Shame, How do I build a farm?

Click the farm then click the icon that looks like a scroll to build it.

Click on the plot of land, you build on the resources directly now instead of from the city.

Click on the fertile land tile. Building on resources is done through the resource itself, not the city build menu (this seems counterintuitive early, when you're building on resources right next to you, but is done to make more sense when your city grows and your potentially claiming resources many tiles - even a screen or more - away).

- Ash

It took me 2 hours to figure this out.  It's not intutive at all.  The same with several other parts of the interface.

Seriously?

Clicking on the location the farm will get built on is not intuitive?

Yes, if a campaign tells you that now is the perfect time to build a farm but at the same time forgets to explain to you that farms and mines etc. are not build in the city option like regular buildings but instead you have to click on the tile itself, that is most definitely not intuitive.

The game is good and fun regardless of some polishing issues, but it is far from being intuitive, the reason being the lack of a tutorial and proper documentation.

I agree, I actually researched the food technology, hoping it would let me build

the farm in the city screen only to find out later that all you have to do is click

on it and I could've built it in the first couple days...

That's exactly what happened to me in the campaign when I was awarded the technology. I was already gathering all the allies later in the game until I realized by accident that all I had to do was clicking on the fertile land tile. 

I just can't make a scenario up in which I wouldn't click on the fertile ground tile while trying to figure out how to make a farm. It seems to me the first thing you'd try after trying to make it in the city failed. I can't imagine what other stuff you'd be doing for two hours attempting to make a farm, there aren't even that many buttons on the interface.

The UI is far from perfect, and there are things that aren't that intuitive, but clicking on a resource location to construct a building is most certainly not one of them. Casting spells isn't under the actions menu, it's got a smaller button next to the mana bar, it's certainly an action, and probably deserves a button in that menu. Trading items should be accessed from the inventory screen rather than the actions menu, another case where the interface fails a bit.

2 hours? Wow I figured it out in 2 seconds. Anytime one gets a new game they should go a clicking around the map and on the toolbars. You learn so much by doing that. So what if you mess something up it's not like you have to play that first game to its finish. All this the game isn't intuitive or has no tutorial is for babies.

I help you with the scenario: You get a message that you are now able to build a farm. You open the city screen to build it, like you build all the improvements before, but are unable to find the icon. You scratch your head and think that you either don't have the appropriate resources our you need to research something else to unlock the technology. Since it is not a pressing issue at the moment and the game continues without your farm, you decide to keep on playing thinking that you can try it again some other time.

Yeah the 1st 2 times I played in the beta I could not figure out how to get food, in fact I was not even building my towns near fertile land. LOL  There is a learning curve

That's where our minds diverge, when I get thwarted at the city I would've immediately clicked on the fertile ground tile to see what was up and search for more information. *shrug*

I didn't play the campaign, simply started with a random large map. In the beta it actually built those things from the city itself, it gets kind of awkward when you've got multiple cities since they are tied to the closest one. For example, you build 3 cities and research a tech in the adventuring tree that puts a resource in the middle of them. It would be hard to judge which city actually has "ownership" so you'd have to cycle through all 3 looking for the one that could build it. The new system is much easier to use and has more in common with every other 4x game that has resources out on the map. The only difference is you don't send workers to build improvements like the other games.

Galciv2 had construction ships and starbase to get the resources. Civ used workers and roads to build improvements on special resources. None of it was built directly from the city/planet.

I can see where your confusion came from, I can't really see how it lasted any significant amount of time. Even a little bit of logical investigation would've uncovered the solution.

I actually tried this but the fertile land didn't look like anything that I would click on but instead like it was just background... Funny how the big rock formation with the water which looks like it is clickable isn't.

Its was hard to figure out what areas were passable and which ones weren't as well.

I assumed it was a bug and moved on. Guess thats what I get for assuming.

I am not arguing that the present option is not the best one gameplay-wise or that it's different from other 4x games, all I am saying is that Elemental does a poor job of explaining itself (in contrast to mentioned Civ) and that this is the reason why it generates a lot of confusion, which is quite apparent if you look around here. A lot of this confusion is rather unnecessary and could be reduced to a minimum by implementing a little tutorial.

I actually have to play from the cloth map until they fix the performance issues. It's SO much easier to distinguish important things on the cloth map than it is on the 3d one. Perhaps that's why it seemed so simple right off the bat.

You know what, I think you have a good point there. I was playing in the 3D view and I also find it difficult to locate important things in the world. I am sure it contributed to the fact that I didn't think of clicking on the fertile land tile in the first place. Now I know where you are coming from... 

Agreed, I zoom out to cloth map a lot just to see which piles of stuff are random decoration, and which are meaningful. Not that I'm complaining about random piles of stuff - indeed I even suggested more clutter at one point, earlier in the beta when terrain was looking awfully plain, and I like the way the game has turned out aesthetically speaking. It's just that the important things, the quests and resources and such, need to somehow stand out from the background so I don't have to zoom to cloth map just to find them. Some kind of animation or special effect to highlight them would be perfect. Maybe they could glow (i.e. increase brightness a few notches) when you mouseover them, just like certain MMOs do to highlight useable items?

How about a glowing outline around the selectable tiles on mouse hover? That would be useful

You have no idea how many times I've tried clicking on that rock formation.  It's big and shiny!  Why doesn't it do anything?!