I never played MoM, so my opinions on how I'd like to see things work in Elemental are based on what's already there, with some really general concepts from some other games I've played (no other 4x fantasy games in my library, unless Warlords III counts). 

I do break out Alpha Centauri on occasion though, but I can't think of a thing in that game that I'd like to see in Elemental that Elemental doesn't already have, or is close to getting right (while terraforming is cool in Alpha Centauri, Elemental has it's own way of getting there).

I guess I bristle when I see the 'game was broken at release, Stardock sucks' comments.  I've been playing the game ever since release, and while the OOM issues are annoying, Each patch has made those less and less common. Sure, the game isn't working perfectly, but it does autosave, so set the autosave for 1-3 turns and voila, you can reload and pick up where you left off.  Note that in 1.09E, 100-200 turns between crashes was what I was seeing, not every 5th turn, so it really wasn't that annoying.

If the 'issues' bothered me that much, I'd have stopped playing a LONG time ago.  But there are enough cool concepts and such in the game now to keep me interested, and suck me into that 'just one more turn..' trap.

These days, it seems a LOT of games are buggy at release.  Because there are Gigabytes of code in games these days, instead of a mere 640 MB or less like the old days, this increases the chance of bugs exponentially.  And because Brad and the crew at Stardock wanted a nice looking game as well as a fun one,  the implementation of said cool graphics has bitten them on the behind.  It seems that these OOM's we are seeing are most likey due to graphics/texture memory issues (witness the mounts in combat slowing things to a crawl bug).

Does this mean game companies should just not worry about releasing buggy games?  Of course not!  That being said, some other game companies simply patch once or twice, and if that didn't fix your issue oh well.  Here, however, I see several Stardock employees who follow up on the problems we post as they get to them, and we've seen probably a dozen patches in 3 months?  Name one other game company that patches that often!

Brad & company reached for the stars on this design, and as he's posted before, Elemental is an entirely new game engine.  And an ambitious one at that.  How many other new game engines (not just new games utilizing existing engines) do you think were released this year?  I think what we have right now looks a lot better than many other games I've played, so I wouldn't call it a dud.

That being said, Brad has come to the realization that he was wearing too many hats, and in his 'post-release traumatic stress' wisdom has brought Kael onboard. Kael's sole job is to make Elemental into the better game we all have been wishing for, until the next cool thing comes along.  Keep in mind that Kael has been on the job for a little over 3 weeks now...

As a game company, I respect Stardock a lot.  Stardock is one of the most prominent companies in recent memory to embrace the 'install game, put game CD away, play it whenever you want' philosophy.  Right now, I have 17 game icons on my Desktop.  Most of those I'll need the game CD onhand to play, and since I don't pack those CDs around, they don't get played as much.  Not having to pack said CDs around, and risk scratching them in the process is a good idea IMHO.  Also, some of the DRM schemes we've seen from some other game companies have been outright draconian, and have in some cases messed up people's computers in the process.  If a Stardock game crashes, my system is fine, and Impulse hasn't negatively impacted my performance.

So the release of Elemental didn't move mountains, and the sea didn't part, and the angels weren't singing.  It's still a good game, and getting better as we go along.  And one I enjoy discussing!  Most other dedicated game forums I don't bother with, because the game isn't sufficiently immersive to bother with.  That says a lot about my liking Elemental too.

I've granted Brad & company a mulligan this time, as the game is already fun and he REALLY wants to see the design grow and mature, and make a continued ongoing investment to make it so.  So call me a Stardock fanboy.  I appreciate the compliment!

Although this probably means GalCivIII might be a little farther off than planned...

See what happens?  I've been so engrossed following the various beta threads and other discussions, I haven't been playing Elemental.  It's been sitting open in the background waiting patiently for a while now!  On that note:

I'm off to fight the Wizard, the hottie babe Wizard of Pariden!

I most definitely agree with you.  Like I said the concept of Elemental is fantastic, hopefully they will be able to make it into the game we will hoped it would be.  Take the good parts:  race distinction and good magic system.  You got involved in the game, unfortunately right now I am still detached from the Elemental experience.

I like how you create the different units in the game.  Lets make it so there are customized weapons for each race.  In MoM, there were two kinds of heroes.  The ones that guarded your cities, and the ones that went out to conquer.  In Elemental you could have three.  The city defender, the city producers, and the conquerers.  But make them harder to get.  The dime a dozen system makes them less special.

In MoM, you could customize the world.  Land Mass Size and Magic Power.  In Elemental you could take it a step further.  Customize the land size, but also how much the land has to offer.  Plentiful resources, or limited.  Lots of food, or limited.  How much do the Shards help?  Make it so we can change the settings to get worlds that are vastly different everytime.

Develop personalities for each of the Sovereigns.  Do they turtle, do they expand, do they concentrate on research?  Make them have tendencies, but able to venture off from them time to time.  Right now every Sovereign is the same.

Also, stop dumbing the game down.  Every starting position gets gold and food and one other resource.  Why?  Make all that stuff completely random.  What happened to the random monsters and bandits?  They have practically disappeared.  Make bandits more likely to attack small outposts, but stay away from big cities.  Make random monsters more prevalent outside of the ZOC.  Don't eleminate them from ZOC, but more common outside of it.  How about a couple more city states not controlled by a Sovereign, but a local.  Where did they go?  Game progresses them same way everytime.  Me and every Sovereign city spamming until we finaly run into each other.  No Random Events, no Random Monsters, it is the same everytime.

A lot of this stuff could be done in the upcoming expansions.  1.1 is to get the game playable and fun.  I am with you, Elemental could be the game that some of have waited 20 years to come out.  Oddly enough, with all the stuff I just mentioned I still find Elemental extremely fun to play.

I agree 100% with what you said here. I've always kinda wondered why we were handed starting resources on a silver platter, when instead it would be actually kinda fun to go out and explore with your newborn sovereign in an attempt to stake out some prime real estate. Do you want some nice land? Go look for it!

They could almost just make a NPC city state as a single map tile that just shows a small city. That map tile has guards on it to defend it, so if you want it, you need to defeat them. If you manage to defeat them you'll get one free spell or technology, some money, and the town there automatically starts off as your town - just as it would if you had a pioneer there and started a city. It's a very simple solution in my mind, since it's pretty much the same each time, just have it so the guards are randomly rolled upon creation, so some are more defended than others - and you don't know just by how much until you try taking it. Sure it's a bit more generic, but that's ok, at least with me. The NPC players are the ones that I want to have advanced and intelligent AI programming, while these little NPC settlements just represent little villages that are not seeking world domination.

I would also like to have it where a sovereign can be killed, and the heir to the throne takes over. But, having that happen can be pretty harsh, perhaps your kingdom/empire splits between two heirs, rebellions pop up, etc. The heirs to the throne would represent "extra lives" that can move your dynasty forward in the game. If you want to kill off a rival sovereign and his heirs to the throne, you'll need to track them down and do it. This way, you can't just kill a sovereign and have it game over for him/her. It makes it a bit more complex, and the sons and daughters of the sovereign will have much more weight to them.

Absolutely, three things should or could happen when an enemy sovereign dies.

1.  The heir to the throne takes over instead of the entire kingdom/empire evaporating.

2.  Rival heirs split the Kingdom/Empire in two

3.  If no heir, the cities form city states, or small groups so we can take them over as well.

LOL. I have to admit I feel like I have missed out on a great experience--the game is referenced so much and seems revered.  I have never played MoM....greatest thing since the invention of boobs?? Wow--maybe I did miss out!