I like that Elemental can be won from multiple angles. The tech-trees in Elemental are probably the most distinct of any 4X, allowing each to work in very different manners from each-other. At the moment though, diplomacy doesn't really work (largely because getting the ai to declare war on each-other is worthless since the ai won't attack.) and the adventure tree is too strong. Simple balance and ai issues will improve that facet vastly.

In the same manner sovereign customization was well done, and each sovereign plays differently. Once more, at the moment some sovereign builds are godlike while others don't even work.

The visual customization of the sovereign was ingenious and really adds to the ability to connect with your sovereign.

In the same vein, the ability to customize your troops is just awesome. It would be nice if you could make more decisions effecting the mechanics of your troops. Of course, it's also important to get the ai to a level where it can put up a decent fight in tactical against a human, so...

Champions are cool. They always are. They need to be more customizable and more capable of fighting it out with normal troops, especially if you invest heavily in them. Not exactly a balance issue, but more of an issue that there aren't many viable ways to use champions despite all the options your given to customize their mechanical nature.

The sprawling cities are cool. Finding ways to put whatever resources your handed to good use in your plans is fun. Would be better if some resources weren't just plain worse than others (more balance issues.)

Hmm, I'm sure I could think up more things, but the game is in a state wherein you can easily customize the nature and appearance of your empire, and there are a lot of cool things to do. Note- doing cool stuff is fun. In this way, the game is well designed, in that it has a lot of fun stuff to do. The barrier holding it back, is thus, that it lacks end game depth, mostly due to balance issues, but also due to a lack of mechanical choices.

I will list the things that I like which are somewhat unique to Elemental. Which means what are the good elements that makes elemental, on my point of view, stand out from the crowd. I will not list what I don't like (already done and too big).

- 2 different production track for unit and buildings

- Wilderness get stronger as civilization expand (It might still not yet be at it's full potential)

- Fixed production time for Unit and building production.

- Unit design is an interesting idea, reminds me of D&D, but the current implementation makes unit design boring.

- Mountains not crossable by land units makes the map more strategic and interesting.

- The 2D graphics are interesting (but they lack of vivid color)

- The cloth map is a very interesting. I would like a full colored cloth map. It also easier to play and recognize terrain on the cloth map than the real world.

- The modding system seems well designed, but there is still a lot of work to do before it becomes easy to mod. (By modding, I mean creating new games, not simply adding maps and stuff. I call that game editing)

Everything else, either it's not new (found in other games like MOM and CIV), either I don't like it or either I hate it.

the 2nd is a bit like elemental insofar as it's basically the same engine as genghis khan 4.. but it's fantasy based and there are dungeon explorations, etc.. again, can't remember details. don't think they came out in english though.

http://www.gamecity.ne.jp/products/products/ee/Rlroyal2.htm

Is there an english version of royal blood 2 (Aka Gem Fire). I always wanted to play but could never do it because of the language.

Biggest boons for me, I think, are the fast turn processing (which I guess will get even faster).  Not sure how useful it would be to list that, as I don't imagine that's in danger of getting ditche! lol.

Another is the unit customization.  I wish there were a bit more to it, though, instead of simply newer tech = better.  Maybe weapons, armor, equipment, etc. should have a weight that affects combat speed.

I really like what people have been writing.

Things i can think off -

I like the faction editor a lot - I think it needs more loving though, many more options for faction bonuses and penalties, and a preview would be nice when choosing your faction colours. I have made odd colour choices and had to restart my game after some really nice starts because the colours i picked were hideous (make stone bright green or something and have a look lol)

I would like to see neutral factions have more of a presence in the wilderness. They could be some kind of trading oasis. Make it impossible for anyone to take over some of these neutral cities - they can sell items and mercenaries for anyone who can afford it.

The neutral wilderness needs some loving. A "neutral zone" diplomatic option could force it so there is always some wilderness. The ai needs to take more advantage of the adventuring techs

If there is not going to be an equivalent to the spell of return than the ai should stop attacking with its sovereigns. Ai sovereign strategy needs some loving.

I would like to see information unlocked by the pub/inn branch of the civ tech combined with the diplomacy negotiations tech that gives you a better understanding of the faction standings than you get from the graphs. You should get some warning flags when certain benchmarks are passed on the way to the various victory methods - weaker factions should have the opportunity to gang up against stronger factions to prevent them from winning the game.

I kind of did like the awesomeness of Salrog (The Dragon). Sure his stats weren't that great, but his spell was amazing.

while he may have been the only way to kill the early-drake Snathi ... at least wielding that level of power (even if a new rendition isn't until late-late game) was really fun.

Also, I kind of liked that you could (in some way) determine where your new citizens were "born."

WARNING: MY POSTS ARE LONG. SKIP READING IF YOU HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN OF A 3rd GRADER!!!

What are the positives??? Very difficult question. Not because there aren't any, but because it depends on how YOU play. For instance, a positive on easy level may not be a positive on hard level. I will answer based on things I love, but think have some (or lots) of room for improvement.

1- Dynasties--. Could have been awesome. The fact that my merchant sovereign may knock up (or get knocked up, depending) a hero that has tech knowledge, or assassin etc.. Then their kids would have one (or two... I wish) traits of the parent, and this matrix would spill down to their offspring etc.   This concept sounded lame to me while the game was in devenlopment but I see tons of potential in the actual implementation of it, now that the game is released.

I think it could be improved by LOWERING the amount of available heroes, and making it to where the children mature faster. On Ridiculous, 8 opponents, I can finish the whole game (well as far as the memory leaks let me take it) and never have one grandchild. It is also too formalized... isn't histroy riddled with kings who killed their wife (wives) because they kept pumping out daughters (the nerve of them. LOL). In Elemental it seems I ALWAYS have 4 kids, either 2/2 boy/girl, or 3/1 boy/girl, girl/boy. In other words, I know I will always have one daughter to marry off, maybe 2-3. I will always have 1 son to marry and thus steal some other sovereigns daughter... maybe 2-3. It would be cool if I could have 4 sons, or 4 daughters, only because of the way the game "takes" dsughters away. I also don't like how a daughter always has mom's talent, and a son always has dad's. So basically, IMO, if you sped up the birth rate/ maturity rate, and mixed up the predictability of my offspring and their talents I think it would go along way.

2- The summons-- I see the devs keep writing posts about "fixing" the magic system, or balancing it, etc.. I don't see the problem. I have no problem with the gloabl mana pool, (until I see how it is implemented) but I don't see, me taking my sovereign, and imbuing 10 heroes as "game breaking" all that means, is my sovereign is now not the "torin" juggernaut that he could be. Where do summons come in to this rant?? Well, in MoM, you could smoke the world in two easy ways (well more than 2, but 2 of the most popular were...) First, you could summon torin, jack him up with enchantments, and/or items, then run around roflstomping everyone. (this is similar to buying massive gear for sovereign but is not nearly as effective... You can still lose a 30 hp Soveriegn in one shot, by many types of units). Second, you could make a massive army of uber summoned units. Great Wyrms, Sky Drakes, demon lords etc... You could then send them around the world ROFLSTOMPING everything. Wee fun.  Well, Elemental changes it up by making it harder to make your sovereign unbeatable, and it does a great job of implementing limited summons. i.e only one fire giant can be summoned per imbued hero or sovereign, etc... So it is much harder for me to make 4 armies, each having 3 fire giants, 3 angels, 3 sky drakes. etc... The thing that needs to be improved is the utility of EACH SUMMONS. Is it just me or does everyone sell that 80gold sand golemn trinket you find early game? Who uses a summoned monster besides Fire Giant? I may not be playing correctly, but I see little to no use for any of the other summons. Some of their skills are broke, and almost all are useless. I would jack up some of their powers to make it more likely to summon them, but for me, I NEVER use any summons ever. It is too easy to smoke the game with heroes, then with summons.

3--Land usage.-- This is a tricky one, I like it, (kinda) and hate it too. First of all, I must be different than everyone on these boards, but I find the current way of building a city the most boring, un-fun, restrictive bunch of crap that totally takes me "out of my immersion" as game developers like to call it. Lemme see, I start a town, I gotta be close enough to such n such resource so my town EVENTUALLY gets it, but no so far away that it is in my zone but "unlinkable". I then gotta try and build buildings, (mostly houses, weeee fun) while getting to the good stuff, oh yeah, I will most likely have about 12% of the room that I need. Not for lack of "space" but because some swamp, forest, hill, or mountain is taking up 80% of the usable world. I love when an Iron, or crystal resource is in an area, where I can only build a city with 1-2 squares of usable area, because it is surrounded by trees. How about them hills, Nothing like spending dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of turns terraforming them, eh????.  Well, the parts I do like about the land, is that when you do get it terraformed/settled, it actually looks like you could live there. Or your game units at least. It looks better than the rest of the world, and now I see what my goal is. Kill next town, terraform it to my preference, rinse repeat. I do wish the "spreading" out of the cities would be done different, and there realy needs to be away to terraforme trees, swamps etc. I have seen numerous saved games people uploaded showing how there are resources in the world that are unattainable, or can only be claimed by a town with 10 people max in it. Due to world restrictions. The AI of course, does not have these restrictions, and you can always take over their towns instead of building your own, which is what I recommend, but if that is what the devs wanted, then why even put in a "city building" element.

4--Leveling of my heroes/sovereigns. -- I really think it is wishful thinking, and false advertising to call that a "role playing element" of this game, but it is still kinda cool. I can think of strategy games from YEARS ago that had strategy and much better role playing (Birthright for example)... so I would not call this role playing, I wouldnt call it that in Warcraft 3 either. But, I do like that as my heroes and soevereigns fight (and they must to advance), the get more powerful. I could have 50 heroes all level 1-2 and none with more than 4 essence, if I didn't fight, but if I wanna roflstomp on ridiculous, I gotta risk them so they get more powerful. Now, what to do with that power? More essence (almost always the correct choice), more strength (attack is far more valuable than defense in this game, so also a good choice), more intelligence for more powerful spells (rarely the right choice), or constitution in case I make a mistake and some sucker actually can hit me. Those syons or whatever they are called, that one shot you for 3x their damage using a spell/ability are nice little hero killers, and it is best to have about 20 hp if you think you might ever get hit.... Anyway. I like this part of the game, but I wish it was fleshed out better, and for god's sake, bring back organized. Why is it even out of the game? The game is so so so slow as it is, now I need to move at a max speed of 3??? Yay. Sure organized is OP in the first 50-75 turns of the game, but after that, I teleport so much it isn't a game breaker. I hate having to marry that grizzly adams dude to get some Organized traits in my younguns.

5--Dragons, Demons-- I think these are awesome, most end units are though, right? But why doesn't the AI use them? Or maybe I should ask, DOES the AI use them? I never seen it. The AI can easily have a few hundred grand sitting in the bank by turn 100, 150 for sure. It has massive time requirement boost too, so it takes short time to pump out units at hardest level. If the AI were pumping out dragons and demons to stop me as opposed to another 75 units of dude in a 9 man formation, armed with boar spears I think the game would move from worst AI ever all the way up to very bad AI. a dragon can kill a hero, one shot. so if you have 3 dragons I have to take out ALL three before they get to attack. With our lovely boar spear dudes, I can make a sammich while my army decimates them. Please program the ai to use these end units with all their massive production boosts.

6-- Diplomacy-- I like that I can see why they hate me (and they all do) but I hate that there is little I can do to not have them all declare war on me. Maybe this is only ridiculous, but I dunno. Anyway, every faction I meet, even my own "side" will declare war on me withing 20-40 turns. Sometimes up to 75 but not much more after that. I usually meet someone, figure out where they are (harder than actually killing them sometimes), then start moving an army that direction to plan my new west bank settlements. The longer I let them live, the bigger their cities get, so I never declare, I always wait for them to attack. To Improve Diplo, I would leave in the "chart" that shows their power base, their number of cities, the reasons they hate me etc... but let me be able to influence it a little. Right now all I can do, is build diplomacy producing buildings, or trade gold/units for diplomacy resources from AI. Then when I have like 3000-5000 diplomacy, they say "+2, we are awed by your diplomacy" or something like that. I can never have a bigger army, because they have 200 gazillion units and gold. Mine are smarter and will win, but I am usually "-4, our military is MUCH stronger than yours", this is while I am taking city after city of theirs.

Probably lots more to comment on, but I see the first person shooter people losing interest in this 4 minute post, and are about to go drink some Jolt Cola. So as a courtesy to them, I will stop here.

Peace.

Cooosmetics! All my soldiers look the same, it would be nice to have a second layer of clothing over the first so to speak so you can first outfit them, and then modify their look.

I'd suggest hand weapons and shields are WYSIWYG.

Maybe different shield skins? Armor skins? Stuff like that is sooo cool. Customization is the keyword here.

I like that Kael is now on team Elemental's roster! 

Also, the 1.1 human resource economy sounds exactly what will set this game apart from most others.  Can't wait to start some serious modding with the new system.

I was going to post something earlier, but it's hard to stay on topic when your main "positive" is something like, "The basic skeleton of the game has a lot of potential and I can tell it will be really awesome if we can just get a little tweaking and content and balance and..."

However, I just remembered something a little more specific. In a game not long after release, I was wandering around completing quests with my sovereign. Most of the huts I needed to visit were in my own or neutral territory, but one really important hut popped up deep inside Procipinee's kingdom. I had been ignoring Procipinee, other than to contain her expansion, and she had been doing the same. We were equal in power, on good terms, and she didn't seem to be doing much of anything. I was content to let this state continue for as long as she would allow it, because I had more important problems to deal with than a quiet neighbor. Once that hut popped, however, I was forced to change the status quo: Procipinee had something I wanted.

Gaining the right to travel through her territory was a simple matter, but it wasn't something I had been planning to do. The quest system, which by itself was just a fun but slightly annoying treasure-acquisition method, had combined with the territory and diplomacy systems to provide an incentive for me to interact with another kingdom I had been ignoring. I can see interesting things arising from this, as reluctant allegiences form not from loyalty or for defense, but because one side wants something the other doesn't know it has.

So perhaps revisit the spawning of objects so that some low % show up in foreign territory, just fingertips away from your grasp....perhaps even have an advisor popup to make a note of the situation.

Anyways, just rambling. thanks again for everyones continuing feedback!

I like the fact that a clueless dude like me can get into the XML files and make changes. Everyone was bitchin' about crashes, but I did all kinds of things and haven't crashed the game yet.

I like the layout of the tactical battles as a starting point. Check out Guardians of Graxia. Yes, a $9 game at GamersGate has me completely absorbed in the intricacy of its strategy and tactics. Even half the depth would put Elemental way over the top.

Best to you!

I like the extent of the tech trees I love how I still haven't researched every tech yet in a game. I would love to see this expanded a bit and see the tech trees intertwine so that some of the best techs have prerequisites from multiple trees. For instance having some rare Adventuring techs giving learnable abilities to champions requiring the univeristy in the civics tree.

I really like the RPG elements for the champions and the ability to level them. The only thing missing is the customisation as they level up other than just stat points. eg AoW type abilities.

Here are some things I liked in past versions but now gone:

I loved the really high monsters in the wilds right from the start, not so much right next to your starting city, but it's so vanilla now.

I really miss the monster lairs and really hope stardock goes back to them. The idea of cleaning lairs out is exciting. Also as the controlled territory expands You could rarely have lairs spawning to keep things from getting too boring.

I really like the world visuals and the cloth map.  I think the rate of land conversion within your ZOC would be nice if it slowed down a little.  

Its nice clicking on a resource to build it, but all resources should be linkable to a town, just give a little penalty if you think its needed if the resource is 5 or more tiles away.

I enjoy building my forces.  Damage types and resistances would add a good bit of fun if they are incorporated, that would give more thought to creating our armies.

I really like being able to group various hero's and unit types together.  My one wish is that we could appoint a leader of our choice, somehow flag a certain hero to be the leader of given group regardless of its level.

I like leveling up hero's.  I wouldn't mind if you had the option of buying traits.  something akin to feats or leadership abilities, etc..

I like the variety of options in technology tree!  keep adding!

doubt it. there was a chinese version though. gemfire is royal blood 1 i think, not 2

---

quite like raise land. getting bottled up in a peninsula by the ai? no problem. out flank them by raising land from water. you'll probably end up surrounding them! downside is that it's not always clear that some lands are not raised properly. a tile might look flat and can be built upon, but in fact not the case.

I like the art direction and style a lot.

I like the quest system.

I like the dynasty concept.

I like the unit designer.

I like the tech research system.

I have to applaud this idea, but all to often in the beta program the baby did get thrown out with the bathwater.

I love the idea. I love the dream. Not the reality. If we could only change the clock back. A poor decision to release a game that was half done.

Its in the past. Let it go. I`m trying my best to move on. Looking forward to Dereks involvement in the project. The cure has been found.

Freebird out.

huh???

you changed xml files, and the game hasn't crashed?

My PC must be older than I Thought. Laptop, 3.something ghz. 4 meg ram, 1.5 meg video card.... My game crashes all the time. What are you running that the game doesn't crash. Let alone changing an xml file and it doesn't burn your house down.

I love that Elemental is an RPG/Fantasy game.

I love that Elemental is a 4x/Strategy/TBS game.  RTS would have been fun too, but, RTS often turns into a "rush war" so TBS was probably a good choice.

I love that you can customize your faction, your champion, and all of your units.  We can put a unique flair on how we play.

I love that the game runs on my laptop!  

I love that you can zoom out for a cloth map overview and zoom in for detail.

I love that the fallen race almost looks undead!

I love that you can shape the world with spells to make it better suit your needs/designs.

I love that there is this one all-powerful sovereign who can share his power with others, or keep it all for himself.

But most of all, I love Brad, the big lummox.

Except it is not new I agree it is genius and it started in MoM and was expanded upon in the AOW trilogy.  Elemental changed the terrain w/o a spell and has a few limited spells which can further alter the terrain.  What would be further genius would be coming up with new and unique ways to use these ideas and how the terrain would affect things like cities and battles.

The game seems to be on the verge of better utilizing water in the terrain and landscape.  Most cities today are founded upon a water source, Las Vegas being one notable exception.  Most all other cities were founded upon a river, lake, springs, or coastline.  Food for thought...

Oh For that matter I like how I can manipulate the Influence of my towns which changes slightly the border and this has allowed me to take control of a resource node on more than one occasion when it was right near the border.  I think the border influence thingy is done very nicely, in fact it is one of the diamonds of this game.

i haven't played in quite a while (since civ 5 release in fact...) but here are my two cents:

the number one thing I like about elemental is the blend of RPG and 4X. I like that I have a physical presence in the game world. I would like to see Dynasty developed much further, to create long political narratives.

I also like the way that cities grow, compared to civ where they are just a stationary tile, in elemental you really build them up yourself by manually plonking down buildings. I would like to see more options to place buildings where I like so I can customise the aesthetic layout of my cities a bit more. in city management games like Caesar etc I always give high priority to how my city looks as much as it operates perhaps minor city-management genre elements could be added, such as layout affecting productivity slightly. although I could see how some people might not like that.

I like the cloth map and to be able to play on the cloth map only.

• I like the game genre, setting backdrop and source material the devs cited at the outset.
• I like recruiting heroes to my side. (I love that one of them is one I submitted.)
• I like the ability to get married and have kids (although how the rest of the whole dynasty system is implemented is pretty weak).
• I like the RPG aspect of the game, but it needs to be drastically expanded.
• I like the inclusion of tactical battles and that they are turn-based.
• I like the art style.
• I like the low(er) system requirements.
• I like the fact that the game is for PC only.
• I like the re-invigorating of the land as the faction's influence expands.
• I like the scaling up of the monsters ties to exploration tech.
• I like the way city building is implemented (but think there should be more uniqueness and specialization in each city).
• I like being able to customize my own units.
• I like being able to customize my own sovereign. I have never used a pre-built.
• I like researching spells, although it seems too easy and fast.
• I like the spell particle effects.
• I love the modding tools and modding support.
• I love the dedication shown to improving the game shown by Stardock.
• I love the cloth map idea. I like the cloth map implementation.

This is a great idea. I love the Champion system, but I have like 20 of them and quite honestly I can barely remember which is which. I haven't developed a favourite because they're too generic and they level quite slowly.

I like the idea of being able to buy equipment, but would like to see the pricing adjusted a bit. I can't afford to deck out any of my champs. Also would be nice if the treasure you find included more items and/or spells, and if stores randomly generated more items.

Like the idea of unit customization. But needs a tweak - right now my group of 8 guards in leathers weilding maces are like 1000 more powerful than my highest level champ.

First post here - gotta say I love the game (got it when 1.09 was current) and can't wait for further mods! Too bad I can't run it on my laptop (crappy v-card) .

Cheers

I like this idea as well. making the races more unique would be a bonus and pretty standard RPG I'd think. One may specialize in economics, another warfare, another makes more children, another's units have more moves, etc.