What Version Number will Equal Fun?

Since the meaning of fun is highly subjective (I, for example, enjoy games in 1.1 with mods), maybe you can tell us a bit more about what would make the game fun in your opinion?

For additional flavor and features, I think you must wait at least until Fallen Enchantress. The gameplay of War of Magic, which you find to be uninteresting, is unlikely to be subject to any significant changes.

My guess is once 1.2 is out, work begins on the FE beta. (and some work is being done already, most of these fixes would be needed for FE anyways)

There's people who don't find Sins of a Solar Empire or GalCiv fun.

In fact, on other forums, I am constantly reading how people don't like those games. So you never know, it's always possible that Elemental isn't the game for you.

I will admit that the Fallen Enchantress design is probably better than the War of Magic design for most people. But what I find "fun" is very different from normal people. 

To fun to me would be better AI in War of Magic, much better diplomacy, better UI, more quests and better tactical battles. Beyond that it's a matter of whether the game is for you or not.

Those all sounds great. When will these be up to your liking in Elemental?

If you know you can win this way, why not try another?  For example, in MOM you could rush paladins every game, if winning was the only thing you cared about.  I think the point of a strategy game is to find new, notable ways to win.

Your best bet is to go to the mods and download a few of those, notably ACP, ExpandedFactions, and the Weapons mods.  The content added is pretty significant.

1.1 was fun to me. I have played several released unsuported games that were worse. Just because Elemental is going to keep getting funner(word?) doesn't mean that it's horrible right now. They are hopefully aiming for perfection currently unachieved in any game so far produced.

At the very least.

Probably never. I still don't like GalCiv in any of those areas.

I knew you were going to say that. What about being up to your liking (within reason) in Elemental?

If you don't already find it fun, I doubt any future update will suddenly change your mind.

So when is the next GalCiv update?  ;)

good Question....

My idea of fun is MOM, SMAC SMACX, AOW, AOW-SM, FFH2, GC, GC2 (never really got into SOSE not really into RTS's). You know all the ones people keep bringing up here So I guess  I'm asking when will E:WOM approach the One More Turn Factor of these? I know it won't be tomorrow. Like I said I'm looking at this as a long term deal. But, are we talking E:WOM never getting there and it being supplanted by E:FE?

Correct me if I'm wrong but, I thought even though they started work on E:FE they were not stopping work on E:WOM I guess I thought E:FE was going to be a different game in the same Universe, One, to sit along side E:WOM, not to be a replacement for it....

Beakie

(Edit) Looking at that List I wrote above they all have diverse factions that are totally different one from another, and decent combat systems You know most of them have some kind of Item or Unit designers too. Those, along with Tactical Combat Systems that work and are fun, I guess that's what I'm really looking for.... I know I'm not the only that wants these I read the other threads... 

On those areas Brad mentioned in GalCiv 2, he did pick on the weak areas of a very good game.  One thing I've noticed, I tend to be much more harsh and vicious on a game the better it is for some reason.  It's like I can forget a game if it's crap, but a really good game- those things keeping it from greatness I'll really scrutinize and be difficult about.  

I have my own biases also.  I tend to strongly dislike inelegant design and weak AI.

GC2 Diplomacy was better then most games to me, with the exception of minors and the UP, which were dreadful. Also, the Research/Economic treaties felt a bit tacked on, and this became really apparent in Elemental, and I've been very critical of that.

GC2 Tactical Battles would have been nice, but weren't a necessary part of the design.  I'd like to see  GSB-style tactical battles in GC3 personally, where you do your setups, then the ships battle based on pre-battle orders.  I'd also have liked to have seen a retreat option to try and save a losing fleet after it becomes obvious you can't win (speed would be critical here).  As for Elemental tactical battles- I think AOW-style tactical battles were awesome, but wouldn't work as well with Elemental.  With Elemental, I'm unsure what would work best, but I'd want the individual troops, even in a group to be unique, and have skills/stats that impact the battle as heavily as the armor/weapons.  This is in addition to an actual working tactical AI.

I wouldn't really want quests in GalCiv to be quite honest.  The Events/Alignment in GalCiv- which I consider the equivalent of Elemental Quests- should have been handled with a EU-style trigger system.  I think EU3-style government sliders and style of doing events of all games could have been a good influence on GalCiv 2/would be a good influence on GalCiv 3.  Elemental Quests- needs a revamp, will get one in FE, will withhold judgement until then. 

The UI in GC2 was fine, except for the entire starbase/constructor part of the game- where it was dreadful.  the UI in Elemental is dreadful right now , though 1.19 looks promising and should fix a number of my complaints.

v1.3t beta will equal fun.

I know what the OP is getting at.  Now that we seem to have a lot of the foundation finally in place, when are we going to get the icing on the cake, the things that make the game interesting.  Quest, faction differentiation, interesting landmarks, more items and artisctically diverse units, more diverese and interesting heroes, etc...those kind of things.  Are we getting them in 1.3 or are those things only going to be addressed in Fallen Enchantress?

The biggest thing atm, standing in the way of making the game fun is the strategic and tactical AI. There is no point in playing if there is no challenge / threat / conflict.

Aside from the AI, the magic needs more depth, heroes need more abilities (skill trees if possible), tactical battles need more depth (walls, gates, destructible elements, etc) and factions / races need more differentiation.

That is exacting what I was trying to say. Thank you for putting my thoughts in better words then I could. And Just for the record I was NOT trying to get everybody so defensive. Or, say that the game is a pile of steaming ..... (like apparently some of you took it). Fundamentally, I like the game was just trying to ascertain basicly what Lord Xia just asked....

Thanks again Lord Xia for your help

Beakie

I also totally agree with this statement. So does anyone know when these things are going to happen?

Beakie

I don´t have a clue when "these things" are going to happen.
I somehow don´t understand the hassle, though.
Perhaps that´s because I only came to know about Elemental in summer (?) 2010.
At that time my impression was that it wouldn´t be released until spring or summer 2011.
Knowing that Stardock will not let it´s customers down, I can wait that long.
I consider Elemental to still be a beta-version, for me the "real" Elemental will not be due before some time later this year.

As I judge it, Fallen Enchantress will be this "real" Elemental.
Of course that´s sad somehow, but I´ve seen way to more excellent games being buried because of the harshness of the market, so that I can be patient when it comes to a spiritual successor to Master of Magic.
EWOM still is a huge bunch away from this "everything-fits-together-perfectly one of the five greatest games in computergaming history"-appeal that MoM had/has.

But as I see it, for Brad this is a matter of personal honor, and Stardock has owned my trust.
I simply trust that nothing short of "we have to stop this or the whole company will break appart" will keep Stardock from developing Elemental to a point where it really delivers what we expect.

So if Elemental hasn´t come to this point next year, I´m gonna be disappointed.
Until then I´ll just eagerly watch the shaping of this game to it´s customers wishes.

Holy shit guys, I was the voice of reason!  I helped!

Right now, personally speaking, the most glaring issues I have with War of Magic are the diplomacy AI and the tactical battles.  They're both being worked on of course but those are the things I have a serious pet peeve with.

But as others have mentioned, in any of these games, players will always find some cheese way to win.  Let's face it, MOM's AI was pretty brain dead. People have this happy memory of MOM but it took a year for the game to be really playable -- the AI didn't actually do anything in 1.0. Seriously. What made MOM special was a combination of the time it was released and how ahead of its time it was in terms of innovation.  But it was originally panned seriously (hence, no MOM 2). 

In some respects, Elemental suffers from the opposite issue. It's a bunch of innovative features not tied together at all.  As crummy as the 1.0 AI was in Elemental, it was better than MOM's but MOM was FUN out of the box.  You don't need good AI (I shudder saying that) if you provide players an alternative. Hence, Caesar IV is a fun game even though there's no real opponent.  

What we've learned since the launch is to focus on a specific game and stop with the all things to all people attempt.

@Frogboy: I agree with the AI-issue. I remember finding out how to beat MoM´s AI pretty easily by just striking very early in the game. Worked every time.
Also I wouldn´t bother too much about balancing. Absolute balance equals absolute symmetry equals absolute order equals absolute standstill equals absolutely boring.

I would rather fix the most important issues and then concentrate on the interactivity with the ingame environment, e.g. food and material production affected by the type of the surrounding landscape (single most important issue to me), making the world more interesting to explore (like your going to in Fallen Enchantress, if I´ve understood correctly), giving more significance to seafaring, etc..

Cause for me these things were what made Master of Magic so great - the maps were just full of so many different and important features; different types of metal, of crystal, of dungeons, of mana nodes with different strength, towers to another dimension with yet more of those features; plus the game gave so much customization and replay value with it´s custom-traits custom leaders, diverse and really different races, and on top of that a seemingly never-ending arsenal of spells from minor to bombastic, that alone gave so many options of interacting with the gameworld and the environment itself, really having effect on the environment and gameworld. Oh, plus custom magical equipment; there´s nothing cooler than that.

So my opinion is - don´t concentrate too much on technical issues, rather concentrate on the richness of the gaming experience and on fitting it all together to form a consistent game.

You yourself say above that what you find "fun" is probably not what everyone finds fun, so perhaps it's a good idea you let someone take the lead now.

I remember several attempts.. besides your attempt to buy the name. I do agree that players will always find some cheesy way to win, your AI will never be a match of any decent human player. Not an excuse for a brain dead AI, but personally I think you focus too much on AI at the expense of fun. If a certain spell is fun, an the AI can use it decently, but a human will be even more creative at using it, you will kill the spell. I'm not sure if I agree with this philosophy. 

Not sure if I agree MOM's AI is worse than Elemental. But you can't really compare as the complexity of the games are different. MOM's AI never had to worry about keeping their sovereign alive for example. 

Honestly, I only care if the AI is giving me a reasonable game, so if the AI cheats a little or even a lot to give me a game, fine.. You are not building skynet or a chess engine after all, so I really really don't expect you to create an AI that can match me without cheating, and I don't think that should be the goal. 

Say what? That doesn't even follow. I think the lesson from what you wrote above is FUN trumps everything, good AI but at the cost of FUN features/content is pointless.

If you want good AI then simplify the game down to Chess...Don't get me wrong I love Chess, but many people find it not fun