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Elemental Beta 2-A Preview

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Elemental Beta 2-A Preview

from JoeUser Forums

imageThis week we plan to release Beta 2-A of Elemental. 

Once Beta 2-A goes out, we will be closing the beta for new users until Beta 3. To join the beta, simply pre-order the game.

Now, for those of you not used to being in a Stardock beta, let me emphasize once again: These betas are NOT fun. They are not supposed to be fun. They are NOT demos or representative of the final game play or even the final graphics. 

What to expect from Beta 2-A

There have been a lot of game play changes based on player feedback.

In no particular order these are the areas we’ve been heavily modifying:

  • Major changes to city building.  Generally, a lot fewer improvements being built and the ones there have more impact. Generally speaking, you will only build 1 of a given improvement in a city. Better improvements will require higher level cities. 1 to 2 housing units is typically sufficient to go up (but food is more precious since you can’t crank out gardens anymore).
  • More mobility in general (units get more moves)
  • Monsters properly spawn based on toughness (i.e. generally no more crazy monsters right outside your base)
  • AI improvements (still primitive though)
  • More items
  • More quests
  • Beginning of cleanup to the tech tree
  • Customize Sovereign enabled
  • Lots of bug fixing (alt-esc crash fixed)
  • Balance work on items, equipment, etc.
  • Some graphics and animation improvements

 

image
A more typical early game city.

We are pouring through player feedback and I think users will be surprised at how quickly and how many user suggestions we can get in (unless you’ve been in a previous Stardock beta in which it’s typical).  We ask those users who are new to our beta programs to keep sending in ideas but to please remember at this point, it is just a visual software program rather than a “game” per se. Those who want to “have fun” I highly recommend waiting until release.

Stay tuned and keep the bug reports, feedback, and suggestions coming!

 

UPDATE

We understand that many of you are finding Beta 2 fun. We're not saying that Beta 2 is completely horrible. We're just saying that we are only at the beginning of the balancing process and major elements (the WAR and the MAGIC) parts of disabled in Beta 2.

335,322 views 219 replies
Reply #201 from Elemental Forums Top

As I posted elsewhere I would really like to see the whole farms and houses part go away.  Building basic infrastructure isn't fun.  Cant they build their own.  Let me focus on customizing my castle and defenses...laying that out...not mundane stuff.  I don't see any fun in the current placement micromanagement other than to ruin the fluidity of the game by having to go back to it.  The city should grow over time no matter what I do.  Basic infrastructure like houses, farms, sewers, and port-a-potties  Should kind of take care of themselves.  The buildings I build should only effect the rates at which things happen.  The production of a building should be linked to population so spamming small cities all over isnt effective.  A city with high pop should get more out of a particular building than a city with low pop.  When I place stuff it should be strategic buildings like castle, walls, moats, towers that effect strategic combat.  Castle building is fun.  Farms and houses is sim city.

Reply #202 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting duke87, reply 143



Quoting Xtropy,
reply 141

This is indeed my point.  Now the reward for carefully placing a city in a good spot will be infinitely higher than it was in the past.   Specifically my point is, currently, gardens provide the exact function that you claim you are looking to avoid, they forgive non-careful play by giving people access to food without having to carefully place their cities.   As it stands now, if you don't carefully place your city you can build gardens, thus your non-careful play has been forgiven.  Without gardens if you don't carefully place your cities, they won't grow at all.Gardens are their own punishment though- they just leave you with more options. I'll try to explain...


Say your strategy involves rushing to ramp up production of a certain resource. You find your desired resource on the map and start a town, even though there is no food production tiles nearby. The benefit is that your town will have access to the resource you want, but the drawback will be that you're forced to use gardens to feed the city, which take up many of your available tiles. I felt that added some nice strategic depth to the game.

Without a garden or the like, it sounds like the only viable option for early cities will be placing them near food sources. Every game will start out with the same mad scramble to find a food source- I think we should have more options.... Should I go for food and build up my population as quickly as possible? Or should I horde metals or magic, ect?


I don't know if the revisions will be better or worse.  I'm willing to wait and see.  All I'm saying is that if you're a fan of the game rewarding you for finding a good spot to place your city, it would seem you would be a favor of the proposed changes.Ditto on "wait and see". I expect our devs know what they're doing and the new changes will be for the better. I just thought I'd air my concerns regardless.

Not to mention that without Gardens maps with deserts and such will be non-exixtant due to everyone trying to build maps that are 'balanced.'  No desert empires or mountain empires etc.  Gardens should be in the game. There drawback as is mentioned in this thread would be less space for other buildings but that seems ok to me since without other nearby food sources you would have to concentrate on producing food. 

Now they could revamp the gardens in such a way that cities that are near food sources won't need them as much.  Also make food sources produce a little more food than gardens but not much more.

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #203 from Elemental Forums Top

Having resources more clustered might help too.  Clustering would make some spots much more desirable.  Almost like Civilization where a town will have 4 or 5 resources it might work rather than 1 or 2.

Reply #205 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nemesis7884, reply 204
2a seems not to be out yet?


That is correct

Reply #206 from Elemental Forums Top

X(

 

ps: your avatar is making me feel uncomfortable

Reply #207 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Bellack, reply 202

Not to mention that without Gardens maps with deserts and such will be non-exixtant due to everyone trying to build maps that are 'balanced.'  No desert empires or mountain empires etc.  Gardens should be in the game. There drawback as is mentioned in this thread would be less space for other buildings but that seems ok to me since without other nearby food sources you would have to concentrate on producing food. 

Now they could revamp the gardens in such a way that cities that are near food sources won't need them as much.  Also make food sources produce a little more food than gardens but not much more.
 

Do deserts exist within the game?  It seems like the very thing the Sovereign does is turn desert into grassland when he/she revives the land.  So I think that building desert cities will be unfeasible for more than one reason. 

Further, even if the game technically allowed you to build a city on a desert, just because the game doesn't feature gardens doesn't mean that the desert cities wouldn't exist.  You could still build a city there, it just would never become a big city unless you have access to a food resource somewhere in your empire, but you could still build a city there just to gain access to some resource.  The game in fact has an "Oasis" resource which is the very thing you would want to build your desert city around.

 

Reply #208 from Elemental Forums Top

I think this is where more graphical distinction needs to be drawn between deserts and wasteland.

Reply #209 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting lwarmonger, reply 208
I think this is where more graphical distinction needs to be drawn between deserts and wasteland.

 

They're pretty easy to tell apart already, imo. One has sand and cactii - the other has nothing but dry, cracked earth along with a few rocks and...a large number of Inns.

Reply #210 from Elemental Forums Top

I guess I haven't paid close enough attention, I'll fire up the game when I get home and look for these non-wasteland deserts.

EDIT: I clicked on the link to Frogboy's 2A city and I did notice the desert tile, and yes I do remember seeing these in the game.  I think I simply didn't remember them was because the fact that a tile is grassland or desert doesn't make much of a difference in city building at the moment.

Reply #211 from Elemental Forums Top

Incidentally, Gardens still exist. You just can't spam them anymore. See Brad's "my town in 2-A" thread.

So you could build a theoretical desert town, and you could rank it up some on it's own. But it will hit a wall where it can't grow past a certain point without external food supplies. Which really makes sense in a desert, doesn't it?

Reply #212 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nemesis7884, reply 206


 

ps: your avatar is making me feel uncomfortable


LOL! My bad dude....

Reply #213 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh Captain My Captain

*nervously tapping with my feet on the ground, while waiting in front of the pc for the magic too happen*

 

i still think the some of the buildings could be a bit more unique and distinct...moreover some more spacing between the buildings would help letting the city look like a real city (i am therefore not sure what i'd prefer, a city that looks less realistic/beautiful but shows all buildings in detail, or one that looks better but does not explicitly show every building)

i also would like to see stuff that supports the immersion of each of the fraction - like statues of heros, parks etc. for the kingdoms, for the empires, maybe skulls piereced on spears around the wall/city/gate or a execution place in the city etc...

Reply #214 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nemesis7884, reply 213
i also would like to see stuff that supports the immersion of each of the fraction - like statues of heros, parks etc. for the kingdoms, for the empires , maybe skulls piereced on spears around the wall/city/gate or a execution place in the city etc...

Yeah! :dur:

A gallow's pole with bodies hanging!! Yes, yes!!

Reply #215 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Xtropy, reply 158



Quoting Zoe_E,
reply 157

Not having food resources available is like being stuck on a continent completely covered in desert or ice in Civ4!


Exactly.  In a completely different game, Civ 4, you could be likewise handicapped if you were to start in the middle of the desert or on the middle of an ice sheet.  It doesn't happen (by default) because the pre-packaged map generators don't allow for something so grossly unfair to occur.  Much like in your example I hope that my starting location wouldn't be so grossly unfair compared to my opponents, where I'd have to spend dozens of turns hunting down a single food resource, where they just start right on top of one.

I just don't know what, by release, a typical map will look like, and how many food resources we can expect to find on average.  I'm sure this will take some tweaking and balancing by the developers.

Unfair...No it is more CHALLANGING. Something people these days don't like. When your city is in the middle of the desert or Ice Pack then it is more of a challange to survive and that is fun. I know that I'm in the minority of players that don't want an instant win handed to them on a platter like so many do these days.

Reply #216 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting OsirisDawn, reply 170



Quoting strager,
reply 150



Quoting Valiant_Turtle,
reply 146
Keep in mind that early cities are not a strong requirement for this game.  The other day I started a game with a inventor hero and a 4-pack of adventurers by me.  I recruited them all but didn't have enough $ left for a city (I'm not sure the game is getting the $ right on recruiting groups, I'm going to check next time I see one).  We wandered around getting loot and fighting monsters until we were all level 4, at which point I found an AI city and walked right in.  I did actually get enough money from goodie huts and quests to start a city, but it wasn't all that important.  The inventor kept me reasonably up to date in tech.  On small maps this particular rush strategy might be quite viable.


 

That should not be allowed to happen!



It is a very strong exploit the AI cant do nothing against. If you are somewhat lucky in recruiting some strong heroes, even 2 or 3 units in a city cant stop them.

AOW:SM AI did this with no problems. They were able to recrute heroes and units. So if that game can do it then I'm sure the AI in this game can be programmed to do it as well. In fact I hope it will.

An I would love for some units to have abilities like Domanate or Seduce to "Cway" units/heroes to your side. Loved this in AOW and the cool thing is that the AI did it to.

Reply #217 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tormy-, reply 177



Quoting Sanati,
reply 172



Quoting Tormy-,
reply 169
This is a strategy game, isn't it?
 


So is Ogre Battle and HoMM, you can't build any cities in those games. Not all strategy games have to be the same. Civilization and FfH are the games you play to build 50 cities, I was drawn to Elemental because they talked about how the game was based on building a much smaller number of cities.



 Source?

PS. The biggest maps is EWoM will be much bigger than the Civ4 maps. Even in the 32bit version. The 64bit maps will be gigantic compared to the Civ4 maps. Do you really think that having a couple of cities will be ok on maps like those? Having 50++ cities on the biggest maps looks absolutely ok to me.

 

 

The bigger the map and the potential for more cities the better as far as I'm concerened. I really hope that we don't get gimp with a city building limit that is small.

Reply #218 from Elemental Forums Top

i played 2a on a medium map and the most i built were like 6 cities and aquired another 2...but honestly i think more then 10 cities would just get boring and repetitive

Reply #219 from Elemental Forums Top

"On another topic, I'm still very worried about turns where one player has 4 big tactical combats and another player has no tactical combats. If waiting for 30 minutes happens too often, that's going to be a problem. I'm wondering if a timer could be implemented... like a chess clock. If time run out, either the grid stays locked in combat, or it is an auto-defeat."

 

Age of Wonders:SM had a time setting you could set for the lenght of tactical battls. You could also choose auto resolve with AI only, Auto-resolved all the time, or Always battle (I always chose this one because I hate auto resolve) 

So I'm sure they could do that for this game.