How are your boys enjoying the game thus far?

They like it but I don't think their standards are as high as ours (my oldest is 13).  I watch him play and wince constantly as I see him play in a very foreign way (there's no real time constraint on the game so he's trogging around with a massive MASSIVE army -- think 50+ units).

The day 0 version limits players to only 12 units per army (my sons are playing the gold version) so that could be an interesting difference.

One other thing I noticed they're doing -- they name every single person they train. Every guy. 

LOL! that's great. 50+ units... I can imagine the swath of destruction. I love watching how younger generations take to games like Elemental as we quickly find new ways to approach things (both good and bad). Thanks for sharing Brad!

Interesting. So an army of 50+ named toons? That'd be rather comical!! Bob, Jim, Tony, Tim, GO TAKE THAT CAVE!

Edit: Never mind... looks like the post I was replying to got deleted. 

How does that work for squads? I'm guessing the entire squad then shares the same name? Makes for a more sentimental attachment to one's army I guess if they take the time to name each guy.

I'm assuming the army limit is applied to groups and not the number of individual units in an army?

I love the posibility of additional (I am going to call them modules) modules / campaigns both retail and non... this gives us as users the ability to make and trade them.. Can you imagine what a kind of a module a Stardock staffer or seasoned fantasy write could do given time?

he is an interesting question how long/many man hours did it take to make the campaign?

@

i think he means the book

It was for fun reasons. The AI was migrating towards a strategy of a single massive army which just isn't very good IMO. Not fun.

The campaign tools you guys will be using are way way way better than they were when we made the campaign.  The trigger system is mature now for instance.

It's even more comical because they named them after characters from other game.  Mario, Zelda, etc.

Initially I wanted to play a random map to learn how to play Elemenal.  But since the campaign is short, should I start with the campaign or continue with my first idea?

Hard to say how long it took to do the campaign because Random House wrote much of the text.

Right now, they're working on the additional campaigns for buyers of the book.  But when you get the game, AFTER you beat the campaign, open up campaign.xml and you can see the whole thing. They stuffed it all into one file.

Just a thought: if the campaign is supposed to ease players into the game and explain game mechanics, won't it be terribly out-of-date?

nice!! Did they at least name one Frogboy?  (had to ask)

Wait wait wait, if you buy the book, you get an additional campaign?

Is it a disc in the hard-copy or would an e-book+ download code be possible? Sorry if this has been answered, but it's the first I've heard of the additional campaign at all. I wouldn't be able to buy the hard copy but I could do an ebook version. But I really probably would be buying it for an additional campaign and less for the book itself, since I don't enjoy reading much.

An ebook version will be available on August 24 on Amazon.com in the Kindle format for $9.99.  As for an extra campaign (with the purchase of the book), this is the first time I have heard of this.

You can find the book @:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345517865?ie=UTF8&tag=joeusercom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0345517865

^^well thats intriguing...

out of curiosity, is there any connection between the campaign and the rest of the game? will my coveted items from one, be accessible in the other?

Yes, will I be able to bring my adventuring party of friends carrying all my barrels of gold and magic jewellery along? Not to mention my precious recently aquired knowledge of siege mechanics...

In this thread reply 37 brad answers this question.

As to this.

my worry about a download code in the back of the book would be that some unscrupulous fellow might just pop by a book store and copy down the code without buying it so that when i got the book home, i find the code has already been used.  Unless the book is shrink wrapped or isnt available brick and mortar or something.

It'd be short if that's the only mode that the game offered, but the real game is the "sandbox" mode.

I always like to play the campaigns, I even played the "terrible" GalCiv2 one. So I'd like more than one 8-hour campaign, preferably multiple campaigns for different factions. Hopefully mods and expansions will add more of them.

indeed as Brad mention in a post some where current campaign is designed to get folks into the game and help them understand the world and mechanics.. Its a tutorial with out being a tutorial heh heh..

Now I am excited about what future campaigns we will see because the mod tools are out outrageous.. if done right Stardock could themselves release really cool campaigns of various length for a few bucks here and there (if they don't chuff out a bunch of free ones themselves)..  while the modders toss out all kinds of free ones..