Let's not get ahead of ourselves...we're still on the 1.1 beta which is extremely buggy. I'd wait until 1-2 patches after 1.1 before buying.

Kael hinted that sort of stuff was coming later.  It's lower priority then what they're trying to do in 1.1 right now.

The day the 1.1 demo comes out, is the day you pay full price for only the current game with no expansions whatsoever.  And this is why I'm asking for a video, because if I buy the game today, there is at least 1 (but I think maybe 2 or 3) free expansions included in the purchase price.  

A great motivator, except I have nothing to go on other than people's posts in the forums.

I guess I need to clarify what I meant by not getting the population thing. It's mostly that I just don't see a point. I never came anywhere close to having too few people to build anything and thus, didn't feel challenged at all by that mechanic. I guess I just don't get it...

So, having spent more time with the game, I can say this:

I forgot to mention how much I LOVE the threading going on. Turns are so damn quick and I just love it. Really helps the game move. 

I REALLY, REALLY want a breakdown of the "Faction Power" score. Could you please tell me that I'm getting X points from my economy, X points from research completed, X points from my military, etc.? Please? Also, I think an advisor telling me what's going on about those scores (kinda like the Galactic News Network, or whatever it was, from GCII) .

Quests seem broken. The huts almost never vanish after the quest is completed for me. Fix please. 

I'd like to see new animations for some of the spells please. A lot of them are rather boring. 

Can you give us a "Trade" menu, please? I'd like to know which towns have caravans and what's being traded, please. 

Like others have said, resources need to be fixed. I've never seen a horse or a warg. Ever. 

This: "The techs, especially in the adventuring tree, should be a lot more explicit in what they do. I still find that I don't know what causes my quest or treasure hunting level to go up, and I have to guess at what's going to happen when I get a new tech from the adventuring tree. There's probably some rearranging that needs to be done too; in my game as the empire, I had a bunch of magical equipment techs, but never could find the tech that would allow me to start harvesting crystals so I could actually build troops with that equipment. "

Anything else?

My 2 cents after 5-6 hours:

First off, the game is drastically improved.  Bravo to the team.  Once I founded my first city and started researching the various techs, there was a while where I was having more fun than I've had in a strategy game in years.  The global mana change was great.  The spell book changes/additions are great.  In particular, I like the spell 'blink'.  You can use it to keep an archer-hero away from melee range, or you can send a melee-hero behind enemy lines to smash a pesky enemy range unit.  Spells like this really add a nice layer of tactical depth to the game, I would love to see more spells and abilities like this in future patches/expansions.  Tactical battles are flowing better and are getting more interesting.

Bugs I've noticed:

Display issues.  Things aren't refreshing.  I captured an empire city as a kingdom race, and the empire city started spreading it's blight throughout my previously green lands.  This annoyed me and I thought it was a feature.  When I quit the game and started playing again, the conquered city started turning everything green again and its zone of influence was reset.  Sometimes when I go to change the equipment of one of my champions, the game won't let me until I quit and restart the program.  Also, my sovereign's appearance seems to 'stick' to one of my champions sometimes and he ends up looking like a clone of the champion.  Finally, the mouse icon isn't refreshing the cursor it should be displaying.

Design beefs:

I don't like that the tech that lets you raze enemy cities is so far down the tree.  I started on a peninsula, and an opponent tried to prevent me from expanding by blocking me in.  I was actually impressed by the AI's aggressiveness, even though he left the two blocking outposts unguarded.  I marched my sovereign and his champion onto the unpopulated cities and I was stuck with them.  I really didn't like these cities draining my food supply or their location, so I was disappointed when I found out the tech that grants you 'raze' was like three levels deep in the war line.  It doesn't make sense to me that my sovereign can raise mountains from the land and call down lightning from the sky, but he can't knock over a hastily-assembled outpost with no one defending it.  I would like 'raze' to be a default ability and maybe grant the tech a bonus to attacking cities in it's place.  Minor gripe.

Also, I would like a way to retrain my existing units.  It doesn't seem right that my battle-hardened soldiers are sitting around in garrison with crappy gear when every store in the kingdom is selling better stuff that my treasury could easily afford.  It doesn't make sense to disband this unit and replace them with an updated version every time I get a new level of gear.  I know different gear = different role, but you're going to want your heavy infantry to always be in the best possible armor.  I'm certainly no master of the game at this point, so if this already exists my apologies.  I didn't see any option, though.

Two minor issues aside, great work.  As a fan of turn-based gaming, thanks for continuing to support the game and the genre.  Like pretty much everyone else is saying, this is a huge step in the right direction.  Even with the assorted beta-roughness, the game is vastly improved and it's finally starting to realize it's immense potential.

Seems like this thread is gathering the posts, so I'll move my comments here.

This game is really starting to be how I first imagined it would! It's like a lump of clay that has been worked into shape by a master potter, who is just beginning to add the fine embellishments that will make the work a masterpiece.

I love the new:

+global mana pool

+population as a resource

+researching spellbooks (might check spell descriptions; some of the starting spells say they are "Life" spells)

 Stuff to improve gameplay/experience:

*There should be two basic categories of champions: Tactical and strategic, or combat and administrative. The administrative champions should gain exp doing their jobs slowly over time. Each archetype of hero within the two branches should have skill tracks that increase as they level up. For example, a farmer should level up as he works in town, and gain skills that increase farming even more or give him the ability to seed a new farm elsewhere; a thief (combat hero) should gain stealth skills, looting bonus skills, etc. Of course, there could be unique skills, too. I believe that this is what's missing here. If this was implemented, it would "make sense," and really help bridge the gap between RPG and 4X sim.

*Fewer clicks for doing things. Off the top of my head, these were irksome situations that required more clicks than should be necessary:

• On pop-ups, get rid of the "ok" button and just make it press any key to continue, or better yet, flash the message on-screen without interruption requiring a click. For example, when you click on the arcane research menu before having research points, a pop-up informs you of this fact, and you have to click the "ok" button to make it go away.
• Equipping champions: You click on the hero's portrait, which says "equip," but then you have to click on another button inside the menu to actually get to the equip screen. Solution: Make tabs at the top of the hero screen to switch between the pages of information, while making the equip page the default tab. Make the equip page viewable from the shop window. You have the tab for it already! Replace the inventory page with the equip page.
• Selecting actions for units: Instead of having to click to get to the additional commands in the UI, can it open with a mouse hover? It would give a sleek, intuitive feel to the UI if you didn't have to click menus like that to get them open.

*Make charisma affect more stuff.

*Please show the champions' attributes in their info pages. I want to decide whether or not to imbue them and how to build them up right when I recruit them, but can't see the attributes until they level up.

*Focus on a rock, paper, scissors style of magic and combat: Weapons and armor have slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage ratings; researching into blunt weapons eventually makes fearsome (albeit slow) warhammer-wielding troops recruitable, who go on to terrorize an opponent until the player researches and creates troops equipped with weapon/armor more suitable to taking them on. In magic, creatures might be resistant to certain elements while vulnerable to others, for example. I know it's been mentioned before; please give it some thought.

I really liked how the equipment has been differentiated in the update. It is on the right track! However, with research branches, the strategic and fun and replayability factors would be increased ten-fold if there was a clear strategic reason for developing a type of weapon/armor.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the good work!

You have a good point about the free expansions for people who buy the game early. The comments by others to wait a few more versions are well founded because the game is still miles away from where it should be but the free expansions are certainly an attractive drawcard. The current beta (1.09n) is very buggy at the moment and I suspect that Stardock will want to stabilise this before releasing 1.1 (at least I hope that is what they will do). But having said that you can finally start to see the potential of the game with this version.

If you don't mind buying now but are happy to not expect too much in the short-term then I'd say you might as well sign up. There is definitely a nice warm glow on the distant horizon and this will ultimately be a great game to own. But if you are really wanting to leap in right now and play a polished, stable, balanced game then I would wait - at least until the stability issues are sorted.

The games is MUCH better, aside from some bugs it is already a very good an fun game. 

the only thing that continues to spoil it for me is that great "thing" that they call armies...   it is more dificult to build now, as it requires a size 3 city with a command post, but the fact is that no matter how hard is to get it, once armies get into the game it totally unbalance it. the game scale should be only one, or every unit represents an army or the scale is a battle of individual units...  i see no good way of mixing it.

if you want to put formations into the game, make it a bonus that units trained in the command center get to be in formation, so if the unit is treined, when sided with another unit of the same type in the tatical map they get bonus in defense / atack that depends on the level of logistics thech you have as long as the units are side by side.

Maybe allow smaller size units to be upgraded to the larger , at a cost of experience.

Much improved, thank you Stardock!

I find the game way to slow, because of long research times and slow building speed. It takes so long to build buildings that you don't have time to build many studies and you need like a hundred. You also have way to much population and I have never come close to maxing out my buildings because once again they just build so slolwy. Playing on fast game speed seems better.

I also don't like the changes to monestaries and other buildings. Removing resource % bonus buildings takes alot of strategy out of the game. You would think now that you are supposed to specialize cities that they would be more important but they were removed instead? It makes no sense.... 

I'm aware tha combat is buggy but low tier units cannot hurt high tier ones at all... One medium level champion unit or monster can kill like 100 low level ones... and thats without stackes!

I think everything else has been mentioned elsewhere.

My biggest complaints so far:

-- No more Lost Libraries... makes me sad as I am a librarian IRL.

-- Needs to be made much more clear that "Archery range" is required to build Archer units, and "Command post" for squads.

-- Imbuing champions should cost more, or be permanent.

-- I don't like Monastery just being a bigger research bonus instead of a multiplyer.  But if it's going to stay that way you definitely need to update the description.

-- (Very minor but) "Fertility" -- the name for the +1 prestige bonus enchantment doesn't seem right.  What about "Renown"?

-- The city summary screen could use more details such as "tech" and "spell research".

-- The formula for calculating influence radii leads to weird boxy shapes; also there is a bug that resets influence when you save/load a game.

-- Quicksave and Print screen should have some kind of onscreen feedback.

That's it for now.  Love the direction this game is going...

I forced myself to play and I must say it is really starting to go in the right direction. Good job devs. Can't wait it to realise its full potential.

Agio, I had a lost library in my last game.

They're very rare but in, had a horsey as well.

Yeah I saw a post from Frogboy saying they were much, much rarer now.  So I guess we just have to build tons of Studies.

Well done Stardock

As an owner of a lower end (dual core) machine I must admit that the performance is a lot better and smoother. Subsequently it feels better to play - however I've not tried later stage games yet. I can feel the 'under-the-hood improvements'. This release shows a continual commitment to the community as a whole. 

Some of the simple changes are the best. I like the idea of seasons and some balance of these could go a long way. How long should a workshop take to build? How long should it take your champion to walk from one side of you city to the other. I know scalability is always a challenge in this type of artificial macrocosm but a little effort could go a long way providing better lore linkages and balance.

In general the changes are very positive and I think I can now 'see' the vision and the foundation of what you originally tried to achieve. Keep the scope of what you're trying to achieve in 1.1 limited so that you do it well, and then look to bigger and more dramatic concepts beyond.

Yeah this is something I really want too. I don't have 1.1 yet but when I last played this game, this was something that stood out to me as being needed.

I don't think it is the portrait saying "equip", it is a small button at the button of the portrait that takes you directly to the equipment-screen. At least I think, I have used it like that, though I know I have also missed it several times too.

Like most, I'm here to say I feel the patch is a step in the right direction. Once I got the new stuff figured out, I felt like I had more to pay attention to than in previous builds. Sort of.

Things I think you guys should focus on next:

1. NOT INTRODUCING ANY NEW STABILITY BUGS. Seriously, I wanted to dig into the new patch, but the ZoC bug pretty much ruined it for me. I know you guys delayed and were between a rock and a hard place, between providing some updates to the public and making sure you put the best patch forward possible.....but that's one of those game breaking bugs you can't afford to release. I guess that's why you called this a beta. Still, if people can't even get into a new build of Elemental because of crippling bugs, it's not worth the pay off of showing your work to the fans.

2. City building cost balance. The goal of the population resource change was so that cities could become more diverse and specialized. The problem is that, once the essentials are in place, it breaks down to relatively the same thing as the last build. You have x buildings which you NEED (housing), and then you have optional choices: money changer, labor pits, research and research.

You don't need money because, now that we're collecting taxes, gold mines pretty much solve your early to mid game cash needs. Likewise, a few materials sites and you don't need to waste pop on labor pits.

Which leaves you with research. Unlike gold and materials, you benefit from having tons of extra research, since it's not a resource that just piles up until it's ready to be used. So the result of the changes are......I still have tons of cities filled out with extra archives and lore shops, because I have _nothing_ else to spend population on. A city of 200 can provide 40! archivists or lore shops. That wouldn't be a problem, except there's not enough other stuff to choose against.

So I really suggest that there's a scaling cost to buildings you can build more than once. Possibly even housing. So that every 2nd workshop you build costs 2 more pop, or some value. The cost of many structures simply does not scale to the maximum pop size cities can have, for those choices to feel meaningful right now.

3. Monster and creep balance seems to be a little off in this build. Not even 50 turns in, and I had a ~120 point Bandit army ninja ganking my sovereign, spawning next to them and attacking them between my turns. That's a little too much aggression, I think, for the early game.

4. I got the impression that the global mana pool is bloated. I.e., I never had less than 200 mana with absolutely no shards in hand. With shards in hand, I could see myself easily with 1000 mana after a few turns of no casting. I think there also needs to be diminishing returns on shards after a certain point. The open-ended mana pool just seems ripe for hoarding and cheesiness.

And just so this isn't a massive whine fest.....the new UI is much better. The animations are really shining now and Tact battles aren't a chore to sit through. Being able to customize hero cards is something I've been wanting for a while. Spells are....you're getting there, you're starting to grasp the balance necessary so spells stand out from each other.

So yeah, it's all a decent step in the right direction. The system is in place, now it's time to balance it and tweak values so it's interesting and challenging enough.

Exactly! Spells seem to take longer to get up & running effectively so this helps in the interim.

Here's my list of observations as a game developer on the game and as the lead designer:

1. Conquering a city doesn't remove enchantments on it
2. The computer players aren't casting spells (I know because I had to disable it for the 1.1 beta)
3. When I found a city, it should do the animation first before taking you to the book so that you can appreciate what is happening.
4. The opening page when you enter the game should give you more useful and interesting data.
5. The world is still too bland and uninteresting in general.
6. There is still no real personality between the various factions.
7. The global mana is very very nice.
8. The overall economy feels much better.
9. There is still way too much advantage to building lots of cities because each city can do a lot of parallel work.
10. Archers are too powerful right now (8 attack on short bow is too much)
11. Tech pacing is better but gets bogged down.
12. Need more quests
13. Need more notable locations
14. Need more interesting land tiles - the land is just boring
15. The monsters sit around waiting to be killed
16. The monsters are fairly moronic. 
17. The wildlands need to feel a lot scarier.
18. Need a lot better dialog
19. Not enough diplomatic options
20. Not enough tools to work together with other players
21. Movement mid to late game gets really annoying. Need some reasonable way to travel distances that aren't lame (i.e. don't rely on teleporting)

Many of these things are on my plate since I am doing the AI full time at this point.  My biggest issue that I don't see an easy fix is the land is just..blah.  In Civilization, every tile feels like it matters.  Elemental has the city building of MOM but the world design of a HOMM which isn't compatible.

Frogboy, have you considered doing a simple territory / wilderness simulation where the wild monsters will expand if left unchecked?

You bring a smile to my face frogboy, as long as those points are on your radar Elemental will be epic. As for the land feeling barren and dull...adding more interesting quests/monsters/rewards will go some way towards making it more interesting. Also spells could be allowed to customise the tiles in interesting ways.... For example we could have a spell that allows us to turn a tile into the lake of enlightenment. Having this lake in our borders makes it possible that one of a few rare monsters will appear having been attracted by the lake. Engaging these monsters could result in battle with rare loot for the victor, or you could get the monster to join you if your charisma is high enough (the monster would have its own unique spells or abilities) or perhaps the monster will teach your sov a spell or ability. I like the idea of one of the monsters being an immortal white fox.

But none of that really matters it is just what popped into my head in the last two minutes. The point is that currently while exploring elemental wandering the wastes is rather dull because I know what I will find. Either a group of 1-4 heroes with one special feature from a fairly short list or one of a dozen quests.... there just isn't the variety atm for the wilds to feel like your going to have an adventure. I know content takes time to make and your team and yourself haven't had this time to do this due to sorting out the stability and game mechanics, When you do get the chance however. Give this game the content it deserves, because it's giving me as the player the choice to spend 200 mana to create a lake of enlightenment to get 1/100 chance that I might meet that immortal white fox and get the sword with the white fox head hilt that grants me an ability to summon the immortal fox himself to aid me in battle but only if correctly solve his riddle first..... that's the stuff that will make wandering those "dull" tiles interesting and also it'a what will keep me playing for years.

It's interesting you reference HOMM here. I've never really seen a HOMM-like structure to the map myself.

I feel you guys have done about as much as you can here, initially. Each tile can affect combat and movement. Each tile is a potential candidate for a site or goodie hut. Some tiles can produce monsters. Some tiles are impassible. The tiles can go up, down, be modified by the player with roads and/or magic....

I'd say part of the issue is map generation. The world feels bland because the world comes first, and the details that make it interesting come second. That ruined temple isn't in an interesting location, it's smack dab in the middle of the a desert, next to.....a farm? The problem with the map generation is that, whether or not the world itself is interesting or compelling is....a feature of random generation. Occasionally you get that perfect combination of topography, site and goodie hut clusters. But those don't happen that often, or the AI long since squatted on them.

It's not an easy problem to solve. I think the world feels uninteresting largely as a result of the visuals and the handful of quests and site types. The heavy use of deserts makes for a lot of bland terrain.

Four things I would suggest:

More terrain features that don't exist on a single tile basis. Cephalo's map generator puts in swamps that are actually recessed into the ground. Volcanic regions that aren't just a mountain cluster you can't cross, but actual obsidian fields. Wastelands in addition to deserts.

Whether effects. Clouds, rain, snow, all with accompanying visual limitations. The thunder in the background is nice, but the world is largely static. The seasons indicate there should be visual changes of some kind

Monsters relative to their locales. Right now all monsters just puke out of whatever forest or unclaimed territory there is. You're just as likely to find a bandit near a mountain as a bug, or a wolf, or a spider. Monster populations spawning in appropriate regions gives the world a sense of context, and makes regions IMPORTANT.

Quest events with timers on them, and more quests that ask players to make choices. This goes to "Just more quests", but quest sites with expiration dates would get players more interested in chasing down sites...and quests that are more than "go to a then b and fight x." Take King Arthur the Roleplaying War Game's quests. They're like mini choose your own adventurers. They can have multiple outcomes. They run some passive checks against stats to determine success. Elemental's quests are very primitive right now, they could grow a lot.

I think the issue with land is that, with the exception of notable features (iron mines, clay pits, apiaries, etc), land is just empty space that is waiting for a city to grow into it.  It has no characteristics, from a mechanical sense, and because of the art direction, it has limited visual characteristics.  Civ has more bountiful resources than Elemental, and land itself has tile value - and features add or detract from that tile value.  There are buildings that require flat land, buildings that require mountain proximity, buildings that require rivers.  Rivers modify tiles, sometimes in collaboration with tech.  The land interacts with your game experience.

I agree with you in that there's no clearly visible way to address this in Elemental while staying within the bounds of the current game model.  Maybe bountiful micro-features that didn't require any sort of building, but once they were in influence/city radius added some kind of small bonus?  +1 food, or +1 gildar or something?  Perhaps more significant tactical modifiers, though I seem to recall that these were attempted and abandoned.

This issue of uninteresting land is definitely a challenging one and something I'll want to chew on for a while.

1. Colour Paletter windows. I'd swear that they still remain open when you close the window they are in.
2. Autofocus is out of control and is becoming extremelly annoying to say the least. Main reason to disable the "City idle" warning as it becomes useless once you start having many cities.
3. Hmm Yeah, having lots of cities still has advantages but at least it doesn't seem as "compulsory" as before. Penalties to Prestige for distance with the Capital, less Gildar production for distance to the capital (we "suppose" the Gildar are taxes, right?)... and wildlands being deadlier (beast may "respet" your initial settlement a bit for balance or whatever but the rest should be fair play). In any case, my cities seem more "laboratories" than "cities" more often than not but that may be because I like to dabble in the different tech trees.
4. No cultural flipping of enemy cities. I'm not holding my breath for this because this looks like a "never happening" thing.
5. Elemental is recovering from a Cataclysm. Not every tile may count like in Civ. At least not from a resource point of view. Ruins to explore, huts, quests... those work to "fill in". Not against new resource types, eh? And geography can be altered by magic so its initial generation should be interesting too.
   
   Are you considering passive bonuses for the different tiles under the influence of a concrete city? Like any tile, if not built upon, providing some kind of lesser bonus (to production, prestige or whatever) depending on its type? O_o
6. Diplomacy is ready to jump to the next level. Make it so.
7. Dynasty system: children still could use some more "meat". Playing female with the abilities I want to later marry (if possible) a farmer so: my boys are farmers like the father (20% Food production each!) and girls have the same abilites as me (Green Thumb, Tactician or whatever). That's nice but not "cool enough".
8. Movement seems tricky without Mobility and/or roads by the Caravans. Boots/mounts and magical items should help. Plus some worthy enchanments that increae movement of unit(s). Movement by sea should be faster than by earth and therefore a thing to consider. Rivers?