I've noted on a large map the distinct lack of wandering monsters and ruins/goodies. As in three hundred turns and no monsters whatsoever. Have started half a dozen different large maps on this build. Maybe the smaller ones are populated...?

Yeah food is tough, but I'm sorting out the system and like it.

Well I guess none of this matters since we can get food from wild gardens but has anyone noticed that refugee camps are totally broken? Its been like this for two weeks and no one seems to care. Sure would make my first city easier to populate though.

Refugee camps are working fine for me. But there are plenty of other things not working, for example, I can't demolish any buildings in my city, keeps saying this will make the city non-contiguous. It does that for every building I try to demolish.

This is niether here nor there but I also can't use a lot of my other resources, like the old growth-->lumbermill and crystalrocks-->enchantmentmine.

I am left wanting wood and fire swords...

Yes, yes...I know. I just posted about this, because it is an important stuff, and the release date is close.

I enjoy the scarcity of food. and our ability to create food producing land.

It adds a strategic and  Thematic level to gameplay.

Happens to me too.

I believe currently the beta has the same number of goodie huts regardless of map size. Set to 40. Dunno about monters.

Remember Brad also said this game isn't geared toward multiplayer. Multiplayer is just an afterthought and an addon to apease those that want to multiplay for the fun of it. But, the core game is single player and there's not going to be much deviation from that just to apease a handful of multiplayers like yourself.

Although they won't be having much fun if the maps are really unbalanced.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Having excellent multiplayer design is usually an indicator of good campaign/singleplayer capabilities. I would go as far saying that a strategy game can only be judged on how well it was made by its approach and implementation of multiplayer. So hopefully you are wrong and multiplayer is not an afterthought

Assumptions are dangerous. First, I'm going to be playing single player pretty much exclusively. Second, you're reading into it way too literally. If Multiplayer was a total afterthought, it wouldn't have several game modes, SD-hosted servers, etc. What Frogboy meant is that they're not going to sacrifice features for the sake of Multiplayer, which is entirely different from making sure you always have food at the start of any map.

Guess you never played Master of Magic or Master of Orion I & II. These games proved you didn't need a multiplayer element to make great, classic, epic games. :)~

Yep and since we/you are dictating what Brad MEANT he's not going to sacrifice balance and playability of the single player game to apease the multiplayer element. All things considered the SINGLE PLAYER game elements, changes and balances will come FIRST and FOREMOST! ;)~

Come on man! MoM is a 15 year old game - multiplayer wasn't even mainstream in gaming at the time. I am talking about modern strategy games (like Elemental) which pretty much scream for an amazing multiplayer experience.

What I am saying is that if a game clearly has multiplayer elements in it, that is the game is designed to be conducive to multiplayer, then balance/gameplay issues in SP are connected to balance/gamplay issues in MP. If you design the game in favor of SP gameplay and mechanics at the expense of multiplayer gameplay then the game will be worse off as a whole.

If on the other hand you design the game with multiplayer in mind then the SP will feel so much more complete and wholesome. By focusing on SP at the expense of multiplayer one is only turning the game into a sand-box Sim City map editor which provides the player no challenge and no way to test their ability to play the game. There is no better way to test a player's playing ability and the game designer's skill at game making than to pit the player against a human opponent. This is why multiplayer must always be at the forefront of modern RTS games.

I don't think you understand what you wrote. In order to "sacrifice balance" of the single player game, there has to be balance to begin with. A random generated map inherently has no balance. There's nothing to sacrifice. Making a preset "start point" where there's always a patch of fertile land is *introducing* balance to both single player and multiplayer, not sacrificing it. In single player, starting without fertile land is okay for someone who doesn't care about cities, but very bad for someone who wants to focus primarily on cities. And in Multiplayer, all players start out on even footing regardless of their playstyles. Win-win for all.

Oh I understand what I wrote and I understand what Brad said. He will not sacrifice the single player game or experience for multiplayer. If you notice GC2 has no multiplayer and is a great game adn doesn't need MP. He even took a poll to make a MP element to it and that didn't even pass salt. So, no I don't expect the MP game to be much as far as the Empire building game goes. I've seen the MP elements and they are arena battles and some small capture the flag like pvp mp games. That's not the type of MP I'm talking about when I say he won't sacrifice the single player game for a MP empire building game. Also this is not an RTS game it is turn based and will have turn based tactical combat as well. See the little button in the game at the bottom right? It's popup says "end TURN" not end rts. lol

I don't mean to offend, but I don't think you fully understand what Elemental's multiplayer is supposed to be. Yes, it will supposedly include some odd variations like arena mode, but it will also support the same epic empire-building game you enjoy in singleplayer, with up to 16 players online. This may not be important to you, which is O.K., but it's important to the guys making Elemental - they do consider large-scale multiplayer one of their "must-have" features, this is not Galactic Civilizations 3-with-magic.

All that aside, singleplayer/multiplayer is completely irrelevant to the balanced-starting-position discussion that spawned it (alas, internet forums..). Good game balance may be more obvious and important in multiplayer, but it's hardly a bad thing for singleplayer - this is not a case of 'sacrificing' the singleplayer experience for multiplayer, it's just a good idea that helps the experience whichever mode you're playing.

For example Civ4 does this, starting positions are "sweetened" (have extra resources added, more for worse positions) so every player gets a carefully balanced spot for their first city. One can hardly claim that Civ4's singleplayer was sacrificed for multiplayer based on that, it's still very much a singleplayer-focused game just as Elemental certainly will be; balancing starting positions is simply good game design (which happens to be more important to the multiplayer crowd, but is still a very good thing for singleplayer).

Elemental isn't an RTS though...

Meant any strategy games.

One thing I have noticed is if you manage the first 15-20 mins correctly you end up with more food than you can use. The population doesn't grow quick enough to fill the houses you create...

Putting a large scale multiplayer element into the game has nothing to do with sacrificing single player experiences for it. Anyone can put a huge multiplayer element into a game just to increase sales. Much like Creative Assembly lies about improved AI with every new release of their Total War titles. It doesn't mean they DID put any effort into improving it which they didn't as it has been seen time and time again the ai is still the same crappy opponent. All I'm saying is if you're a multiplayer fan don't expect a whole lot of balancing for your favor as the game goes gold. I expect the majority of balancing and improvements to be for the single player game not multiplayer whinnings that ruined Age of Wonders Shadow Magic game.

well, the multiplayer component of the game is already suffering because of single-player. 

Frogboy said that they won't put in any spells that the AI won't be able to use. Assuming those spells are balanced, then the single-player experience (a smart AI that can do everything the human came) is taking away from the multiplayer experience (a human CAN do everything another human can do). 

But it's not a big deal to me... I hope multi-player does get fun and balanced but I don't expect it to be for awhile. However, I will fight for certain game concepts to work for a good multi-player over a good single-player. Simply because a well balanced multi-player game will make a fun single-player game too. If you want to comp-stomp and create a super-sovereign of death, lower the difficulty. 

It would actually make sense to have some fertile land nearby.  If the Sov was going to restart civilization, he most definitely would find some good, fertile ground to start with instead of a patch of dead ground.

About multiplayer spells, how feasible would it be to mod in spells solely for multiplayer?

Well that's excellent to my ears. I'm glad Brad is living up to his promise because I want a well thought out single player experience and couldn't care less about a MP element at all. He could have left it out like he did for GC & GC2 for all I cared. Good job Brad.

I think the OP was asking about food, not MP, so on that subject, in Beta 3a you can build farms only once you are adjacent with your city to the resource (e.g. fertile land). Truth is you will struggle to feed your cities if you don't build some of them near food producing resources. I think the plan is to loosen this up again in the actual release (or at least in 3B). Personally, I feel that once you get a little used to the shortage of food, it does seem to add to the strategic overlay rather than subtract from it.