That's all I want.

Playing against another person is overrated, most people refuse to lose and so leave.  The best and worst thing about MMO's is other people.  I prefer gaming with friends on a LAN so you can grudgingly admit they got the better of you in that round, or truly do a victory dance, or better yet smack them upside the head while asking them where your reinforcements are.

Which is how I want my games, perfect

The MP possibility is nice (you never know if the whim hits you) but I could even do without it.

the combat AI is non existant,  hope your coding includes that.

Or even the coding that puts casters in front and summoned monsters/melee units  in the back getting fixed before release.

Just  get one caster with a 9 square AoE spell and the mobs will chase you around forever. 

but it is still the engine that worries me, and not just OoM crashes.  The UI popups stack  and block each other and then the UI Focus gets so lost you have to reload.  if you have 2 combats and 2 breakthroughs at the start of a turn, you better hope you saved, 'cause even the autosave slot may end being hosed. 

Speak of Autosave, what is up with the engine not cleaning itself up before a game load?  I have to restart the game in XP 32bit every time when I have gotten past starting saves and want to do a game load.

It's a matter of pacing control.  When you're the only one playing, you can control the pace of things.  When you have another human in a turn based game, it's different.

Also, a LOT of things make things very unfair to the point we've had to take them out of multiplayer until we have time to implement more multiplayer specific stuff (for instance, quests are ridiculously unfair in MP because if you get a quest that gives you a +3 sword early, all the skill in the world won't make up for that).

What I'm inclined to do is have the multiplayer version of Elemental split off from the single player.  This is what Blizzard has done with SC2 and it's a really good idea.  So the MP version of Elemental would get its own tech trees and spells and modified game mechanics that play better online.

When I have a bit more time, I have an idea for doing multiplayer tactical map games (i.e. the entire game would be focused around the player building their spell book prior to the game and then coming in and making use of their spells one by one to get the resources and mana and creatures and such they need to win).

Whatever changes you might make in the multiplayer version, I hope you still allow people to play the unaltered unbalanced and completely unfair non-altered-for-multiplayer in custom games with their friends.  My group of friends, that I have been playing TBS games with over the years, have no problems with the original version of the game and hope the altered version won't be mandatory for playing multiplayer.

For anything that is unbalanced in multiplayer, I hope it will have a settings toggle to turn it on or off. i.e. I would hope quests, victory conditions (ala Civ4), etc. can be turned on or off during the game's setup in multiplayer (and single player too, for that matter), based on what people want to play. I haven't played the beta (I only pre-ordered recently) but if things are already done this way, then never mind.

I do not really like the fact, that you want to limit multiplayer, instead of giving players choices to ban some artefacts or spells etc... I am looking forward mainly to multiplayer, and I was expecting mods to take care of balance, but I do not want to play dumbed down version of elemental. Just because of the reason you wrote. If you can not do it properly, leave it to players, but do not screw it please.

And for +3 sword, what is the difference, if AI get it and own me, instead of player? For example, this thing, can be solved really easily, by adding rarity to items, and then being able to set what rarity of items appear in which godie hut, or better, being able to exclude every single item from it.

Only problem can be some really game changing powerfull spells, which should be banable, and we are set.

Pacing is always problem for TBS, but if people go to play MP, they expect that...

I am sure, there is sooner or later going to be mods aimed on balance. And to achieve it, we need options, and not forcing players to one scenario no matter what. 

Shouldn't the mod community help solve that?  There's some great suggestions on the Elemental Ideas forum.

That sounds like an awesome idea for it, kind of like a Magic: The Gathering MP version of Elemental.  In a good way!

Well, here we have the eternal controversy: SP vs. MP.

I think that one of the first thing to define when designing a new game is where to focus it, and in this case it´s totally clear that the game
is designed specifically for SP, and I like it so!.

At this pre-release time, and if I were the Frog, I wouldn´t spend any time thinking in how must the game be modified for to get a better MP experience,
though I agree in to have it splited from the SP one: I don´t want bugs in my SP games coming from code specifical for MP.

I don´t know much about MP games but I think that the main requirement for them must be a fine balance, and to achieve this goal the better way is
making specifical MP maps, with no huts nor quests that bring the luck factor to the game; the same applies for the way to recruiting heros. So I
think MP games are usually more of a map/mod work than a coding one.

Please, let´s the Frog concentrates in give us a good AI and stability for the D-Day!  

I might get Elementalitis too.. LOL

Stardock has really never done multi player. Brad is all about the AI and that is ok with me. It would be cool to see a mod that makes multiplayer fun though. Id love a ranking system etc.

I played Dominions multiplayer.  And quite frankly most of these rpg tbs 4E games I enjoy single player much more than multiplayer. 

My hope is that you design the AI to have difficulty settings.  So that when the "easy" or "normal" setting becomes too easy, the next higher difficulty setting can be used.  I think if you overdo the AI and "turn it all the way up" as some in this tread recommend, you will make the game unfriendly to the casual gamer.  Plus, I don't like to lose a game repeatedly as I am learning it.  Getting repeatedly clobbered by an AI that inherently knows the intricacies of the game while I don't just isn't fun.  That having been said, I don't mind sometimes losing.

Please do not forget that there is also coop in multiplayer. And in coop, it is fine to have all those imbalances.

All I ask is that the ai PLAYS TO WIN not just there to DELAY the human players inevitable victory. I see so many games where it's just time spent getting to the end of all the turns instead of full fledged goals for both the human player and the AI. Also, if/when the human player has a moderate lead the ai's should start allying and banding together against him. This is what makes a great game imho when the challenge remains in the middle and end game not just the beginning.

What a panty waist. You remind me of that commercial where the drill sargent is a psychologist and asks the guy if he wants a kleenix and then throws it at him and calls him a cry baby. hahahaha I start out playing every game on its hardest settings and rarely have to go down a notch. I learn on hard so there aren't anymore levels to go up when I defeat the stupid ai. Man crying over an ai being to hard is just the most funniest thing I've ever heard of.

....And "psychoravin the Internet Troll" returns.  I was wondering where you'd been    

@KalGerek:  I wouldn't worry about difficulty levels.  Stardock's previous game Galactic Civilizations 2 has numerous difficulty settings, and I imagine it will be much the same with Elemental as well.    

Impossible?
Chess. Nuff said.

Humans can learn, yeah. But we are talking about games with fixed rules, nothing like the chaotic nature of real life.
An AI can very well be superior to any human player, in a game, with rules and limits.
Especially in turn based games, but sure, as the games get more and more complex with fewer and fewer limits, the AI also gets more and more handicapped, it simply cant deal with all the options.

I still have my hopes up for an AI revolution once quantum / photon cpus enter the mass market though, then again, we'd need a self-coding AI (which has been done several times).
Or even better, a global AI project, commonly writing a huge framework for a good AI which can be used and built upon for any need (games, military, whatever).
As it is right now, we're basically re-inventing the wheel everytime a new game is made (teaching the AI to move fowards, and jump), while say, the automobile industry has had a proper framework to build upon and modify for a long time. Dumb analogy but you get my point.