That is an option? let alone default. Thanks will change that right now. As for the scroll in and out to reset map does not work for me.

As for magic suggestions, I'm looking foward to Boolean Essence and the shared mana pool.

I think it would be funner though if using magic and learning spells were dependent on having the crystal that powers it.  Like, you need to have a fire crystal to cast infernal.  Maybe have a few spells which aren't crystal dependent, but just a few.  Given the similarity of the different elemental schools, I think maybe that was an original design decision. 

Since right now you can pick any school you want, it leads to a narrowing of the gameplay experience as most players will just pick the stongest ones and those that don't will still tend to pick the same spells from game to game.

In the magic tech tree you could always have options for extracting, say, fire essence from air crystals, but by default you would have to use whatever school you have crystals for.

Make magic more powerful but also make it more rare and precious, like spell books need to be found through adventuring or diplomacy with other factions.

Maybe have essence be a resource like gold without any limits, which you spend when you cast a spell?  Given the title and fluff of the game, I think essences should be divided into elemental variants.

You have yourselves a really fantastic game. I’ve been haunting these boards for awhile and purchased the game shortly after release. I whole-heartedly applaud you guys for continuing your work even after it hit retail. There is a TON of potential here and your player base knows this. Keep up the good work!

At the risk of redundancy, I’ll post some suggestions and observations.

Suggestions:

Option to disable animations / speed them up during tactical battle: I like to play with legions of archers. At times this can make the game feel tedious as I wait for archer animations to process.

Increased customization / variety / flair for Sovereigns: I’ve seen this mentioned before. Perhaps including the option to buy a special ability during character creation might help diversify them.

Unit grouping / Hot Key binding: Losing your battle group when they stop in a city is frustrating.

Chance to hit enemy calculated: while hovering over an opponent with the weapon icon displayed, it would be nice to see the probability of your attack hitting and possible damage range.

Observations:

Adjusting camera angle in Tactical Battle throws off unit selection: I’ve readjusted my angle and at times have been unable to mouse / select individual units. I’m not sure if this is a bug.

Confusion increased my damage: I had confusion cast on a unit of warhammer weidling troops (I think 12 guys in total). I clocked an opponent for roughly 2000+ damage. This has happened twice I believe.

^Wouldn't just fixing shard damage scaling fix that. When player gets fire shard, he'll pick fire damage spells over others, etc...

Great and everything, but where exactly does making the game fun fit in? As it is now, the game is a huge mess where there is nothing to do early on, and dragging the game on becomes a chore.

 This might not really be your kind of game. The pace of the game is how most of us like it.

Agreed. It's like Civilization but there is more to do. It's not for everyone and they'll never make everyone happy.

I certainly appreciate the candour and openness that you are displaying with your product. I am a software developer so I know how nasty the public can be. Your willingness to stick with the product is the main reason I am sticking with Elemental. I have played 6 games so far, and only last night have I managed a win. My overall feeling is that this is a diamond in the rough. The patches that you are putting out are great and the work you are talking about doing is exciting. All the best to you and your team.

I hope I'm not too late. Downloading now.

Very good.  This addresses many of my concerns as far as the gameplay

Agree. Global pool? Great! Maintaince instead of enchantment slots? Great!

Moving spell books to tech tree? No good!

Listen to your customers SD.. I'm 100% certain almost everyone would agree with this.

BTW I know you hate to be compared to MOM. But do you notice a trend? Your first two changes are inline with MOM/AOW.

Your last not so much..

That said I can see your point

Magic has 2 issues..

(1) It's too easy to get all spell books

(2) They are too similar anyway..

(2) can be fixed only by adding more interesting spells, and totally revamping the spell books, even in my wildest dream you won't be able to do this.

Given (2) trying to fix (1) is somewhat redundant.

So instead of pretending it's an interesting choice in sovereign design , you might as well put it into tech.

Sad.. 

To clarify.

In MOM

(1) Spell books had distinct spells..

&

(2) You could only pick some of the spellbooks (it was almost impossible to get all.. except by reloading over and over again when sacking dungeons)

Both together makes the decision making hard. 

Without the first, it doesn't really matter if the second is met or not.

Actually in one early dev journal they actually described a system like this. I have no idea what happened after that, that resulted it this totally stupid magic system.

Arrogance? That they wouldnt copy MOM? Or some sort of copyright issue? (don't think you can copyright a mechanic right?)

You want to to know the competition?  Why Elemental makes me cry ? 

Rise from Erebus mod for Civ4 (A mod started off of the FFH2 but much much more).

http://greyfox.me/rife/ 

All these changes sound great and like they will result in a much improved system, something everyone is looking forward to.

As most people have stated I have concerns about the spellbooks changes unless you intend to do something like this:

1) Make each Spell book into their own individual tech tree within magic, thereby forcing a player to learn level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, in order to get those high level spells that we will want .... along with:

2) Make magic scale in power and usefulness better so that we want to go for the high level spells since they will give us something to look forward to and maybe even drool for.

3) Give each spell group their own"flavor", referencing MoM (the spiritual predecessor of E:WoM) I would suggest something like a system where each spelltree has certain similar themes, special effects or types of spells available earlier, later or not at all.  For example:

        Earth    -   Early gain of summoning of minor earth creatures, A focus on single target spells and defense / food

                       building spells 

        Fire      -   Early gain of short range direct damage spells, Creatures that are available are high damage dealing but

                       low health, spells which enhance offensive capabilities and metal mining ability

        Air       -   Creatures that are of higher movement capacity, Spells which tend to have more random but intense effects

                       (i.e. A storm that strikes 5 random locations with 3 space of the target space dealing huge damage to them

                       and stunning the targets), Spells that have non random but very low damage effects. Movement and ranged

                       weapon enhancing spells (including the caravans on roads)

       Water   -   Spells which reduce movement speed or stun targets, mostly spells that affect all targets in area of effect but

                       not for as severe of damage.  Terrain changing spells.  Trade enhancing / limiting spells.   Defense reducing

                       / armor penetrating spells.

4) Make it so that there is a "resistance" or "magical defense number" that is given to all units, this will be a base number that is further enhanced by the number of levels of spell research in each "spellbook" up to the amount of essence of the highest essence hero in that stack.  This also makes it worthwhile then to have high essence heros in different stacks and changes the synamics of multiplayer games based on what spells those players around you are researching and which mana are available to hold for casting spells.

Using a system similar to this would give spellbook research meaning and change the replayability as well as enhance the mutiplayer aspects in my opinion.

Actually, shards currently add to your mana pool (aka Essence). Each shard you build a shrine on gives you +10% to your Essence. So nothing different here.

Ouch! I can't read 242-post threads (even if I just come back from a Front 242 concert! Was mega-cool!)

So my 2 cents:

- About minors. Why do people want to make minors more like majors? We already have majors. Minors provide more variety and can have very interesting mechanisms. I remember we talked about it in the dev journal when they appeared and also on the Diplomacy thread. (In fact, I fear that these forums become a few never-ending threads with forumers repeating ad nausea their same arguments on X or Y feature. Seems to me that we already covereda a lot of ground during the Alpha Beta; better put it to good use!)

- About the 'free expansion'. I beg your pardon for not jumping from joy and kneel from gratitude at that news but...it would seem normal not to pay again until everything BoogieBac wrote on his Master List finds its way to the game (which has by now been acknowledged as being barely a game). Sorry to be harsh but I can't see me paying again for Elemental till at least 6 months in the future (and I already paid 100$!! between the CE and the 20$ of added tax that the postman extorted me this morning. ). Like someone somewhere else said "expansions are for adding new content" like, say, an underground plan or dungeons or underwater cities and factions (Think Rl'yeh and Atlantis!).

You know what bothers me with spell system.

There are too little of them of higher level. pretty much 85% of them are crammed into first 5 levels.

For example, there is just 1 (and with letters: one) 6th level spell in whole game!

Also many spells are duplicate versions of different school. Blizzard, Infernal. Chain Lightning, what's the difference: NONE!

Then, there are several strategic spells that do the same thing: destroy resource tile by water, sand or air, your pick.

P.S.

Summoning school is delayed too much. You can more quickly discover 3 and 4th level elemental summons that outclass any summon from summoning school.

There was a poll and apparently not "most of us" like it.

I have a question that maybe doesn't belong here. I saw in locked AI thread that you are porting code to Python and that is easier for players to read. Why is that I am using C++ and I did some moding for M&B in Python and I didn't notice that Python would be any easier.

Because we won't be releasing the C++ source code for users.

Hey what that over there ???

*takes kryos C++ Source Code and flees*

On a more serious note: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, and released C++ Source Code makes for some really good mods! (Not that i would have any  idea on what to do with it.)

Releasing the Source Code would mean releasing the Engine which is a very, very bad idea, financially. Some random person could completely rip it off.

Secondly, you'd have to recompile the entire game for your tweaks, which isn't something Impulse::Reactor can support, nor something that the average user is up for the task. Plus, it would be a HUGE compile. I imagine it would take a good amount of time...

What we’re going to do is that for users who own the game by a certain date will get (at least) the first expansion pack for free as a token of our appreciation for hanging in there with us.  As some long-time Stardock gamers can tell you, our expansion packs aren’t minor things. 

- nice

The elemental spell books (earth, air, fire, water) will get moved out of character creation and into the tech tree so that players can determine what spell books they want.

- nice

In MoM the shards, hum... nodes of your books were adding more mana (in fact not mana but magic power that you wouldsplit between mana, research and skill - how much mana you can use per turn). And that was a brilliant system. You had to do choices : lots of mana ? few research and few spells. A lot of research ? few mana and low skill (you couldn't cast a lot of them)

Elemental should borrow that system.

For the books : in MoM it was really hard to get new ones after those you chose at start. So you spent a lot of time learning spells from your books, not discovering new books. So initial choices were significant because you had to do with what you've chosen.