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Stardock's new game "Elemental: War of Magic"

covr

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You have to wait, it may took a few minutes, but the game will eventually start. It's a common problem.
 

Eyeball

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Encouraged by this thread, I reinstalled with the new mod.

My reaction was similar to the first time I played it - uninstalled after literally 15 minutes.

Unimpressive visuals, poor coding, long loading times, poor interface and just complete overall lack of appeal to me. Start working on GalCIv3 instead guys, this was done better by AoW.
 

coldcrow

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Thanks.

At least it is playable now, even if quite abstract (in a bad way).
 

asper

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Project: Eternity
So how does this shit compare to Dominions 3: The Awakening?
 

Malakal

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asper said:
So how does this shit compare to Dominions 3: The Awakening?

Umm I think the same way quake 3 compares to heroes of might and magic 2. Those are different games.
 

DakaSha

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I love reading forum posts about this game on the web prior to release.. then read posts after release ^^
 

Tycn

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http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/articl ... 1_THE_LIST

So here's a partial list of things that we think are big deals that we want to address this year in the Elemental universe in order to make it the classic PC fantasy strategy game of its time.

1. Core Engine Stuff. This means smarter memory management so that we can have larger maps, faster late game performance, etc.

2. Core Strategic AI stuff. This means an AI that plays the game strategically in an intelligent way.

3. Core Tactical AI stuff. This means that when you have a battle tactically, the AI units play as if they were being controlled by another human.

4. Core Diplomacy AI stuff. More interesting and intelligent diplomatic options available to players.

5. More overt AI differentiation. That is, each faction plays different to the point that players can see a difference. They're not predictable but rather they have different ways of achieving their objectives.

6. More faction differentiation. That is, each player is blatantly different across the board. Techs, improvements, weapons, racial attributes, etc.

7. More interesting tactical battles. Specifically, tactical battles that blend the best of strategy and RPG together. A complete rewrite of what we have today.

8. More interesting and important city differentation. That means, more explicit ways to specialize cities, more interesting ways to make different cities unique and strategic on their own.

9. Vastly more interesting world. We have this great world with great lore behind it but you don't see it in the game. This is going to change this year as the lore of Elemental comes into play both in terms of actual game mechanics and game play but in the general feel of the world.

10. Much more modding support than what we have today.

Start Monday, 3 new people join Stardock and are being added to the Elemental team. And two of them are pretty well known and the other is an amazing game developer that we've bee fortunate enough to find.

Stardock is looking to hire more people for the Elemental team (in particular, Kael and I are trying to recruit a seasoned lead game developer). Please contact myself of Derek if you know anyone who would fit that description. Stardock has some other game projects that start up this year as well and the publishing group is working on some new things as well. So it's going to be a pretty exciting year for Stardock gamers.

Their devotion to salvaging their game is impressive.
 

asper

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Project: Eternity
Stardock is looking to hire more people for the Elemental team (in particular, Kael and I are trying to recruit a seasoned lead game developer). Please contact myself of Derek if you know anyone who would fit that description.

Someone mail them Cleve's contact info.
 

20 Eyes

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Trash said:
You know, I practically wrote this puppy off but now...

I don't understand why Stardock gets so much flak around here. GalCiv 2 was a good game, though boring, and sure they screwed up with the release of Elemental. But they're one of the few companies that actually seems to give a shit about their fans (ie, free expansions to people that bought Elemental at release, continuing to update the game when just about anyone else would cut their losses and move on).


Unimpressive visuals
I guess this is a matter of opinion, but I think the game looks really good. The cloth map is pretty cool, and there are all kinds of nice details when you zoom in on cities. The buildings have animated citizens sawing lumber/trading/ect and it's even animated when the buildings are under construction. I'm a sucker for detail like that.
 

obediah

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20 Eyes said:
Trash said:
You know, I practically wrote this puppy off but now...

I don't understand why Stardock gets so much flak around here. GalCiv 2 was a good game, though boring, and sure they screwed up with the release of Elemental. But they're one of the few companies that actually seems to give a shit about their fans (ie, free expansions to people that bought Elemental at release, continuing to update the game when just about anyone else would cut their losses and move on).

While treating your fans like people is commendable for a game developer, it doesn't come close to making up for not being able to make a fun game.

If you just want someone to be nice to you, give your $50 to a hooker and skip the 20 frustrating hours trying to find the fun in a Stardock game.
 

Trash

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20 Eyes said:
Trash said:
You know, I practically wrote this puppy off but now...

I don't understand why Stardock gets so much flak around here. GalCiv 2 was a good game, though boring, and sure they screwed up with the release of Elemental. But they're one of the few companies that actually seems to give a shit about their fans (ie, free expansions to people that bought Elemental at release, continuing to update the game when just about anyone else would cut their losses and move on).

To be honest? Everything gets flak around here. Often in the extreme. Though my comment wasn't made with that intention. I figured that they never would be able to muster the resources and talent to make something out of the mess that elemental was. The dedication shown so far impresses me. Guess it helps that the owner of the company decided to make it his personal pet project. Though that sometimes might hurt it....remember Duke Nukem?

Looking forward to see what they'll make of it.
 

hoverdog

dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
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Project: Eternity
20 Eyes said:
Unimpressive visuals
I guess this is a matter of opinion, but I think the game looks really good. The cloth map is pretty cool, and there are all kinds of nice details when you zoom in on cities. The buildings have animated citizens sawing lumber/trading/ect and it's even animated when the buildings are under construction. I'm a sucker for detail like that.
cities are cool and shit, I agree, but the rest of the game world is just banal.shit.boring. I mean, I understand that it's supposed to be 'post-apocalyptic' in a way, but still, all is brown brown brown brown, plains and mountains are fucking ugly^infinity, forests' scale is ridiculous, and there's not much else.

i tried playing, but I gave up. I don't know why really, patch improvements look like they were taken straight from MoM (which is the best thing they could do) and should fix the game a bit at least. yet I can't. it just seems really, really bland.
 

Zeus

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The weird thing is, Elemental IS a fun game. It has plenty of problems--mostly in design, now that they've cleared up a lot of the technical stuff. But whenever I play, I catch myself enjoying the ability to customize my empire and soverign, trying to come up with a new way to try and win.

I love the tactical combat. Even broken, it makes Elemental more fun for me than the Warlords series, or Civilization, or any other 4X series with some sort of abstracted auto-resolve. Me, I like moving my pieces around in battle, not just TO the battle.

And then there's the random map generation, something Age of Wonders lacked until what, Shadow Magic? And even then, I hear the AI can't handle making new cities. Least in Elemental, I have to race against other empires for resource squares. The exploration aspect is good, especially the way you can upgrade Adventure and unlock more Goodie Huts.

They really need to add more spells and fix diplomacy. Oddly enough, I think diplomacy is even more of a problem than the lack of spells, because as of now, I can cast a few interesting spells, but I can't do a damn thing with any of the other empires, save for useless marraiges. Seriously when some reptile-faced magma-background badguy is twice as strong as anyone else, and the other factions are messaing ME about how we should team up against him, when I then contact them for some sort of a non-aggression pact, so we can focus on Mr. Big Bad and Scaly, they shouldn't cop such an attitude.

As is, every time I try to get a treaty going, they're like, "OOOH! A non-aggression pact is worth FIVE THOUSAND WHIMBAMAJIGGERS for me! It's only worth TWO whimbamajiggers for you!"

Get over yourself, man! We're all going to die!
 

ricolikesrice

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Zeus what is the "scale" of the typical elemental battles right now ?

from the videos i ve seen it seems like another of those games were a "major battle" is 5 guys and a bear fighting 4 skeletons and 2 demons ...

is that spot on or do mid/late-game battles involve enough units that its actually fair to call them "battle" and not just duels/skirmishes ?
 

Zeus

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ricolikesrice said:
Zeus what is the "scale" of the typical elemental battles right now ?

from the videos i ve seen it seems like another of those games were a "major battle" is 5 guys and a bear fighting 4 skeletons and 2 demons ...

is that spot on or do mid/late-game battles involve enough units that its actually fair to call them "battle" and not just duels/skirmishes ?

I haven't seen many late games--updates keep killing save game compatibility--but in my experience, even with one empire dominating, they only come at you with a small, well equipped stack. Maybe 8-10 units, max.

It's not at all like the preview shots of a dragon fighting sixty or seventy troops, though I hear that's in the works later on.

Personally, I prefer small scale tactical battles (one of the reasons I like Master of Magic's battles more than say, Battle of Wesnoth, which starts you out with like 30 pieces to move around). But if you want huge, "Lord of the Rings" style battles, yeah, it's not even close to there yet.
 

20 Eyes

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ricolikesrice said:
Zeus what is the "scale" of the typical elemental battles right now ?

from the videos i ve seen it seems like another of those games were a "major battle" is 5 guys and a bear fighting 4 skeletons and 2 demons ...

is that spot on or do mid/late-game battles involve enough units that its actually fair to call them "battle" and not just duels/skirmishes ?

Zeus' reply is correct. But one thing about the game that's pretty cool, is the size of your units grows as you research military logistics. For example, an early unit might be a single town guard or something. By midgame, you can have a fireteam of archers as a single unit.

The AI needs more work, because like Zeus said it doesn't throw much at you. But I like the idea of early battles being more like brawls between a few small-time local heroes, and late game battles showing those heroes commanding squads of professional soldiers and shit.

The game has a lot of ideas that really appeal to me, which makes it so frustrating that they're not all fully realized. I hate to be optimistic on the Codex and I know the game should have shipped in a much better state, but I think Elemental will be a gem by the time Stardock is done with it (expansions, major patches, ect).
 
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When is that though? When is it, post-release, that we can expect a decent product? A year? Two years? Post release support is a good thing, don't get me wrong. And I don't fault games much for buggy releases with some unbalanced mechanics (see: Paradox). But what they're developing is essentially a completely new game. That makes it nearly impossible for me to give Stardock a pass on this turd.
 

Trash

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Their initial release was a disgrace. Moreso since they evidently thought that they had delivered a fine game. That they since realised how much they suck at making anything but spreadsheets and have attracted new blood to improve on this and keep pouring resources into this is pretty commendable though.
 

ricolikesrice

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thanks zeus and 20 eyes - i dont necessarily need 1000s of units on screen (though i certainly wouldnt mind that scale either ) but seeing 8 guys (and the bear ! ) duke it out for a supposedly 10.000 pop city ... thats quite a turnoff even if we re talking about a fantasy game.

....now if its however 8 units consisting of 10-30 individuals .... then it becomes semi-acceptable (though i d really prefer more) for me.
its one of the few things (apart from better AI) that i d want improved in a MoM remake/spiritual sequel.

thats why i was curious since i saw that elemental *could* have semi-acceptable scale in screenshots .... but in videos i always only saw a bunch of single guys (and bears - there are bears, right ? ) in battle.
 

Zeus

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Yeah, when I said 8-10 units, I meant eight Heroes, summoned creatures, individual solders (per square) or squads of soldiers, which you unlock via the combat tech tree.

Unlocking squads is one of the more interesting design mechanics. In MoM, you had units that looked ho-hum at a glance, until you did the math and realized, wait a minute, that's damage per halfling. Then you had troops like the paladins, which were only two to a unit. But in Elemental, you can start out with a single Scout troop, unlock the ability to band them together, and all of a sudden you're walking around with six scouts per square.

So yeah, even at a "10 units" defending a city, they could be made up of 60 scouts. Which is still really low, but whatever. :D

Personally, I think squads are way overpowered. They have access to the same starting equipment as heroes (not sure about high level magic items). Because there's no equipment difference, and because heroes are limited to one per tile, they're basically nerfed versions of standard troops! I mean, they can cast spells, but the global magic system makes mana a precious commodity. One or two battles and you'll be out of mana, and you'll have to defeat the next death squad your opponent sends your way using only the same basic equipment available to squares and archers. Sure, they can level up--but so can regular troops! They're incredibly underpowered.

P.S. Yeah, there are Bears. :D They're a summon spell, just like Master of Magic.
 

Raghar

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ricolikesrice said:
seeing 8 guys (and the bear ! ) duke it out for a supposedly 10.000 pop city ... thats quite a turnoff even if we re talking about a fantasy game.
Where? These cities looked like 150 population cities. If he would get brain it would be fairly nice low end, each person matters, game. Imagine city population similar to Tropico... ...just with spears and other stuff. The trouble is he can't decide on one design. He is shuffling several different designs around. Because he doesn't have focus, results often fall short of theirs goals.

Actually I would probably be able to improve that tactical combat, it would require about half year of coding however.

In addition its easy to add some strategic goals into current game. (Well he hired Jon Shafer so he might get some improvement.)
 

Raghar

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Zeus said:
a single Scout troop, unlock the ability to band them together, and all of a sudden you're walking around with six scouts per square.
He screwed up with combat system. He simply multiplied the attack and the defense by number of troops, and he was done with. That was wrong approach of course. Increasing attack merely made armor insignificant, and the whole group became overpowered. Late in game, there ware large stacks of catapults attacking your units. It looked absurd.

Kinda wonder why some developers fail at statistic and imagination departments.
 

20 Eyes

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Raghar said:
He screwed up with combat system. He simply multiplied the attack and the defense by number of troops, and he was done with. That was wrong approach of course. Increasing attack merely made armor insignificant, and the whole group became overpowered.

I'm pretty sure this changed in 1.1, or maybe even earlier.

The squad system is still weird. It seems like the biggest advantage now is the added survivability.
 

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