Elemental has improved drastically mechanically. It functions and rarely crashes (only about every 100 turns or so not every 10). However, I have some fun issues with the following
Cities
The variation between cities is fairly minimal. Without a tile limit or higher maintenance cost, there is no reason why i shouldn't build one of each building; the econ can take it. Also cities grow far too slowly. Prestige should be a population growth bonus, not the entire population growth. The amount of food and space available in a city would naturally indicate how much population it can sustain. Something simple like:
- Pop < 25% max: growth = 2x grain + prestige.
- Pop < 75% max: growth = 1x grain + prestige.
- Pop >= 75% max: growth = 1/2 grain + prestige (min 1).
So if i had a city built on 4 grains, it would grow at 8 people per turn until it reached 25% of its max population. This would really speed up the early game which I'm going to talk next on
Early Game
There is very little variation between my games. Yes the map is random but what I do is not. First tech is always standing army so I can get shields. Then I can at least produce a unit with spears to help negate monster armor. Then I will produce 2 units of spearmen per hero and go adventuring. The problem is I have to pretty much baby sit my first city if i'm unlucky. Repeatedly I've started near by an ogre or slag which threatens to wipe me out of the game in the first 10 turns. I don't build a city near one; they wander over to it. So I get the joy of clicking end turn 20-30 times to produce my spearmen to go kill it.
Which brings me to my next point. Too often in this game the best decision you can make is to end turn. Wandering around without protection for your sovereign will likely get them killed. If its a hero and they die, they will likely get one of the new very real injuries. Injuries needed a buff but without the means to rid yourself of an injury, they are a little to damaging.
Quests are simply gone. I have not seen a quest; nor spawned near a computer player in 4 games. I'm not sure what happened but they functioned well in the early game. It filled in some of the "press end turn" gaps which now plague the early game.
Combat
Tactical combat doesn't have enough...tactics. Total War, one of my favorite 4x games accomplishes tactical battles very well. However, in a turn based game you often need to "integerize" parameters so some of the detail can get hard to replicate. Here are a few items to enhance tactical game play.
- Armor Types: The types of armor need to be made available sooner. Also there should be upgraded versions of each type of armor. For example the crappy leather armor could be called wolf hide armor. Then drake leather armor would be an upgrade for that armor. So if the three types of armors have their own tiers, then the combat would have the Gal Civ II goodness of the different weapon/armor types.
- Weapon Types: Please move bows and some of the other weapons closer to the beginning of the tree. It takes forever to get a bow and some of the other types of weapons. See Armor types for an explanation, tier it up.
- Flanking- Give a flanking bonus to attackers if multiple units are attacking the same unit.
- Terrain Bonuses- Hills/Trees should matter in tactical combat.
Anyway, the game is improving. If the game was more granular I feel it would be better. Gal Civ II had "beam weapons I, II, III...." which worked well for that game. I think if you adopted a similar approach to this game it would really help.
