So, i wasn't on the beta at all, but i've been following Elemental since the early days and bought it on pre-order yesterday. My background is that i've played pretty much every turn based strategy game on the PC, and MoM is still my favourite, with AOW:SM & Etherlords 2 rounding out the top 3. I've also developed computer games for the last 15 years. Here are my thoughts on the game, and a couple of questions (As i haven't found a manual at how to do the basics)

Positive Feedback:

1. Unit Customisation: Love the fact you can redesign every unit tye to how you want them, reminds me of MOO 1 & 2, and is unique for a fantasy TBS.

2. Quests: It's great to go exploring and find quests and objects that are random and change the way you play the game.

3. Strategic Combat: Strategic Combat is what raises the best TBS games above the rubbish combat in CIV, Elemental is 'almost' there, and just sort out the first point below, and it'll be great.

Less Positive Feedback:

1. Combat: The biggest problem for the 3 guys at work who have played the game is the huge randomness of the damage in combat. Having a spell or attack that does 1-25 damage means tactics are less important than lucky rolls in important battles. The guy sitting next to me said he fought a battle twice last night against trolls. The first time all his units died and none of the trolls did, and the second time when he employed exactly the same tactics all the trolls died and none of his men did. I haven't had as large battles as he has, but a spell that does 25 damage inflicting 1 damage on a wolf does seem rather random and therefore removes a lot of the tactical nuances from the combat. This is a shame, because apart from the damage calculations, we all like the strategic combat.

2. Movement Allowance: It's very difficult to find out how many movement points a stack of units have. I lost count of the number of times i thought a stack had no more movement, or that it would be able to reach a target and i was wrong. Considering a tile selection is brought up in combat, can a similar thing be done in the world view when selecting a unit or group? Also, putting the X/Y for moves left/Maximum moves along with the combat rating would help greatly. This combined with with the default option of 'auto next turn' meant i rarely had any idea what was going on turn wise when i started the game. Everyone i know playing has turned of 'auto turn' so they remember to look at their cities, so i'd be tempted to turn it off by default on the options on install.

3.City Building: I was fortunate to have scanned the forums before playing the game, but the guys who haven't ran into the 'can't build a hut because they can't build a farm' issue. The game needs to remind players A) When they need to build a new farm or hut and that the build queue is empty and they can afford a new building. Civ does this really well, especially when you unlock new tech, and go back to all your current cities and build a granary for example.

4. Research: I decided to build a channeler who was primarily a spellcaster and started my first game next to 2 different libraries. After building on the arcane knowledge one (for 10 resources) i have researched a new spell about every 3 turns. I'm now at a point where i can summon fire giants to fight alongside my peasants. This seems completely unbalanced. How can my one village of 10 people and library research so many spells? Even levelling up my spell research (i'm level 6 now) takes 2-3 turns. Once i built the world knowledge library building that was a similar problem. i think the longest i have had to wait is 4 turns for a world research to be completed. This means improvements are flooding in when i feel they should be drip feeding through the game.

5. Cursor Keys Move Units: Cursor keys should scroll the map! All 3 of us here have moved units by mistake when trying to scroll the map. Especially on an isometric view, cursor keys make no sense to move the units. I'm playing in a window on my laptop and i don't want to have to left-drag to move the map around, i want to use the keyboard.

Questions:

1. How do you make money in cities?: I have built a market, meaning i have 1 Gildar income, but the building that gives +25% won't help and i can't find another building that generates income. Obviously Gold Mines would help, but there are none near my starting city.

2. I have played for a couple of hours (Albeit slowly while learning) in my game on a large map, but i haven't seen a single other faction. Is the world that big?

All in all, we think that this game has the potential to be the best TBS game out there, but it's rather unbalanced and the control system and tooltips/feedback could be better.

One of my friends keeps getting memory leaks and the world not loading when he goes into battles although personally i haven't had any problems as yet.

Keep up the good work, fingers crossed the balance can be improved!

Mike.....