Glad you read my post earlier, but I'm not sure you quite got what I was saying as my comments were for use specifically within Tactical Battles.  I <3 Tactical Battles.

As much as I like Shadow Magic, for me city building was this game's one saving grace (I really like city builders, but good city builders are hard to find).  However it could be much better.

Some ideas to start with:

- Housing should not consume food; either make it something for limiting army size or base food consumsion on current population.

- Requiring housing to level the city up and then setting the "base" population cap above the required amount does not make sense. It would be better to have the city "expand" when nothing else is being constructed (housing is built internally and automatically).

- Have more buildable structures that provide resources (not percent bonuses) that do not require a special tile. Things like a gold mine should not be required; but rather provide a significant advantage.

- More variety of buildings in general (particularly per faction / per game buildings) so cities are not clones of each other.

Personally I like the city building. I don't like the way most cities end up with the same buildings in them and the lack of distinctive feel, etc, but the actual mechanics of building cities I think is quite cool.

Which pretty much proves the point. Everyone will have opinions and conflicting ideas. What is needed is someone with a strong vision at Stardock (someone very clever with an excellent understanding of what makes other fun/challenging TBS games great) to put together a coherent whole rather than the many disjointed pieces we currently have.

What I liked about AoW:SM is that I didn't need to concern myself with whether or not I had enough housing (or food).  In Elemental there were many times I'd find myself wondering why some of my cities haven't expanded yet.  So I'd spend time checking each city to see what the housing situation was.  Inevitably I'd find out that some of them had reached the pop cap because I didn't have enough houses.  Like you suggested, I would rather have housing built internally and automatically.  When nothing is being constructed, increase the population growth rate by a %.

Food is another area aspect that I'm fond of it's current implementation.  Why do buildings need to consume food?  It's not intuitive for me.  Why not base it upon population?  That's something everyone understands.

Maybe the lack of personality for each city is part of the problem.

As it stands, I might as well name them "Sprawl 1", "Sprawl 2", "Sprawl Around the Mountain", etc.

+1 to keep the City Building. I enjoy it.

My biggest request is to greatly expand the magic system. You don't have to make it just like MoM, but at least use the concepts of elemental spell differences, resistances, and world spells. I hope this can be part of 'B.'

It's getting there and a lot of the ideas are good. little enhancements will go a long way to making this a good game.

UI

Hotkeys: There needs to be more hotkeys and more customisation on how those keys are assigned. Right now it irritates me to not have a way to find out what they are and how to assign them. E.g. If I hit G by mistake it freezes the unit and I can't make it move until I realise oh it must be on guard by mistake.

Escape key needs to be more versatile and cancel anything.

Inventory: It is still too difficult to buy and equip. It annoys me I have to go to the shop, exit go into inventory, forgot to buy one item, go back into shop, exit, go back into inventory. Frogboy, you mentioned in Beta that there was going to be a more intuitive inventory screen, and I'm not sure if you meant the current one, but that's not enough. I want to easily see if I don't have gloves or boots equipped, not try and sift through the pool of items.

Quests

I really like quests and I can see the potential, and you guys know there needs to be more quests so I won't belabor this point other than to say it feels like the beta still.

Also there NEEDS to be a quest management screen much better than the exisiting. I want a list of current quests. I don't even care about the ones completed, I only care about the ones that aren't, and I am genuinely surprised you actually haven't done anything about this given how fun the quests are in the game.

Tactical Battle

It's not far off being decent in my opinion; some balance tweaks will do the world of good. Again it's just the little things that tarnish the experience. The ability to auto resolve without wasting precious mana. The ability to speed up animations or skip them altogether. I really quit like the way it's going to shape up.

Also where are my battle summons? Where are my illusionary warriors? And where's my wall of fog to hide my archers from enemy archers?

Magic

MoM had this down pat. I hated choosing between the books because they could do quite different things. I loved light for the healing and raising, I loved Nature for the transformation fo the land and maximisation of cities and resources and food. Death was great for debuffs and draining. Blue was brilliant for movement and illusions. As it stands now it doesn't really matter what spell books I choose because they all pretty much do the same thing. I don't know if it's just a matter of coding some good spells or whether the system can't really do it.

Also a little peeve of mine is why does endurance have a 5 turn duration? I hope it's fixed it because that's just stupid; if it's unbalanced then put a upkeep on it.

Champions

Champions aren't heroic enough, unless I am missing something. Assigning stats is pretty boring, I want to give them abilities like in Age of Wonders where you could give them special actions. It's not enough to stick a couple of strength here to add 2 attack or 3 essence or infintessimally increase spell damage. Why not be able to add one of the talents every few levels such as wealth. Or make the adventuring tree even more cool by enabling a chance at skill upgrades to the champions

General

This brings me to general points such as mods. I know Stardock made this game to be modded and the community would make great mods, and I'm sure they will. But that's not what I want. I want to be guaranteed a good game without having to go trawling for mods. It's not that I don't trust the community, It's just I don't trust the community . Stardok NEEDS to have maps and quests and interesting stuff from the beginning. The expansions will no doubt help, although I guess I am going to ahve to shelve the game until then because it seems quite uninspiring.

Lastly, if you say you are going to address things then do it. If you aren't sure, then don't say a thing and do the stony faced Blizzard thing. I remember clearly at the end of the beta (I missed phase 1) where bugs were mentioned that you were aware of them and fixes were already ready, or being worked on, for the release version, but of course they weren't; and again I don't want to retread painful ground, but I am seeing it again. I thought there was supposed to be some kind of mana pool in 1.08 or was it going to be in 1.1? Either way I was quite disappointed to see the old imbue/level up champions to try and get more mana regeneration. Maybe you should even consider going to a separate mana pool and casting skill again? I wouldn't object to that for the sovereigns.

First of all, thanks for putting in the extra effort needed to turn this diamond-in-the-rough into the great game it deserves to be.  We all know about the issues at release, but that's in the past and I'm glad you guys are focusing on what needs to be done.  Not too many other game companies would show this loyalty to it's customers (free expansions, ect).  Anyway, I hate to butt-kiss, but you guys have taken a lot of flak and deserve some praise for trying to make things right.

Now for some constructive criticism...

My main issue is that sovereigns are boring.  The character creator is awesome, but after you're done with that you're pretty much done developing your sovereign.  The rest is just spells, equipment, and stat points.  I'd like to see traits that you can select every X amount of levels.  Maybe your sovereign forsakes armor and gains a nice attack and dodge bonus.  Maybe your sovereign's command of the air grants him the ability to fly.  Maybe his strikes become so powerful that his attacks ignore armor/resistances/whatever.  The possibilities are endless, someone more creative than myself can come up with better ones.  I'd like to see this extended to troops, as well.  Instead of just equipment, you should be able to assign your various troops different traits.  Berserker vs desert nomad vs traditional knight is more exciting to me than axe guy vs sword guy.  This brings me to my next point...

'Magic' should extend beyond spells.  By this I mean your heroes/sovereign should have a more magical nature, and their abilities/traits/development should reflect this.  Even the traits that are selectable when you create a sovereign all mostly mundane things that any talented human could do.  A water sovereign should be able to walk through the ocean, and give his stack the ability to do the same.  Maybe a hero with powerful fire magic causes the workers at an opponent's research node to perform at a slower pace because of the sweltering heat when he is near.  A kingdom founded by a powerful death mage is able to enchant a few elite units with a small chance of instant death on attacks that land.  This can be extended to monsters, random events, whatever.  Bring magic out of the spellbooks and into the actual game world.

Selecting too many schools of magic should lead to a jack of all trades character that doesn't excel in any school.  Nobody likes a hero whose power is 'lol, everything :)'.  This would help create diversity among the sovereigns and their kingdoms.  I want to see the Ice Queen and her forces battle the fire-wielding Necromancer, not sovereign #1 vs sovereign #2.

I'm fine with the death of a sovereign being an instant game over, but if that's the case sovereigns should be wrecking machines.  If you see an enemy sovereign enter your territory you should be alarmed.  It should take several units/heroes to bring one down.  This would add a sense of risk in choosing how to play your sovereign, as you decide whether to use him to bolster your defense (and where) or sending him to give a big boost to your front lines.  He doesn't have to start off like this, but by mid-game a sovereign should be a tremendous force.  Maybe a peaceful sovereign gains strength when he's standing close to his capital, maybe an offensive one gains a bonus when he's in enemy territory.  Perhaps an especially twisted sovereign actually suffers penalties when he's forced to defend others.  This could come from selectable traits, or the game could slightly alter your sovereign whenever he either defends or invades a city.  There are tons of examples in fantasy of mystical beings losing power in strange lands, or being more unstoppable when in the confines of their home realm.

Tactical Combat needs some sprucing up.  I'd like to see things like defense-oriented heavy infantry getting free attacks on opponents that pass within two squares of them.  Pikemen having extra reach, but weaker counter attacks (except against cavalry).  Ect... I'd like variety in my units.  When you get into a tactical battle, you should have to think to yourself, 'hmm... how can my knights, my pikemen, and my priest beat his archers, scouts, and berserker?'  I think it's awesome we can design units, and giving us the ability to create units with a wider range of functions would make this even better.

Smaller suggestions:

-Improve the economy options.  In 1.07, monster hunting was the only thing keeping me from going broke.  I know you addressed this in 1.08, but I think this area needs some tweaking.

-More variety in how cities look, you should at least be able to pick from two or three skins when you build something.  Pretty big request, I know.

-The ability to challenge the enemy sovereign to a non-lethal duel.  Perhaps there could be a morale bonus/penalty if you win/lose/decline the offer.  It'd be cool if heroes could challenge other heroes, too.  Seems like it'd be a cool way to start a battle sometimes, or gauge the power of a rival without outright attacking him.

-Expand on the possible roles of heroes.  Some heroes should be great leaders, some great mages, some great administrators, some great spies, and others great adventurers.  You should be able to build heroes to be good at a certain function.  Also, give some sort of advancement/progress to non-combat heroes.  Bob the accountant isn't much with a sword, but his managerial skills are just as valuable.

-Heroes should emerge from your citizens.  What are all these lazy civilians doing?  I'd figure most of them are working regular jobs, but perhaps a few take to adventuring.  And perhaps a few live long enough to make a small name for themselves.  And perhaps a few of those are good enough to be royally sponsored.

Wrote more than I meant to, but there you have it.  Some of these suggestions have probably been repeated ad nauseum, but I see great potential in Elemental and figured I'd throw my voice in the mix.  Thanks for the continued work, and I look forward to seeing what you guys do from here.

As stated by posters above me, many facets of the game are quite boring/bland.

Heroes/Sovereigns - Definitely need to be more epic in feel and scope. They should outclass any standard units. Period. Items they acquire and use should add abilities or spell charges. Magic wands for ranged magical attacks. Something, bloody.. something. Look at the games we have all played. Disciples, Homm, AOW.. bloody heck, Lords of magic! Hero/Leader units GET special items and treatment, why should Elemental try to veer away from what we have come to expect as a standard in the genre? By all means, reinvent what needs reinventing, but don't mess with what works well, makes sense, and we have all come to expect just to BE there.

Mom's ability to cast a generic create item spell ( with caps on the +'s and amount of things you add to the item) and later create artifact spell (sky is the limit, if you had the mana resources and casting power to get the uber item made) was PRIMO.

Eg, I could start a game with sorcery magic and have the spell wind walking researched which allowed my enchanted hero the ability to 'float' across terrain and allowed all units stacked with me to float as well, at the speed of the hero enchanted. Wind walking had a pretty hefty upkeep. So off to cast create item, pick a generic ring as the item to create, slap a 'permanent' wind walking on the ring, Voila.. my hero now has a nifty windwalking ring.

There were just SO many possibilities. Most unit enchant spells had upkeeps, but by creating items with permanent enchants, I could afford to buff my heroes up nicely and spend my mana maintaining other more important global spells. Speaking of global spells.. should be some, every magic tier and type. I absolutely LOVED being able to create cheap staves with 1-4 charges of a low level spell (healing, phantom warriors, earth to mud, web), and then be able to cast these things in combat and NOT use my mana. They fully recharged after every battle and the really UBER spells would cost a fortune to put into items, so it was balanced out well enough that you didnt have some killer spell right from the get go.

Starting spells - I get so mad at Elemental every time I create a Sov. Why? I make mages. I LIKE mages. I LIKE magic. I DO NOT like starting my game after picking all spellbooks at creation only to see the same 3 crap bland utility spells and having NO summons, NO combat magic, NO buffs.. it just feels like the biggest slap to the face. I hate that to 'buy' equipment at the start of the game you have to spend points from the same pool of points you use to buy stats and skills!

O M G.. srsly? Stone ages much? How about this guys - A pool of points JUST for stats. Several points JUST for abilities and spellbooks, and last, some points JUST for starting gear? Epic.

Mana/Essence - Annoying to not be able to SEE it at Sov creation. No options to increase mana if I want to make a big ol beeftastic mana pool spellcaster? Hrmph. Fail. Why no good equipment for a caster? How about a mana regen 1 ring or a staff with 10.0 essence as options to be purchased or even standard gear that comes with characters who make a Sovereign with casting in mind?

Starting Skills/perks - Bland. +2 food for 5 points? Who in their right mind is going to pass that up when looking at the rest? You need food bad enough in this game, taking that one is like, mandatory imo. 10 points for 1 tech a turn generation? Bland. 10 points for 1 arcane research? Bland.

How about instead of buildings providing X% to this or that, starting skills add %. Eg, instead of 10 points getting me 1 gildar a turn or 2 food a turn, I get abilities that enhance what will already be provided in the game. Perhaps an ability to double my research in tech, or double my mana regen. (hell just a mana regen ability from the start would be nice), and while we are at it, should make it so the abilities I choose at the start can be upgraded in game as I am leveling up. Give me some of that ol RPG feel.

Games like HOMM or King's Bounty come to mind here, where I may have rank 1 of 3 in an ability. How about that mana regen as a starting ability giving 1 mana per turn. Upgradable to rank 2 (3 mana per turn) and rank 3 (5 mana per turn) as I level up in game?

I feel like I could just keep going on and on and on, and I really doubt much of what I say is going to change anything. Besides, there are so many people thinking like me and wishing for things like me, they will definitely post them ( and will probably look a lot better than my posting!)

I give up, going to wait for next patch with fingers crossed

I have a general comment regarding the UI. Many people have extensively addressed the functionality, but my mini-gripe would be with the asthetics.

Firstly, the fonts need to be grander or more stylized or fancy or however you want to put it.

Secondly, the appearance is a little squarish and bland. Make it a bit more interesting by doing things like making the spellbook look like old parchment, or using things found in a wizards lab as menu backdrops, or even integrate them by having players click things like flasks and inkwells and journals in order to navigate the different screens.

Have a theme for each section of the menus where the music changes and there are relevant background sounds as well as visual effects. Make each menu section take up the whole screen to focus and immerse the player in each element (no centered pop-up window).

Use things like runes and charms and old-world artifacts and inventions as colourful elements to give it that arcane look and feel. Myst might be a good inspiration here.

Think musty, misty, shiny, glowing, rusted, rustic, elegant, extravagant, bizarre, cluttered, obsidian, marble, gold, silver, jade, etc.

It doesn't matter which slot this gets placed in, as long as something is done about it. A game with a wonderful mystic and mysterious 'feel' about it can have players forgive much, and just be happy going from screen to screen in their own little world.

Frogboy,

I truly hope that you do as you have stated and make this into the game it could have been...

That having been said I acknowledge my sincere disappointment in the game in it's current state but, since you are asking for what may be done to improve things and if I read you correctly what we think should be improved upon to help E:WoM turn the corner and achieve something special here are some of the core elements I believe need to be worked on the most.

The feel of the land:

The world is supposed to be a post cataclysmic recovering world devastated by magic and trying to recover so how about giving us some of that feel.  When a civilization collapses There are always things left behind, these things are generally obvious in the ruins that are left and the objects on the landscape showing signs of the exterminated peoples and cultures.  Using this idea there are things I expect to see and ideas incorporated.

Ruins :

City ruins, Special unique structures unable to be understood, Abandon Temples, Ancient Landmarks, Oracle locations, Strange towers, Forts, Signs of the Cataclysm, Battle ruins, burned out castles, abandon schools, Ruined port on the sea, Abandon trading posts, and some kind of roads or trails showing pointers between a few of these location showing people once traveled between them.

In each type of ruin I expect there to be hints about what it was used for and perhaps a chance of discovering something random and appropriate to that type of ruin:  Ancient books, Devices of forgotten technology, random amounts of gold, weapons, people who revere or worship the ancient object, hints at other locations, legends and rumors of other greater possibilities and rediscoveries.

Unlockable locations - The current mechanism for locations seems partially right but seems to miss the boat in many respects, especially where it comes to the random spawns based on research for entire groups of locations.  In my opinion About 80% of all locations should be generated on the map at the beginning of the game and be visible upon entering into scouting / visible range of the square or at the very least upon entering the square.  The lowest levels of locations should have between 50-100% of the visible locations able to be entered without any research much like the abandon caravans are currently.  Research should then instead focus on making them appear through the Fog of War as location icons perhaps within X spaces of the actual location to account for unreliability of rumors ect... The research paths could be logical topics such as: Paths of Commerce, Ancient Battlegrounds, Schools of the Elders, Temples of _______, Homes of the Titans, Cities of the Past.  Different amounts of research reveal more of these through the FoW with a small chance of making one of the other originally non-visible locations appear.  Additionally to actually unlock the locations of the mid and higher levels in order to enter into them specific research must be done on those types of location.  This is the research needed to overcome the runes or have the knowledge of the places to look in order to find where the items of interest might be.  At the highest level of locations in addition to the normal research to make the locations show up a spell could be unlocked, a Ritual of Opening for X, when this spell is then researched and cast or simply cast it opens all of the locations of Magus the Mad or whatever.  When that spell is then cast the locations become open and there is a chance for random monsters to be released from them much like the current mechanism.

Tech Tree:

I should not have it be more difficult to research a very basic idea within a tech category simply because I have spent a large amount of effort researching a more advanced idea within the same category.  With the current design of the tech tree if I advance one portion of a tech tree it affects all other research costs within the same tree.  Specific "dead end" research branches should be resource related i.e. mining should be a general research followed by smelting and on up the line but research into mining specific ore types or things such as beekeeping could be tied to a specific research to get full value from those resources.  This would account for an improved understanding of how to effectively exploit that resource rather than merely have it present.

Interrelation of items within a tech tree, mining should need to be achieved before metal weapons and armor are available.

New topics included in the tech tree, these could then be built into the prerequisite for a variety of other structures.  Among those items which are frequently lost in the fall of a civilization are the advanced forms of various skills such as carpentry, stone working, metalworking, mathematics and mechanics.  These skills are often ones that are known by the eldest and most vulnerable in times of crisis so they are among the fastest lost especially when the apprentices and journeymen are sent to war and many of them lost during war.  These same techs that are ones that different factions could start with in order to help with race flavor.

Map refinement:

Quest locations, Goodies huts, Notable locations and perhaps even lairs of monsters should spawn their own map locations as tactical maps rather than be simple encounters on the terrain type of the land under them.  This will require the addition of a variety of additional terrain tiles and so I expect would require being delayed until the second expansion but, a series of basic wall and corner tiles and a basic floor tile would give the community something to work off of for modding into more types such as ones for specific types of encounters such as laboratories, temples, catacombs, caves and lairs.

The parts of the maps that were not initially included in the game but were intended to be present such as most notably rivers and some of the special terrain that goes with them.  I would also recommend adding an additional level of magnitude of height to maps this would allow for more dramatic maps and allow for steppes, valleys, ravines as well as the look of a land devastated and torn apart by magic. Special lands showing the after effects of magic would also be a nice future enhancement at this point, lands showing strange crystals, chaotic storms of magic, floating islands of land still hanging after devastation by magic, dark corrupted forests, desserts of shifting sands that send those who enter them to random locations and any number of other refinements that could be used to enhance the game, both by the player mod base and by your designs in campaign creation.

An official random map generator, the current one made by Cephalo is a great start but it needs further refinement and shouldn't have been left to the community to develop.  An official random map generator should include spawn rate of resources as well as a more complete inclusion of terrain types and perhaps sliders for climate and cliffs / beach.  At the same time include rivers if they have been corrected at the point you release this or patched once you have done so.

Magic:

The current spell books lack depth and a cohesive feel to them, as well any one or two spell books will end up giving a sovereign the complete variety of spells one would need to win the game so there is no reason to take focus on magic beyond that.  Taking more than one school of magic should enhance starting essence or more variety to spell choices.  

AI:

AI strategy needs to have a chance of competing with players and allow for future mods by players so that players may influence the behavior of the AI in their own mods.

AI Tactical strategy needs to be developed to include something more than charge straight ahead, it should take into account it's own movement speed vs. that of the opponent as well as not closing to the adjacent square unless able to initiate an attack the same turn with the only exception being when it's own movement speed is 1.

Other issues:

Weapon balancing, unit balancing, city balancing, resource balancing, interface on the map editor (think photoshop), a quest editor and any number of the other complaints in the forum as well.

At this point I am out of things I can recall at this moment but am sure once I fire the game up again I'll come up with more since there was so much potential that seemed to fall so far from expectations and are still so many things that can be done to improve things.

That does sound like a really solid "plan of attack" chief. I'm sure you guys are keeping your eyes on a lot of suggestion threads so I'll try to keep this narrowed down to a few key points.

Magic System: We're all greatly looking forward to your revamp of the magic system. The "Global" mana sounds interesting, but, some of us are worried that by making it "Global" you'll just end up turning the casting units into a walking "mouthpiece" for the Sovereigns. Make sure to take other unit stats into account as variables. Like High Int or High Wis and make sure they are taken into account on a per character basis to distinguish the casters from one another so they matter. This way players can get attached to their "Favorite" Champion and all the casting champions aren't carbon copies of each other that just look different.

A way you could do this would be to give every spell a "Intelligence Requirement". Say "Summon Fire Elemental" would have a Intelligence Requirement of 13. If the champion that wants to learn to cast Summon Fire Elemental doesn't have 13 Int, then they won't be able to learn that spell. This makes leveling up a champion useful and important. You're going to use your favorite to level him/her up faster so they can cast more powerful spells instead of just having "Mana" being the only factor on whether a champion can cast a spell or not.

Spells: There's the foundation of some good spells in game, but what it needs is more World Altering Spells. Spells that affect everyone on a map, all the factions. General spells that might do Good things for All the Empires, but Bad things for All the Kingdoms, and vice verses, good things for All the Kingdoms, and Bad things for All the Empires. Then these spells could be "dispelled" by a Sovereign of a rival faction. Spells like "Eternal Night" which could bring an age of darkness that all the Empire Factions get a boost from, like +10% production or something else that's simple to apply across the board, themed for Empires or Kingdoms. Then the other factions could work towards casting a counter spell that would dispel it or reverse it or even turn it against the factions it was supposed to help.

The game needs more "Meaningful" spells that have a drastic effect in game. Some of them could be weaker spells for early to mid game, while others could be stronger spells for mid to late game. The system for raising and lowering the land is a good start, but in the game that inspired it, Populous, you use that ability literally as a weapon by raising and lowering entire continents at once. This is a Great "World Altering" spell, but Elemental's version needs to be beefed up. Think how in the map editor to make a bigger brush you hold down shift and hit the + or - keys. This should be added to the raise/lower land spell in game so the player can raise/lower a large piece of land at once. This would be really useful, as could variants of that that transform the land like turning land to desert or to ocean causing a major piece of damage to an enemy civilization.

Epic Scale: I recently saw a quote by you, Frogboy, where you said MoM was your Only Inspiration and we all know that's not true. You talked about many, Many, different Fantasy games and Literature as the Inspiration for Elemental. A lot of the Epic nature of the game you talked about seems to be missing still. I think The Gorgon said it best in his thread right here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/396951/page/2

Quote from The Gorgons Post:

"We were told, almost hidden away in a snapshot reply in another thread than the main discussion, that Stardock has given up on making the game more “epic”. So it won’t live up to the famous dragon versus army pic used to sell it. Won’t live up to Silmarillion, which we were told was the inspiration. Sovereigns won’t be like Sauron in the LOTR film, like we were told countless times.  Another area where, incredulously enough, it all seems to just fizzle out. If the answer and end result will be similar on the points above, darkness is really falling over this game. More like: it is falling into oblivion."

I'd really like you to step back and look at all the things that inspired you to make Elemental to begin with. MoM was a good start of course, but you yourself said there's no reason to make a direct "MoM Clone" when computers in today's world are capable of so much more. Remember when you said this?:

Quote from Frogboy's post:

"If you like the Total War series, you can imagine some of what we have in mind except here you can get that Lord of the Rings battle feeling where certain units just make mince meat out of whole squads of enemy units."

Now of course the game has changed a Lot since then, and no one expects you to copy TW. I like the Turn Based system the game was changed to, as do many others, because turn based strategy gives you time to come up with deeper strategies during play. Still, if you go and read Both the threads in the general section on Epic Battles, you'll see a lot of replies wanting the scale of the game to be increased. The current set up of small unit counts is perfect for the beginning of the game, but by late mid game to late game the larger cities in the Kingdoms or Empires that are supposed to have thousands of people in them should be capable of putting out much larger units.

Also if you look at the replies, on four separate pages of the post I made there are people posting who haven't even bought Elemental yet stating that the reason for this is that they're read the forums and seen people complaining about the limited nature of the game and it not being "Epic". Most of them said if the game Was Epic, then they'd buy it, but the lack of "epicness" is what's holding them back. Some people have said they bought the game after seeing the picture on the side of the box and were in return let down when after playing a few games they realized unit counts couldn't get that high even by end game levels.

As an ex developer I can see the challenges of balancing things out, I've faced them before myself making sure the skills and abilities I was making for the Necromancer and Paladin classes in UO were balanced against all the other skills and abilities the other classes in the game had. I'm no stranger to sitting down with long lists of damages and costs to make sure skills and abilities I was making weren't over-powered or didn't cost too much. If the main reason things aren't being made Epic is because it's too hard to balance, I'd be glad to donate my time and sit down and work out balanced stats and counts so the devs can implement them. I'd gladly do it for free to see the game reach the epic proportions that were talked about all through the development cycles. Hell if need be I'll even fly to Michigan and put myself up in a hotel room while I do the job. You won't have to spend a cent

The Gorgon was right when he said a lot of the Epic Nature that was talked about during development is gone or not added and I'm REALLY HOPING Stardock didn't "Give Up" on making a Epic Game and leave it totally in the hands of modders to do. Speaking of modding:

Modding Tools and Assets: Is the "60 Day Content Package for Modders" still on schedule? What about news on those tools we need to get our models and animations in game? Many of us in the modding community and eagerly awaiting news on this. The Dragonlance Team already has a lot of models done, minus a few animations, and we're just waiting for the tools we need from you guys so we can get them in game. We really really need these as fast as you can possibly get them to us. I'd like to be able to get our models into the game and moving around before I have to go in for my hospital stay. We can get our models into the game now, as you'll see with the upcoming "Flying Citadel Mod" we're working on, but those are still models. We need to be able to get animations into the game as well and we're hoping that's what your tools will allow us to do.

I hope you reply to some of this as many of us are curious on the schedule for getting those tools out to us.

Keep up the great work and don't loose that "Epic" vision

The area of the game I feel most needs work is the AI, however you have already expressed concern with this in another thread and have already said you'll be working on it extensively after 1.1 so this isn't what I will discuss.  Instead I want to talk about tactical combat.  More specifically, diversifying the weapons.

I am going to make a few references to MOM.  I know, Elemental isn't MOM.  However, there is one thing that I feel this game lacks that MOM has and thats unit diversity.  This can easily be accomplished by diversifying the weapons themselves.  For example, spear units in MOM usually had the first strike ability.  They would use their retaliation strike before the attacker got to attack.  This ability could be attached to spear weapons in Elemental to give much needed tactics to tactical battles.  Other abilities could be attached to other weapons, such as swords having a percentage chance to double strike ability (attack twice) with one attack.  Axes could perhaps have a cleave ability by striking two stacks of units as long as they are adjacent to one another.  Maces/hammers could have some other ability.  The sky is the limit here and you don't even have to take my suggestions.  I know some of them could be rather overpowered in this game setting.  However, we really need a reason to use anything other than mace/hammer weapons right now.  And we could really use more spear type weapons as well.  Wooden sticks just don't cut it, which brings me to my next point.

I'd like to see more weapons added to the game.  Wooden sticks are fine for peasants but I would love to see more spear and ranged weapons added.  Add some halberds, metal spears, and pikes and lances so I can make some mounted spear units.  Lances in particular could do more damage the further the unit had to travel to get to its target (would only work when mounted).  Give us crossbows, more powerful up close but much less range compared to a bow.  Slings wouldn't be a bad idea for a really early tech ranged weapon.  More siege engines such as ballistas.  They could have a piercing ability that could strike units in a straight line behind the initial unit fired on.  And have meaningful uses for siege engines and the corresponding warfare techs such as having actual walls show up when attacking cities (if proper research has been acquired).  I really do not like the idea of attacking a city and not having to break down walls if they have researched the fortification techs.  As of right now, fortification techs are useless the way combat is handled.  There is no point in even using armor since the biggest stack with the meanest weapon always kills everything in 1 or 2 hits anyway.

Diversify the terrain a bit as well.  I want to see tactical battles that have obstacles you have to move around or can hide behind.  Why aren't there trees in the middle of the battle field when you get into a fight in a forest on the over land map?  These obstacles could be destructible too.  Launch big boulders from your catapult or fireballs from your sovereign (and have them catch fire!) at the trees to knock em down so your enemy can't hide behind the trees block arrows from your archers.  This also removes them so your melee units don't have to dance around them to maneuver into position to fight your opponent.

Tactical combat right now is just run up and punch our opponent with the best weapon and unarmored unit you can make.  The first unit stack to get the first strike wins.  This makes tactical combat boring and predictable.

Back in the betas when i was active I stated that we need more feedback from you (yes, players need feedback from a dev. team).

I stated that without it we are wasting our efforts in giving our feedback to you.

I got a reply along the lines of "I can either do this or get this game done".

I still stand by my statements. And pardon me for my rudeness, but take a good look at what you have done and ask yourself if you are happy with it.

So I repeat - If you don't give us more information you won't get anything done.

There's a thread by the Gorgon, and while he sounds very dramatic and grumpy he did state one important point. Take a good look at this forum. I'd call it a feedback graveyard. That's a lot of feedback down the drain.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not stating that everything we said should have been implemented. On contrary most of what we said shouldn't have been said because you weren't planning to implement it.

You want to get anything done - tell us what you need.

I haven't been around lately, so I'll probably miss an example, but let's say you aren't happy with a particular element of elemental (sorry this came out by itself no puns intended).

Instead of just starting to wreck havoc on it you can start a thread stating "We are planing to change this aspect of a game. What are your ideas about it?". The closest thing we get to this atm is patch sneak-peaks. The problem is - we need that kind of information much earlier.

The most common tendency is not to announce thing until they are done. "The right thing to do" (TM) is to announce thing before you start working on them. First is done out of fear that things may change, take longer than planed or even be canceled-out before they are done with. The second is done so that things can change, get no less attention that they need and maybe even be canceled-out before it's too late aka before they are done with.

You get the drift yet?

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something but from my point of view thing are falling apart due to the lack of careful planing.

It's your choice really you can hurry your patches and hotfix them later or ask us before you start working and save the effort on doing thing you'll be asked to remove.

Now, since you stated that we can use this thread to talk about anything...

Who's bright idea was it to wreck havoc on "organized"? Why was it done / what didn't you like about it in it's old state?

And can someone link me to the explanation of the global mana pool idea? By the name itself it doesn't sit well in my head, but that may change depending on what it is actually about.

Sorry I haven't been around lately and it takes some time to grasp the recent goings on.

I really love this game--but I'm starting to get scared that it'll be changed way too much for me to enjoy it like this, so I'm grateful for this thread!!

What I WOULD like to see happen is to expand the dynasty feature because it really adds a lot to the game already and I'd love to get more out of that.  It would be nice if we could choose to marry our children to our champions, because there is not always an arranged marriage possible (my family and the other families I knew had all daughters at one point, so no marriages were possible.)  It could have a random effect on your prestige, if you like.  It could have a chance to lower your prestige, or even increase it (like when Dianna married Prince Charles, she improved the prestige for the monarchy by more than double )  Also, succession really needs to be a strategic element in the game.

I would love to see quests expanded and I loved the idea of entering into dungeons with your hero!  I'd love to see that in the near future.

I would also love to see more diplomacy in the game.  I'd like it if there was a lot more interaction with the factions you have diplomatic relations with.  If you could get diplomatic missions from your missionary hall or embassy, for instance, that would be awesome.  It would be cool if you would have missions where you could escort a character to a location in the other faction's territory, or to their embassy.  Another idea could be a mission to go and cast a spell or enchantment for the other faction.  The diplomatic missions could be a good way to improve your relationships with trade partners and allies, and would add a lot of fun for players who already enjoy quests, I think.

I like powerful magic users like in 1.08, because it makes heros seem much more heroic!  Magical resistances would make it a little more challenging to use magic to wipe the world clean though--or change tactical combat to include initiative. 

I personally don't think it's necessary to make tactical combat complex--I don't see tactical combat as a main feature of Elemental, but more as a supplement.  I like the spell effects and don't like the length of some animations (but would prefer to have shorter animatiions than no animations at all).  Most games that have complex tactical combat are JUST a combat game.  I don't see Elemental as a war game with an rpg twist--I see it as a turn based rpg with quests, battles, awesome magic, diplomacy and dynasty.  I enjoyed the tactical battles in Heroes of Might & Magic 5, but tactical battles is pretty much all that game has to offer--whereas Elemental has a lot more depth and variety to gameplay.

Last but not least, I would like a multiplayer mode (hotseat preferred) to include most of the features that the single player game includes.

Ok, here are a few of my ideas/comments for magic and the lack of longevity/epicneess which I think are the main issues

Magic

The elemental tress need to be different. There's nothing wrong with having a basic attack spell in each, such as firebolt, lightning bolt, but they need to be different, give lightning bolt a 10% chance to stun for one turn, give fire bolt a 5% chance to set the target on fire, give the icebolt a 10% chance to slow the target and give the earth/something better named bolt a chance to rend armor. The same for end game spells, how about a fire spell to set the land on fire, how about an air spell that establishes a portal for some very high mana cost. How about summoning various levels (minor, major, etc.) of elementals that have characteristics of their element.

The spells are too easy to get. I want to have to choose. I want to work really hard to even get 15 spells. I want to be able to do nothing else at all if I want all spells. Spells shouldn't be easy. Make books exclusive to what you choose at the beginning, EXCEPT, for easy books you can get in the research tree and super rare books that you can only find in 10% of games and require some quest to get.

How about some special spells, they are all quite bland at the moment. How about a spell that gives your channeler an aura to attract heroes. How about being able to slow/freeze an opposing army at a very high mana upkeep (in the new system I assume).

What about combinations of all these exotic spells, can I use a drench in oil spell to slow down a unit and then a firebolt to set him alight? Am I an expert channeler who has the earth and fire books and high expertise in each - then can I summon an earth element and augment it with fire to make a magma elemental that has benefits from both sides of parentage?

The death/life books should be massively different. I can heal my units with light, I can bless them and I can resurrect them. With death I can curse my opponents, I can augment my units but only in certain ways and I can raise dead on both sides as less effective but numerous units.

What about spells that take a variable amount of mana - like counterspells, or can I put all of my mana into one super elemental.

What about wide-arching spells. If I am a water elemental expert can I make it rain in my lands, slowing the progress of ALL armies by 1 tile/turn. Can I make it rain in the whole world? What about a spell that has a stupid mana cost that blocks all magic, (though might be sucsceptible to counterspells).

Lack of Longevity/Epicness

I was expecting a magical world, where there were spells you only found once in each game, where there might be a dragon every couple games that could change the game, where you might find some artifact that was powerful, or there were technologies that you'd never seen before. But it all feels very normal, the spells are all samey, there are no diferences between elements, you can get the books through research, you see the same monsters each game, I've never found something unusual item wise and worst of all the tech tree is always the same and a bit bland. Would I play the game when all is fixed (probably after 1.1) yes, would I play it as much as I play Heroes 3, or Civ IV probably not - but if it was made less samey and boring then that would change that completely. The reason Civ Iv and Heroes are good is not because they're always different games, in fact they are always the same game but there is so much depth, look at how many spells there are in Heroes 3, how many artifacts, how many creature types - there are so many ways to approach the game.

And how do you define "own the game by 30th of September" ? Order date ? Impulse registration date ?

I like this plan of attack.  Expansions A, B, and C will keep me interested in the game.  I'm glad to see economy building and the UI will remain the focus of "A".  I'm also glad "A" sticks to the original intended design, whatever flaws there may be. 

As a wish, regarding the "A" part of the game, I'd like to see a victory condition that focuses on economic expansion or influence alone, where a core strong, peaceful, and productive kingdom culturally seduces, overcomes, and cripples it's lesser rivals--basically a civic's-tree-oriented victory (just like we already have victories for the military tree, magic, adventuring, and diplomacy).  You can do this by creating entertainment centers like theaters and pubs and establishing trade routes with rivals cities, and the more trade happens, the more the city falls under your influence and switches sides.

A couple of small suggestions I wrote in another thread, my guess they would go to A:

Shop:  Make it so we can see what the hero has currently equiped when we're buying stuff, preferably with a figure representing the character with his/her character slots

Movement in the map:  Please have the unit/s draw a line first to the destination we're moving and then have another click confirm the move, maybe have it as an option as well.

Squads, etc:  When showing the attack/defense values of a group of soldiers, please make it so we can see the stats for the individual figure..  say if i have a group 4 solders with 5/5...  its better to see those numbers instead of 20/20...  big numbers tend to be misleading...

Magic: Can't really say much since the current embodiment magic will change, I'd just like to add, like many people suggested,  a magic resistance stat of sorts... or not, after all, armor should protect you from a fireball or a stone to some degree...

Have a sovereign choose only 1 or 2 schools of magic at most..  choosing one school should give you access to all 10 levels, while chosing 2 will cap both... 

Make cities something more than just resource collectors, have them produce something on their own as well, but to prevent city spamming have it tied to their level...  say a merchant makes 1 gilder in a lvl 1 city, 3 in a lvl 2, 5 in a lvl 3, etc... same with the 4 basic buildings...  another option could be provided to scale metal and crystal production as well...

That way when the city just starts off wharever resources it has will make a difference but in the end a lvl 5 city will beat a gold mine laying around...  also there should be administration cost associated with the level of the city, being 1 for lvl 1, 2 for two etc... in that case gildar production could be boosted to cover that...

Heroes:  have them earn a some hit points when leveling up as well as the usually stuff... and why not some passive xp just for being there...  

Soliders xp:  reduce the way solders gain experience when leveling up, a solder that survives a couple of battles can have up to 3 times the hit points of a fresh one,  make it just 1 per level up or a multiplier of their original ones (adding 20% per level up, that way soldiers that started with better training will keep being better)

An option to build roads!  

and last, move the independents away from them, its annoying when they just sit there and prevent my units from using them, forcing me to lose a turn when they are needed in the front...

Btw I just remembered there was another post for this so I'll paste it there as well...

Now something for B related to the magic system:

Add the life and death books!  Life being associated with the kingdoms and death with the fallen...  

Have the option fpr the sovereign specialize in only 1 or 2 books of magic, and make them different:

Say the most basic unit buff for life should be +hit points, for fire, damage, for earth, armour, for air speed and for water, no idea 

Give us the option to choose the recipient of the buff within a stack (this for A if you don't mind)...  

Create some combat enchantments associated with each book, a +stats for life, -for death (to the enemy of course)...  more direct damage spells for the elements...  make fire a DoT based magic, air more AoE based, earth a one hit wonder and again for water no idea (maybe control magic, freeze etc)...

Too sleepy to go on...

There's one fine example that came to mind - Magic system.

I doubt that it escaped anyone notice, but in case it did - Just about every forum member has his own vision of perfect magic system.

Nothing wrong with that, but still it's an ocean of information.

Dev. team will have to deal with that horde eventually.

How? I can't predict an actual outcome but I won't make a far guess if I say that their own vision of it will be a deciding factor.

That's the natural thing to do, one can't make a decent enough creation if it contradicts one's tastes.



Now, what makes it a problem is that the ones who give those ideas have got no clue as to what the dev. team vision is.

I'm not saying that it's easy to express, I'm guessing it's not even easy to grasp. Anyway, let me continue this example and hopefully it'll get clearer.

I dunno if you actually read through those countless ideas, but for the sake of this example we'll assume that you did. In that case you've probably thought "this isn't going to work", "this sounds nice", "hmm... some of this can be used". This is the upper part of the iceberg that I called your vision of the matter. Even that upper part is hidden from us.

I suggest to make it visible. Of cause I don't ask you to reply to each and every idea, what I ask is once you've seen a bunch and made some filtering "tell us how it went".

Start a thread stating "we've read a lot of ideas... ... these are the ones that caught our attention so far: ... . What are your thoughts on them?".

Such a thread would direct our effort and in turn make your own job easier. Instead of adding yet another idea that completely mismatches with your vision we could work with something that does.



Ever played a word guessing game that gives hints by pointing out the letters that match? This is how we can give something that fits your vision.

Ever tried to guess a word you don't know anything about? This is how we currently give you ideas.

Compare the chances and I hope you can understand why your feedback to us is so important.



Mind you, such a thread can get hot and messy to an extent, but isn't a messy thread better than a messy forum?

Take a look at this thread for example - It got some ideas already. Anyone discussing them? Nope. Everyone is busy promoting one's own vision of elemental. In a couple of days this thread will either be full of those "2 cents" ideas or dead. Those ideas are a lot of wasted effort. You can direct it, make it go into something productive, like an actual discussion. The time you need to make a thread is a small price to pay compared to what you'll get.

Make a bunch of those threads on different aspects and you'll find that everyone who cares about the game and not just about posting one's own ideas is giving you useful feedback (at the very least more useful than 2 cents ideas are).

The next step would be to discuss how different ideas on different aspects can correlate or conflict, but with your current unwillingness to organize what we currently have this step is far out of scope.

I get the sense, SD is saying they probably won't add that much content until C. That means C will probably add unique tech trees and differentiate the races more.  Probably more soverign design choices and special abilities. And spells of course..

B would make some major changes in game mechanics , I'm guessing Tactical combat.

Since C is like at least a year later,  I hope modders can save the game by modding in fun spells and abilities/traits that make sovereign design a lot more fun and impactful.

As many posters have commented about, a lot more than just the magic system needs a major overhaul.

Here are what I see as the major problems that MUST be fixed before making an "expansion pack" of content.

#1) Magic - Spells schools aren't different enough, and many don't seem to do anything. Magic tech tree has little use, maybe this will change with other changes. Stats need to be more useful, hopefully the global mana pool will change this for the better but the track record isn't so good right now especially with "global" things that you love. MoM had a good global mana pool system, and each charater still had their own personal mana pool. This would be a good system to copy and I hope it is where you're headed.

#2) Combat - Unbalanced, undifferentiated, almost no strategic or tactical elements.

#3) Economy - Many people have mentioned it in various ways and you seem to be ignoring it in every review or comment... but the current economy model is BORING. If you want people to like your game, you need to eliminate boring and install FUN. You even threw out a popular and fun economy system in beta because it got in the way of your game (your game's failure as it turns out). You need to revisit this and you need to include it in your customer polls so you stop turning a blind eye to it.

#4) Dynasty GUI - Unintuitive and unwieldy. It seems like it could easily be a fun and useful mechanic. We know Stardock is good with GUIs so hopefully this one should be an easier fix for you.

#5) AI & Diplomacy - The AI doesn't think well, they lack distinct personalities and the diplomacy is difficult and cumbersome.

After fixing all of these I think the game should be ready for an "expansion pack" of content. If you don't have the mechanics in place, it will just make more difficulty with working on the content down the road.

@Gorgon

Got your point, really. It wasnt thougt as a offence. All i hope for is, that everybody calms down a little bit and i was hoping my (broken english) words opens the other point of view. Nothing else

Right!

For A or B:

- more differences between the factions/races. (special Units, special abilities, special improvments)

Enough Gorgon.  Take your rage elsewhere.  This is a discussion for what things people would like to see in the game. And for the record, Stardock doesn't ship products, it uses a fulfillment house. We have taken the issue of duplicate shipments up with them.  I can think of plenty of forums you can visit and express your endless rage.  If this thread turns into a flame war, I'll just lock it.  

Our participation in the forums is not a requirement and while I am dismayed at the technical issues that the game came out with, I can assure you that we are doing the best we can. But your purchase of a $50 video game does not entitle you to abuse us on our own forums.

This will be the only warning I give on this thread. I'm going to go back and remove the off topic message and see if we can go forward from there.