People will always have fond memories of the games they played, the movies they saw and the books they read when they were much younger. It will always be hard for anything new to hold up to the old stuff in their minds because no matter how great it is, it can't bring them back to the state of awe they had as a kid (or teen or college student or whatever) experiencing the original beloved thing for the first time. So it's generally pointless to argue that modern game Y is better then classic game X, your not just competing with the game itself, your competing with the idealized memories of it.

In general I find these boards to be fairly polite for an internet gaming board, especially given I don't see much sign of moderation. But it's the internet so there will always be people who are rude or insulting.

I agree the Stardock forums are better than most.  It's one of the few message boards I can stand to post in or to read on a regular basis.

Probably not, though I may have, I recall just getting board and frustrated with SM and uninstalling it because it simply existed to piss me off.  There was more that annoyed me than just the poor AI.  But I get that alot of people really loved it, alot of people really love GalCiv2, while I think that MoO3 (post Bhuric's patches/fixes) was vastly superior.  Different strokes for different folks, the focus of the games was different, though the setting the same.

As rude as he is, psychoraven does make the interesting point that as much as MoM is an influential game, nobody has ever really made a really succesfull followup to it. AoW is the closest, but regardless of which is better, it never atteined the status in gaming lore that MoM did. There are other fantasy strategy games that made it far bigger then MoM ever did (ie HoMM). But they don't follow the civilization meets magic formula that appealed to so many.

It kind of raises the interesting question of why that is. I mean even MoM was pretty horribly flawed, but it was still fun just because there something about the civilization + magic formula that was so fun that you played it despite the horrible bugs, AI and balance. Perhaps it's one of those things that seems really cool but is just really hard to work out in practice. I guess it's another reason to be interested in how elemental turns out. Although no matter how great it is, I doubt it will reach enough people to have the influence that MoM did, just like as great as GalCiv is, it didn't reach enough people to have anywhere near the influence that MOO did.

Edit: I notice that someone mentioned a post fix version of MOO 3, how big were the fixes/changes? I played the originally realeased version and it was one of my biggest disapointments ever.

double post

  Actually no I'd say you were since you admitted you know nothing about the two games. Thus you have no real ammunition to make accusations about him or the games or anyone else. At least he provided some links to view. I personally look for user information an accept it long before I accept the biased reviews of palm fed socalled professional reviewers.

  I'm another that actually agrees Mom is the better game of the two as I have played both of them as well. That socalled game improver patch that the community made is so multiplayer oriented the single player game suffered from it. The whole crowd of Age of Wonders stands pretty much in the we are the elitist multiplayers and I never could stand them anyway.

  I'll just stand that I'm glad Brad is focusing on the single player game an experience. What he and crew does to the MP element as long as it doesn't effect the single player game I don't care.

I think part of the reason GalCiv never reached the same influence as MOO is that, if you look at both games objectively as a quick example below:

MOO1 10 races, GalCiv1 6. MOO lot of varied techs with more flavor (I won't count exact techs since I don't know off hand) GalCiv had a lot of generic laser 1, laser 2, etc. techs. Tactical combat in MOO no contest vs. GalCiv combat. So it's hard to get the same acclaim when you can't match the sophistication of core elements of the notable titles of the particular genre. (I won't go into much depth here to keep it short).

Brad says they're using MOM as an inspiration for Elemental... but who cares in a way. The Demigod devs were probably inspired by DOTA (which is 'king' in that genre), yet they failed to match some of the fundamental cores of that particular genre. DOTA had dozens of heroes, and the selection is one of the cornerstones of DOTA, yet Demigod ships with 6 or 8 heroes? Ouch. They had more maps in Demigod but nothing quite of the same scale. More items in DOTA than Demigod. One of the only notable improvements I saw in Demigod as opposed to a DOTA was that you could spend gold on upgrading your creeps. So you were presented a bit more of a strategic element of "Should I upgrade my hero with items vs. do I upgrade my creeps" that wasn't present in DOTA. But DOTA features far outweighted what Demigod brought to the table.

To topple MOM (or AOW), Elemental would just about have to match MOM in terms of character/race selection, spell system, building/city development system, and combat. And if they choose to omit one or more of those elements or if they're not to the same degree of sophistication, then Elemental would have to possess some other core features that tilt the game in its favor. 

Generally you expect games to improve over time, but lately we're seeing a lot of games come out that are more "console-friendly" or "streamlined" instead, but when you strip down or simplify features, how can you ever dethrone the classic "kings" of the genre? Esp. in TBS games where complexity and sophistication is a good thing and a draw of the genre. Cleaning up and streamlining a GUI over time is great, but simplifying core systems that strip out the depth won't create a new successor 'king'; if anything it'll create some bastard son that doesn't attain the same fame or becomes long forgotten.

My only question about the whole game is :

- Why the hell did they go with Squares instead of Hexagons ???

Nice post sabbath519.

I don't think developers go out of their way to strip down games. It has more to do with the new technology getting in the way. As an example, the older games were 2d sprites with possibly a few frames of animation. To add a unit or hero in Age of Wonders required these frames to be drawn or rendered and then associated with a unit.

In Elemental the units are full 3d models. To add anything more than just a rehash of an existing unit means that not only does the 3d model need to be made, but all the accessories also need to be made for the model (armour etc). So to add a unit in Elemental as opposed to Age of Wonders requires a much greater effort.

I'm assuming this is why there isn't a massive amount of diversity in the units from Elemental and why they are pretty much all based on a human model.

I agree with your conclusions about comparing the older loved games with more modern equivalents but the new technology is much more a blockage than we realise I think. The saving grace is that Stardock entered this project with their focus primarily in the right places and even if the diversity isn't there in version one, I'm sure it will be addressed over time.

I suspect you're right on that . I've been thinking the same myself after seeing the similar models across the factions in the beta. I could see there being a lot of extra work if one of the races were different in stature and they had to redesign the robes/weapons to fit and not look out of place on them. Stardock doesn't have the luxury of a hefty budget to work with which doesn't help in that regard. However, TBS games do have a bit more leeway in terms of graphics compared to other genres such as FPS or MMO's where animations and collision detection need to be 100% precise, whereas in Elemental they can get away with a lot more.

Some games get quite creative with their battle graphics such as say Advance Wars for example, even though they reuse the same battle scenes over again, but I thought it had a neat style and they were engaging to watch. Other games have extremely low budgets such as World of Goo, but look fairly amazing.

But not everything revolves around a graphical component either. The magic system in MOM had you generate mana from various sources, but you could spend your magic generation in 1 of 3 ways : either generate mana to build a mana stockpile to cast spells or pay upkeep on active spells, research points for learning new spells, or caster skill points. All it required was 3 sliders, but the depth behind that was substantial and the allocation changed depending on your situation and goals. You could for example focus your playstyle on using many spells with upkeep but you'd need a lot of mana generation to fuel that. In contrast, you could forfeit casting spells 'now' and focus on research for better spells 'later'.  The third choice, casting skill influenced how much mana you could use in combat. So if you had low cast skill you might be able to cast 1 or 2 spells a combat, whereas with high cast skill you may cast 5 spells a combat, although your research suffers as you wouldn't have as large a mana supply.

Brad Wardell:

Even with the innovations, Elemental is stubbornly traditional in places. "I hate hexes," says Wardell when asked what he thinks of Civ 5's big new feature. "One, I like being able to move in eight directions. I don't like only being able to move in six. Two, it makes the game feel like playing on a hardcore board tile game. I just don't like that look." Wardell also shrugs at Civ's attempt to remove multi-unit "stacks of doom" from the genre. "First of all, we call them armies. And historically, there have been armies, and I like them. I don't like stacks, though -- I don't want to have fifty units that are fighting individually," hence Elemental's seperate tactical combat sequences.

I'm assuming Brad is referring to the look of 1980's style war-games. There are a lot of games that use hexes where the structure in unobtrusive including Age of Wonders. One of the reasons Civ V decided to go the hex route because they didn't like how easily armies could be by-passed by other units across the diagonal. This is the most frustrating thing about playing the Fall from Heaven mod. GalCiv doesn't really need hexes (although I would argue that it would have been good there as well) but hexes on a land map provide a lot of positives.