Kingdom is definately 1250, it is the only one I play as. (I only found one thousand through captured cities)

I'm sure. Is your custom faction using kingdom city hubs by anychance?

Nada, Empire tech tree and buildings. I did the base faction through the Workshop's faction creator.

Ahh, that could have very well been the AI then. I thought I saw a mention somewhere of the AI getting wierd and not building up to level 5 cities. That might have been for the minor factions though, I can't remember. Maybe they up'd them both on the latest patch?

The xml for forth level Fallen Cities defines the level up amount as 1000. (found in CoreImprovements -> F_CityHubs.xml)

I must admit, this is the faith I have in Stardock (and frogboy)!  I bought the game several months early due to the excellent Galactic Civilizations games.  Although I do like it, I do agree there are things that could really be improved (as a quick example, it just seems like not enough happens in the world early in the game; In something like Civ. IV, you had better start quickly and be semi-developed before too long, but in this game I often wander around "looking for things to do.")

This is also a personal rant:

PLEASE LEAVE THE ARTWORK AS IT IS (or same-style with improvements).

I LOVE IT!!!

I have heard and read some things in reviews about "you, too, can have a cartoony dragon" which is not what is there.  This is the best art stlye I think I might have seen, except those immatating real life in a video game.  Someone at Stardock, who had been away at launch with the birthing of a baby, made a comment about cleaning up the artwork or something to that effect.

For me, that is one of the BIGGEST pluses to this game.

Anyway, back to the point!  I have strong faith that Stardock and frogboy (and company) will make this game be tremendously good eventually.  I like a lot of it now, but it could definitely be improved.  What gives me such faith is Stardock's AWESOME treatment of their "paying customers," and thier willingness to listen and go in directions suggested by fans.

I'm not that much of a frog-person, but :

LONG-LIVE THE FROGBOY (I have faith!!!)

Bad post.  It comes across as mean and vindictive (and I, personally, disagree with every comment said).  The circlejerk and Fan-Cult comments show the lack or respect towards frogboy, Stardock and the rest of us who read it.  Ideas are fine, but I just never understand why people attack.

Few ideas are actually "stupid". What happens a lot is that people post something but don't think it through or consider the consequences once it interacts with other parts of the game.
Then, when others point out the possible flaws that it would lead to, squabbling ensues.
People start defending themselves instead of just improving on the idea and taking away the reason why others "attack them".

It's not an Elemental thing or a forum thing, it's a people thing. It won't change.

Anomymous posts would indeed "fix" it by hiding and protecting your precious little idea from all the evil people out there who might try evaluate or improve it or simply express that they don't like it.
There has been at least one other (hilarious) proposal, to tie the worth of an idea to a numeric value like "turns played while connected online with the SD servers". An idea does not get better just because it took you 10 times as long to think of it.

If people can the stupid squabbling they could actually work on the ideas.
For instance I agree with the principle wish for "epic battles" but disagree with the prevalent notion of how this should be achieved. Should I just not post to such a thread because the "wrong people" are there and might disagree with me? So what?
It's okay to disagree. There is no divine right or wrong.

In the end (while modding is still disabled = ) it's not my decision which idea are good for the game. The best I can do is to present my vision of the game in a clear and concise way. When the ideas make sense that's a lot more useful than any number of bumps and "me too" posts.

I would like to have more diversity in how I can build up my kingdom/empire. I really like the separate tech branches and prefer them over trees like civilization where you end up to have all technologies anyway, but they are not going far enough in my opinion, it always ends up with more or less the same after 100-200 turns, since there are not enough possibilities that make a real difference. I would like more distinct specialization, probably with some xclusive choices, perhaps tied to your faction or the kind of souvereign you create.

Well, yes. In Elemental you have the choice of either researching (generic) military tech and having powerful units or not doing so and getting crushed by the AI which always does.

Those kind of choices aren't really choices.

Military tech alone should have deeeeep multiple paths to strengthen different branches of the military, such as a cavalry path to add all kinds of boni and abilities to cavalry alone.
The research tree must be so deep that it would become virtually impossible to fully research all branches of military tech.
Only then will there be choices.
Right now it's one click to fully research everything you ever need to know about cavalry.

Indeed, I found that. It's labeled as a Value. I think it abstracts or multiplies some of the values though. If you look a little further down that same XML and find the Level 5 Castle, it doesn't even give a max population value. Instead it's like this: (Note: I'm taking out all of it but the population part since the rest isn't relevant here)

<!--*****************************-->
 <!-- Settlement, Level 5: Castle -->
 <!--*****************************-->   <!-- Holds 20 population -->
  <GameModifier InternalName="Storage_Population">
   <ModType>ResourceStorage</ModType>
   <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
   <Value>500.0</Value>
   <Cumulative>true</Cumulative>
  </GameModifier>

Now, we know the population max for a castle isn't 500 people, and it doesn't list the total pop at all. Checking the XML for the other city levels I wrote down while I was playing, the level 3 matches at 500 pop with what I wrote down, as do the others. Still when I'm in game playing as my Fallen faction, just like the pic I posted shows, it tells me it needs 1,250. So, this is either a side effect of me making the faction with the faction creator, or they tweaked another XML somewhere and it's over-riding the value in the F_CityHubs.xml . There are a lot of instances where some files over-write others, which I've noticed in skinning. We have to give races with custom skins their own modeltype to make sure the DDS file doesn't over-write the value we assign to our custom skins.

You do have me curious though now why the XML shows one thing but it shows me another while playing. Very odd indeed.
  

As of sept 20 update:

Dynasty tree in many games , not all, get screwed up, and soverign is shown matched with a cradle circle.  Seems to happen more often when soverign has royalty trait.  One game, (wish i had saved it) had soverign married to one NPC, but in description, soverign was listed as "betrothed" to another npc.

suggestions:

Cloth map - set a toggle switch to temporally remove seeing units so user can see the details under the units.

caravans:  please attach a lable/desc to each caravan indicating its 'home' settlement (where it was produced).  Silly wizard of wrong directions sometimes gets caravans turned around, and they arrive home befoe establishing route..)

thank you

I agree.

This 500 value is the base population the hub stores. It is the number of people the city can have without any houses. The value we're talking about, is:

        <GameModifier InternalName="Storage_Population">
            <ModType>ResourceStorage</ModType>
            <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
            <Value>250.0</Value>
            <Cumulative>true</Cumulative>
        </GameModifier>
        <GameModifier InternalName="LevelFour_LevelCap">
            <ModType>LevelBarrier</ModType>
            <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
            <Value>1000.0</Value>
            <CityUpgrade>F_Castle</CityUpgrade>
            <Cumulative>false</Cumulative>
        </GameModifier>

Notice the difference? ResourceStorage = base population (250), LevelBarrier = value needed for next level (1000).

If you were to add the following to level 5 definition:

        <GameModifier InternalName="LevelFive_LevelCap">
            <ModType>LevelBarrier</ModType>
            <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
            <Value>2500.0</Value>
            <CityUpgrade>GrandCastle</CityUpgrade>
            <Cumulative>false</Cumulative>
        </GameModifier>

Then, along with a new Level 6 tier definition of GrandCastle, you can upgrade to a level 6 hub once you get 2500 people in your city (implemented and checked to be working).

Apologies for going off topic.

Another thing that just occured to me which would of a huge benefit to the AI would be to add some amount of fog-of-war to all these stacks that are moving around on the map. Why are we able to see everything like god looking down from up high? A game that I like a lot, ASL, has the concept of "concealment". Stacks are topped off with a ? (question mark or "concealment" counter) and the opposing player would know nothing about the concealed stack other than its location and how many units were in the stack.

Something like this could be implemented in this game. Nobody should be able to know anything about any stack except its size (how many stacked counters, which would range from 1 to 12 in this game), and its location as shown by the stacks grid location. Any stack that attacks or is attacked loses its concealment for the remainder of the current turn only & all stacks (other than the player's) automatically regain concealment at the end of each turn. This also means players could be attacking a level 5 wandering monster or a level 1, not knowing for sure, which I think is really kool.

As things are now, the amount of info gotten from just mousing over an enemy stack or simply moving up to it & checking out its strength factor is simply unreasonable, in my opinion, and just serves to weaken the AI. The only info players should get is simply # of units, nothing else. If you want info from a stack you have to attack it first with a sacrificial unit like a scout or champion & then run away.

I would even go one step further, there probably should be some kind of defensive bonus given to defenders. The game-as-is pretty much just assumes the defender is taken by 100% complete surprise in every battle, every time, but that's typically not the case. There should be some mechanism that determines if the defender is "surprised" (if so, combat as usual), if not the defender should start its pieces "dug in" in high defense locations. I would go so far as to give defenders in appropriate terrain some kind of additional "tactical concealment" advantage as this would be normal for defenders that were not "surprised" and were prepared for an attack. This "tactical concealment" would be lost when the defending unit moves, attacks, or is successfully attacked. Benefits of "tactical concealment" would be something like halved-attack for whoever attacks the concealed unit.

"Surprise" could be determined based upon some appropriate leader trait of the two leaders involved & a random die roll, probably some other factors would be appropriate as modifiers such as -1 if open (defenders would see you coming from a mile away), -2 hills, defenders on hills would see you from even further away, maybe +1 for terrain that could allow you to "sneak up" on your opponent such as woods, marsh, etc....

This is slightly related to the current conversation, but is it just me or is the territorial and city bonuses to defense way, way, way to powerful?  I recently attacked a city with a stack with a combat rating of around 300.  There was a single defender with a rating around 80.  The enemy was panicked the entire time, yet my units would constantly miss and score only 1 to 2 damage.  It took me about 6 rounds to kill him.

Also, I think the summons in the game are way overpowered.  I can pretty much mop the floor with the AI with a single stone giant throughout the entire game.

This "full disclosure agreement" also affects the empire report.  I mean it's okay to see these stats for your empire but to see complete and 100% accurate info on empires you haven't even met, yet?

Also other areas, like which buffs or abilities an enemy unit has.  This should not simply be visible at any range...

First lets sum up what sets apart MOM (and in parts other fantasy tbs) from many bland other games (lots of stuff missing, I know...):

Threats from hostile environement
(this is true for many good tbs out there and quite a bit lacking in Elemental. Should be expended upon imo).

That is also a feature wich is able to tackle the problematic ease of fast expansion currently seen as a problem in Elemental and has additional merits besides mitigating city spam a bit. Things that also improve content/gameplay not just being a technical fix (Imo Monsters and especially bandits should be far more agressive at attacking unprotected Improvements / cities ect. That whould teach puny human players to leave their cities mostly unprotected without real fear of reprisal. ;)).
One way to do that in Elemental whould be to have higher level creatures spawn on higher world difficulties not just bigger numbers. Just to give one example.
A riddiculous world really should feel riddiculous not like an interesting and bumpy walk in the park. (AI difficulty is a different matter. One I am not worried about long-term.)

Really Callenging Monster hoards/Locations of interest that makes your eyes pop out in sheer power also falls into that category. (Not all should be determined by the player + AI actions / Tech. Some variation whould lend more character to a given World.)


Different and interesting meaningful choices all across the board. Balanced not by being nerfed or perfectly balanced compared to each other. Instead working regardless of imperfect balance in many combinations (if not all...) because the whole of the unbalanced options gives a (more or less) balanced whole. This one is really rock hard to acheive especially on Intent I grant you so much (and is actually a big merit of FFHs Design).
This is a real big one imo being able to customize in a real fashion in most aspects and still most choices being able to compete in at least a considerable way.

Examples in this field:

Wizard customization (huge forte in MOM. Elemental could one day eclipse it in this field. Provided there is enough courage to truly think big in what different choices should be possible from the start. Not easy to do with a balanced result. I give you so much.)

Schools of magic (imo in this one Mom is very good, all Schools you have to pick have meaningful choices and feel very different, FFH2 perhaps not so much in this,.a few overpowered tactics like 11 death books + elfs or about half the spells being either clutter or equal copies of one and the same notwithstanding.
Given time Elemental should easily be able to eclipse any predecessors here !provided! the base system is solid enough. Given its modability and the vibrant + constructive community + interested developers having a real heart for their “baby” and their sights on the long run.)

Races (Given, this is not Moms biggest forte in terms of balance in spite of the differences. Gamplay notwithstanding. FFH 2 is better in that field by quite a margin in spite of even a bigger diversity. Or perhaps because of it?)

Item design  (Well, hard to beat MOM here and not necessary to that degree) and interesting magic items to be found.

The truly marvelous thing is that those things also work in combination with each other and even in parts mitigate weak points like Mom’s noticable imbalance in races.
The whole is what counts. (Imo FFH2 is quite a bit better here overall even if the variables are a bit less numerous in vanilla.)


Good system of random events (I find Elemental’s Quest system has easy potential to eclipse its predecessors in a big way. Better than plain random events is Events that give you options to interact + at least influence the outcome if not change everything. Not necessarily just bound to locations. The thought of random Event-System using Elementals Quest systems if what Stardock officials say is remotely true is nothing short of mouth watering.)



Broadness of content / minigames / interesting things to do (Only time and adding of content both from modders and Stardock will fix that. I’m not worried about that.)






My thoughts on what concepts in Elemental could be expended upon (with probable phases those Changes could be implemented from my outsider point of view.) in spite of following quite a different path in terms of diversity than MoM or FFH2 (not necessarily a bad thing...):



Big things:

Lack of meaningful choices / mass of content / true possibilities of customization.


Examples:

Diversity in Factions.
In spite of the faction system in Elemental being seemingly bland (Empire/Kingdom divide nonwithstanding), there are allready impressive seeds of what could be done with existing traits right now. if the get rebalanced and redesigned a bit:

The most solid existing example being master archers trait. If more traits whould be like it, there whould be vast racial diversity in terms of real gameplay without adding any new features / changing lore or flair of the factions, just by rebalancing what is there.
That whould first take a full reexamination of what traits should be and how much they cost in the faction moding tool. So playing existing factions gets some merit and custom ones are not anymore heads above what existing factions offer. (There is nothing to say against pricing traits in a way there is one major and one minor trait possible for a faction without taking disadvantages and making the major ones really count which actually seems to have been the guideline for the existing factions). Allowing to much being taken at once with custom factions / default point buy sadly lowers diversity not hightens it. Finding the sweep spot is the true art.

Examples what could be done with free techs for certain traits (tier 2 for minor traits and tier 3 for major ones sounds sensible to me. Dead end techs / techs without game-changing followups are a bit preferable for those starting techs obviously...):

Factions starting with techs from magic tree having slight preference for Shards and a small edge in casting / aquiring arcane knowledge / the magic side of the game.

Factions (for example) starting with the tech allowing squads having a military edge right from the start without offering a riddiculous advantage not mitigatable by anyone else around given the time it will take to sensibly leverage the advantage..

Factions starting with certain diplomatic techs could exploit their neigbors and turn them into a resource from the start instead of making rush and quash your first neigbor (+ others soon after ;)) a default choice. (read: treaties tech and the likes)

Factions starting with civilization techs would have a builder advantage right from the start where those might matter (ones allowing prestige generating bildings for ex.).

Factions starting with adventuring techs (notable locations or quests, so you can find interesting stuff right from the start beyond the standart stuff if it suits your fancy without explicity investing.). How this changes gameplay doesn’t need exlanation.

Since this is allready partially implemented in game I consider that change an easy to do one with a huge impact on gameplay and thus very much desirable.

Other faction diversity possibilities: Offering specialists for a lower number of pop under the new population usage system. Extra area of influence like one of the traits is allready doing/supposed to do, cheaper improvement of recource nodes, slightly cheaper tech cost progression, lower training time for soldiers and I’m sure others could come up with plenty of other things, Mana income from population (touchy one, hard to do in a balanced fashion.) ect.

Easy to guess I consider the tech stuff possible in Phase a. The rest sounds like a to b.



Quest diversity and more vibrant environment: That end fight of the quest and the runup indeed is nice as is the spider fight for the armor. More of that please. And earlier.
Especially the spider fight shows you have that in mind. Good exiting stuff but far to rare though. More courage to throw that stuff at us unsuspecting players. Provided the pool of quests is big enough they will seem quite unique and players won’t be able to memorize all of those.
 
Time to inject the world with some life of its own...(I don’t consider fight x bandits / darklings / wolves worthy of a quest fight beyond tier 1 quests really... Even there the occasional stronger stuff is ok. I assure you.) Shrills, Drakes, Trolls, Dragons, gigantic Spiders, powerful undead and elementals. That is the stuff an interesting world is made of (and you even cut those wandering stacks of mobs for whatever reason. I hope its not the economic thing. Because there are other fixes to that than removing the stacks. That fix made the game even more bland. No more lonely singletons everywhere. Monsters also need company... Oh and stacks of monsters in an army of monsters...)

Make that a or b at the latest please... (this last bit is critical for how fun the game is and the only point where one of the patches actually reduced the fun with the removal of monster armies in my experience with the game so far...)



Dynasty System: Now that is something which could set Elemental truly apart from most of its predecessors. No need to double up on the efforts since this has already been discussed broadly with many good Ideas so not much from my part here.
Its clearly not for phase A though imo since Stardock should get this one right and not just as a footnote as it is now. Not a good idea to do this with so many other things lacking though.
This could be the base for a whole expansion of its own if done right (with a litte icing on top in other fields of course) and give the game a whole new feel.
Its not easy to do such a thing in a remarkable way so I consider this appropriate for phase c.
After the rest is done right a good base can be expanded upon with things like this so no need to hurry here.
For the short term I trust the modders to apply some of the suggestions which abound in the forums. So you could borrow ideas there and implement the parts found better by active testing in your vanilla version of that.


Smaller things:

Examples

More Diversity in Sovereign generation

The new concepts for 1.1. offer some intriguing possibilities here and one just needs to “get inspired” by other concepts borrowed from elsewhere (read MoM and other staple games in the genre):
Alchemy-like perk allowing transfer of one resource to global mana (gildar looks interesting) or if a general conversion system is implemented cheaper conversion.,
Worlord-like perk adding extra level of experience to standard troops.
More Kids / greather impact of dynasty ect. (better base system could help here...)
Spell/Node specialisation allowing stronger spells from certain schools or more yield from shards/ certain elements.
Nice Starting pool of mana of course for those spellflinging sovereigns out there (or higher Pool growth.).
Cheaper troop equip in general (needs to be of low magnitude)
Cheaper non-faction troops (darklings / spiderlings ect...)
Diplo capital +1 per turn is a must imo to enable fraternaly minded sovereigns..
Cheaper building cost/lower building time
Meaningful equipment not! available in a shop right from the start (like some magic trinkets ect with not to much of an impact but interesting still...)
Starting with certain spells from the books you have picked without paying time to research (just whould need some base ones)
Just to give some examples.

This should also be possible in Phase a poossibly b.





Real meaningful equipment diversity: This has been critisized by many around here. I will take cephalo’s example of shortbow / longbow to elaborate where / how it might be possible to give things a spin without all to much of a change of the fundamental system:

Instead of making longbows just more powerful versions twice as expensive as shortbows and equal in all other respects make them different enough to allow for different uses / merit in different situations:

vastly shorter training time and considerably cheaper cost for shortbows and give them slightly shorter range so you can decide if you need ranged defenders of lower quality / range in a hurry and mass or quality and firepower at long range which takes time and resources (the new specialist system should make this a real tradeoff and not Shortbows the new default.) also please add one or 2 extra options (like one lower one like slings and one hight-tech one like crossbows with their own perks...) so there is some progression.

Doable in the existing framework and again with a profound effect on gameplay.

This is true for most equipment (is there a possibility for negative training time modifier for certain equipment? That whould allow for cheap and fast club-bearing troops for times you need defenders in a pinch.). Short-Range throwable stuff possible to carry in lieu of melee weapons with less firepower and limited ammo, Ranged 2 melee weapons ect (possibly even still allowing some form of retaliation). I’m sure some bright folk will come with other concepts + it will be easier to judge what is possible when 1.1 materializes so that maybe is for a short fix/ patch soon after 1.1..

So this one should be covered in a base way in A and should probably be expanded upon for Phase b with more radical ones for c.


More unit abilities (you seem to allready have that on the radar J). This is for phase b to c i reckon. Flying, Invisitility, Waterbourne and the likes are staples for fantasy tbs for good reasons. I’m sure one day they will make it in. Some things are allready in like webbing spiders. Needs to be the rule not the exception in the long run. Less radical things should be doable in phase b.


Spell diversity (you seem to have that covered soon with looking to Mom as example so no need to waste words J) Phase A to b


Edt: Nearly forgot to mention, important enough to warrant an additional paragraph: More interesting loot to find in the Quest locations (tied to more hostile environment and more interesting Quests from big things).

For example: Mystic ranged weapons, Interesting sets of armor, named blades ect. 1 Shield and 1 Armor seems a bit short in Number. I'm sure if you make a thread for ideas you'll get plenty of feedback you can implement with minor modifications. No need to do that all by yourselves or waste your time with such a vibrant community present (and you can be sure many people would delight in the prospect of their idea making it into the game...). Finding random standard Swords in Tier 2 or even 3 notables is rather disappointing (let alone patchwork / cloth armor. :().
Yea that should make it into A... For obvious reasons.
Most Characters in interesting stories go adventuring to find interesting magical items (P&P RP comes to mind) not uncle bobs old worn pice of stinking cloth or the rusted sword of a retired soldier next door. That is sort of anticlimactic... (Finding a nice two-handed blade is quite a good thing in terms of power, giving that sword a story and something else special makes it even nicer though.)


Just a short overview of what I think could be improved without all to much of a hassle.... There is enough base things you already got on your plate till 1.1 so I’ll keep it at that.