OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[sector24]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Is there anything interesting in Elemental that would make you want to stick longer to it?

And some questions:

3. Is there any hard limit for tiles for my cities? OR any pattern? Some of my cities have same size, but 2x less tiles...
6. What's the strongest sovereign? So far it looks like the one starting with 2 units just owns everything, as he can amass insane amount of gold etc from monsters and treasures. what's +1 gold per turn if you can find 200 gold chests?

3. You are limited to 50 tiles per city. If you put a resource inside your city (gold mine, etc.) that takes up 4 tiles. But it is put behind the city walls, so there's a tactical decision between freeing up 4 tiles and preventing bandits from burning down your gold mine.

6. Statistically speaking, some of the pre-made sovereigns are unbelievably powerful compared to the custom sovereigns. A few have more than 50 points placed in stats alone, and then on top of that they have abilities and equipment. The only advantage of a custom sovereign is the stacking of ridiculous bonuses, like getting all the +movement bonuses and the ability that allows all units to move at the same speed as the soverign (or something like that).

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Is there anything interesting in Elemental that would make you want to stick longer to it?

Good potential when there's an ai, a better ui in places, and some more balance. hopefully good modding capability too.

1. How to deal with Golems? They pretty much insta-kill any armies.

You mean fire giants, stone giants, etc? Yes, they kill everything. Best counter: Summon one of your own. Next: You need lots of attack to get past their armor, so need good weapons and lots of units grouped together. So buy a company of soldiers equipped with longsword or heavy warhammers or the like. Just make sure to have many individuals in the unit, each of them dishing out lots of damage.
Alternately, accumulate insane intelligence on your sovereign and cast some spell at it, particularly if you own the shards that go with the spell.

2. Or maybe auto-resolve comabts sucks so bad that with 10x higher attack you lose anyway?

I wouldn't trust auto resolve except maybe for 1 on 1 fights. The tactical ai is so bad that playing by hand means you'll win evenly matched fights easily so...

4. Can I make more adventurers or do I have to run like crazy with my sovereign to check all huts taht pop up everywhere?

You can hire adventurers and the like. Some of them seem to keep roaming the map even late game.

5. Do games take hundreds of turns, or is it just me?

They do for me too. But then I use a magician sovereign, she casts spells, and if it takes 20 turns for her mana to refill, the game drags just because of that.

[Dhaeron]

Can anyone who already played it give a review of the tactical battles? For me, boring tactical combat is a complete dealbreaker. GalCiv 2 was promising until the first fight showed that braindead rock-paper-scissors scheme that had going. There's a reason i always come back to playing MOO3 when i'm in the mood for space 4X.
Well, SEIV is nice too.

[sector24]

There is nothing "tactical" about the tactical battles. Basically all your guys are on a grid, all their guys are on a grid. There are no obstacles or impassable tiles to create choke points or anything like that. Most of your spells are single target, infinite range, deals 1 to X damage where X = your INT. Melee attacks deal 1 to X damage where X is your attack rating. Defense reduces damage ranging from 1 to X where X is your defense rating.

The wide number ranges make it hard to guarantee that any given attack will result in a kill, and it's especially frustrating when your spells roll low because you only get back 1 mana per game turn. So blowing 10 MP in a fight is rarely worth the price.

When you research warfare tech you can make groups of units that all stack together on the same square. Instead of 4/6/8 guys with individual stats, their stats are merely added together. So basically, 4 peasants = jaguar warrior, 4 axemen = niefel jarl, 4 knights = prince of death. It's pretty crazy. You spend all this time leveling up your sovereign so that he has 40 HP and a whopping 20 attack, and then a couple turns later you can just crank out unlimited numbers of 150HP 300 attack units in all your cities.

That's the gist of it. I bet one day all the units, equipment, spells, and special abilities will be modded to make tactical combat as good as it was in Age of Wonders oh 17 years ago...one day. But not today.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by sector24

...
That's the gist of it. I bet one day all the units, equipment, spells, and special abilities will be modded to make tactical combat as good as it was in Age of Wonders oh 17 years ago...one day. But not today.

And I won't buy Elemental one day earlier.

The way you describe it, even HOMM V and Disciples I-III has better tactical combat, not to mention AoW/MOM or, heaven forbid, dominions.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by sector24

There is nothing "tactical" about the tactical battles. Basically all your guys are on a grid, all their guys are on a grid. There are no obstacles or impassable tiles to create choke points or anything like that.

This is plain false.
There are impassable tiles.
There's also terrain that provides defensive bonus.
It's hard to guess which, since what looks like a hill may not be one, and vice versa, but the terrain has an effect, and some tiles you can't cross (barriers).

Most of your spells are single target, infinite range, deals 1 to X damage where X = your INT.

False again. Many spells have short range and a side effect (freeze opponent f.e.), some have an area of effect. However all tend to deal the same damage.

Melee attacks deal 1 to X damage where X is your attack rating. Defense reduces damage ranging from 1 to X where X is your defense rating.

The wide number ranges make it hard to guarantee that any given attack will result in a kill, and it's especially frustrating when your spells roll low because you only get back 1 mana per game turn. So blowing 10 MP in a fight is rarely worth the price.

Yes. The real issue with tactical battles though is that if you spend 12 mana (4 fireballs targetting 1 target, or 2 lightning targetting 9 squares for 10 mana), it'll take you 12 turns to regenerate it, which means tactical spellcasting is just unusable.

When you research warfare tech you can make groups of units that all stack together on the same square. Instead of 4/6/8 guys with individual stats, their stats are merely added together. So basically, 4 peasants = jaguar warrior, 4 axemen = niefel jarl, 4 knights = prince of death. It's pretty crazy. You spend all this time leveling up your sovereign so that he has 40 HP and a whopping 20 attack, and then a couple turns later you can just crank out unlimited numbers of 150HP 300 attack units in all your cities.

That's the gist of it. I bet one day all the units, equipment, spells, and special abilities will be modded to make tactical combat as good as it was in Age of Wonders oh 17 years ago...one day. But not today.

It's also worth mentioning the ai isn't very good yet, and that the one who strikes first still gets a very big advantage.

Overall, I agree that the tactical combat is not yet good enough.

[Doo]

I can write a good review in around 48 hours time, so far I have not committed much time to playing it because after work I'm pooped. Friday night I intend to have an epic 6 hour marathon, Saturday morning I'll give you a fair and proper rundown of the game.

[Fantomen]

How depressing.

[Zeldor]

You should read that, following all links in the article:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/el...tay-well-away/

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

You should read that, following all links in the article:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/25/el...tay-well-away/

For those too lazy to follow, I'll summarize:
review summary: "Elemental’s disastrous launch: stay well away"

And quoting this notable paragraph:
"In response to someone saying Elemental “plays like an early beta” on the Quarter to Three forums, Brad requests that anyone who thinks so “please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don’t buy our games.”
"

The review seems to be fair, even considerate. The reviewer states that he's or was a stardock fan and loves the game concept, he also gives a link to a thread in which Brad responds to that sad comment.

All in all, too much drama too little "soul" in this game that I once so looked forward too.
Looks like I have more to look forward too if they'll ever translate that game Dimaz mentioned to English.
Or, some company do an "exact" copy of MOM with production values of 2k11.