What does "(+4 additional game tiles)" mean?

Oh damn, CTD after 5 mins of playing with .302

I totally agree with this.

I also want to note that the population level is very low. I don't think 1 population should represent 1 people but rather 1 hundred or 1 thousand people.

When I was playing Ramannce of the 3 kingdoms which took place in ancient china, a small province could have a few 80 000 people while a large one could have 200 000 people. If your map represents the whole world, and not a portion of a world, and if you want to make an epic game you really need more population.

BETA 1z3, Turn 34 crashed when clicking the turn button  CORE DUO 2.5GHZ 2 GB RAM, 3870 ATI 512MB, VISTA !

Well, reloading saved games is still problematic -> occasional lock-ups when trying to reload a saved game, but it's not a big problem for beta2, it can be fixed while we are in phase 2 or 3 as well.

However the CTDs must be fixed before we move on imo. I've reported 2 of these crashes. It looks like that these CTDs are caused by 1 specific "bug"...at least the debug looks like the same after the crashes. I might be wrong of course. I had no in-game lock-ups so far. Eh now that I think about it...it's weird. In the previous build [0.3] I had lot of lock-ups and zero CTDs. In the current build [0.302] I had no lock-ups, but a couple of CTDs. Hmm....maybe the lock-ups were related to the caravan system? Because it's been removed from 0.302 -> no lock-ups so far.

If you DO have a crash or some other stability issue, make sure you do a full bug report (see the beta forum guidelines).

In particular, we need to know what you were doing at the time as it could be as simple as someone doing something that wasn't thought of.

Need a full crash report. Please see the beta guidelines in the beta forum.

I have gone from 50+ Turns to CTD with 1Z2 to 100+ (limited games thus far) with 1Z3 so things are definitely back on track.

As far as  the Saved Game issue. I try and save every 15 tuns even with Auto-Save on, as invariably, if the games crashes the Auto-Save are no good (set to 8 Turns) while I can often recover a specific save "T-78" say, that was/is created and then the game proceeds for some further # of turns before a Crash event.

I am home tonight, so the eye gouging, will continue then. Debug.err(s) to follow.

P.S. Don't like the "Recruitment Only in My Territory" idea at all. That way I have to hope one wonders in and then that I have enough CHR. to capture. Let us have our Allies... BOOO!

Hmmm got my first CTD with this build, also elements on the map just out of the Fov appear blurred. Numerous other problems, will submit error when I have the time. It seems to me this, for me anyway, has created more problems than solved.

*Just a quick question. When creating a sovereign, are there still missing skin icons on the appearance tab?

**Also am I being stupid, where are the create roads (have I missed something?)

It crashed after about 11 turns with my new system.

I had several issues with my old system (5 years old) playing BETA (graphic does not display characters and crashes about 8~15 turns... etc) I don't even bother to mention my old system in detail... celeron 3.2 GHZ + ASUS + 2.5 GB memory + Geforce 7600 GT + Windows XP sp2 (English)..

So, I recently built my computer hoping to play Elemental (60%) better and simply my old one is .. old (40%).

New System = AMD Phenom II X2 550 + ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO + 4GB DDR3 G.skill + Windows XP sp3 (Korean) + DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

I know you guys are working very hard and doing a great job upgrading BETA.  I can see the differences every time you release a new BETA.

I just want to point out that we are still having some... stability issues. That's all. Othrethan that you guys are fantastic !!!!!

Two thumbs up !! 

I'm not sure how much I like the limitations on the number of standard improvements. Especially if the number of possible such improvements doesn't go up massively by release.

I mean, let's consider a metropolis-sized city as an example. 52 mini-tiles max; let's  assume that 6 full tiles (24 mini tiles) are taken up by resources, shards, the keep, major projects, etc. That leaves 28 tiles to be divided up into other improvements; unless we need to spam housing, that leaves plenty of room to fit lots of many different kinds of improvements and doesn't really even allow specialization, let alone encourage it! 

Just as importantly, consider the frustration... What if I have a metropolis with 5 barracks, but for some reason I could really, really use one more. Maybe I'm in a dead-locked war and that one extra barracks would help my replenish my troops faster than my opponent to gain the advantage. But no, too bad - the barracks are grayed out, because I have reached some arbitrary number of them already! The Elemental gods forbid more than 5 barracks per metropolis.

I should be able to build as many of these improvements as I want, or as fits my strategy! If I want to fill a city full of one or two types of improvements, I should be able to, but like with everything else there is an opportunity cost. If I fill a city full of barracks, then I am paying high upkeep and not generating extra revenue from, say, economic improvements, and I'm not generating the research I'd be getting if I had build some universities, etc.

Make those opportunity costs meaningful, so that extreme specialization and a complete lack of specialization, as well as the middle-ground, all have their pros and cons, so that their strategic value is situational. Applying some random cap to these things would remove so much of the fun of deciding how to build my cities.

Basically agree with pigeonpigeon. Though I think it's good to limit max number of a building type in smaller cities to encourage growth, I think larger cities should definitely be able to build as much of whatever they want. There maybe some efficiency reduction or something for going beyond a certain number, but I do cringe at the situation where I can't build more banks or barracks despite really needing it simply because I'm at the max number for the city.

Boogie, I have CTDs on Vista, but you probably read my reports already...as I see, more people are having the same CTD type: Hit the end turn button -> CTD.

I would emphasize the importance of not changing game mechanics to resolve a balance issue.

The solution isn't to change the game mechanic but rather to provide more meaningful improvements higher up the chain.

I agree and disagree. This isn't purely a balance issue; an arbitrary maximum (a rather low one, at that) on the number of times you can build a given improvement per city completely eliminates many player options. The balance issue here is secondary, the primary issue is the fundamental limitation on the ability of players to develop their cities in whatever direction seems most appropriate (or even fun).

Sure, more meaningful improvements would help mitigate the problem, but it is still there, and people will still run into it plenty often, I bet. And if the variety in improvements is focused higher up in the chain, then small-medium settlements will still suffer this problem (for small cities that is probably fine, but not so much for the middle tiers).

In summary: if this were a balance issue, I would agree completely that changing the game mechanic would be unwarranted and maybe even a downright bad idea. But it isn't a balance issue, it is a gameplay issue. The balance issue will still be alive and kicking if you remove this cap, it will just take a slightly different form.

If I am ever playing Elemental and have a good reason to want to build a fifth barracks in one of my cities, I will be frustrated and annoyed if I can't do so just because 4 of my city's max of 36 tiles are already barracks. Every time that happens, I will think "ugh, why?" That is not a reaction to strive for. On the other hand, if I am allowed to build my 5th barracks at the cost of not building something else (with diminishing returns, reduced efficiency, etc) I will be content. Even if the penalties are high enough that I will usually decide against doing so, the option to do so in the unusual situation where it would still be beneficial seems like an incontrovertibly good thing - it'd alleviate annoyance, and make city building a little more strategic and fun.

I really can't see a downside, other than that balancing might be a little trickier.

That never seemed to have been an issue in say Civilization where you can only build 1 of a given thing in a city.

The "limitations" are substitutes for abstracting other things (such as population of a city). In the real world, even in command economies, you can't simply conjure up specialists (merchants and educators and what not).  Rather than having users have to micro manage special classes of citizens, we instead simply provide limits on buildings that involve specialists based on the city level which is based on the population.

Yes, and history is replete with dictators who were frustrated because their small nation couldn't simply conjure up the necessary resources or people to do what they want.

The downside is the trivialization of the skill and meaning of a robust society.  

If only the Germans had quick-built more tanks they could have defeated the Soviet Union in the East. No, wait, they couldn't really do that because they didn't have the logistical, resource, or manufacturing capability to do that.  But in countless strategy games, players are able to simply ignore these basic things.

Sure, it would be great to be able to will an outpost to have 10 schools. To heck with food or housing or population. Just create a research-centric Kingdom of dozens of outposts that are filled with schools or libraries or what have you.

But intuitively, that trivializes what having a kingdom means and the significance of building cities. Why have cities at all if we can simply conjure up whatever we want?

If you want to mod your own game to give you unlimited construction in a city or give yourself unlimited money or whatever, you can do that.

But that is not the direction I would like to see Elemental go.  I am not a stickler for realism by any means but there should be some sort of reasonable justification for a game mechanic.

Although I'd consider that "/discussion" enough, I must say that I like the other arguments used. If this game couldn't be modded, Stardock would be under siege right now.

Perhaps the out of memory error is a 64-bit issue or something? On 64-bit systems, the integers and pointers take up twice as much memory, etc.  Does that still apply if the game is built as a 32-bit binary and executed as a 32-bit binary? Because it seems I get the out of memory errors when Elemental is consuming somewhere over 2GB of memory. Don't recall the exact number. I'll try to reproduce it again. But I am Win7 Ultimate x64. Phenom x4 with 8 GB of memory.

I should also point out that I generaly have like 8 or so cities by the time I get the error and probably level 20+ in civics research and around 15+ in warfare research with most cities being level 4 or level 5 and tons of improvements in all of them and I am just starting to crank out a good number of well-equipped soldiers.

I run mainly Win7 x64. 

I proudly plaid through the beta 0.302. I won the game after 312 turns.. It's shaping up pretty well. I do think we are ready to proceed I'm voting YES we can move to beta 2  : )

Ps. I run Win7 x64 as well.