i'm against campaign changes because to my mind it results in two flawed games instead of one good game. when i look at the campaign stories for galciv 2, i can't help but think that there's no story there that could not have been told better and more easily by just incorporating it into the campaign as an optional extra mega event (ie, like an improved version of the dread lords event, but with multiple and more specific missions leading up to it and following on after).

similarly if you want a more story centric elemental, just give me a check box at the start of a sandbox game that forces me to play as relias on the elemental map, and gives me story related missions and events.

make the story of the game the one i write myself, rather than some derivative mini game. to me, the very existence of a campaign symbolises the biggest flaw in stardock's game design: the inability (or lack of desire) to propoerly integrate and harmonise game mechanics.

does oblivion have a story mode that's devolved from the sandbox game world? no, they're integrated into one. and rather beautifully so if i may add. i know they're very different games, but since they are both massively ambitious, stardock could imo learn an awful lot from them.

i love single player campaigns in rpgs, but i did not buy elemental to play an rpg. i have plenty of other games for that (and, hint, most of them have more than 4 stats per unit).

in response to the "no one buys games without campaigns" comment, personally i don't think most people who were excited about elemental were excited about playing a scripted, naff "go here, kill this" series of missions. you can get away with this stuff when adventuring is a mini game, but not when it's THE game. we were excited about an epic, fantasy strategy game that gave us some rpg elements for developing our sovs and dynasty. give us that.

I have absolutley no problem with a campaign, it's just not what I bought the game for I wanted a single player sandbox game. So naturally I would rather they focused on that than campaign and multiplayer. Other people though have other priorities like yourself and I can respect that. If I want an indepth campagin I'll play dragon age (which I did for a while and enjoyed), but it's not what I'm after from elemental.

I don't like campaign very much. I stated this in FfH2 and Galciv, campaigns where you don't carry anything from the previous 'episode' to the next boil down to me to:

If you want to play cool scenario #3, you must beat boring as hell scenario you hate and would never like to play #2, which is, well, bad.

So I don't like campaigns. I don't want to be channelled into doing something if I don't like.

However, I do like scenarios, as long as they are stand alone or, if they are linked, that what you actually did in the previous scenario matters in the next.

Anyway, I prefer sandbox. It offers replayability in a way campaigns don't. That means the worth of 1 good scenario may be 1, the worth of 1 sandbox game may be 0.99 (slightly less, but not less if the map is decent), but I'll play 100 sandbox games for 1 scenario, so sandbox ends up being 99 times more interesting than any scenario.

personally when i look back at GC2, i would happily have sacrificed the entire campaign concept if it had meant getting a sensible economy, or properly integrated united planets, or carriers, or a better tactical battle system.

more than anything, i don't think stardock has the budget and production values to do all the unique models, voice over and what have you necesarry to do the sort of campaign people expect anyway.

The progenitor 4X's, Civilization, Master of Orion, and Master of Magic, didn't have campaigns.  The origins of this genre eschewed campaigns.

The genre would eventually move on to scenarios, which I think was a fine idea, but those were either special rules or special condition matches.  Story?  I think Sid realized that stories come from individual sandbox matches, not some poorly written hackjob script.  Reynolds came along and realized that giving giving each faction personality, specific goals, and providing the game with a simple but interesting backstory would provide an infinite number of stories.

Elemental is already fractured and unfocused enough.  Release a full campaign that less than half of your playerbase will even bother touching in an expansion.  Til then, every minute and every penny should be spent on fixing your damn game and making it worth pushing into memoryspace.  

Yes, take people off the campaign if you have to. Your writing is bad and no one cares about the stupid buggy wannabe LOTR campaign.  If you have a dedicated writer (I hope you don't), fire him (cruel, but he's awful at his job) and spend his salary on a more robust QA lab.  Or an artist.  Or a designer.

Seriously, a campaign is an even bigger waste of time than multiplayer.  At least multiplayer might result in better balance and more bug testing.

A good sandbox game will write its own campaign every time you generate a new world.  Period.

It's not that I'm against a campaign.

It's just that I absolutely don't care about a campaign in the slightest.

I am sure that the modding community will tell plenty of campaign stories.

In the meantime, I would rather Stardock focus on the gameplay and engine as well as getting the modding community the tools it needs to blow everyone's minds away.

A campaign actually makes you care about the characters and lore. A good campaign gives life to the game, which was one of the criticisms that Elemental has had.

Look at Warcraft and Starcraft for example? It's campaigns gave life and flavor to it. This criticism is also found in Galactic Civilizations and it had a not so hot campaign itself because it focused more on Sandbox.

Some ideas then:

• Smaller multiple maps instead of a giant one where the player is bored moving around endlessly
• Champions/Sovereign gets stats (items and spells learned too?) saved from one "scenario" to the next
• Multiple outcomes possible for next "scenario" to add replayability
  • Autosave before those points so no need to atart over completely, also may help those who experience bugs but don't save often
• Something unlocked when campaign is beaten (play with the "evil" side next time for example)
• More emphasis on city/army building 
• Bonus points after scenarios to improve faction/sovereign/starting units

In my case, it is because I love good campaigns and am a sucker for well-written storylines. In fact, good campaigns and great storylines are the reason that I buy many strategy games for single player that others buy only for the multiplayer and feel my money well spent even if I only play through the games once or twice. Given this, why am I in favour of sandbox game development from Stardock? The reason is as simple as it is obvious: Stardock has never demonstrated an ability to either write an engaging storyline or a good campaign. These are skills that the development team has shown no evidence whatsoever of being in possession of: The rudimentary campaigns they have shipped with Elemental or the GalCivs haven't shown even the faintest hints that given more resources they would have been good. Under such conditions, I absolutely prefer that they stick at doing what they do best - sandbox mode.

For Stardock to produce a good campaign would apart from substantially more resources spent on the campaign almost certainly require the hiring of people, who are good at writing campaigns (and good at writing in the first place!), whose job it would be to do it full time, and giving them enough authority that they won't be overruled on a regular basis by the techs. Writing a good campaign is very expensive.

Stardock makes games with "campaigns" that are glorified tutorials and mostly, but not completely, a waste of time both playing and reading and I just don't see it changing anytime soon unless they start operating on a completely different budget with people hired for the purpose of writing campaigns.

So given all that... Yes, I am against any half-hearted and underfunded efforts to "improve the campaigns" because I just don't see it panning out. I won't get campaigns I'll actually like out of it but resources will have been spent that could have been spent on making the things Stardock has a track record of getting right working.

I agree with some points above that it would have been better if they fit the campaign into a sandbox game with cutscenes, and have specific campaign quests guiding the player through, but still have a game where there would be research, diplomacy, adventuring, dynasties, etc. that could be brought to bear in beating the final campaign challenge and any intermediate steps. 

Since Stardock doesn't really "do" campaigns I can forgive book 1 as a misstep.  I don't know if the campaign is any more or less broken or fixable than other parts of the game.  As least I was able to play through the campaign without crashing.  For over a week now I've been waiting on the 1.08 patch to hopefully be able to finish sandbox games.

I am proud to say I have never played a campaign in any RTS or TBS game.  I hate them.  They feel so forced.  The couple of times I did try to paly, It very frustrating to have to wait 20+ hours to see all the units!

Or how about the...

You just built your first Demilich Dragon of Armageddon!

"Mission Complete!" complete with silly trumpets trumpeting triumphantly.

What?  You mean I can't take him into battle?!

A good campaign is a chance to do some exceptional storytelling.

A bad campaign is a waste of everyone's time.

Stardock doesn't like doing campaigns, so bother to hire/build up the ability to build good campaigns, so their campaigns are bad, so players don't like Stardock campaigns, so they complain, so Stardock doesn't like doing campaigns.

A neatly closed loop.

Here's what I think should be done:

1. Completely scrap the campaign that exists now.  
The campaign is short, underwhelming, and buggy right now.  It simply doesn't do the game's lore any justice.

2. Create a nice, in-depth tutorial using the latest game mechanics.  
Use Elemental's lore, characters, and setting, and whatever else to make a super-duper tutorial that jives with the game's backstory.  

3. Replace "Campaign" with "Tutorial" in the game menu for now.
 A nice tutorial is far more important to people right now than a campaign.

4. Polish the heck out of Sandbox, Workshop and Multiplayer modes.
People buy TBS games primarily for its sandbox game, period.   This needs to be working like clockwork before any thought can be given to more campaigns.

5. Build us a real campaign
In the meantime, for long term, start working on a campaign that truly does the game justice, and release it in a few expansion packs down the road. 

I am not against a good campaign, in fact I am all for it. However, if the question is where the Devs should focus their efforts, I'd rather they focus on the sandbox play for the simple reason that I'll play the campaign once or twice at most, whereas I hope to play and enjoy hundreds of sandbox games.

Pretty much my sentiments.

A game, designed to be a sandbox game from the ground up, cannot hope to have an impactful or solid campaign without the sandbox that it is built around working in perfect harmony.  To do so is a waste of resources...

Fix the campaign now and it breaks later when the game is completely fixed and polished, which means you have to fix the campaign again later.

Fix the game first and you only have to fix the campaign one time.

Basic common sense which path to take.