Hmm...

the game CAN last for long time, but nothing will prevent you to play a tiny fast map if you want

as for the rest we have to see magic before we talk and compare to MOM

surely it seems a bit a "diesel" from the beta but soon there will be magic and we will judge

anyway right now the beta is pretty enjoyable soonish, you get quests, you go adventuring, fight very soon, get rewards and try to defeat stuff

ctities grow but you dont really need them to start *playing* and having fun

in this elemental probably beats mom

why? cause in mom it was very slow to get champions and to equip and lvl up them

it was impossibile to start adventuring with champs lvl 1 in mom

you DID need a army there at start, while later on champions eventually becomes very strong and can kill a drake 1 v1

in elemental you have champions very soon, and the sovereign is already playable without an army

i like this more than mom

Worse case scenario? Mods.

Best case scenario? Impossible to please everybody but manage to please as many as possible (within reasonable limits).

Well. like I said I don't consider the game to be bad because it's not as simplistic as former games of this genre. Or because it might not suit my needs. Or that my needs come before those of many.

Just that I'm a little afraid that it's gonna be too long winded for me to really enjoy playing it. However, if things are as ddd888 depicted my concerns might be void after all.

That was the exact reason for my post. So people post their experience and other insights to dissolve my fears.

We will see...

The early game is pretty slow right now, because it takes time until you can do the research to build (and pay for) troops of any real size or strength. And that's still pretty basic stuff. When you throw in 3 more tech trees to work through, it's going to be a long game.

I'm hoping for an advanced start option, myself. That was the single greatest option in Civ 4.

Well, if you read the Beta 2B preview, they're disabling Civic and Military trees and enabling Magic and Adventuring.. so you won't be spending all your time researching new buildings, but you'll be going around summoning imps and killing crap. If they manage to make both paths a feasible way to play, then those who like to build up their empires with big cities and such will be able to do that, and folks who just want to start off killing lots of stuff will be able to do that.

yeah its slow to build an army

but you dont need it

in mom you did

even to defeat a war bear or a phantom warrior you need to train some troops, not talkinf of strong beeasts

in elemental right now you can start questing from lvl 1 without any help with your sovereign (and other champs you may find around)

in mom you couldnt even explore cause it was pretty risky to lose a city from wandering beasts

And you can use the Option button to turn up the SPEED of the game. Seems to work too.

I don't know if you remember Master of Magic clearly--I still play it at least once a month. However, it takes an extremely long time to get rolling in MoM too. At first, you've only a handful of spells (which will be like Elemental I bet, though we haven't seen the magic system yet), and one city (where you don't have a choice where it is, unlike E:WoM). You start off with a swordsman and a spearman. City building can take an extremely long time... and to get any of the bigger spells, that takes a very long time, as well as capturing mana nodes, which you need an army (sometimes) to take them, and so on. One could argue that it takes a long time for the "fun" to begin in MoM too. 

If you're playing the beta or reading posts based on the beta, you can't take that as a review or look at the finished product. It's not finished, not by a LONG shot. We've three whole tech trees denied us right now! Not to mention the distinct lack of diplomacy between nations to speed up research and suchlike. 

The quote, taken out of context, was Brad talking about a huge gargantuan map IIRC. Games in MoM take for-EV-ver to win. Civ sometimes takes forever to win as well, especially on the larger maps. It can be argued that potentially any strategy game can take forever to win. Conversely, they all have the potential to be very quick too. 

I am very excited for Elemental. It really feels like the updated successor to MoM I was looking for, with so many more add-ons and features. Not to mention the modding, which I bet will be enormously popular. 

I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. Considering right now that cities are pretty much optional, I don't think it's fair to say you won't get into the "fun stuff" quick. I don't know what you mean by "monolithic", but Elemental is a completely different beast from Civilization. MoM even is closer to Civilization than Elemental is to Civilization.

You can adjust the pacing if you want. Hopefully this'll satisfy the 15-minute gaming itch. I think you're taking some of Brad's quotes out of context. The whole years-long game was really to demonstrate the possible scaling of the game. Depending on the settings you choose, you could play a 15 minute game all the way to a game that lasts years.

Dude, best way around that,  pick all books from one type of magic, my fav is Earth

Play High elves, Chose Natures Cure, Trasmute and Gorgans.

Dismiss your starting units.

Manage your tax to maximuse income, build a shrine stright away, and keep pushing that tax, turn all your points into mana and all your gold into mana, and start casting gorgons on turn one.

As long as you arnt taken out by wondering monsters.

And never forget to get Gias blessing as early as posible and cast it on everything!!

You can be owning the computer on imposible in no time, the only

That is one of the things I really liked in MoM, btw. Just as much as I liked raiding pirates in Galciv.

@Madmelodie:

Yes, I do remember how playing MoM was since I finished my last game about a month ago.

You're absolutely right. It was very slow (sometimes even awfully slow) at the beginning. But once produced, troops came fully equiped. You didn't need to research and/or buy basic equipment to prevent them from fighting with baskets on their heads and table forks and butter knives in their hands. Or to have someone teach them how to ride so you could produce mounted troops. But exactly that was how I interpreted Elemental to start out. If I misinterpreted things or advancement goes faster than I would expect then all the better!

Once again: This was the purpose of my initial post. To make others here with more experience and/or insight share their wisdom...

Oh, and I wasn't thinking in terms of 15 minute games when I stated that I don't want to play the same scenario for ever. More in terms of a few weeks or even one or two or three months.

@Star: I think it's really too early to tell exactly how things are going to be. Right now we're missing a crucial factor in not having any magic...which is such a big part of the game, it made it into the name! You're absolutely right in that the troops started armed, but getting the troops also took forever (dark elf wizards ftw), especially for the really advanced stuff. Not sure how things are going to play out in Elemental. We can only sketch guesses at this time. 

@sjwt: Yeah, you can pwn with just about anything in MoM. That's just one way. I've won games with every single wizard in the game, as well as with all sorts of combinations that I made, and with a variety of races. 

For One We Like long games. Two if you Don't theirs an option called PACING It allows you to speed EVERYTHING up for your personal tastes or slow it down.

Three theirs also going to be Modding and Online.

If you are not satisfied then we can't please everyone and we're not going to let the game get watered down just because your upset with the pacing.

I sincerely hope so.

I'm wondering how that pacing option is gonna work. Well, just about another two months till I'm gonna find out, I guess.

Even in Elemental's current beta, which is very incomplete, there's plenty to do from turn 1 - you are not just sitting around waiting for a technology to research/troop to train/etc. before the fun can begin (like in Civ). In fact, you don't even need to found a city right away - your sovereign is quite capable of adventuring, hiring allies, taking on basic quests, and grabbing lots of Civ-style "goody huts" right from turn 1, no waiting involved.

Also the troops you can build in the beginning aren't terrible either, it might be viable to immediately build a few peasants depending on your playstyle.. but you can get better and more customizable soldiers with just a little research, so you may as well wait. Anyway it's definitely not a major undertaking to get some useful guys-with-pointy-sticks in the field to start conquering stuff, you just don't really need to since the sovereign is quite capable on his own right from turn 1, and the NPCs you can hire even more capable.

Now the more advanced stuff that we don't have access to yet, like some of the major magic or the ultimate perfectly-equipped soldiers, may take a very, very long time to get (this is speculation, but I certainly hope it takes a while, I prefer slower-paced games myself). Even so I don't think it'll feel like a long time, there's so much for your sovereign to do in the meantime. You do not find yourself waiting around for your cities and your research before you can do stuff as in Civ; even if the city-building and technology-researching sides of the game are undeniably Civ-like*, Elemental has other things to do that are utterly unlike Civ with the sovereign doing quests and hiring NPCs and so on.

*When I call city-building and technology-researching "Civ-like" I don't imply that Elemental hasn't done innovative things in these areas - it certainly has, there are several interesting ideas here very unlike what you'd expect from Civ. Just saying that Elemental is probably more like Civ than it is different in these two areas - my point is to contrast them with the other aspects of the game, which are nothing at all like Civ. It's definitely not any type of 'successor to Civ' unless you're looking at a few specific features of the game.

Also i'd like to say this to adder.

I am sorry if i seemed angry or offensive i just am abit sick with them watering down games *Heroes 5 for example* and ruining my favorite series or new games before they even come out with last minute changes that utterly change the game *such as changing the pacing so much its no longer an epic strategy but a short 30 minute match* Multiplayer i understand using fast pace but for single player i'd perfer to be able to save it and pick it back up later.

So i am sorry if i came across as confrontational or angry.

I have to say I really love the satisfaction of building up your empire from scratch. By the time it's well-oiled and ready for a world-war you have intimate memories of every town and every resource you've fought over and are ready to put your baby to the test against those damn infidels. 

I think I'd agree with the last poster - there are so many games out there which rush into the action and neglect the feelings of discovery, organisation and the reward for planning. That said, sometimes you really want to get a move on. I don't have the beta, but surely the determining factor on this would be map size, or even some fast start or way to adjust the resource system?

Hehe, to me you didn't. So no hard feelings.

We're at the same side afterall. We want this game. How fast paced we play it once we have it is up to each of us.

Reminds me of Achmed the dead terrorist. "SILENCE! I kill you!"

He has the best "Take your child to work" day ever. "Achmed, where is our son??" "He's over there, over there, and up there.."