Hi

Good work, i think it is coming along well. I enjoyed this game although it is still a bit buggy (but it is beta)

1. The monster threat was hard (i think they were a little too aggressive) but do able. The spawning was good, but did make it tough at the beginning, since i had a couple of Drakes that were spawning stuff, i couldn't kill the Drakes and the small Drakes took out my second city a couple of times. The real problem was that losing cities early makes the game very hard when the nine tiles around the city become wasteland. I would strongly suggest that if a city is lost to monsters then the tiles do not get destroyed.

2. I though the AI was quite good. It is better than it was and generally it did alright. But as you can see from the saves, there is no way i should have won. Altar was on 600 power and had 13 settlements. I was on 175 power and had three (although only 2 were any good). and yet i went through Altar very easily with two stacks. Mostly this was because hardly any of his troops had armor, and the computer doesn't seem to get the importance of leveling troops. ( couple of the guys i had, had 275 hit points, which is a lot).

3. Challenging

4. Gilden, medium map, 6 players: me, Alter and the rest were Empire.

5. I did notice Magnars sov get stuck for quite a while in one place. Altar had a big stack of Pioneers sat there, but generally the AI did OK. I think the default for troops should be that they can upgrade weapons and armor. Also Altar seemed pretty lucky with the monsters, quite few did not attack him. But they all went after me, especially the big winter guy who decided to destroy most of the cities that i took from Altar. That did feel a little unfair (to say the least!!) and explains why so much of the map at the end is wasteland.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy4sfledzyx60g6/Is%20it%20Won.EleSav

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c21dfsicc364gpc/Yes%20its%20won.EleSav

I agree with you 100%.  This shouldn't be a game of "lets see if the player notices that someone is sneaking across his land this turn!".  AI should have to ask permission to cross.  The only other thing I think you can do is fill a bottlekneck with cheap slaves (as magnar). 

Playing the game on hardest (ridicules) with all the options being on norm.

Unsurprisingly, I failed to beat the game. This was done due to two factors:

1) Player units (computer) grant a very small amount of exp. Beating on an earth elemental is easier, and probably give a better exp reward than a small army of mediocre units. I am not sure if it's intended, but the whole feeling is that it's way harder to level champions compared to earlier versions.

2) Computer spams units like there's no tomorrow... Just because I crushed 5 stacks of 5 units each, doesn't mean the 10th one won't start killing my units. This is probably due to difficulty, and the reason I didn't test the easier settings.

Also, a couple of notes which were strange, and probably are bugs:

Certain monsters (mostly drakes) ignore my settlements... until 50+ turns when they decide to attack them, for no reason at all. A bit more consistency for all the monsters will be nice.

Unit stacking- It's quiet annoying killing a stack of monsters, only to find there are more stacks below it. I've had to attack the same tile 3 times in order to clean it from monsters once.

Turns not ending- A few times I pressed the end turn (or it was autopressed? not sure) and the game got stuck. While everything was viable (I could cast spells on enemy units), I couldn't end my turn (grayed out). Saving and loading fixed it, though.

The Ai is kicking my ass, early game on many of the games I have played. Most recent playing Altir , war was declared by 5 factions on me before 100 turns on EASY, you read that right EASY. I like a good challenge but If I wanted to have no fun and feel pain I would just smash my hand with a hammer.  Other wise I think things are coming along nicely !!

I think I found my problem, Autoplay still does not make the best choices for you. New game I am playing, large map all factions, seems to be going much better so far

I've just returned to elemental after playing Wom for a couple of weeks then uninstalling it. I've been curious about the direction FE has taken so I decided to try out the beta to see how I liked it. I started with beta three and have played a bit with .913. I've only had time to play a couple of quick games with .913 so far but here is my feedback for what it's worth.

1) Monsters felt about right to me. There were weak ones in the immediate vicinity of my starting area and then stronger ones farther out. Perhaps more of a "medium" layer would be perfect but all in all I thought the monster distribution was good. The easy monsters were easy to clear and the hard ones tended to stop progress/expansion until I was strong enough to clear em.

2) AI players were only a threat in the sense that they came after me from multiple directions once they declared war. Thier armies weren't that difficult to kill but I had to pay attention to them destroying all my resources and cities.

3) Played on hard difficulty

4) Played 2 games so far in .913. First game was Gilden, summoner (just cause I wanted to try it out) large map, random map type moderate everything. Took water and earth level two so I could get the summon elemental spells from both spell lines. Can't remember the other settings. In the second game I played with the following settings:

Custom faction (Spartans), adepts, enchaters, flesh bound tome, no ranged weapons, Tarth race

Custom Soveriegn - earth disciple, water disciple, summoner, attunement and brilliant, weakness=cruel

Map - large, random map type

Options - Hard difficulty, normal pacing, moderate everything, 9 opponents

5) In my first game as Gilden I benefitted from a good starting location in the top corner which only allowed enemy AI's to come at me from one direction so I didn't have to worry much about defending my cities/resources from multiple directions. As a result, it was pretty easy to clear my territory with my summoned units and defeat enemy threats once they did declare war. I could then comfortably progress up the research tree to make some stronger units and them take my enemies cities. The terrain must have been mountainous which made the game easier since enemies could only approach from certain directions. I stopped playing after awhile because I seemed to have a pretty big lead in the power rankings over the next most powerful kingdom (Pariden) and I wanted to try another combination

In the second game I planned on being a summoner again so that I could get the shadow warg spell which would effectively give me two troops per battle if necassary early on without me having to train any troops in my cities. I took earth and water for the elemental summon spells as I leveled up to add to my summoned army. Took adepts so that I could immediately start harvesting shards to add to my mana supply, took enchaters so that I could capture resources using the arcane monolith spell so that I wouldn't have to use production lines to produce pioneers, and took flesh bound tome specifically for the Cull the Weak spell which I planned to use to build up my mona supply and heal myself during battle by sacrificing my summoned units. I also took cruel to give myself an extra point for picking traits and because I planned on not hiring any other hero's (ay least at the beginnig) and going at it with just my soverign and summoned unit stack.

In this game I found that my experience with monsters was pretty much the same as the first game. The easy monsters were easy to handle and clear and then as I got further out I encountered the odd "medium" monster and then the strong ones which stopped my progress until I was strong enough to take em on (basically whenever I got to level four earth and gained the summon earth elemental spell). On thing that almost screwed me was the cull the weak spell. In the description it says that it gives you 40 mana and life but the description is either wrong or the spell is bugged because whenever i tried it, i got the mana but not the health which almost killed me during a battle or two before I realised that. What was great about this spell as a summoner and what may make it overpowered is that it is a great way to get mana built up very quickly. Summoning a shadow warg during battle only costs you 22 mana but sacrificeing it gives you 40 so you end up with a net gain of 18 mana. Once I got  the summon ice elemental spell, it only cost me 15 mana to summon it during tactical battles and you get 40 for sacrificeing it, a net gain of 25 mana. By summoning creatures and then sacrificing them before the end of tactical battles, my mana pool was always bigger after battles then before and grew very quickly.

With the AI I found the same kind of thing as with my first game. The armies that were thrown at me weren't that hard to defeat but they came at me from many directions. As the map in the second game was much more open than the first game, I found that my initial rapid expansion with arcane monoliths were getting destroyed and my one stack wasn't enough to defend everything. So armies not hard to defeat but they threatened my cities/resources which prevented expansion without dedicating resources to train garrisons. The solution I found may be a bit of an exploit using the cull the weak spell. I ended up training alot of pioneers (the unit that took the least time to train), and sending them into battle with my soverign and elemental. Once in battle I would immidiately use cull the weak on all pioneers to build up a huge mana supply quickly and then after the battle I would use my level 3 earth - raise mountains spell to erect a wall of mountains around my territory so that enemies could only come at me from one direction. This has allowed me to eliminate threats to my cities and resources from multidirectional enemy attack and still only use one (or two at the most), stack of units to defeat enemies and expand my empire.  The game is on season 189 and I'm third in the power rankings and quite sure that I can now comfortably win now that I don't have to worry about attack from multiple directions.

6) Unfortunately I don't know how to do that

Have a good day and keep up the good work

Just got leveled by an Umberdroth that the sneaky AI scouts activated near my capital.  Did even have a chance to build a second settlement.  On normal (default) settings getting repeatedly creamed by monsters.  AI empires seem to do okay, most of the time they are large in size than my own, when looking at population and number of settlements.  The strong monsters (Umberdroths, Fell Dragon yep saw Verga bite the dust challenging one of these early although  not permanently slain) need to be placed on the map far away from starting locations.

Notice the following if you cancel building a sawmll the forest is permanently destroyed so you cannot build again, did not play long enough to see if saw mill would be in que if forest appeared.

Custom sovereigns have same issue as E WoM were after quiting and starting new game appear as headless and shirtless.

Have given up on playing custom Soveriegn with Capitar (no longer supported/balanced) not sure if it is true but seems like pop growth really slow.  Will have to try Umber to see if same.  Granted this is observation only have not gone with hard data.  Granted I don't seem to be very good at this game right now.

Yeah, I agree, it does seem like you should have one or the other, a tactical summon or a strategical summon, not both.  I rampaged as well through a few opponents with the ability to have 2 fire elementals.

I played on normal and I thought the world was too aggressive. It is quite frustrating losing cities to crag armies and umber-beasts. It takes so long to research decent troops upgrades and to actually build the decent troops to protect cities that for most of the first hundreds of turns it is all sovereign and heroes who can't cover the distance between cities nearly fast enough. This period takes too long and is frustrating.

Slow leveling (why? this is the most fun), slow tech, slow movement. The pieces of a great fun game are there but I am not a fan of the pacing.

Have played the start of two games now in 0.913 and the AI is much stronger.  I've been at war with everyone all the time and that has been no cake walk to defend all edges of my kingdom.

The political relations seem set a bit too high though, it is always asking for massive amounts of gold for trade and tech packs which should be much lower you'd think so that both sides would enter into them for mutual benefits, or the economy needs to be boosted you can't ask for 400 gold and only be making 11 a turn same with lvl 7 & 9 champions recruit costs.  No one is recruiting them as they cost 800-1600 gold so you'd have to play for days to get one and by then the game would be mostly completed.  Can hero recruit be modified too to cost multiples with out the tech and the tech decreases the hiring cost maybe 2-4-8 or something then the 1600 gold champion would be 200ish?

The AI monsters are aggressive and impressive.  Umbroth are maybe a little too powerful, I had one spawn burn down 3 cities before I caught up with it.  If their map moves are limited to 1 square that would help this a little too as I don't see why they need to travel faster than your troops can, or don't benefit from roads?

One issue I have found is the Drake camps disappear now one defeat and the drakes can no longer be built.    unless this was a 0.913 change?

I'm a long way from winning my first game on 0.913, challenging, large map (well, my second, but the first had a horrible setup and the monsters finished me early on), but answering what I can:

1. The monsters are a definite threat to me, strangling my expansion. They're less of a threat to the AI players - sometimes attacking but otherwise not. Altaria managed to establish a town in a place I had previously lost one to some Knights of Asok, and another next to a spider mob, both of which ignored them. They're continuing to be legitimately tough into what I guess is my mid-game. A Shrill Lord has been harassing one of my cities by sending out small shrill mobs, but thankfully hasn't become active itself.

2. Several AI are playing well. Kraxis is playing very aggressively (including breaking a non-aggression pact established after our first war, which I didn't know was possible). I am gradually winning, having swiftly beaten their much less threatening Resoln allies. Altaria are the most successful, spamming cities in a way that I haven't been able to - in part because of being invisible to the monsters. Someone has gobbled up all the low-level Kingdom heroes, I don't know if it's other Kingdoms hiring them or Empires killing them. I don't know about other factions but Kraxis is building tough troops to launch their major attacks while using lone heroes to harass my outposts. I'm playing Gilden so my own troops are faily hard, thankfully, given my lack of heroes. All 8 main factions are playing, I have yet to meet Yithril and haven't had much to do with Magnar or Tarth yet but all the others seem to be doing pretty well - even Resoln, who could stand the loss of three of their cities as they were spamming settlements and had places to fall back to after we signed our peace treaty. It's going to be a long, involved game for a while yet

3. Challenging.

4. Gilden, with default leader. I'm trying out all the different races to see which fits best. My best game on the previous version was as Umber (hint, hint).

5. No success as yet. I'm wearing Kraxis down by targeting their cities while they battle me, Altaria and Tarth, but Karavox is landing plenty of solid hits on me. There's also a cheese-war taking place - the AI has access to various movement cheats (early access to Tireless March and early escape from Tremor immobilization) which I'm countering with save scumming when he does something that should

Just aborted a game where basically started in such a position that there was no room to grow.  Not sure what I am doing wrong, AI Tarth and Altar each jumpted out to three and four settlements respectively and I was more or less boxed in.  There were no areas on the map, even with the toggle to show fertile areas to build cities.  Needless to say, start locations need to be seriously addressed with random maps, the seeding is horrid.  Yet again there was an Umberdorth lair nearby, not sure how, but one of the AIs either killed it our set it off on a rampage.

Pioneer/Outpost/City spam are seriously taking away from the game.   Don't even think I played this for twenty minutes until I realized it was lost cause, you cannot come back from exponential growth, except for AI being, well the AI.  As rule I don't wage war on Kingdoms playing as a Kingdom, call it personal, or role playing preference.

Game is still light years ahead of E WoM.  Of course if you are trying to get casual gamers then the game is going to need some work.  Folks are not going to want to play a game that as bfwebster indicated is tedious.