I hope the entire SD crew take a good few days off to play Civ 5. I know we're not supposed to compare, but they're both 4x games so comparison is always gonna happen. Maybe dettaching themselves from EWOM for a few days will give them fresh inspiration for the future and after playing Civ 5 they may come back with the attitude of "let's blow this game out of the water and turn EWOM into something amazing!" 

Btw, I don't have EWOM anymore...got a refund....Firaxis is getting my money this week....still following EWOM though and looking forward to the day when it becomes the "must-have-classic" that so many believe it will.

Not a lot of purpose really, I just seriously felt a little sorry for Stardock and hope they learn from this.

What purpose do most threads have on a board? Most of them little purpose, just people sharing their thoughts.

Plus like the other poster, just to annoy you :p

Been playing Civ5 all morning so far and really enjoying it...

BUT... Elemental is still a wicked game.

For me these two games are about even... some might laugh at me for sayign this, but its my personal opinion.

CIV5 = better graphics, better music, optimized alot better and is very addicting

Elemental = More ambitious, much mroe custimization, better mod tools and is very addicting

Civ5 you can learn quicker, it is more user friendly as far as the UI goes, holds your hand so to speak.

Elemental to me does somethings better, but somethings worse.

Overall? I love both games and will be playing them for years to come Im sure.

Civ5 wont stop me from playign Elemental though, love em both!

If Elemental was released as 1.08 instead of how it was on release day I think reviews would be alot better for Elemental. Civ5 was definatly released in a much better state then Elemental but ya know what? I think both Civ5 and Elemental can learn a few thigns from each other, both do some htings better then the other.

Anyways, just my two cents

This is getting ridiculous !

If you think you´ll like Civ 5 more than Elemental in its current state then buy it.

But please spare me from this "I am sorry Stardock!" nonsense. If you think you need to apologize because you did not buy a certain Stardock game you should explain in the first place why you are thinking you are obliged to buy this game.

Regarding Civ 5. I would never buy a Civ game before having read the reviews and checked the game play. Civ I and Civ II were great. Civ III I bought on the first day. And was dissapointed. Big empires got penalties (In I and II you could counter this completely with Democracy). And Conquering Cities was a chore.

Civ IV I bought from the bargain bin and it was even worse. You even could not raze cities that did not fit in your scheme. I spend only 25€ and all expansions were included. So the money was not wasted. The "Fall from heaven II" mod was real fun.

Even in its current state Elememtal is more fun to me than Civ III and Civ IV (FfH II included) combined.

Ridiculous? read your post. You can check Civ 5 out before buying it. Unlike a certain game here.

<My posting>

This is getting ridiculous !

If you think you´ll like Civ 5 more than Elemental in its current state then buy it.

But please spare me from this "I am sorry Stardock!" nonsense. If you think you need to apologize because you did not buy a certain Stardock game you should explain in the first place why you are thinking you are obliged to buy this game.

Regarding Civ 5. I would never buy a Civ game before having read the reviews and checked the game play. Civ I and Civ II were great. Civ III I bought on the first day. And was dissapointed. Big empires got penalties (In I and II you could counter this completely with Democracy). And Conquering Cities was a chore.

Civ IV I bought from the bargain bin and it was even worse. You even could not raze cities that did not fit in your scheme. I spend only 25€ and all expansions were included. So the money was not wasted. The "Fall from heaven II" mod was real fun.

Even in its current state Elememtal is more fun to me than Civ III and Civ IV (FfH II included) combined.

<My posting/>

 

Ridiculous? read your post. You can check Civ 5 out before buying it. Unlike a certain game here.[/quote]

Please read the OP´s posting. He pre-ordered Civ 5.

PS: @Stardock: You might want to improve your forum software. It seems to me quoting quotes does not work correctly.

In one of the game setup options is the ability to raze cities or not.  Apparently you didnt spend much time with Civ IV.

I was not able to find it. Actually I had to use a Python script a nice guy wrote to add this feature. But I am sure you are able to tell me how to activate this feature in the game options, aren´t you ?

Well it may have been added in one of the expansions, but believe me, it's there.  So your inability to find it really does not speak well to the time you spent looking for it.

Anyway different strokes for different folks I guess.  I cannot imagine for the life of me how anyone thinks that Elemental 1.08 (or earlier) is remotely as good as any of the Civs, but that's just me looking at feature complete balanced games, vs. crap that clearly failed QA and had no beta for balance or mechanics.

It's not as good as Civ 1 and 2, but it's a far better game than Civ 3 and 4 that's for sure.  Civ 5, looks just as crappy as the last one, I'm glad I didn't buy it.

Well if you think its crap why are you still here?

I have been playing Elemental non-stop since the day it came out.  I think about it all day and dream about it at night, I still get out the manual and read it and look at the amazing box art every chance I get.  I have not had this much fun with a TBS since HoMM 3.  I played Civ 4 for about 3 hours and never touched it again, it just put me to sleep with the incredibly boring game-play (Leonard Nimoy didn't help).

Believe me, I'm not a Stardock fan.  I hated GC2, and I generally am not a big fan of the staff.  But, I think they nailed it on the head with Elemental.  It's now one of my favorite games of all time.  

I simply do not understand people that would prefer "Clone-ilization" over Elemental, isn't 20 years of the same BS enough?  I guess that says something about society, people love mediocrity and their sequels over and over and over and over again.  So go ahead, enjoy the Micky Dees of gaming.

I've played the entire Civilization series pre-Civ5, and yes they are good games. I'll probably end up getting the new one at some point. But, there is one thing that I like about EWoM over Civ5. What is it? It's that new fresh feeling of playing something different than what's been out there already in the past decade. It's fun doing something new.

I grabbed a collection of Civ 5 from the bargain bin. Both expansions "warlords" and "beyond the sword" included. And the feature simply was not there. I doubt they added addiitional features afterwords.

But if you like the Civ IV so much I am sure you have it still on your hard disk. Just start it up and tell me where the option is.

Actually I don´t care what you imagine. I simply like like elemental more than Civ III and IV combined.

If Civ 5 is a feature complete balanced game we will see when it is out.

And yes you are right Elemental is far from perfect. But it is rapidly getting better and better, has great modding support and is currently the only game in this genre available. So it has my full support. Civ 5 still has to prove its potential.

Correction:

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I was wrong. Razing after conquering the city is possible. Abandoning a city you already own is not. Abandoning was the feature I missed so much.

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I never quite understand the comment that a person is buying one game over the other.  If you like strategy games you can own more than one at a time.

Here you go JimKnopf:

City razing is in fact automatically "on".  You have to manually select the option to turn it off. 

But no, you cant abandon existing cities, which is rather annoying and lame.

To give you something to complain about, obviously.

I dunno...  a well polished though very well worn path vs. an incredibly bumpy and broken one?

Yes, the Civ formula is long in the tooth, but that doesn't somehow validate the broken heap that is Elemental.

I actually returned elemental and bought civ 5, atleast with civ 5 I feel like there more then just one faction and the cities look different. and untis are more diverse, better diplomacy etc. and in a years time there will be a fantasy mod for it.

I so wanted to like elemental who knows maybe in a year it might be worth getting.

You know, it doesn't have to be one or the other... you can actually play BOTH!  The installations are NOT mutually exclusive. 

I'm playing Civ 5 for now only because Brad's release schedule promises a better Elemental in a couple months.  Fine - then I'll wait a couple months and come back.

So your saying that he should pay money for a game that is currently sub-par in hopes that SD gets it up to greatness?  You don't 'reward' someone for doing mediocre work ...Do you? Look most of us think that SD will eventually get the game up to par but that does not mean they will succeed. So if you have yet to buy the game then my advice would be to wait until at least 1.1 comes out.  Or if you want to support the company then buy a game that is outstanding (and so far thier best made game) Galatic Civ 2.

Not only do they need to play CIV5 but also take some time to play AOW1, AOW:SM, MOM, HOMM, and DOM3.

By the way I do love the hole HEX map thing that CIV5 does. It is about time as far as I'm concerened.