Anyone else finding they can't post, even though it"s back up? I keep getting a message saying "you can't post so soon after your last post", even though it's been
 45 minutes.  I even get it when trying to PM  Fishypants.

I got my butt kicked in my first game (the scenario where you have to hold the center tile for 3 turns).  I'm not sure yet if it was superior A.I. or my unfamiliarity with the system, but it sure was fun.

On replayability: In the skirmish games, each Guardian (there are 4 to choose from) has different units and different special abilities, which gives each of the four maps 12 possible combinations of play. 48 scenarios plus the campaign isn't bad for $10

Still, a difficulty menu and a map editor or random map generator would be nice.

It seems like the strategy is going to be in using the right combination of unit/spell/terrain tile to your advantage. One thing I discovered is that in the campaign, there are certain events (not sure what triggers them) that unlock additional cards.

One thing I'm definitely not liking is that the matches are all timed.

It's available through GamersGate for $10.  I'm sure Steam and D2D will be following before too long.

So far I played the first campaign mission, which serves as the tutorial.  Other than the lack of any kind of cutscene, this does not feel like a budget title.  You play on a floating map made up of squares (5x5 in the tutorial, I don't know if there are any other sizes). Moving a unit onto a square give you control, and each square you control generates mana at the end of the turn.  Each square also has attack and defense bonuses (plains are good for cavalry, etc).  One unit can occupy a square at a time.

At the start of a match you get 1 Guardian (hero unit) and a small pool of mana for hiring your starting units.  Turns are broken into two phases - Movement and combat.  During the movement phase, in addition to moving units, you can use their special abilities (some have magic attacks, some can summon additional units, etc) and play spell cards. When one side moves into a square occupied by the other, there is a battle resolved in the combat phase.

In the combat phase, before the battle ever plays out, each play an play spell cards that serve to buff and debuff.  What's nice is that there is a display at the top of the screen that shows how each card played will affect the outcome of the battle. Cards are played face up, and when both players have passed, there is one more round where a "sacrifice" card is played face down. After all cards have been played, the battle is resolved.

So far, my only concern is replayability.  The game ships with one campaign made up of the tutorial and 5 scenarios, and 4 more stand-alone scenarios. There is no editor or random map generator, and, from what I can see, the maps are pre-set.  I don't know how random the cards are that you draw - I'll have to try the same scenario a couple of times to see.

Looking at the in-game manual, there appears to be quite a bit more depth that what was revealed in the tutorial, but for $10, I'm giving this a preliminary thumbs-up.

I'm really tempted, but between Civ 5, and the soon-to-be-patched Elemental and Vicky 2, I just don't have the time.  I remember not being able to get into it originally, but my gaming tastes have evolved such that for 10 beans I would give it another shot.

I'll second what Sarkus said about the A.I. - playing at Prince I blew what was an almost sure cultural victory by neglecting both my military and repeated calls to get me involved to stop that bastard Alexander while we still could.

Now it's 2025, I'm down to two cities, and still holding Alex off with Musketmen and Tribuchets.  The only thing keeping him from finishing me off quicker is he's also in a constant state of war with America and China.

Uh-oh, I'm a little over 500 turns in on a large map with only two other opponents and it's taking over a minute to process turns[and i have 6 gigs of memory on a pretty fast machine].

500 turns is the end of the game, isn't it?

March 25, 820 AD

To: Pepe Lepew
From: Napoleon Bonaparte
Re: Construction Project

My Dear Pepe:

I write this note to offer my humble apology. Apparently, when I commissioned you to build a road from Paris to Orleans, so that our tradesmen might travel between the two cities with greater ease, I neglected to specify that it was to go around the lake that separated them. While I commend you on your efforts and hard work, I have found that traveling several miles underwater tends to put a strain on the horses.

Just because we are Frogs, that does not make us Frogmen. Ha Ha.

Please note that in the future, roads are to be built around obstructions like mountains and bodies of water, unless specified otherwise.

Kindest Regards,
Nappy

It's my understanding that once you have access to a strategic resource and have built the mine/pasture/whatever you can build with it anywhere.

Mouse over the happiness display - every city causes 2 unhappiness, and every population point causes 1. Those figures can, of course, be mitigated buy buildings, wonders, and social policies.

I don't know if this is a bug, or I'm missing something. I gifted one of my units to a City-state, but got no influence in return. One of the other City-states sent me a message that I would gain influence for every Barbarian I kill, but that doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere either. Finally, how the heck did Hiawatha manage an alliance with a City-state within 50 turns? (This is at the Prince level, where the A.I. gets no benefits, presumably).

Something else I found out...........pathfinding is another area that needs work.  If you're moving a unit someplace that takes more than one turn, and there is a City-state along the way, you'd better babysit it, because the A.I. will NOT move the unit around a City-state's borders.  Before you know it, that friend you've spent so much gold on hates you.

Is it me, or is the pace a lot slower than Civ IV?  It just seems as though construction and research take a lot longer than they used to.  Of course, I could just be playing slower as I get used to the new system.

I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "broken", but there are a lot of issues with diplomacy right now.  I've had Civs propose Pacts of Cooperation one turn, only to have them cancel them the next.  Also promising to protect a City-state one turn and withdrawing it the next.

To see the strength of a unit click on it.  Next to the symbol is a vertical bar that runs red-yellow-green indicating health.  Mousing over it shows the exact strength.  (At least for Barbarian encampments.  I'm assuming it works like that for all enemy units).

GamersGate has had it for a few weeks, now.  I started it, and it's ok, but it is very linear and all hack-n-slash.  No control over character creation or development at all.  I pretty much lost interest after the first couple of hours.

It's unlocked but decrypting slowly.  One can only imagine how much worse it would be without the pre-load.

Dear GOG users,

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We've debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we've decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.

We're very grateful for all support we've received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.

This doesn't mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We're closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

On a technical note, this week we'll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

All the best,
GOG.com Team

Oh, OK.  I hadn't seen that.  That message is fucking bullshit.  No explanation (that means anything) whatsoever, just "we can't carry on like this".  Like what?  What was the problem?  Was it the no-DRM thing?  Not making enough money?  They've built up a great community of lovers of old games over the last two years and then they just pull the plug.  Fuck them if there isn't a really good explanation for this.

At least I have all my GOG games burned to disc.

I blame Rich.

EA holds the IP for Alpha Centauri.  Don't hold your breath waiting for a remake.

I'm going to shelve this game for now, much as I'm enjoying it.  For starters I forgot to finish my game in progress before grabbing 1.08.  Then there's so much in the pipeline for the near future that there seems little point getting too attached to the way the game is now.  I'll follow it closely and see what 1.1 brings to the table.

My feeling exactly.  Especially with Civ and the Vicky II patch coming this week, there will be plenty to play while Stardock applies another couple of coats of paint.

Rt-clicking on a tech, unit, or concept takes you to the Civilopedia entry, iirc.

Cargo!

Since it's a Steamworks game, you can buy the retail box from Gamestop, input the code into Steam, and throw out the physical copy if you want.  The discs can be used to install, or you can just download the thing via Steam.  It's a nice arrangement.  If you wanted to use your Gamestop credit.

I just bought it off the website. I am at work so I have not got to download the client or anything.
   Wish I would have known that first.   But, its not like the gamecard will go to waste.
I like the download thing just because I do not have to "find the box" everytime I reformat. gamersgate had been fine for me.
They will give me a manual or something I can print off right?   

I am a civ nub, and I like to have the tech trees and stuff right infront of me.  In fact, I wouldnt mind actually having that guide book for this game.  Maybe I can run buy gamestop and snag it.

I hate to tell you, but there is no hard copy manual.  Period.  The boxed copy will just contain the disk and a .pdf file.  That said, the game contains a Civilopedia, and everything in the game is hot-linked to it to tell you what you want to know.

recording of live stream part 1

recording of live stream part 2.

I watched the live stream in it's entirety, and I'm convinced - it's now a Day One purchase for me.

This place is starting to sound like Quarter to Three.

Announced out of the blue yesterday, it's a couple of months away.  I have no interest in horseshit & gunsmoke, but this will be a Day One purchase for me just on GP.

More here.

This video turned me around, and I'm back to considering a Day One purchase.

Three Moves Ahead covers Elemental.  Brad is there.  http://flashofsteel.com/

Stardock didn't develop Demigod - GPG did.  And I thought the problems at release had to do with stores breaking street date before the servers were ready, not that the game itself was broken.

What needs to be fixed isn't the mechanic for learning and casting spells.  That's fine as it is.  But the spells need to be made more interesting, redundant spells have to be eliminated (how many Fire or Earth spells that do rnd(Int) to one character do you need?), and a way to increase mana regeneration has to be introduced earlier.  As it is, the building that does it requires a Lev. 5 city, which means you're several hundred turns in before you can build it.

Latest word from up high:

It is great to be back to the land of high speed Internet connections.

The team got v1.07 out this week which addresses some of the issues reported by players. There’s a lot more to do of course. Here’s a few notes on what’s on our plate right now:

* Enabling multiplayer. Why isn’t it up now? Because the same problems that would cause a user a problem in single player would happen in MP too except now there are now multiple human beings involved which increases the frustration. I’m going to look at the response to v1.07 this weekend and see where things stand.
* Improving the AI Part 1. There is a little (lot) of confusion on the AI. Minor factions aren’t supposed to build. They’re just there. I think we’ll have to change that to either make it more obvious that they don’t do anything (like change the style of city to be more obvious) or have them behave more like major factions.
* Improving the AI Part 2. I am hoping to be able to get my AI updates into v1.08 (next week) to make the major faction AI substantially more capable. The basic problem with the AI is that a lot of data changes were made very late in development (values for weapons and armor and how much various improvements do) that heavily altered the AI’s evaluation of what was “worth” constructing or how much it needed to protect its sovereign and such. This is the kind of thing that will have to be addressed – for starters.
* Game Mechanic Changes. There are going to be quite a few game mechanic changes based on our own experience and reading on the forums. Keep posting your suggestions.
* Magic System Changes. This is an area that’s going to get a lot of changes. For instance, Essence will become a boolean (true or false). Your mana will come from a global pool of mana that is from the shards. The elemental spell books (earth, air, fire, water) will get moved out of character creation and into the tech tree so that players can determine what spell books they want. Various spells will gain a mana “maint” rather than using “enchantment slots”. This all brings us to the next part
* General UI. There are some outstanding posts on the forums with suggestions about the UI that we’re looking at. But generally speaking, we want to eliminate a lot of what I’d say (with the benefit of hindsight) gratuitous complexity (enchantment slots, tile limitations on cities, obscured game mechanics, etc.). We’ll get very specific with the community as we start to put these in.
* Performance, Compatibility, Memory. These three things remain the most troubling and frankly, heart breaking issues. On a personal note, nothing pains us more than when someone accuses us of “rushing” the game. The phrase “works on my machine” is not an acceptable excuse. We just blew it on so many levels that it will require a detailed post-mortem (which I do plan to provide so players, customers, and others can learn from our mistakes in general and my personal mistakes in particular). When I read the check-in logs, I wince at how specific each “crash” is (“Crash caused by user having 8X AGP card in 4X AGP motherboard with soft lighting turned off when in the unit design window”). There’s a reason most games license their engines (Civilization and Fallout 3 use Gambryo for instance, other games use Unreal, and so on). We use our own home grown one “Kumquat” which is proving to have serious teething issues that we are most definitely suffering the consequences for.

There’s a ton more to add here but these are a few of the things on our mind. It’s been, as you can imagine, a horrible horrible couple of weeks. We’re doing out best to make sure Elemental lives up to its potential which brings me to the final part.

Elemental’s original release schedule was to have the first release (War of Magic – Book 1: Relias) and 2 expansion packs (Book 2: Cerena and Book 3: Magesta).

What we’re going to do is that for users who own the game by a certain date will get (at least) the first expansion pack for free as a token of our appreciation for hanging in there with us. As some long-time Stardock gamers can tell you, our expansion packs aren’t minor things.

I'm not sure the changes to the magic system are for the better. Sounds like you have to research one of the books and be harvesting shards before you can cast any spells. Might make the early game pretty dull for people who like to hurl fireballs around.

Interesting post today from Brad.  You're likely to miss it since it's buried pretty deep in someone else's thread:

I don't think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock's fail on Elementa's launch.

I'm going to write more about this but not only did we think v1.05 was ready for everyone but we felt v1.0 was too. That's the level of disconnect/poor judgment on our part we're talking about.

If the game had come out in February, it would still have been a disastrous launch because lack of time wasn't the issue. It was blindness, sheer blindness.  We felt the game was finished. And I speak of v1.0, not v1.05.  Blindness.

There will be massive consequences for Stardock's game studio.  I'll be talking more about this when I get back. But the game wasn't released early. The game was released poorly. Head in the sand syndrome imo.  I've read the reviews as much as possible given my hideous internet access up here and I agree with them. We just didn't see what they were talking about. We thought any complaints would be about polish points or something.

The point is, the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is. I wish it was an issue of the game being released too early. That's an easy thing for a company to "fix".  Elemental's launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.

EVERY competent software developer knows that the programmer must never be the one deciding whether the program is done. Yet, my love of Elemental broke my self discipline and I began coding on the game itself in vast amounts and lost any sense of objectivity on where the game's state was. I normally only program the AI on our games so I can keep a level of distance from the game itself to determine whether it's "Ready". On Elemental, I was in love with the world and the game and lost my impartiality.

We'll do better.

Like you said, I have those buidiings ready to go as soon as my cities hit level 2.

I always start with the first two levels of Civ tech so I can start upgrading my cities as soon as possible.  After that it's on to a level or two of Adventure for the quests and goodie huts. Of course, as soon as I'm ready to found my second city I go for Trade as soon as I can so I can start running Caravans. I've yet to play a Sovereign that didn't start with the Summoning book.  Being able to summon a bodyguard on the first turn means I can put off the Warfare branch for a little while.

I found my first city almost immediately.  Even if you can't see any other resources around that first piece of fertile land, rest assured, they are there. First building of course is a workshop.  I then use my Sovereign, protected by Janusk for initial exploration.  Right now my main mobile force is still my Soveriegn, along with 8 summoned creatures and a couple of Scouts.

Shards currently do not do anything in tactical combat, so there's no real reason to use them..yet.

The jury is still out on that one.  I've read posts that claim they do work, but the random number generator is wonky.

One thing that's pissing me off.  I've summoned some kind of imp thing (can't remember its real name as I immediately changed it to Bob) and its stats are good, for early game anyway, but it only moves one space per turn on the tactical map.  Since he's usually a good ten spaces away from the enemy in every battle, he has yet to participate in any battles at all.  Thus he is rendered absolutely pointless and, effectively, he's artificially inflating my stack's combat rating when I weigh up my chances against a rival stack.

Blame the lack of documentation for this one. All creatures with an ability or spell have an icon on the left hand side of the screen (it's next to the "skip turn" hourglass, and real easy to miss).  I assume you're talking about the creature from the "Bring Out The Imp" spell. If you look next to that little hourglass there's an icon for a spell that can be cast once per battle. Click it and click a spot on the tactical map and he'll be teleported there instantly.  I use it to take out enemy archers and spellcasters.  It does use up all his AP's, however.

If you have a summoned bear, there's a "maul" icon in the same place that is very handy (causes opposing troops to miss a turn).

No, I was referring to research.  The slider controls brush and so forth.

I started a new game tonight with 1.06 on normal/normal difficulty.  In the immediate vicinity of where my Sovereign started were the following:
 
5 Lost Libraries
4 Midnite Stones (from goodie huts)
2 Patches of Fertile Ground
1 Gold deposit
1 Stone Deposit
I'm still waiting for the partridge in the pear tree.
 
All of this before I researched my first Adventure tech.  No one is this lucky. I wonder if they messed with the balance somehow....

just wait till you have tried a game a few hundred turns...there will be stuff on every damn tile...its a bit much, and frankly, I dont like the spawn system at all..

You know you can control that, don't you?

I started a new game tonight with 1.06 on normal/normal difficulty.  In the immediate vicinity of where my Sovereign started were the following:
 
5 Lost Libraries
4 Midnite Stones (from goodie huts)
2 Patches of Fertile Ground
1 Gold deposit
1 Stone Deposit
I'm still waiting for the partridge in the pear tree.
 
All of this before I researched my first Adventure tech.  No one is this lucky. I wonder if they messed with the balance somehow....

Should be up tonight or tomorrow:

---------------------------------------------------------
----------- Elemental v1.06 Change Log  ------------
---------------------------------------------------------

**********************
* Gameplay / Balance *

+ Cost of weapons increased in terms of gold and materials
+ Monster leveling tops out earlier so that there aren’t crazy powerful monsters late game
+ Training time increased for the more sophisticated weapons
+ AI will focus more on training soldiers rather than building up their cities if under threat
+ General AI improvements
+ AI smarter about training units in cities based on their current resource situation
+ AI more effective at determining who to go to war with
+ By default, the AI opponents added in the Choose Opponents window get difficulty set based on the World Difficulty
+ Campaign: Markinn now gives tactical HASTE spell instead of strategic SUMMON ROCK GIANT spell
+ Campaign: city leveup bonuses for TECH KNOWLEDGE and ARCANE KNOWLEDGE now suppressed in campaign
+ AI sov's are now using an HP adjustment multiplier based on AI difficulty settings

***********
* Battles *
+ Hooked up the projectile follow camera code to obey the Auto-Move Camera in Tactical option.
+ Adding message boxes to explain why spell casting fails.
+ Fix to repick targets in autoresolve when a counterattack kills the attacker.
+ Fix to make targeting picking more intelligent (to be sure it doesn't pick invalid targets).
+ Auto selection of the next unit in tactical battles should no longer occur if the game option for not auto selecting is turned on.
+ Tactical action cost modifiers for everything except for movement (which can have buffs) should now be 1.
+ The tactical action cost of special abilities is now 2.
+ All tactical actions use up to their cost, except for spells which require at least 2 action points.
+ When a tactical battle closes it now sets the cursor to be an arrow.

******
* UI *
+ Fixed Map Notifiers only placed for resources your faction can eventually tap (ex. won’t tell kingdoms about wargs)
+ Trade Equipment Wnd tweaks so that summoned creatures show up in the scene views better.
+ Hooked up new entries for the actions list, vitals list, and other basic image entries in main game wnd contexts to act more like buttons (highlight and have a click down state) to indicate that they are clickable

*************
* Bug Fixes *

+ Fixed the infamous "white screen" in tactical battles that occurred on a very specific hardware/driver/OS configuration.

+ Fixed a problem that would cause the particle effects to disappear after alt-tabbing out of the game when running in full-screen.
+ Fixed a DirectX warning in Tile Highlight Graphic
+ fixed uninitalized UNIT pointer in AIMessageBox (caused a debugger crash, probably fixes random crashes users have witnessed)
+ Fixed bug where linked pioneer improvements were getting the multiplier bonuses from their linked cities twice
+ Changed around the values grabbed for some resource breakdowns so that they match getting rid of this double bonus
+ You can no longer build pioneer improvements on resources outside of your ZOC, even if they are adjacent to a city, to prevent them from getting destroyed if they can't get absorbed in time
+ Adjacent pioneer improvements to cities now get absorbed into the city the very next turn, instead of 2 turns after they became adjacent
+ Fixed bug where custom empire factions designed in the faction designer wouldn't have a valid tech tree
+ Custom factions now get the appropriate wall set, and change their name to "Kingdom of" or "Empire of" appropriately
+ Fixed a bug in the faction designer that caused the race spinner to not match the actual race being displayed
+ Shortened the text in the caravan info cards to make it less likely that text entries will overflow to the next line down, and got rid of some old text that doesn't mean anything to how caravans work anymore, and got rid of some hardcoded strings, and moved the hardcoded quote to the different caravan/trader unit types
+ CMapGenerator no longer generates race starting position for tactical battles, since they aren’t used in that mode and were causing debug messages to flood output as the random land tile buffer isn’t getting filled after the first tactical battle map is created.
+ Campaign: Fixed oddity where reloading a save would reblock the pass between New pariden and Gilden.