This is one of the primary reasons that you guys rock.  You aren't afraid of admitting your mistakes, and you take correcting them to the next level.  Not just getting past them yourselves, but putting it out there for the rest of us to learn and grow from.

Keep up the good work.  We're here with you, for you and because of you. 

I'm interested in what the advantages / disadvantages were in pursuing the home grown engine vs. licensing something like Gamebryo.

Aside from the issues that have come up, what were the primary factors?  Flexibility, feature set, cost?

Well, I am hoping they go the GalCiv2 route and make research into each elemental a particular track of magic tech. So, as you research fire spells, you unlock more and more powerful fire spells that you can then learn. But, they should not unlock the same level of spells in other areas. Then, if you want those areas, you have to spend the time pouring research into them. But, keep in mind that as you discover techs, the cost for the next one goes up, so there would be a real trade-off to trying to reach deep into multiple elemental magics.

To reinforce AndonSage's point:

Brad in your future post, can we have some of the reasoning for why some of the proposed changes to the magical system are occurring, and why they're being done a certain way rather than just a list of what the magic changes are or will be? Eg. Whats the aim/goal of moving the elemental books to research from character creation and what advantage does that bring from keeping it in character creation? I don't mean to have you take up a lot of time writing up more detailed explanations for why changes are occurring as you're no doubt busy with a lot of outstanding issues, but it helps to foster a more productive feedback discussion from the community, esp. if that helps guide your decision-making.

Also, if your attention is needed elsewhere, maybe you could appoint less 'vital' staff to be up-to-date with the dev plans on a particular game-system and can filter community feedback.  You're the AI specialist, and the distant broad-level project overseer so you're probably busy as it is.

RE: Minor Kingdoms

When I run into a minor kingdom I want a chance to be surprised at what I find.

Thus, I agree with an earlier poster that minor kingdoms should be able to build units, buildings and expand by conquest (not by using pioneer units). I also suggest;

1. Give each minor kingdom a personality - Peaceful (would not expand through conquest), Defensive (follows the swiss policy of neutrality through strength) and Imperialistic (seeks to expand through conquest).
2. Give each minor kingdom a leader - sometimes (25%) one of above average skill - a reknown warror, a skilled mage. To make the tactical battles interesting.
3. Give each minor kingdom a population - it may be human, but it may be populated by one of the other races or darklings.
4. Give each a random research strategy.

RE: Magic

I would differentiate the schools of magic more in a way that forces the player to make choices and really make magic a viable route to victory.

If you are moving the magic books to the tech tree then each element its own tech tree and more unique spells.

Example:

Fire Magic > Fire Magic Studies (building: Guild of Fire Mages) > Fire Magic Focus (building: Tower of Fire Mages) > Fire Mastery

Allow the player to research Fire Magic Studies - this would allow the player to build a Guild of Fire Mages which would give the player a 25% bonus when researching fire magic spells and the subsequent Fire Magic Focus -which allows one to construct a University of Fire that gives another 25% bonus to researching fire magic spells.

Fire Magic Focus > Fire Crafting (allows player to craft magical items embuded with fire magic - ring of protection vs fire)

Add more strategic and tactical spells that are different from each other - not the typical x points of damage based on intelligence.

Example:

1. Strategic: Fire Storm (as suggested by another poster) that burns down buildings in a targeted city tile. You don't have to enter a city to battle its defenders, just rain fire down on it to force them to come out to fight you.

2. Tactical: Forest Fire that burns down trees on the tactical map opening more of the map to movement.

3. Tactical: Heat Armor: Heats Metal Armor worn by selected unit. Useless against units wearing non-metal armor.

4. Tactical: Smoke: Reduces attack range of units to 1 tile thus rendering archer units and long distance magic attacks useless.

5. Tactical: Counter Water Casting - Disrupts Water Element spell cast during ememy's turn. If a water spell is not cast, its a wasted casting.

6. Tactical: Consume Hedgworks - Defensive Hedgeworks on battlefield are consumed by fire (unless protected by magic).

Wait, why not put it into Arcane Research, rather than Tech Research? Instead of Research Spell Level 2, it can become Research Fire Level 2. You're using Arcane Research to advance elements (or discover them) which makes more sense to me than suddenly multi-tasking the blokes you have working on civics and archaeology.

Can we please add movement paths with notation about where a unit/stack's movement will terminate each turn to the list of changes?

I recommend not working super hard on the AI right now beyond putting a few band-aids on the really bad stuff. Activating multiplayer might sound like a super bad idea right now, but multiplayer is the thing that will expose the game rules that will need to change.

If you finalize the AI now, when multiplayer comes around it will be clear that major changes will need to be made, and you'll either be forced to make separate rule sets for single player and multiplayer, or write the AI twice! Multiplayer allows us to examine the game design in detail, and will be the most efficient way to make Elemental the best it can be.

Also, I'm putting the final polish on an actual random map generator for Elemental. I still need to find a good way to place starting locations, but I have some ideas. I hope to be finished over the weekend. So far the results are good.

I saw a short story for this game awhile back which made me want it and I finally saw the game at best buy last Sunday night so when I got home i researched it on the internet on this site.I was mortified from what I read about all the problems and bad reviews.But I cant really explain why I did what I did(I ordered a copy and received it today) except I always had a great feeling that this game was going to be awesome.Ive never played this type of game so I dont know what im doing to notice any problems while playing this game but I will try again tomorrow.Call me crazy but I bought this game knowing there was problems on the chance it ends up being good.I will spend $50.00 and take a chance on Stardock,their passionate fanbase and a picture of a dragon(from the magazine article)on a style of game(turn base)ive never played before.STARDOCK I got a feeling it will be good so don"t let us down.

I agree that the minor factions with personality would be nice.  A minor faction could just be a "crippled" normal faction without a channeler.  One might only be able to build one city.  One might not be able to build troops.  etc.  And a way to play as minors then would be a nice bonus for hard-core fans.

But that said, adding features like this should wait.  The problem with the game that I can discern from the reviews is one of "feature creep".  It doesn't run like a well-oiled machine, it runs like a box of parts.  Lots and lots of parts.  There's a lot of features in the game, and there was never time to let those features gel to make a cohesive whole.  Some of the features need to be tweaked, some need to be revamped.  But adding more features will just lead to the same initial problem, I fear.

Hi bazerka250.  You're crazy.

I'm Nick.  I'm crazy too.

Brad-

My wish for minor factions is that they have unique units with special abilities that we can recruit if we ally with the minor.  That would give them a real reason to exist.  Next, they might have special spells that can be purchased if the relationship is good enough.  finally, a player who befriends them might get a boost to their diplomacy points (I forget momentarily what they are called in the game.)

BTW I almost felt your angst about unanticipated release issues while reading your post.  Your candor is refreshing, if painful to read.  Thank you for persisting in your dream game and sharing it with us, I think its going to be quite a ride!

I'm glad to see that a suggestion I made in one of my posts about compensating players who have purchased this game soon after release is something that Stardock is going to do. It's a very sensible thing to do and I am very glad to see that Stardock seems to be a company that actually supports the products it puts out, admits failures and strives to fix them. The company has integrity and this is something that is lacking in far too many companies and people today, far too many, and it's just damn good to see that integrity still exists out there.

There is one point that remains, a very serious one: why should I play this game right now or in the near future? I'm one of the people following updates, wanting to play but waiting until this game is in a state that can be considered a legitimate retail release. My girlfriend still plays however she says that she cannot play a serious game because patches render saved games unplayable. This is something that others have pointed out here on the forums as well. With that in mind, why should we continue to play Elemental and function as beta-testers who paid to participate in the beta when we cannot even continue to play our saved games through patches? Being unable to continue playing saved games through patches demonstrates that this game is still very much in a beta stage and, as we all know and admit, that just isn't acceptable.

Now, of course, major patches are likely to render older saves unplayable because they bring major changes and minor patches just the opposite...but how many major changes have to take place? What happened with the planning and testing stages that caused us to have Elemental in the current form that we have now? This still looks really bad, even with Stardock doing their part and addressing issues that are there. I would very much like to play Elemental and enjoy all that it has to offer as it changes, but I just can't bring myself to play this game when I know that after the next patch comes (whenever that happens) I will not be able to continue playing any of my saved games.

My only concern would be that you could research all of the elemental spell books every single game. Won't that reduce the uniqueness of each game if you have access to almost the same spells each game. Perhaps an alternative way to implement magic would be to have each character inherit a number of spell books - so each character has a unique spell choice and therefore strategy. Example a sovereign could begin with 5 earth books, 3 Fire books & 1 life books - that would give you access to level 5 earth spells, level 3 fire spells & level 1 life spells.

Now at the start of each game each sovereign hasn't learnt how to harness the power from higher level spell books (remember they just inherited them - they haven't learn to use them yet) and is limited to learning spells from book level 1. Magic oriented sovereigns such as Procipinee & Ceresa could have unique access to level 2 spells of whatever books they are carrying so long as that particular school has at least 2 books (skill levels). To get to level 3 they can learn that from the magic research tree as you suggested.

To get further spell books (i.e. past level 5 earth in my example) perhaps your sovereign could invent a new book from the magic research tree but it would need to be extremely expensive research. So maybe it should require a large investment in crystals or gold etc.

Alternatively you could find new books in monster lairs and ruins and after aquiring a new book you need to learn that book from the magic research tree (a new tech would appear). These books could be another life book or perhaps it could be a new unique rare school i.e. something that is not available at the sovereign creation screen.  If a sovereign is aligned to life magic that should prevent them from finding or learning death books and vice-versa

Anyone have opinions on this suggestion???

Frogboy, welcome home! It's great to hear from you. Of course, all of what you're talking about looks great!

Personally, I like the idea of researching magic. This would allow the player to put the starting points into their sovereign to focus on combat/magic/leadership, and lead to a more specialized character.

However, I highly recommend making this research multi-tiered: Researching "Level 1 Water Spells" leads to the option to research "Level 2 Water Spells." This way, spellcasters are forced to specialize or generalize, but cannot become masters of all schools of magic. So, if there are a maximum of 15 levels of Magic-Branch research, and there are (4 elemental spellbooks X 5 spell levels) PLUS the shard technologies, there will be many tracks a spellcaster can take, but none that will allow them to learn all of the spells--at least not all of the high level ones!

In addition, the adventure track should offer tracks that can accent ALL OTHER tracks. For example, if the sovereign is focusing on warfare, she might pursue the weapons and armor artifacts through unlocking those adventure quests, while another sovereign might unlock quests to find new types of magic spellbooks (mind, chaos, spirit, nature, etc.), and a third sovereign might unlock quests that help to grow the empire (find the mystical hen that lays golden eggs, thus adding additional food and gold to the city).

By the end of the game, the sovereign should have become very specialized and well-defined--UNIQUE--to the extent that the player wants to start a new game to find out what it would be like to focus on a different track.

Keep it up!

I've always thought "minors" where basically "majors" without Channellers. I.E. they are a bunch of common people gathered under the banner of a non-magical though stronger-than-them leader. Like a champion with groupies, as it were.

As such, have them act like "majors" but missing some of the tech/buildings that "majors" get, like shard harvesting and using Lost Temples.

Thank You................

The thing I want more of is variety.  Monsters, treasures, quests, weapons, buildings and goods/services.  In that regard, Civ has it right.  Each faction needs to be unique.  Unique buildings, unique text, unique everything.

Now, when riding a Warg and engaged in hand to hand combat, why doesn't it bite?  Why can't you ride your dragon? or a bear?  That's the kind of openess I want.  The more of it, the merrier.

If I remember correctly, Kumquat was actually developed for an even more ambitious game called Society. I think they made Elemental because it could be done using stuff they needed to make anyway for Society (game engine, highly moddable assets, dynasty system) but could be finished much earlier and would be a safer investment. (People have been demanding a new fantasy TBS game for years.) It's much easier to justify doing a super-big project when half of it is recycled from an earlier, smaller project.

I like this idea. Doing half the character creation during the game instead of before it would do a lot to promote the feeling that you're creating a unique story.

I would also feel much better about spellbooks being moved to the tech tree if researching said spellbooks carried an opportunity cost sufficient to prevent you from learning more than half of them during an average game.

Frogboy, please also consider minor-to-moderate changes to the XML language. There is so much we modders could do with a few more tags and functionnality!

As for the AI, have you considered (let's be very ambitious) to implement the very beginning of a true computer AI? No, I'm not talking about Skynet here :p. I'm talking about Creatures' Norns. As in, minor learning abilities. It could give something very, very interesting.

Welcome back, get the AI improved and Ill be a happy camper. !.07 is great, wish the game would have been released at this state instead of 1.0.

Keep up the hard work! I love the potential this game has and am really enjoying it despite the ai and performance things.

I just want to add to some of hte concerns about tying magic more directly to the shards.  I like the sound of that in general, but I've had a couple games where there are no shards remotely close to where I started out.  While this does pose a challenge, if I was stuck in that situation and completely unable to use magic until I got to a shard, the beginning of the game would be a lot more blah.  I look forward to seeing the full post on magic next week and hope the final result is a compromise that increases the importance of shards without totally crippling socvereigns without them.

Making the Books own techs with levels and researchable spells sounds nice (i hope i did understand that right.).

While you are at it you could implement some spells that draw from multiple Books? Say for summoning a Icelord you may need a 5Th level Water-book and the 8th level summoning book.

Furthermore would i like to see magical items bound to research of the books. For example a ring for the unit designer with 2 charges of the "blink" ability if you research enough of the airbook.

Lastly please do some more nondamge Tactial spells.

edit: The minor factions need to be more active in my oppinion. Less powerfull then the mayors but still something that can cause in some way or another some trouble. Maybe you could make them also quest givers or hire let us them or theyr heros. Speaking of heros you could draw them from the minor factions this way they may may not appear out of nowhere.

disclaimer: If this is a double post my FF fucked up.

I just posted an idea on the way that a global mana system could be instituted based on the lore of the game in the suggestions portion of the forum. It was getting kinda wordy so I decided to post it there rather then go on a rant here that would quickly be forgotten.

I have to say though, your company continues to impress me with its genuineness. I have been a long time shopper of Stardock products, but have yet to become active in the forums, however, your behavior and willingness to own up to the community response has changed my mind on this, and you will probably be seeing more of me in the future. Which could be good or bad, I tend to ramble.

Just keep up the good work, and keep on supporting this game, if you guys can get firm grasp of what you want the game to be, and listen to the community about how to implement it, then you will end up making this game into the game I know it should really be. (And to be honest, even now the game is better then most of the crap on the market recently....) 

I still would like more customization options for our sovereign,  Let us really play with our start....    Read Here for more of a list: https://forums.elementalgame.com/394749  <----- Read it for fun or profit .... shameless plug to get more people to read the post.. and tell me what they think.

From Edwin99 -   a post about more Fire spells.  

Fire Storm:   Requires 1 fire shard  1 Air Shard 

Mana: 40  Range 20 max from caster 

Creates a giant cloud of swirling flames that rain down over the area burning everything.

Last for 3 turns area of effect is 9x9 for first turn 

Turn 1  Damage = Int*3 * ((.5*fireshards)+.5) rolls an attack vs every unit and structure. Area affected 9x9

Turn 2 Damage = Int*2 *((.5*fireshards)+.5) rolls an attack vs every unit and structure. Area affected 6x6

Turn 3 Damage = Int*1 *((.5*fireshards)+.5) rolls an attack vs every unit and structure. Area affected 3x3

From post: https://forums.elementalgame.com/394926

Im still happy that I picked this game up on launch.   With some well thought out tweeks this game will join the others that people will keep going back to for years.