I’ve only been very loosely reading this thread, but based upon what little I did read I was surprised to hear the launch date was so soon.
Does the Hivemind agree that this baby is ready to ship?
Cubit
1842
How would we know that? As I understand it, retail split from the beta a few weeks ago.
Give us 8 hours after the release to pre-order customers, and the Hivemind will have an answer. Until then, it will just sit in the corner clicking forlornly at the “Check for updates” option.
Mmmm… i don’t think you have read some of the comments in the last pages… lets’s say it’s controversial. ;)
Brad says the beta process has been the same as in their other games, so if you liked those at launch it’s reasonable to expect the same level of quality and polish in Elemental.
Marcin
1846
From my semi-cursory-turned-into-3-hours check, I’d say yes apart from the memory leak (Out of Memory!) and some wonkiness in scrolling (snaps back to whatever’s highlighted when dragging map) and unit selection (detail window lags one click behind your current selection).
Mordrak
1847
The beta process isn’t the only variable: overall development time, scope and familiarity of features (including technical/graphical), and type of gameplay would all be factors potentiality affecting the finished or polished quality of a final product relative to your past experience with them.
Yeah, and this little thing called Civilization 5…
At this point I’d rather have MoM2/Elemental over Civ 5.
Time for pre-order.
Elemental feels like a strange 4x game. Sometimes i wonder… where is the micro? And the sliders?
You can’t raise/lower taxes, or balance your economy/research. You can’t tweak your magic research/mana like in MoM (and there was something like that in AoW but i played too much time ago). You barely have to look after the morale of cities. You can’t manage workers from your city like in Civ, or focus your city efforts like in GalCiv 2. You can’t buy buildings on constrution, exchanging gold for time and effort, or buying stuff using long time loans likein GC2.
I wonder if they tried to evade the clusterfuck of the economy of GalCiv 2 and perhaps they cut back too much.
Mordrak
1851
That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware of any of that, but I haven’t been following the game closely. I’d expect at least a couple of those items included, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
How long is your average game on a default size map? I could see stripping a lot of that if you wanted a faster game arc and resolution, maybe to facilitate multiplayer.
Have the beta testers been able to mess with the modding tool? How easy would it be to put some of that back in?
Strato
1852
I do agree with you there. I’m sitting on my hands with this one though. I’d rather have less micro rather than the brain bending mess of Gal Civ 2. I still struggle even now to get a clear picture of how everything meshes together in Gal Civ 2. Then again, in games like Rome Total War and Medieval 2 (haven’t played any others) didn’t exactly have sliders yet there was still a fair bit to toy with regarding city management. I think the only sliders in those games was tax rate and AI spend policy.
In place of sliders though, there seems to be a lot more interaction with the map based on the cursory play throughs I’ve done, whether that be raising or lowering terrain, hunting for quests, or growing towns.
ckessel
1853
Good point. I hadn’t thought about that at all. Maybe it’s inherent in your choice of what buildings get built and whether you’re scarfing down pop to build armies?
KevinC
1854
Get it while it’s hot, boys (and girls):
Full post here. The post contains tasty goodies on what’s going to be in the release version. I don’t think all the enhancements he shows are going to be in the RTM/Gold version we’ll get early access to, unless those plans have changed?
@Strato: Total War games are focused in their deep tactical battles, that’s why it’s “justified” the more or less simplified model of the strategic part.
@Ckessel: You make those choices in every Civ clone (building stuf in cities, exchanging resources like gold/pop for armies). My point is that apart from those those two, you make even more choices at macro (budgeting) and micro (city management) levels in other games. So i don’t think they are inherent to the current actions in the game.
I suppose they wanted a more straightforward, “broad choices”, macro game.
edit: there is even more stuff that isn’t there if you compare it with GalCiv 2. Governor lists? Rally points? Management screens for your empire? Economic/research treaties? Random events? vote in council? Etc
edit 2: not saying the game has to be a clone of an already existing game…
shang
1856
I personally find it great they’ve cut the amount of micro decisions. 4X games traditionally become really exhausting to play during the end game for me because of excessive micro management.
Razgon
1857
Yeah, I dont understand why every 4x game out there doesnt incorporate what Master of Orion 2 did, and have a galactic council win by vote of majority…so simple, and works so damn well
ckessel
1858
Yes and no. Civ doesn’t have you pulling population to make units (except for Settlers). Civ also doesn’t have a hard restriction on buildings based on map size. Elemental cities require placing buildings on limited terrain. Civ you can build every single building you want and it’s only the farmers/miners/etc that have limited space.
Both of which mean the tradeoffs in Elemental are different than those in Civ.
Marcin
1859
Agreed. Plus I find the focus on personal development (that is, of my sovereign and the relatively small number of heroes) far more interesting anyway. :)
Dunqan
1860
I’m writing this during my lunch break so I’ll try and be quick. Many of my comparisons are vs. MoM but mostly just to illustrate what I saw as an elegant system vs. a linear one. This also follows along with what Naeblis said earlier on city building.
My biggest issue with what I’ve seen in Elemental is linearity. Brad has said that he sees the betas as being bland an uninspiring and I definitely found this to be the case (and that fact that he said as much gives me some comfort that it’ll be fixed). I hope this gets cleaned up before it goes live but I also wonder if there aren’t some architectural limitations/issues that will keep this from being one of my favorite titles (I certainly hope not as I’d love nothing more than to play this game for years! I’ve pre-ordered and am hoping for the best but I am concerned).
What I mean by linearity is probably best illustrated in the combat system (in addition to what Naeblis points earlier - no ability to really modify production levels, gold, mana generation, etc. in towns - all linear - in other words once you lay down your city center 99% of what will be built there is already clear).
When you start out developing units you can build single units with low attack/defense - like 4-6 attack with 5-10 hps or so. This unit is generally fairly weak vs. most enemies but can be used to some small effect. Then after a bit of research you can build squads of 4 or more units. The problem is that (in the beta at least) a group of archers is about the most powerful unit in the game. Since 10 units = a linear 10x attack and 10x defense. So what was a 6 attack now becomes 60 and 5-10hps becomes 50-100hps - which is enough to decimate a dragon at range with no fear of retaliation.
The system in MoM was much better in my opinion in that each individual unit attacked separately. This led to weak stacks of multiple units being able to do some damage - but not overpowering what should be much stronger units (for the realists out there - if 1 arrow has a 0% chance of hurting a dragon - why should 10 shot by equal archers be better?). This led to tradeoffs where sometimes it made sense to sacrifice units for the greater good by taking half the health of a powerful unit before being finished by another unit and also led to interesting situations such as adding adamantium or luck or other spells to units which could greatly skew what had previously been medium units into very strong units. All of which added to interesting non-linear combinations in late game play. Most of the effects could be countered by other spells/effects and sometimes you’d end up with fun might vs. magic situations (all summons vs. all enhanced normal units).
Another example of linearity in Elemental is how sovereigns regenerate 1MP/turn (without the world wonder that doubles it) - again very linear - you can’t really become a mana wielding menace because of this limitation. A great thing about MoM was the ability to focus on different strategies - I’ve won with mana, I’ve won with production (Klackons once or twice), I’ve won with heroes (albeit vs. a weak AI). The current spells in Elemental are all completely linear (1x int damage for level 1, later spell doing 1.5x int damage, etc. for fire, ice, air - they’re all the same) - but Brad has said they’re aware of this so I won’t belabor the point.
Like I said hopefully the game that is released has much of this updated to be more balanced and interesting (and much deeper!)
