Elemental: Beta 3-A video

I actually really like equations in my spells. I thought that was very nice (:

Agree with everything you say - very interesting to listen to. For beta 3A, do you want us to list out where there are no sound effects or visual effects, or where clicking through menus is unintuitive?

Being able to access city commands from the tree in the corner would be absolutely fantastic.

All I can hope is that I came off as brad's 'yes' man...I felt like all I could do was agree

We'll have to do these more, mostly in post production when the weight of gold is off our chests  

I like seeing equations for spells (even if its only in the Hergamemnon).

But yea, I agree that having the equation on a giant pop-up in middle of screen is a bit of an immersion breaker.

rather, have the equation in the other descriptions, and have the pop-up be a more flavorful description. But yea, I want access to that equation through some route. hehe

I agree with picking up the pace a little, at least if you are not playing on Epic. It's feel like 300 turns go by before I have really done anything other than the bare basics.

equation need to be somewhere, ofc that popup is not the best place

maybe some short description with no numerbs and a button to click for an extensive detailed description with equation eventually

My first thought was how is he hitting with an arrow threw all the trees.
Arrows from distance is cool, I don't think its over powered if... its broken into 2 shots types.

1) Arch it over objects with less accuracy

2) direct LOS with more accuracy.

My 2 cents.

Nice music 

Looks better and better every version

Looks great - keep up the good work guys

i think arrows are overpowered as is.  i think that this can be solved by either decreasing damage or accuracy.  we should be able to let loose a volley of arrows, but it should be augmented by terrain.  if you are on high ground and firing into a valley then sure you should get big bonuses.  firing into a forest however should give you big range penalties.

you could give units with projectiles a certain number of them.  this would be based on equipment such as a quiver added to them.  ammo amount is like mana.  standard quiver gives 5 shots.  if you have a supply unit(wagon, beast, etc.) then they replenish standard 1 shot per turn.  better items and supply units do better.

otherwise units that require projectiles must return to a settlement to replenish.

@BoogieBac I'm always glad when Brad throws up a video where other people are with him.  Even when they're hard to hear, it's great to see other team members hopping in and sharing stuff with the community.  Once things are all a bit more stable around the office, it'd be a lot of fun for you guys to put some more videos together with one another.

I should point out that it is really difficult to pan around the map to find the place where you want to teleport. To get around that, I tried to click the empire tree to go to a city and then click where I wanted to teleport to, but it de-selected my unit when I tried that. There needs to be a minimap or a way to jump to where you want to go, or it is really difficult to get around.

I've been playing on a Phenom x4 with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit, 8 GB RAM, and a Radeon HD 3850 with 512 MB RAM. While it's not the most up-to-date system in the world, it's still a pretty decent system. However, Elemental is dirt slow on this system. Trying to zoom out and back in like you guys do in these videos ... forget it. It chugs and then jumps to being zoomed out or jumps to being zoomed in. Same thing for panning around or revealing the fog of war. If I turn off the advanced lighting, then it runs a bit smoother, but still is not entirely smooth. My system is only a couple of years old, and it's not exactly a low-end system. I hope you guys can improve the performance a bit. Seeing how smoothly your system handles zooming and panning, I think maybe you need to work on slower systems so you can spot the areas where you need to improve performance.

Good point.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Nice designer video. It really started to hit on a lot of the key aspects of the game, that do need to be updated. And some that I guess I just accepted as polish that'll happen in time (walking sounds), (terrain tearing).

And it brought a smile right to my face when Brad mentioned that the units cost to much. Because they really truly do. War of Magic, with half a dozen guys, isn't a war, it's a gang fight. And the amount of wealth gained, doesn't balance that out enough. It just takes forever to get forces put together.

And the cost of upkeep is too high currently vs the gold that is coming in. 

But all of that is gameplay adjustments that will feel right when it goes live. They just have to get them worked on and then it'll be what were all hoping for.

And Boogie, you weren't so much of a Yes Man, as someone who also was sharing some interesting insights yourself.

The whole video had a great feel. It was very much a video diary, and felt organic. Great job guys!

Just fantastic! It (like most games do towards release) doen´t seem stray away from the golden road, the rules of iron: being fun for the player. I have often been overjoyed by the creative minds and passion of game creators, only to be sickened at the end product. A  misshapen thing, altered along the road of greed. Let this product not  be thrown into the festering pits of gain.

Agree with this.

still a little confused of how combat is.

Basically i think if we are playing like from square to square on a map, i think Fantasy Wars/ Elven Legacy did it great.

Terrain details per square grant bonus to defense, and additional attack perks. IE hills grant +1 distance to archers attack, but forest protect from arrows and cavalry. But biggest difference between those game and this, is that the terrain was obvious. Hills were easy to spot and so are forests. Felt like a table top terrain game. I lliked it. As you guys mentioned in the video when hit by a arrow it is to make it obvious the guy has been hit, include a  "got hit" motion and damage number on top of head.

Not sure how strategic warfare will be.

And i agree with Gorstagg. 50 turns in a game and all  i got is 6 champions wondering around and maybe 5 units defending 3 bases. But then again maybe the battles arent final and neither is aggressive AI so, once strategy is included we can find a reason to use regular units.

I think a big difference between this game's unit production and other turn based games is simplified to:

Other Games (Civ, GalCiv2, etc.): You generate X resources per turn but you *DO NOT* stock pile them. In other words, if a Civilization City or Gal Civ city, they generate 10 production per turn. They can't store this to 100 production. They just make 10. So if a unit costs 100 production, it takes 10 turns.

Elemental: Units have costs and your resources are stock piled. I found this slightly odd from the beginning; instead of waiting turns to pay the resource cost for the unit, you pay it up front (as if you rushed production,in other games) but still wait X turns.

Now, I like Elemental's resource system. I like that I have 10 horses, but I think some minor adjustments can be made to refine it and the unit production system. Here are my suggestions:

Suggestion 1: Queue unit production and have it display how many turns it would take, calculated by A) How many turns it takes to get the required resource and How many turns it takes to train the unit. This way, for example, if we have the resources for one Amazonian and build 2, it says 5 turns for the first one and 14 turns for the second (Because it will take 9 turns to get the materials again).

Suggestion 2: Don't leave out the rush production option. This should definitely be a Civics or Warfare tech (Conscription? Something like that) and maybe it costs double, or triple the cost of the unit, I'm not sure. For many smaller civs, though, this can save them from a desperate situation.

Suggestion 3: I love the Unit Size and Experience build options. But, the least experienced units shouldn't take 5 turns to build. I feel like that's a little long for a single peasant with a club. What about even numbers? 2, 4, 6, 8 turns, stacking, for each level of Size and Experience (meaning your legion of veteran super soldiers would take 16 turns, but a party of peasants with no experienced would take 4)?

Nice vid, thanks for posting, oh and thanks for the glow lines on the splash page of 3A too!

After watching this video, I just realized something again [..just take a look at Brad's cities @ 8:00]: We can build cities way too close to each other -> the "minimum distance cap" should be raised by 2 tiles at least.

The recruitable NPC @ 5:00 is Raline the Weaver. Original post below:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/381751

Good to know that they're aware of certain issues, like the lack of sound FX

To be honest Tormy, living here in the Twin Cities.. I don't mind cities being so close to each other. 

Eh..well...if it will stay like this, you will be able to build lot of cities on a relatively small area. -> It looks weird + more micro. Just think about epic sized maps...to be honest I don't care about the micro part, but many will care..however it really looks weird that the cities are so close to each other, that is my problem.