If you’ve got the right spell sphere you can also learn the level one “Nature’s Bounty” spell which will boost your food enough to build that critical first hut.
There is a maximum number of tiles you can build in. In beta it used to be tied to the city level, but apparently is no longer. One of the developers posting on the official forums said that he thinks it’s now 50 for all cities.
You can actually pretty quickly (turn 15 or so) have a pioneer ready to found a second city, build a farm there and quickly upgrade your capital, which had time to build basic buildings. You don’t always have to found a city near food right away. Although you WILL need one in the early stages of the game.
Questions:
How is the max number of buildings in a city determined? Is there any indication of how many you have left other than trial and error?
What is the max number of enchantments I can run? Says it’s tied to essence but is that base essence or do modifiers help?
-You have 40 tiles (the number might have changed) to build stuff on. So 40 one tile buildings or ten four tile buildings etc.
-Dunno about the enchantments sadly. The betas had a menu with empty enchantment slots, but that seems to be gone.
How is the max number of buildings in a city determined? Is there any indication of how many you have left other than trial and error?
Under the city’s name, there is a little bar showing how much prestige the city generates, some other stuff and the number of available tiles left. It’s the number on the right hand side.
Ooo, I never noticed that. I was just looking for the max tile info last night. Thanks!
Played a sandbox last night and enjoyed it much more than the campaign. It’s pretty satisfying to see my influence spreading outward, picking up new resources, etc. I found that the bandits and such will also stomp on a lightly defended town. Bummer.
Questions:
Is there any way to create a stack of units from single units (not just during the original creation once you’ve got the proper tech)? My unit roster is a bit of a mess from building early-game singles.
Is there any way to keep group cohesion when going into a town so that I don’t have to reassemble my adventuring party every time I stop for a rest?
When researching spells, you occasionally get the pop-up that says “Visit Spellbook” and “Advance Learning” or something like that. Visiting the spellbook seems to queue up a new spell for research, while the other button does what?
Is casting one of the spells that enhance town production permanent?
Should I be learning every spell I can or limiting my choices? I feel like I’m just randomly clicking on stuff.
I am assuming that with the caravans you build it and then send it to a nearby town, after which it builds a road and continues back and forth. Correct? Is there an advantage to having a caravan running at both ends of the route?
Advance Learning immediately picks the next level of spell power to research.
Right now many of the spells seem redundant. Basic damage spells have the same effect until you gain a couple of the corresponding shards.
Not that I know of, they have to be trained together first.
Is there any way to keep group cohesion when going into a town so that I don’t have to reassemble my adventuring party every time I stop for a rest?
I wish, my (stupidly inefficient) way of getting around this (dumb) problem is to pull everyone out of my town before I send a stack in, or manually break apart the stack and just send the hero into the town tiles.
Except for town defense, there isn’t really a reason to go all the way into town that I’ve seen though, you can shop from anywhere within the border.
When researching spells, you occasionally get the pop-up that says “Visit Spellbook” and “Advance Learning” or something like that. Visiting the spellbook seems to queue up a new spell for research, while the other button does what?
If I’m not mistaken it raises your spell level, it’s the same as choosing to study the next level in the book itself.
Is casting one of the spells that enhance town production permanent?
There are durations for all spells listed in the descriptions. I don’t remember this one off the top of my head.
Should I be learning every spell I can or limiting my choices? I feel like I’m just randomly clicking on stuff.
It depends on how fast you want to gain casting levels. If you don’t see anything worth learning this instant it might not hurt to go up a level and check those spells out, but it takes time.
There is an enchantment bar, but it’s tied to the hero now. I guess that makes sense, as it’s my caster that is sustaining them? However, I am not sure if I saw a total limit listed there. Hmm.
The +1 food spell is certainly permanent and yeah, there’s a “Duration” attribute on the spell info that sould say “infinite”.
The positive town enchantments are mostly “permanent” but use up a enchantment slot (these are also used up by summons and certain unit spells like the +2 attack one). The manual said something about your enchantment slots being limited by your essence but I haven’t seen a clear indication in game (I’m guessing 10 essence = 10 enchantment slots but not sure)
I have no idea where the enchantment slots are listed either, if someone knows it would be nice to find out.
Once I finally got a few graphics issues I was having worked out last night I had a good time with Elemental. There are definitely some warts here and there, and there is definitely some balancing to be done with some of the numbers (like why do patchwork helmets give less protection than patchwork breastplates, but cost a lot more materials?), but I think the core game here is a good one.
My first game was as a Kingdom and was basically just a learning game to get back into the swing of it and figure out what had changed since beta. I think part of the reason some of the bugs with the game don’t bother me so much is that it’s so much better than what it looked like during beta. Miles ahead of that in every category.
In my first game I started on a large map with basically a caster setup for my sovereign… all 6 starting spellbooks, good intelligence, and the bonus ability that gives you arcane knowledge. I played for a good hundred turns or so, got a few cities established and then decided to start a new game with last nights late patch to apply some of the lesson I learned.
A few tips from my first game:
For my second game I decided to turn to the dark side and created an imperial sovereign. Pretty similar to my first one, but with the skill that gives world tech instead of arcane tech. This game I decided to go with a medium map since I never even saw one of the other players in my first game. :P
My first city was in a good spot with both food and a lost library. That means this first town will be able to provide me with lots of research early on, in addition to the 1 point my sovereign gives. I found a gold mine and a marble quarry a short distance to the northeast and started working on a pioneer early to expand up there.
Between my first two cities was a long road that appears to have been there from the start. I used my sovereign to scout to the north and found one of the other empires Kraxis on the other side of a small mountain range from me and a water shard. That’s the only shard I’ve found so far, but it’s all by itself in the middle of nowhere and is almost in Kraxis’ domain.
Once I got my 2 cities built up a bit and had all their resources capped I was doing pretty good. That gave me a solid source of all the main resources and I built a few new armored conscript units and sent them off to explore the east and southeast with my sovereign. In that direction I found the Kingdom of Capitar, and a couple of really nice city locations. One had gold, iron, and a beach on the shore of a large ocean. The other had a nice scenic outlook, an old growth forest, and wild wargs that I would later be able to train up as mounts.
I started building 2 more pioneers as well as my first multiple figure units in the form of 2 groups of trained conscripts. My conscripts were nothing to write home about, but they were armed with decent fang blades, patchwork breastplates, and light shields. Individually they were pretty weak, but in a group of three they were formidable (at least this early on).
I built my third city in the spot near the ocean, but as I approached the spot with the wargs to place my forth city I found a Capitar city there. Blasphemy! They can’t even use the wargs! This demanded immediate attention so I sent my sovereign and his little band (himself, 2 conscripts, and a summoned bear at this point) to scout out Capitar’s other cities and began massing my conscripts near the border with Capitar. As soon as I found their capital and my troops were in position I launched my assault. I quickly overpowered the militia defending Capitar’s border city and began moving my troops farther into their empire. The final assault on their capital was the toughest fight yet with their sovereign and about 6 units of militia defending, but they were nothing compared to my summoned troops and conscripts. I made sure to let my sovereign make the killing blow on the enemy channeler.
With Capitar now under my control I was in great shape. During the war I had been working on domination techs, and one of those had revealed a second gold mine near my 3rd city, and from Capitar I had captured a crystal mine, the warg pen, a new lost library, and 2 old growth forests. This gave me a solid resource base to build up with, and a lot of research flowing in.
My plan now is to build up to take on Kraxis to my north and then use my beachfront property to begin building a navy to explore the rest of the world. Kraxis appears to be the only other faction on this continent with me, so I will build up a nice new army using my newly acquired resources to take them out. I’ve also researched some tech that game me access to some pretty powerful creatures I can recruit in my second city. They look really strong, but they are 450 gold a pop.
At that point it was about 2:30 and way, way past my usual bedtime (curse Stardock for releasing patches after 11 at night!), so I’ll have to continue with them another night.
There’s really a nice constant flow of new goodies to exploit while you play and so far I’m finding it lots of fun. Lots of minor issues I hope they get cleared up soon, but so far I’m very happy with the way Elemental is turning out. There’s just something great about the way the RPG elements combine with the Civ/Mom style empire building that’s really immersive.
When I get a follower that gives me +% in food production for a city, how do I make sure his bonus is actually applied to a particular city? Or did I miss something somewhere?
If you move the follower onto the original city square, they will join the city and will apply the bonus. Later you can have them leave the city and go to another one if you want.
What about the follower that makes recruiting heroes cheaper? Do you carry him with you everywhere, or can you park him in a city? I can recruit from my cities within their radius.
Sepiche,
That was a great writeup. I’m playing the Empire faction and am beating up on Capitar as well. They had a few border cities with massive influence that was causing me all kinds of headaches, so my trusty firegiant and I headed out with some elite troops to go lay some smack down. Kraxis took the opportunity to hit me in my weakly defended flank, though, so my invasion may have to be put on hold while I plot my revenge.
I agree, though, one thing I really like is the steady stream of new goodies. I’m also impressed with how good the five tech trees feel. All of them tempt me, and while I’m still new and unlearned, right now it feels like there’s not a “no-brainer” tech path to follow. Each game so far I’ve gone a different route and have been exploit the different bonuses in various ways. It’s really well done.
On the spellcaster. Enchants tab. I still don’t see the total # of them.
I just found a bug probably left over from godmode debugging. You can page through other kingdoms in “Kingdom Report”, giving you at least partial stats of the technology advance, population, income, etc.
Good question, have you tried using the unit itself to recruit others?
Aren’t those only for the enchants currently set on the spellcaster? We want to know where the slots are for the city enchantments.
No. All of the enchantments that caster has er, cast. I am staring at Brilliance cast on my starting city in my sovereign’s enchants bar right now.