Juvantei

Join Date 02/2010

My opinion on the state of the game and suggestions

I want to just make a point that maybe the developers will take note on. I play a game called Medieval II: Total War. I love that game. And I want to make a comparison on some aspects of both of them. No they aren't the same exact game yet theres something I want to make a point of.

I love building games and empire/city managing games. So I thought I would love Elemental Beta 3 with all its latest improvements and such. But there's something just not right about it yet. When you first start out the cities growth crawls like molasses. Now you might be saying, WELL OF COURSE....IT IS THE BEGINNING. Well it doesn't really matter. The pace and growth of the game is just way too slow Brad, way too slow.

When I play medieval II Total War. Let's say I pick Scotland. Scotland starts off with ONE province or state. Yet the growth of the cities and the time it takes to build armies is drastically different then Elemental. In elemental I have to wait TEN TURNS to build one settler. SEVEN turns if i remember correctly to build one peasant unit. It's horrific. In medieval II I can build agents in one turn, and 3 cards of units per city or castle per turn.

In Medieval II: Total War hitting the end turn button is dramatic. This loud gong sounds off and then trails off. You got ALOT done in one turn. And it keeps up like that and every turn becomes more and more meaningful and LONGER. You have to deal with 5 different battles in one turn. Managing 23+ settlements and so on. That game has done well with the pacing of itself.

If you could redesign your game so that the pacing is vastly different, cities grow faster, developement has a tree to help you better build your cities in a balanced way rather then spamming huts or spamming tax collectors in your town which could gimp your city.

In Medieval you only build 1 city hall and get the max benefit and instead of building more you can just upgrade to the next level. In elemental you build 6 or 7 and then have no room to build anything else and you have to demolish and start over. That is kind of annoying.

And could you improve the cities from the inside? Like snake some roads or something to connect the buildings to each other. It looks weird as it is right now.

And its strange that you have to build a 4 grid building just to make your walls a hedge wall or higher.

I'm surprised you are releasing in August. The game isn't very enjoyable to me right now. And unless you make some big changes to the way the game's pace is I don't think I will be playing it in August or thereafter at all. And you might be thinking "So what"? Well I'm just giving you my opinion on the game thus far, I don't enjoy it. It's too slow. Probably some other potential customers who feel somewhat the same way, your choice.

elemental

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Apples and oranges. Very few things from TW are applicable to Elemental. There's a pacing option at game creation, but I'm not sure if it's functional yet.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, ppl are different. I always play marathon speen on CIV IV, and will do the slowest possible here too. This is not an RTS

Successfully updated karma reason!

It's just a matter of scaling. Unit training may be slow, but the movement on the global map is slow too. In games with provincial systems generally more things happen in a single turn, because moving a unit from one province to another is more impactful than moving it a tile or two, which is a standard for most units in Civ-like games. So you'll have to hit the "end turn" button more times, but the effect will be similar. I'm not in the beta, but some reports suggest that the research is too fast compared to other aspects of the game. If it's true, this is the real problem that needs fixing before the release.

Successfully updated karma reason!

That is why I play TW when I am in the mood for a quick game I don't have to think too hard for and I will play this when I want a slower, more epic conquest.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Yea well I didnt expect the community to care much. You guys have your minds fixed and set in stone. I'm the type of player that loves these kind of games but YOUR game in my opinion is too slow and the pacing isn't well balanced. It takes to long to grow. It has alot of potential and I like the other elements like questing and magic but the pacing is too slow.

I loathed CIV IV, it was the most simplistic game of its type. The only thing I like about that game was getting a research completed and hearing Nimoy sound off. Other then that, total borefest.

In this game I am spamming the end turn button just so I can get to my next research upgrade, that is really stupid. It's not apples and oranges. The games have some things in common and are worth comparing to improve this game. I want the turns to feel more meaningful and not force me to spam the end turn button just so I can get to my next city upgrade or get my next research. That really cheapens the game.

Guess I'll be uninstalling Impulse since I have Steam for most of my games and I have really no reason to have Impulse since my only games are sins of the solar empire and this. Not really worth hoping for it anymore when the community and devs are set in their hearts on this type of pace. Sins is tedious and repetitive, while also the multiplayer is extremely slow and can take up to 3-4 hours for a game. Not very good pacing. Oh well, enjoy your game. I'll move on somewhere else.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It may be a good idea to judge the game by the final product instead of the beta before you give up but maybe it isnt the type of game you would like.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Yes, if you don't like Civ it's probably not a game for you.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The pace and growth of the game is just way too slow Brad, way too slow.

No it's not Brad it's just right. I'm tired of these wiz through to the high level buildings and forget the beginning and middle game. Keep it SLOWWWW and make getting to the high end buildings and creatures take a longgggggggggggg time.

So go back and play M2TW this is Elemental:War of Magic not some kiddie game like the Total War series. This is a thinking mans game not some romper room game like the total war series after the origional MTW.

Once again this isn't M2TW and any idiot would know not to SPAM building the same buildings. You can tell you've played nothing much but kiddie toys up to now. You want all your power rangers at the start. hahahahahah

The game isn't very enjoyable to me right now. And unless you make some big changes to the way the game's pace is I don't think I will be playing it in August or thereafter at all.

And of course nobody cares if you play it or not. Why are you even here? Go play your precious TW2 that romper room of all romper room games

Don't you just love ultimatums Brad? lol "Unless you make some big changes blah blah blabh I'm not playing your game"
hahahahahah too funny and noobish.

Byeeee (waves) don't let the internet door hit you on the way out and btw......CAN I HAVE YOUR STUFF?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Juvantei,

reply 5

I don't find myself spamming the end turn button. The buildings in E:WOM do NOT take that long to build, but researching takes time.

So I agree it's apples and oranges because TW doesn't have research. I don't have to research spears, then lances, then horse tactics, then plate armor, then horse armor before I can train Gothic Knights. So comparing the pacing between getting knights in TW to getting the Elemental equivalent directly is comparing two completely different styles of progression, hence the apples and oranges comments.

In Elemental, however, you're starting from the ground up, so you have research. You have to rediscover the art of smithing a sword, training a horse for war, fashioning plate armor. Then you can outfit your army (design a unit) that uses these things - and do it with WAY more customization than what M2:TW provides (next to none).

I see it as apples and oranges. The focus of each game is different. TW is about build order progression via buildings (because TW is about getting to the battlefield and wiping your enemies off the map, not rebuilding a civilization first, it's an rts with a more fleshed out "out of combat" component, a RTS/TBS hybrid of sorts), which are instantly available once you have the pre-reqs. In Elemental it's more about progressing your research order and then getting the building build order, and then you can build that next building improvement (Elemental is more about re-developing civilization...and then going to war to wipe your enemies off the map - at least after designing your units in a why they can dominate the enemy, which is strategy in and off itself with material requirements before you can make that Gothic Knight - i.e. metal to make the armor, available horses, etc).

Successfully updated karma reason!

tesb

Join Date 03/2008

+302

@Juvantei

i agree with you

the pacing is too slow and the end turn button is nearly pointless. in each turn the player should make important decisions.

i liked the pacing in heroes 3 the most, buildings were build instantly once got the recourses (as were troops), the armies had a decent movement heroes had big impacts on battle as did they have skills ... (if only we could have build cities, recourse camps etc.)

i really hoped this game would merge the best of heroes, aow, mom ... but it looks more and more it will turn into a civilization game.

edit: the research is fine, but buildings and troops should be build instantly. the resources should be the pacing factor imho.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting tesb,

reply 10

@Juvantei

i agree with you

the pacing is too slow and the end turn button is nearly pointless. in each turn the player should make important decisions.

i liked the pacing in heroes 3 the most, buildings were build instantly once got the recourses (as were troops), the armies had a decent movement heroes had big impacts on battle as did they have skills ... (if only we could have build cities, recourse camps etc.)

i really hoped this game would merge the best of heroes, aow, mom ... but it looks more and more it will turn into a civilization game.

And you can go back to playing Heroes 3. ) But, before you go....CAN I HAVE YOUR STUFF?!!

Successfully updated karma reason!

tesb

Join Date 03/2008

+302

And you can go back to playing Heroes 3. ) But, before you go....CAN I HAVE YOUR STUFF?!!

great discussion. heroes3 was far from perfect too, i just mentioned things it did right and there is no reason why elemental should steal the most boring aspect of the civilizations genre.

also i will probably mod this game to my wishes, although this may depends were sephi goes civ5 or elemental or perhaps he stays with civ4 i don't know yet.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting psychoravin,

reply 11

And you can go back to playing Heroes 3. ) But, before you go....CAN I HAVE YOUR STUFF?!!

Someone break out the troll repellant spray.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Juvantei you don't have to uninstall Impulse. Use it to download King Arthur. You'll find it's more your style.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Das123

Join Date 05/2003

+82

First of all, can we please keep the personal attacks out of the discussion? We've got a gamer who has an opinion so please give him an opportunity to air it.

... back to the focus of the thread ...

Personally I like the slow pace of the game and for me the city building is getting really close now. Its funny but I found the city building in TW quite slow as well waiting for high level buildings to be completed.

Where TW does shine is the tactical real-time battles. And I'm mainly thinking of the Third Age Total War mod here as it is most in common with Elemental. In TW I liked the early game but ended up hating the late game as it just seemed to drag on and on for me. I don't think I ever actually finished a TW campaign ever and I have all of them since Shogun.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The thing about Total War is that the whole point of the game is to get you into epic battles as fast as possible. I want Elemental to be a game about character development from the cradle to the grave and the growth of your empire from a fledgling nothing to an inter-continental behemoth. In TW, I can choose to start as the Byzantines and within one turn have massive armies and be at war with five different factions. Elemental's progress should be more organic.

Judging from the fact that you hate civ, this isn't for you. I think most of us would rather have Elemental follow civ than total war. Cheers!

Successfully updated karma reason!

I do not want to see, game too fast paced. I actually like, that things are taking longer, first of all, turn are faster because you do not have to change build order, in every city you have. Second of all, if something take longer to build, you have to think more about what you build first and what you wants to build later. And Third of all, scope of elemental, is much much bigger then MTW, or ETW and later on it would be draging alot.

Successfully updated karma reason!

This is why the pacing option will exist. I think this is somewhat of a non-issue.

People who want a slow epic campaign can set the pacing to "EPIC" (Go figure)

and people who want a quick action-packed game can set the pacing to "FAST" (Or whatever)

Everybody wins.

That being said, insulting someone and calling them a "Kiddie" just because they have different tastes in gaming says volumes about your OWN maturity level.

Grow up.

Hell there are plenty of people on these forums that I think are old idiots...I don't call them out for it though. That would be rude.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thats it Three Points to make.

One Pacing is an Option and a scale their adding in so be happy with that.

Two 'Turns' in total war are very long things you know they take alot of time in a single turn.

Three do you know how many turns you can pass in this game in single player fairly quickly? In 2 hours i was up to turn 1870+ Thats alot of time So In reality its not all that slow its just the raw numbers that APPEAR slow. I like it the way it is and after losing the economic debate this is one that is not negotiable.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I loved different aspects of the galactic civilizations, total war and age of empires games, but i definately agree with the OP. if the pacing of the game is like the galciv games then all my games will go the same: colony rush while i research and wait for my population to grow enough to build anything worthwhile, only to find, by the time that i can that i am a second tier power and that the game has largely already been decided, leaving my tactical decisions redundant, and despite my huge population and empire i am still nowhere near capable of supporting any kind of force i can feel proud of. before i know it i have lost two hours of my life to an ai's abilities of economy cheating, micromanaging and a few lucky surrenders. often i never even get to fire a bullet before the outcome is inevitable.

BTW anyone who thinks the TW games are fast because they are province based is dead wrong: they haven't been province based since 2004.

the total war games have lots of really good features, even though they would suck as a pure TBS. for example, i wish population and taxes in gal civ had been modelled like in medieval 2 total war. more than anything else though, they make you feel like the powerful ruler of a mighty realm who can make important tactical (short term) decisions. GalCiv and Elemental (so far) feel like long term population, manufacturing and research management games which lead to inevitable victories, dressed in rather unconvicing and unimmersive sci fi or fantasy clothing.

brad has always seen his games as more involved board games, which is a noble purpose, but the world is too complicated to be modelled with huge generalisations on a bottom up basis. for example look at the ridiculously minimal way that tactical battles are handled, murging movement speed and number of attacks into the same stat. anyone can look at that and gaffaw at the notion that sauron and a charging knight are basically the same thing. similar mistakes were made in GC2, where there are no stats to model accuracy, tactical speed, gun tracking speed etc. and it lead to ridiculous and simply unfun situations which look to be repeated.

like i said the TW games make you feel like the powerful ruler of a mighty realm who can make important tactical decisions. the philosophy sure as hell doesn't make for an immersive game, in which you feel you could change history at any point with a few crucial decisions.

i hope to be proven wrong.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting ferang,

reply 6

It may be a good idea to judge the game by the final product instead of the beta before you give up but maybe it isn't the type of game you would like.

That's the thing I don't like about today's technology and "Digital Download" services. Especially when Devs say "The game will Never be done". While that is good that it means they'll keep putting out expansions and updates and more content, it still means the game is Never Done and hence there is No "Final Product". Frogboy says often that Elemental will be a work in progress for years to come, and I do love that, But, when he says it will never be done I always think about GalCiv 2. GalCiv 2 is probably my all time favorite space strategy game, honestly though, I consider it to be "Done" and a "Finished Product". There aren't going to be any more expansions for it, and I doubt there will be anymore patches or updates. When it comes to GalCiv, I personally think it's time to move on to GalCiv 3. Until GalCiv 3 hits in a few years, GalCiv 2 will remain as my Favorite Space Strategy game. I think the Only thing GalCiv 2 is missing to make it the ULTIMATE Space Strategy game is Tactical Battles which I'm praying will be in GalCiv 3.

Successfully updated karma reason!

BTW anyone who thinks the TW games are fast because they are province based is dead wrong: they haven't been province based since 2004.

Uh, given that Empire: Total War and Napoleon (just a reskinned Empire) are province based, what's your definition of that?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Total war games are all well and good, but given that Med2:TW was released years ago I suspect the OP is playing one of the many modded versions. Vanilla Med had some appalling bugs (Enemies standing still whilst you killed them with arrows, Heavy cavalry charge not working, enemy units roaming your land with impunity, Enemy factions attacking for no reason etc etc) and isn't in any case a good comparison to elemental. As for pacing, there are options as in SoaSE for timescale and I dearly hope the longest is truly epic. One thing about Age of Wonders 2, the TW games and FfH2 is that they go waaaaay too fast for my liking. I like to carefully look after my troops not spam them like a demented factory.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Annatar11,

reply 22

BTW anyone who thinks the TW games are fast because they are province based is dead wrong: they haven't been province based since 2004.

Uh, given that Empire: Total War and Napoleon (just a reskinned Empire) are province based, what's your definition of that?

there are technically provinces, but movement is by a high res grid, rather than risk style province hopping. you control cities and (in the new games) other structures within a province to generate income: the borders themselves are only used to show when enemies have enetered your territory. at heart the games are based on fixed cities on a high res grid.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, it's a different representation of basically the same mechanic, though. The fixed cities are the representation of the province, which is as static as the city. The difference is this allows you to actually move around the province and have interactions with other objects in it. How movement is handled is also just a different representation. Movement in something like HoI is abstract, there's no geography or anything, you just select your stack and make them move from province to province. E:TW just has a more graphical representation of the same thing, allowing you to actually dictate your army's movement path around the geography. Essentially, Risk-style province hopping is just an abstract E:TW style province hopping, but they're essentially the same system.

Successfully updated karma reason!