Civ 5 has very modest requirements, dual core systems were available in 05, you can't expect pc developers to keep building for antiquated technology. If you don't have a dual core or better its time to either upgrade or stop calling yourself a gamer.

People were saying the exact same thing about Civ IV, about how it would tank.  Yea, that happened!

If you don't have 4-5 year old hardware to run Civ5, you're probably not much of a gamer.  And in that case, waiting until your computer dies or you replace it isn't too much of a burden, right?

I really do truly sympathize with people who want to play but can't due to system reqs, but be reasonable.

Is it a good symptom of the problem that a thread about Elemental's limited amount of buzz has turned into a thread about Civ 5's system requirements?

I think part of the problem is the lack of details. Civ 5 comes out a month after Elemental, but in a lot of ways we know more about the final product. We know more about what the final UI looks like (we don't for Elemental). We know a fair bit about how combat works (we haven't seen abilities in tactical combat yet in Elemental). Some things have been known to be locked in longer (whereas Elemental started with one combat system then completely changed it).

The last one is particularly tricky in terms of promoting a game. I can tell someone what I know about Civ 5 and be pretty confident that it's going to be true of the finished product. For most of the Elemental beta period, that simply wasn't true. How do you promote something when you don't actually know what it's going to end up being?

Right.  Civ is a little easier to talk about, because you're talking about an existing franchise (a franchise that Elemental is, in some ways, based off off).  It's hard to discuss much about Elemental at this point, as there's no more Beta updates and we've yet to see the game "come together".  In two weeks time it will be much easier to talk about (and pimp) Elemental.

If the game is great people will find it regardless of coverage.  It's a niche game but it seems there is a hunger for a good 4x fantasy based game so that will draw some in.  If they play it and love it people will talk and more people will buy it who are into these kinds of games.  The question is how good will this game be?  There aren't many that reach that special place where they immediatly grab you and are remembered forever.  If the game is just good and no must have mods come out then the modding will dry up.  If it's a great game though (or someone creates a mod that is a great game) then the mods will pour in and you will probably still see new mods 5 years from now.

If you remember both Civilization and Fallout's mod communities started small and grew because of the popularity of their modding productions. Oblivion had countless mods that REALLY improved upon the game and Fallout has it's own assortment of major mods but also started with an established modding website (Nexus, taken from Oblivion).

If Elemental is a great game, it is easy to mod, and we get some good mod talent who can produce spectacular mods then you'll see Elemental living a long and healthy life.

Agreed....and now some funny stuff. I suppose most of the ppl know about the game called "Dwarf Fortress". It's an ASCII based masterpiece. I started a topic on the official forum about testing our FPS in the game on different systems. The results are interesting...in short: even DF becomes unplayable after a period, if you don't have a dual core system at least...however DF is all about CPU power.

Hell who needs MODS, play the damn game you BOUGHT and quit trying to leech something off of others for FREE.

Hi everyone,  just to let you know that in my lastest update from Dells Alienware site there's a nice little ad for Elemental on their M15x laptop.  Nice one guys!

So playing mods is now leeching off of others for free?

It's not like modders have a gun pointed to their head and forced to make free mods for games.... geez

I've been playing Civ since the first CIV came out. And CIV4 was the best version by far. And Civ 5 looks to be even better than CIV4 so I have no problem with 2K creating a game that uses the modern PC power. And I even like the Graphics. So if your still running your Pentium 4  machine then I suggest you come out of the Stone Age and upgrade your PC.

You also don't grow the fan base by producing stagnant content that has no upgrades. Face it everyone appreciates a good looking game. Graphically this is a huge upgrade for the series. If they didn't make these kinds of changes the fan base would NEVER grow. Yes in some ways its a risk, but its a calculated risk. Face it any computer bought in the last 4-5 years should be capable of at least running the game. My rig I bought a few months ago with a liquid cooled i7 quad core, 4 gigs of coursair ram, 1TB HD,  and an ati 5770 cost around 800 bucks. Sure since then I have upgraded to a 23" widescreen monitor, added a 2nd ati 5770 in crossfire and put a sound card in. But the core machine was only 800 bucks and it stomps the system reqs of pretty much EVERYTHING into the ground.

point being for less then the cost of 1 starbucks coffee per day for a year you can get a machine that plays everything. So people need to stop being cheap...(and this rig was ordered from cyberpower cause I didn't want to build one myself, so I am sure it coulda been done cheaper.)

Nowadays there's no reason except lack of funds to make an ugly game... Graphic cards are there to be used

I was at EB on Saturday putting money down for my Civ5 Collectors edition, and the guy at the counter said, "Big half-year for PC: Starcraft, Civ and the Warcraft expansion.  Civ is also picking up a lot of pre-orders so seems you're joining a popular group."  I said, "What about Elemental?  How's it going?"  He says, "What?"  Looks on his computer and says, "We haven't got Elemental on our pre-order or stock lists."

Elemental will tank because there's no information in the main game circles, and no one will be able to find it (or even accidently come across it) except on a hardly-used almost-unknown digital distribution site.  

"Tank" is higly situational and non-descriptive. Number of copies sold is less important than return on investment. Civ 5 *needs* to sell a crapton of copies because a ton of money was spent on the game. Elemental cost what.. 1 million? 1.2? Something along those lines, I  think. Comparatively, it needs to sell many fewer copies in order to generate a great return on investment and end up generating good business.

I think I read somewhere that the budget was around $800,000

$5 million, according to Wikipedia.

Stupid WSJ won't show the full article.. but I was sure Frogboy debunked that in one more recent thread when someone was commenting and he answered that he wished he had that much money to make a game.

Ahha, found it!

https://forums.elementalgame.com/389038/page/2/#replies reply #47.

So let's say 2.5 million, including development of the engine from scratch (which AFAIK began before Elemental was a game, since the engine was being made for Society initially).

At some point, developers have to assume that everybody is on a machine using transistors already. You can't expect PC game developers to support vacuum tube machines forever. Not to mention some of us have newer computers that don't have drives for things such as punch cards or 5 1/4 floppies anymore.

I remembered playing X-Com again a year or two ago. It was such a pain to slow down my computer to handle it and I was using a core duo at the time. I eventually just bought it off Steam which comes with DosBox pre-configured. I since have a bought a new quad core already.

I wonder if the other number also includes marketing and the servers that were put up for multiplayer?

Now all Frogboy needs to do is ask his friends at Blizzard to sell an Elemental-themed WoW in-game pet and they'll easily make their investment back.

No idea. But I think it's pretty safe to say that Elemental's budget is much, much lower than Civ 5's so it needs to sell much fewer copies to make a good ROI, which is really the only thing that matters as far as SD being supported financially. More is always better of course, but Civ has been an established franchise for many years. Just like Starcraft, people will buy Civ 5 because it's Civ, while Elemental has to win over a lot of the crowd first. It'll be slow going, but if the game ends up being expanded well and gets some sequels, it might eventually gain a similar level of popularity.

As the kind EB worker listed all the sequels/expansions for the most popular franchises pretty much ever in their respective categories.

I updated the Wikipedia entry.

You're right. "Tank" and other such terms are all relative. Really, any game that can turn a profit isn't a failure. That's not something I'm terribly worried about in the case of Elemental.