ScottTykoski ScottTykoski

Namaste, New Beta Goers

Namaste, New Beta Goers

Welcome to the Road Less Traveled

As preorders are processed and new users begin downloading (and...gulp...playing) Elemental, I wanted to extend words of both welcome and warning to our fellow adventurers....

- You are possibly (or definatly, at the time of this post) downloading the 0.291 build from last Friday. You should be on the lookout for v0.295, which we will be announcing one we get one last bug squashed :)

- These are the last build of the Beta 1 cycle. This meens you'll be playing on the cloth map only, and the major features, while in, are still in a sate of infancy. Beta 2 will bring new content and a maturing of these mechanics.

- These build are prone to crash. We've chipped away at some of the memory leaks, but 100 turns in don't be suprise if your computer is begging for mercy on it's delicate silicone. Autosave is your friend :)

- You won't have fun. Anything emotions that girgle forth that even resemble enjoyment are either the anticipation of fun or straight up gas. And 9/10 times it'll be the latter.

The game, at this stage, is something most companies would desperatly keep under wraps. What we're hoping is that the player input we get at this point outweighs the lack of fun you'll have to wade through for the next few months.

Enjoy!  :)  Feel free to post any comments, concerns, or questions...Brad, myself, and the rest of the team will be around!

128,375 views 70 replies
Reply #51 Top

 I hate to break it to RisingLegend, but I'm enjoying testing Elemental in it's current state.

Then you sir are crazier than a shithouse rat |-)  I hope to one day get into the art side of game design and so I am trudging through this beta as experience with games that are not finished. But I am a very impatient person, and so I'm learning to be better at that through this too! I just hope a few of my ideas for the game can get in, that will make it all the worthwhile :)  

Reply #52 Top

Yes, the Beta is hideous (for the love of god, can I get some UI that makes getting to things I care about easier), but the promise it holds is glorious.  Maybe the touchpad on my laptop is part of the problem...

It's too bad about the memory leaks; being able to Alt-Tab in and out would make note taking SO much easier.

Now I suppose I should actually read the wiki information. :-)

Reply #53 Top

I know there are other threads on this, but I really dislike having to use the Sovereign exclusively to create cities; it would make sense to have settlers to at least build cities within the current nation boundary.  Shouldn't the people be imbued with some sort of life essence to be able to help the sovereign renew the land.

MoM had such rich terrain...

Do I really have to remember who started the stack in order to know who to click on to eject?  Maybe this is a bug?

I promise to find more appropriate channels for venting in the future.

Reply #54 Top

Okay .. so is ANY of the questing/ruins/dungeons implemented yet? or is it all semi-randomized popups??

in any case, I love the levelling up system, and Might I add that the Adventurer profession is AMazing :)

Reply #55 Top

Quoting RisingLegend, reply 51

Then you sir are crazier than a shithouse rat

Well, I am a pianist for a living.  Musicians are all crazy.  Thankfully for us, this is a GOOD thing - an expected thing :grin: .

 

So twice now I've won through conquest, without ever meeting a single AI opponent on the map.  This amuses me greatly.  Apparently I am simply so naturally awesome that the AI cannot comprehend my existence and ragequits.  :D

Reply #56 Top

Quoting ABOMB11, reply 43

Quoting Nosrick, reply 34I've got a slight problem.

My wallet was stolen last week, and I only just got my new card today, so I couldn't change the details (I honestly don't know who to contact, either). Am I going to have to wait until next Beta?

I've been excited about this game since its announcement, but I can wait if need be.

Just got an e-mail that told me the transaction failed.

Had a similar problem i just re ordered it through the link that the e-mail sent me. in the conformation e-mail should be a serial code, register that and make sure you have show pre release versions checked marked in impulse under preferences and restart... it should show up.

Good Luck

 

:sadpanda: Similar thing here, I placed the order on a rebate card I had and it was denied for some unexplained reason.  I re-ordered tonight on my real credit card but haven't seen a charge / beta key yet, did I miss the boat?  Was really looking forward to digging into the game this weekend. :(  Guess I'll email support but I'd be surprised to hear anything back before monday...

 

Reply #57 Top

So! much! crashing!!! .... bangs head against wall, floor, and ceiling. Its all the more frustrating since the tiny bits that *actually work* are quite fun "for now"

One thing that is super annoying though. There is a patch of fertile land in between some mountains, but plainly accessible. I tried to work my city towards it ... not "snaking" mind you, simply moving my buildings in that general direction. For SOME reason, my movement in that direction is HARD CAPPED!!!

now, if it was just # of square hard-capping, thats fine. I tried several different ways of accessing that farmland ... all to no avail. Well, it would of been nice especially since I researched refined farmland like 1 or 2 times!!!

Also, I had a strange feeling that instead of increasing research by 10% ... Sovereign staying in a city actually helps ALOT. I mean ... turtlers unite!!! but then again, a super beefed Sov (20 strength, 20 dex, 20 constitution) with the Adventurer profession doesn't  NEED to turtle ... his job is to go out and KICK SOME ASSS!!! hellz yea. WEll, it would be nice if my capital took quicker than 86 turns to build a company of UberMenchin 1s .... but then again I guess its my fault cause its a science city and not a military city.

What do I need for faster units? Is it a combination of Barracks and Mines? do barracks/armories actually currently DO anything yet?? Peace out.

Reply #58 Top

Quoting Tasunke, reply 57
So! much! crashing!!! .... bangs head against wall, floor, and ceiling.

... ... ...
What do I need for faster units?

 

To the first portion:  Yeah.  It crashes all the time :)  There are still a few memory leaks present beyond other reasons it could crash.  Thankfully, if you hit ESC during your game you can enable auto-saving and how often it will auto-save.

 

To the second portion:  I was wondering that myself on the last run-through.  Earlier today I played a straight up military warrior city and was creating people like mad.  This time I went straight magic for awhile, then Civic - and it would take about 250 turns to train a unit.  I'm going to do a lot more experimenting, but it may well just be that you need some military oriented buildings to train faster.  The wiki may have some information on that, I haven't worked my way through it yet.

 

Quoting Tasunke, reply 50
... however a way to scroll quickly across the map would be nice... ... Please give an update with a faster scroller!!!

 

Hit ESC during play - there is a slider there for map scrolling speed :D  It's working just fine for me.

 

Quoting BreadMan017, reply 56

  :sadpanda: Similar thing here, I placed the order on a rebate card I had and it was denied for some unexplained reason. 
 

 

The same thing happened to me.  I was totally bummed when I got an email saying the transaction couldn't be completed, and thought I'd miss the beta boat from having to re-pre-purchase.  Thankfully, the people at customer support were incredibly awesome and ensured everything went through as it should when I sent them a ticket about it.  I don't know if they do any custommer support on weekends, so that might be unfortunate, but I'm sure at least by monday you'll be good to go.

Reply #59 Top

To train faster you need barracks. Armories will speed up the process in creating the equipment needed.

If you create a swordmen, the game calculate that you need to : forge the sword, the armor and then train the peasant. All of that take time. And resources. If you have the resources, the forge and barracks you will speed things up.

Reply #60 Top

Roger, sirs, reporting my beta experience,

 

Version :0.295

Experience : very first time

Duration: ~30 minutes

 

As I start the game, I pick a soverign King

The next turn button unexpectedly seems far at the right and design to be the sysmetry oposite of the reaserch bar.I saw a spider so something and challenge it however, I lost...

 

around my gameplay of ~15 mins, I dont know where a girl come from but she seems love me very much and suddenly I got married ...lol 

 

Then I build city and start some research, graphic is "tasteless" but that is ok coz already being repeatedly informed. Then I grow older and suddenly I got a child at 45.

 

Thing are boring so contiinue to click next turns, many ant-like creature and men pass around, but they seems busy heading to else where and suddenly my wife give birth at 50+ and 60+ for my 3rd kids. I am concern coz she is aged, but still ambitiuos at building big family.

 

So I go into the dynasty screen, to see her. but she looks the same when she first come from no where at age 30+. I want to admire her beauty but the portrait seems to small. Then I continue, and to my suprise she give birth again at age 70+, the baby is with a name Raban or something (ugly name..lol) but I accept anyway and my eldest son already near to 30 at this same time.

 

There are 1000 and 1 things to research in the 5 areas and all need to start from very very begining. My city cannot grow, and then 2 of my peasants deserted I think no food. I mouse over and there is a messege say limitation of food. I dont where to look for food so I just change my research from warfare area to civilization and click the farming

 

As I am boring cannot admire my wife or play with my kid...haha, so I click next turn repeatedly.

 

Wow, my age become 176 and my wife also 170+, luciky she didnt produce anymore kid... and I eldest son is 130+ !

They all stay in my city and other monsters keep passing around like road traffics.

 

Since I have some basic idea what the game is about and I am too old ..lol I decided to exit the game.

My win XP seems to hang for 3 mins and become slowler and so I restart my computer.

 

End of report, roger.... sirs,

 

(thanks for providing the experience - is funny and I laugh alot)

 

 

 

Reply #61 Top

crashing and corrupt saves are a bit harsh, but thats ok. It is expected from a VERY early beta.

its already somewhat fun, lots more work to do of course for it to be a complete game. as far as I can tell there are VERY few spells in existance right now... the best of which being charm monster. in my recent game i charmed 3 giant spiders and 4 trolls for my army... then I started killing trolls... each one immediately killed me with 200 damage, but also died from the army (I have no control over it)... i "teleported to town in the last moment" and leveled up... rinse, repeat... got me tons of essence, but I have no use for it :(

Reply #62 Top

Easy use for essence .... create more cities!! But alas, you can also increase your attack.

My adventure kings can usually kill a whole troll army by themselves by level 3 or 4, and take on individual trolls at level 1. Alot of that has to do with all the pretty potions I find to increase my stats, as well as the rings.

Of course, my most recent Adventure-er king (wasnt actually an Adventure King but a Crusader King) ... he was accompanied by a Company of Elite Crusaders. Crusaders are basically Ubermench. I never had enough time to build a Paladin, for it was a suped up Crusader with +1 movement, and alot more defense. A regular crusader started at requiring 80 turns. Eventually an elite company required the same 80 turns. I think this had to do with building some barracks, and researching refined training a couple times.

Cause by the time I researched refined training, maybe 5 times, IIRC my regular Crusader could be trained in perhaps 11 turns?? honestly forget if it was 11, or if it was 20 and later dropped to 11. In any case, much faster. It was sometime after this that I was training elite companies of Champions every 70-80 turns, in each of my three cities. Upkeep was getting high, so I built Tax Offices in all my cities. Acaia for some reason had a much smaller plot of land to build on than Jerusalem and the other one. Maybe cause it was close to a forest?

In any case, for about 90% of the time I like the "capped radius" .... but that other 10% I wish there was a way to extend our buildable zone by some means, usually just in ONE direction. Like, three cities began in a somewhat close proximity, could build outwards in three different directions, and have their "build radius" doubled for one direction. Maybe a UI function as simple as "Southern Growth, Northern Growth, Eastern, WEstern, NE, NW, SE, SW growth" .... and that cardinal direction is doubled, but the max tiles/squares remains the same.

In an addition to that statement, I think it will be much better once there are certain improvements. Say imrpovements over "HOUSE" ... like Apartment, SlumHouse, TownHouse, ect. basically just House +1, House +2, House +3, and Apartment (better than House 3), Apartment +1, Apartment +2. In addition, such grande buildings as Improved Farm, Improved Apiary, Improved Orchard-> these should be unlocked the first time you research refined farming imho. Or maybe when you research improved farming, I dunno. I kinda hope refined farming increases Orchard and Apiary output as well, cause if it doesnt then there needs to be a Refined Orchard/Apiary tech.

Also, I think there should be a check to make sure there is at least one of each shard on the map. Not entirely certain if there is or not, but fire shards currently seem like an endangered species, while Earth, Air, and Water are quite prolific.

There should be a way for the capital to have more build-tiles than the rest of your cities (imho). That way, you can expand to pick up all your starting resources by the same city, if you choose to grow and nurture that city instead of getting 2 or three quick villages off. Only fair, fitting, and appropriate imho.

Also, on finished game, even though all the stuff looks prety, I think there should be somekind of Key to tell which land-type is which (swamp, desert, hills, ect) ... or at the least allow a delayed pop-up of detailed land information once your mouse rests on a piece of land (long enough to imply desired intent, 2-3 seconds or more).

The click n drag movement is fine for now, although I think in the finished game players should be able to use the arrow pad to swiftly move their "viewing screen" across the map. Also, a quick way to switch between Cities (and CHampions) would be a life-saver. Perhaps have the cities display an icon on the right hand side, or simply use comma to scroll through cities and period to scroll through champions.

also, is their actually a way to recruit heroes? they just seem like free exp to me.

Ive had lots of 1 vs 1 sovereign battles, and won each of them. Was very fun :) ... also fun when my hastily built peasant horde* defeated invading soldiers.

*-about 4 peasants vs 1 soldier, quickly became 10 peasants vs 2 soldiers (at a time)

Reply #63 Top

Easy use for essence .... create more cities!! But alas, you can also increase your attack.

My first 3 original cities spread enough "good land" for me to found 3 more without paying essence... I have captured tons of resources too, but for some reason I am now going broke and can't afford more cities. Also, there doesn't seem to be a point to expand further. I have no use for any of the resources. not the shards, not the essence, not the big glowly crystals (forgot what they are called) which are color coded.

My adventure kings can usually kill a whole troll army by themselves by level 3 or 4, and take on individual trolls at level 1. Alot of that has to do with all the pretty potions I find to increase my stats, as well as the rings.

Mine has 0 str, 15wis, 15int, 10 everythging else. and I used the rest of the points to buy access to every single spell school. then I gave him some flaws relating to combat to aquire talents relating to being a mage.

then I made a custom civ, I bought access to one extra school (the light magic one, which contained no spells at all).

He was meant to be a paper nuke, but having no control over him whatsoever he just gets killed every time. (he did gain some defense and attack by finding potions and tomes that increase those... but most tomes he finds give extra spell research points... which I don't need because there is only 1 or 2 spells per school).

Reply #64 Top

There's a bug in the upkeep. Instead of adding upkeep, the game multiply it !

it should be 1st city = upkeep 0

2nd city = 1 upkeep

3rd city = 2 upkeep

So for 5 cities you shoudl have an upkeep of : 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10.

But with 5 cities you get : 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 = 24

And the 6th city will cripple you : upkeep 120 O_O

And if you get a 7th city ... 720.

Very crippling bug.

Reply #65 Top

Thx for the welcome. I wish my ATI drivers would be as sable as a Stardock early Beta. I hope Stardock will have lots of sucess with this game.

Reply #66 Top

Yea ... the bug is DEFINITELY a multiplier .... and I think its even worse than that!!! I had only 5 or 6 cities iirc with 600 or 700+ upkeep!!!

 

in addition, the "Making of History" game is damn hard!!! Being non-self sufficient sucks :/ ... grr trade deals

Reply #67 Top

Thanks, clicking "show pre-release versions" fixed the problem of it not showing up on my list, naturally.  Would be helpful if that were on by default, or the email mentioned it.

:banhammer:  

Reply #68 Top

this explain why my economy collapsed when I built the 6th city.

Reply #69 Top

it is off by default on purpose... the game is an early incomplete alpha. most features are not even implemented yet, its not so much a game as a demonstration of early rendering engine.

you are supposed to jump through hoops to even see it, if you didn't, you'd install it and be pissed off at how bad it is.

Reply #70 Top

man i'm finding it great fun well at least thinking of how fun it will be later on when it doesn't crash and i can look at something else then brown dirt and dull pictures of mountains that are really flat. it has a nice take on the way the citys work now we only have to wait till it gets more content & polish, starcraft 2 is coming sooner but i'm sure this will be funner in the long run