Elemental all-purpose thread

[kerzain]

Random thought after last game: The very early parts of the game seem to be a race to see who gets the strongest guardian unit, because the moment you get one you can pretty much roll over everybody within walking distance.

For instance, my capital city has a lot of resources around it. I started out by building a gold mine and a farm, both of which were right next to the city. As the city grew and my borders expanded, I built one more gold mine, a lost library and an apiary, none of which were adjacent to the city itself, but within the borders.

Now, 50 turns later, I’ve realised that none of the improvements that aren’t adjacent to the city show up in the city screen, nor do are they being factored into the city’s production, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried expanding the city, by building a bunch of huts, in order to get the improvements into the city proper, but it doesn’t seem to work.

I noticed that one of my gold mines (in border, but not adjacent – like yours) was not showing up in the city screen either. When I click on the incoming gold breakdown I see the mine in there instead, but I am getting income from the mine.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I can’t find the answer to anywhere: What’s the number after the crown symbol, in the battle breakdown screen?
No idea, it isn’t experience because I’ll have multiple heroes all level up at once after a battle where only one person was awarded 50 crowns (as an example). I am thinking it might be some sort of prestige… or something… Or Maybe an artifact of some time when experience might only have been awarded for killshots, I don’t know. At the moment the entire party seems to get exp though, even though only those folks who do the killing get the crowns (as far as I can tell)

Where can I see how much experience a hero has, and how much he/she needs for the next level?
When the hero is selected there is an experience bar to the left of their pic on the very bottom menu, it’s purple as it fills up.

Where can I see a research point breakdown of my kingdom?
I don’t think there is a big list where you can see a list of cities and their income, but if you open each city window you can see the research/income generated for each city, you can also hover over the progress bar on the bottom of the main screen to see how much research is being generated per turn.

Am I supposed to be able to recruit adventurers, and if so, why can’t I do that (I’m talking about the ones that are called creature-adventurer, or somesuch)?
If you hover over them and a thought bubble appears with a big red line through it you can select that adventurer and then over on the right choose the actions tab and hover over the dialogue box to see why they won’t talk to you, often it is because you don’t have enough money.

What exactly do caravans do? And so on.
Once they have arrived at a destination you’ll see a percentage appear in the city screen under ‘trade’, I’m guessing that is a bonus to gold income, but it could also be food (I’m not sure which).

[tomchick]

All good questions, Nikolaj, and all examples of the game’s poor documentation.

For instance, my capital city has a lot of resources around it. I started out by building a gold mine and a farm, both of which were right next to the city. As the city grew and my borders expanded, I built one more gold mine, a lost library and an apiary, none of which were adjacent to the city itself, but within the borders.

Now, 50 turns later, I’ve realised that none of the improvements that aren’t adjacent to the city show up in the city screen, nor do are they being factored into the city’s production, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried expanding the city, by building a bunch of huts, in order to get the improvements into the city proper, but it doesn’t seem to work.

Note that you have to actually spend gold and/or materials building on the special resource location itself. Assuming you’ve done that, if you can assimilate the special resource location into your city by touching it with buildings, it should be part of that city, which will draw a border around it. The resource’s “card” display will also list the name of the city. Otherwise, the card will red “wild improvement”, and it’ll just shunt whatever it produces into your global pool.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I can’t find the answer to anywhere: What’s the number after the crown symbol, in the battle breakdown screen? Where can I see how much experience a hero has, and how much he/she needs for the next level? Where can I see a research point breakdown of my kingdom? Am I supposed to be able to recruit adventurers, and if so, why can’t I do that (I’m talking about the ones that are called creature-adventurer, or somesuch)? What exactly do caravans do? And so on.

I think the symbol you’re talking about is the stack’s “combat rating”, which is an at-a-glance indicator of its bad-ass-itude, or lack thereof. (EDIT: Oops, I see you’re talking about something else. I’m guessing that’s xp, but I’m not sure. Good question!)

Select your hero and check his Vitals tab. There’s a bar for his xp. A tooltip appears if you mouse over it, telling you exactly how much xp he has and how much he needs to level up.

There is no global research breakdown, but the technology display lists your total research point production per turn in the top right corner. Otherwise, each city’s research point production shows on the map next to the sextant icon, and you can get a helpful breakdown of each city’s research production on the city’s detail screen.

You can only recruit adventures if your NPC level is high enough. You can check this under the World Variables entry of the kingdom display. Raise it by researching technologies in the Adventure/Domination category.

Caravans pave roads between the cities they serve. Otherwise, as near as I can tell from the display screen, they increase food production and do fuck-all for your gold income. I don’t know if that’s a bug or if it’s working as intended, but there it is.

 -Tom

[Free_Parking]

The game just finished installing. Time to give it a whirl.

[Marcus]

Fuck it I’m weak.

[Mordrak]

I noticed the removed non-terrain based combat modifiers in the patch notes. I take it that’s removing some of the seemingly random bonuses you’re seeing in tactical combat.

Does the combat reward tactical positioning, like flanking or attacking from behind?

[Nikolaj]

Thanks for the answers, they do clear some things up.

I noticed that one of my gold mines (in border, but not adjacent – like yours) was not showing up in the city screen either. When I click on the incoming gold breakdown I see the mine in there instead, but I am getting income from the mine.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m getting the income, too, but on a kingdom level, as if the improvements are not attached to the city. That kind of suck, since it means that all of the specialisation improvements I’m building in that city won’t have any effect. I wonder if there’s some way to attach those improvements to the city, later on? I tried tearing down the lost library, so I could rebuild it, but it wouldn’t let me.

[JM1]

I noticed the removed non-terrain based combat modifiers in the patch notes. I take it that’s removing some of the seemingly random bonuses you’re seeing in tactical combat.

Does the combat reward tactical positioning, like flanking or attacking from behind?

Not that I’m aware of.

Defence makes a big difference - it defines how often an attack will miss. For the first hundred turns or so I don’t think I came up against more than 2 units with defence >0, but as soon as I faced a couple with 5-10def they didn’t just fall over.

---

I also have nerfed my sovereign by spending 4 essence to make another hero a spellcaster. This was my fault and entirely avoidable - I thought essence was a resource, NOT a character stat (it defines your max mana - I can’t cast half my spells now). Woops.

On another note, I built a city next to a fire shard. The fire shard disappeared :(

[kerzain]

Thanks for the answers, they do clear some things up.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m getting the income, too, but on a kingdom level, as if the improvements are not attached to the city. That kind of suck, since it means that all of the specialization improvements I’m building in that city won’t have any effect. I wonder if there’s some way to attach those improvements to the city, later on? I tried tearing down the lost library, so I could rebuild it, but it wouldn’t let me.

If you have any other towns very close to that resource, who’s borders are not touching the borders from the resource town, check to see if IT is getting the mine income. I have a feeling that would explain a problem I was having in a game this morning (two separate towns, but a mine psysically closer to a town outside it’s own border sending income to the wrong place). I’m still not sure this is what was happening to me.

[Nikolaj]

Note that you have to actually spend gold and/or materials building on the special resource location itself. Assuming you’ve done that, if you can assimilate the special resource location into your city by touching it with buildings, it should be part of that city, which will draw a border around it. The resource’s “card” display will also list the name of the city. Otherwise, the card will red “wild improvement”, and it’ll just shunt whatever it produces into your global pool.

I tried assimilating them, as you describe, but nothing happened. I even tried waiting for the city to grow a level, to see if that would trigger the assimilation. Maybe I have to completely envelope the location with buildings?

edit: I just tried it, and that didn’t work either. I guess that if you build resource improvements, before the city actually touches those improvements, you forego any modifiers the city might have added.

If you have any other towns very close to that resource, who’s borders are not touching the borders from the resource town, check to see if IT is getting the mine income. I have a feeling that would explain a problem I was having in a game this morning (two separate towns, but a mine psysically closer to a town outside it’s own border sending income to the wrong place). I’m still not sure this is what was happening to me.

I do have another town relatively close (although still further than the main town), but it’s not getting it either. It seems to go straight into the kingdom pool.

[Mark_Asher]

I’m posting in the busiest thread on the busiest forum. What qualifies as something better to do on here? I like to make fun of games.

You are like one of those Seattle police officers just waiting for a chance to punch a jaywalker in the face!

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

Ok, I was not in the beta, so I’m pretty lost. I tried a random map, but had a graphic glitch where the whole screen was gray when I reloaded a save.Thoughts on this? I also had a new unit when I reloaded another time and had Jansik disapear.

Then I tried the campaign, and founded my city. I’m told that a shopkeeper has set up shop and I should buy equipment. How do I do this? I can’t find a shop or a button to click and the PDF manual does not tell me how unless I mised it.

Any way to shut off the auto turn feature? It’s a turn based game and I want to decide when to advance to the next turn …

[Dejin]

Ok, I was not in the beta, so I’m pretty lost. I tried a random map, but had a graphic glitch where the whole screen was gray when I reloaded a save.Thoughts on this?

I haven’t seen this particular bug. Sounds nasty. Is it just that the map view is displaying somewhere where everything is under fog-of-war? Try zooming out all the way and see if that helps. Otherwise, no idea.

Then I tried the campaign, and founded my city. I’m told that a shopkeeper has set up shop and I should buy equipment. How do I do this? I can’t find a shop or a button to click and the PDF manual does not tell me how unless I mised it.

While your leader is selected, there should be a set of actions down in the bottom toolbar. It may be the active tab or it may not be. For example with my leader selected right now, on the left of his portrait in the toolbar I see tabs “Vitals”, “Actions”, “Enchantments” and to the right of his portrait I see my hitpoints and mana levels.

Click on the “Actions” tab, and you should see a “Shop” icon – it looks like a bunch of gold coins and some bottles. If it’s greyed out, I think that usually means your leader is not in friendly territory.

Any way to shut off the auto turn feature? It’s a turn based game and I want to decide when to advance to the next turn …

Hit Escape and switch to the Gameplay options tab. There’s an “Auto-Turn” checkbox, see what that does. Personally I don’t like the way Stardock auto-turns work. They seem to always have my guys do their automatic movement after the enemy compeltes their turn and before I have a chance to see the results and cancel anything I don’t like.

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

1)I haven’t seen this particular bug. Sounds nasty. Is it just that the map view is displaying somewhere where everything is under fog-of-war? Try zooming out all the way and see if that helps. Otherwise, no idea.

2)While your leader is selected, there should be a set of actions down in the bottom toolbar. It may be the active tab or it may not be. For example with my leader selected right now, on the left of his portrait in the toolbar I see tabs “Vitals”, “Actions”, “Enchantments” and to the right of his portrait I see my hitpoints and mana levels.

Click on the “Actions” tab, and you should see a “Shop” icon – it looks like a bunch of gold coins and some bottles. If it’s greyed out, I think that usually means your leader is not in friendly territory.

3)Hit Escape and switch to the Gameplay options tab. There’s an “Auto-Turn” checkbox, see what that does. Personally I don’t like the way Stardock auto-turns work. They seem to always have my guys do their automatic movement after the enemy compeltes their turn and before I have a chance to see the results and cancel anything I don’t like.

1. Would not scroll even nor go to selected area on minimap.

2. Thanks, that option was not there before I reloaded, or I missed it.

3. I looked for this but only saw “auto save.” Found it now. Why no tooltips on the options screen??

[ckessel]

I played the campaign for a decent ways. I reached a point with some bug where hitting end turn never ends the turn. I’ve tried reloading the game, I tried even uninstalling and reinstalling (which doesn’t delete saves) and it still has the same problem.

I also get a lot of crashes going back to the main menu and reloading a previous save.

Otherwise, my experience is pretty much the same as the various ones I’ve seen here. Lots of usability things that need work. Maybe I’ll wait until v1.1.

[drteeth]

I tried assimilating them, as you describe, but nothing happened. I even tried waiting for the city to grow a level, to see if that would trigger the assimilation. Maybe I have to completely envelope the location with buildings?

edit: I just tried it, and that didn’t work either. I guess that if you build resource improvements, before the city actually touches those improvements, you forego any modifiers the city might have added.

I do have another town relatively close (although still further than the main town), but it’s not getting it either. It seems to go straight into the kingdom pool.

Your resources go to the the nearest town to them when they are built. You can check this by clicking on the resource. It’s info box will tell you how much it’s producing and where the output is headed.

When you are looking at your town you can click on any of the little lines that show how much of each resource they are making (or losing) to get a very detailed accounting of where it is coming from and where it is going to.

I’m rather enjoying the game but damn is it ever slow and crash prone at the moment.

[Mordrak]

If you build two towns close together early on, can you merge them into a megalopolis?

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

So before I go back to this, is the Day 0 patch savegame compatable?

[Dejin]

So before I go back to this, is the Day 0 patch savegame compatable?

The patch tonight is save compatible. I haven’t heard anything about the day-0 patch one way or the other.

[Jason_Cross]

Yeah, food is a special resource. I think the idea is that you need to make a special provision to produce it. You can’t just plop it down into any city. You have to find a food square, cultivate it, and then use it as a source to supply your empire. As I said, once you grok city development, it’s pretty elegant. I really like the way it’s done in Elemental.

Yeah, I don’t have any problem with it, mechanically. I just have a problem with the way one has to just stumble upon something that is not just unintuitive, it’s actually counter-intuitive to what you just learned about building city buildings. The exact same thing has tripped up what, three of us in this thread? Four? Experienced gamers, all. No amount of tooltip or manual reading will teach you that “special resource” farm thing, either.

Ben’s example of combat is a spot-on and further example of how this game has far bigger problems than fixing some memory leaks or % values. Spells using up all your action points, except when you use up some action points first, is just completely wonky. Squares in tactical combat having seemingly random bonuses (that don’t clearly show themselves until you pixel-hunt across the map to look at tooltips), not in any obvious way related to actual elevation or terrain, just seems like it never should have made it into the game, let alone out the door. And then there’s the tactical AI, which as he noted, basically makes all units rush straight at you (as far as I can tell).

Someone said the tutorial here isn’t worse than Civ’s, and boy howdy, is that ever wrong. The new player tutorial in Civ IV does a perfectly serviceable job of walking you through the actual basic mechanics of the game (click here, move there, do this, change this value to that, etc.). I have no idea what Civ V’s is like. I would actually love to see something just like Civ IV’s tutorial in Elemental.

[Matthew_Gallant]

Everyone knows why you’re in this thread. I’m not sure why you think I somehow don’t get it.

And I’m not sure why I am being singled out in particular, regardless of motivation, for posting only on-topic jokes related to what many, many other people are saying.

Others are able to have a good laugh about Mark Rein taking a dump on cliffski at a conference and others in turn have good laughs about cliffski’s vehemently expressed ivory tower ideology regarding piracy, all without segues into “why” and exhortations from the management to fuck off.

And furthermore, if you purport to know all of my motivations for doing nothing but making on-topic jokes riffing on opinions that many have expressed, why do you imply that you consider those motivations invalid? Are they really? How ugly an American does Brad have to be and how many developers who employ my friends have to have their reputations close to obliterated by his fuckups and subsequent shady spin before I am allowed to make a joke or five at his expense?