5741

Ha! :-D

Strangely, I kinda agree, which I find very sad.

5742

Updated, played, and the first battle I get the “Can´t end Turn” bug. Back into the Box and starting up CIV 5.

5743

I would suggest, if you suspect you’d like this- getting by the end of this month, especially if you can find a retail sale.

Reason: Stardock has said the 2nd “expansion pack” will be free to those who buy before end of October. The question is do you trust Brad to get the gameplay right? From what I’ve seen so far, I’d give it good odds.

1.09 has had some pretty decent gameplay improvements already.

5744

Oh, I’ve already got the game - I just decided to hold off playing it until it’s in pretty good shape. I’d hate having my opinion of any game shaped by its apparently poor condition at release if there’s a decent chance there’s going to be some real fun to be had. Sounds like 1.1 is my best bet, as that’s where a lot of the redesign is supposed to kick in.

5745

Wardell analyses some problems in the current game design and lists some changes in v1.1 addressing these problems.

An extract:

In Elemental v1.1 we’re doing the following things:

  1. Mana is global. All casters have to share that mana.
  2. Summoned units have a per turn mana upkeep.
  3. Imbued heroes have a summoned per turn mana upkeep.
  4. Mana per turn is generated by controlling shards.
  5. Buildings require population to fill them.
  6. An Outpost requires 1 food to maintain (thus you better be bloody sure you want that outpost).
  7. You can build multiple of a building as long as you have the population and city level to do so. Thus, lucky resource placement is not so overwhelming.
5746

I dont know anymore, if the game can ever hold my interest again.

To be honest, I think that unless they do something spectacular, they missed their chance with this game, which, is really sad.

5747

(from Jarmo’s link above, emphasis mine)

It only took him two months of his product’s abject failure to figure out he needed to stay out of design.

5748
  1. Make the map interesting. My biggest complaint right from the start. An assortment of hills, mountains, forests, bespeckled with quest markers and resources at random locations is somewhat yawn worthy. For a game that has an exploration research pathway, it sure does fail to give or hold any sort of interest for me in what lies within the fog. I can forgive it with Gal Civ 2, space is big, but there is a whole lot of nothing around. But on Terra Firma, in a fantasy setting, well, there are no excuses.
5749

What sort of land features would you expect?

5750

The land features are there, as are the quests, but the random scattering is not interesting. For instance, I don’t think it would be sensible for a mountain range to suddenly meet flat ground right? Can not hurt to have a few hills around the mountain, or mountain range, hills that can affect combat, or the building of city structures, to decide whether the natural barrier afforded by the mountains is really worth it. Map scripts for various TBS games have, and can do it. Now, of course in a fantasy setting, if the mountain range were that which suddenly rose up from the ground one day due to some sort of historical event. Then that becomes a terrain feature. A terrain feature that can have a whole quest derived from it potentially. Or access to an elemental shard.

Point is, if the map is boring, city placement is boring. Does it really matter if I found a city in this tile or that tile? It could, depending on how much the city has to grow, but that is about it.

If the map is boring, quests lose a lot of flavour, and degenerate to errand boy status.

Also, there’s no volcanos dammit!

5751

If he was the CEO and lead designer, and disliked the tactical combat so much, i think it would be more productive if they had made the game without tactical combat, focusing their efforts perhaps in a move involved combat from a strategic viewpoint (like Civilization V combat, better than in previous Civs, but without making a tatical combat system). It seems they made the tactical combat just to cross a check in the “feature list” of these type of games.

5752

I don’t know, there are several large systems in Elemental that are intertwined with the tactical combat, e.g. spell research, unit equipment and combat abilities and equipment research. These do not speak of an afterthought combat grid.

5753

I think you’re right.

5754

The simple, obvious solution would have been to just steal … err, be inspired by the MoM tactical combat which was just working ™.
Or, alternatively, they could’ve copied ideas from other games, such as the HoMM series, for example.

rezaf

5755

They kind of do. The entirety of the gameplay, on all levels, feel like an afterthought. Possibly because they couldn’t execute the design they had planned, and ended up with a collection of place-holder fixes.

The “city improvements as fixed modifiers” idea is one of the reasons city layouts are meaningless and dull. City improvements should produce modifiable quantities of stuff.

One of the reasons the map is so dull right now, is that the only difference between tiles is the movement modifier. Tiles should have production modifiers as well, to help make city layouts matter.

One of the reasons heroes are meaningless and dull, is that the stuff heroes can do either doesn’t need to be done, or can be done better by something that isn’t a hero. Basically, they’re redundant and they suck.
There’s any number of ways to address that, but the essentials are to make heroes give unique bonuses to other stuff, and to make heroes capable of non-passive (as in: not a modifier) stuff than nothing/nobody else is capable of.

  • These are just a couple of examples, but I trust you understand what I’m talking about. Because, well… There’s nothing what so ever in the game that doesn’t feel like someone said “sorry boss, but if you want this bit playable by Tuesday, I’m gonna have to simplify it a bit”. The whole thing feels much more deserving of my handle than I do.
5756

The simple, obvious solution would have been to just steal … err, be inspired by the MoM tactical combat which was just working ™.
Or, alternatively, they could’ve copied ideas from other games, such as the HoMM series, for example.

rezaf

5757

I’m not so sure about that.

1.) The Forum Wars are more entertaining – and have garnered more attention – than most of the games released since Elemental. Emotions are running hot because “not-MoM” turned out to be unlike MoM. Except for the initial, game-ruining bugginess, of course.

2.) Civ5 hasn’t done a great job at holding anyone’s attention past 20-40 hours. Everyone anticipated it to be Elemental’s killing blow, but Civ5’s shaky legs spell a huge opportunity for Stardock.

3.) Unless Elemental’s first expansion, “We Swear It’s not a Re-Release,” is a complete technical failure, you better believe it’s going to be showered with positive reviews. The only thing the public loves more than a fall is a redemption. Especially when it comes to (perceieved) underdogs.

tl;dr:

Any press is good press; Civ5 flubbed its coup de grâce; A new SKU is a blank slate.

5758

Civ5 flubbed? What?

Elemental’s first expansion will be showered with glowing reviews?

That’s some good stuff you’re on.

5759

Yeah. This is a huge problem I have with the game for plenty of reasons. Special tiles are all that matter, and as a result the game feels like a GalCiv2 mod.

One of the reasons heroes are meaningless and dull, is that the stuff heroes can do either doesn’t need to be done, or can be done better by something that isn’t a hero. Basically, they’re redundant and they suck.
There’s any number of ways to address that, but the essentials are to make heroes give unique bonuses to other stuff, and to make heroes capable of non-passive (as in: not a modifier) stuff than nothing/nobody else is capable of.

I always thought Heroes sucked in MoM, short of some overpowered crap like Torin. The only use I could find were caster heroes with -Resist wands. Otherwise, an enchanted, Alchemized pack of Slingers or Paladins were cheaper and stronger the vast majority of the time.

Heroes were better in Age of Wonders due to projecting your Wizard’s domain and due to the fact that there was not a “figure-by-stack” system.

Now, I agree with your proposals and general feelings about heroes, but I just wanted to point out that, to me, they’ve always sucked.

5760

The fuck? What are you talking about? I don’t think you realize how popular Civ5 is, despite some nitpicks from a hardcore community like Qt3. Elemental’s first expansion (re. patch) will more than likely not be reviewed by any gaming sites.