Wheres the Magic??

I think they are going to do exactly what you said. It's going to take time but I'm sure they are exactly on the same page as you are. Stardock has already said that they are going to do big things in the magic part of the game, it's just going to take a bit more time to make those changes.

I want all the same things as you do. Except for the vampires and zombies and skeletons, that's not a necessity. Death can be death even without those. But I wouldn't mind if those kind of spells were in.

I just like zombies =(

I agree. They will surely know this already though, so we just have to wait for them to do it. I'm kinda disappointed I have to wait, but at least they have done most of the important stuff now and hopefully they can focus on getting some great magic.

I agree with you but give 'em time they have finally got the game stable and it rocks! I have high hopes for this one and it might take a year or two but it will be amazing!

What about zombie vampires? Or Vampire skeletons? The possibilities are endless!

Maybe even vampires that sparkle!

I know Frogboy has already discussed why certain creatures are not present, but I would certainly be in favor of an 'Undead' style book & or race. (yes I'm aware these things can be modded, but I'm looking more at core components much like the OP). It would be nice to also be able to have a spell book like "Death" and have to sacrifice captured soldiers or population for extra spell points etc etc. .

To the OP: I agree with what you're saying about showing the magicality of the magical kingdom. It would be great to see those enchantments actually in action. Hopefully this will happen in the future. I disagree however regarding the technology paths. There are some great discussions already going on the forums regarding this and you should definitely put your opinions in on those.

Gah! Vampires that sparkle would be just an excessive version of what we have now, which is magic that lacks flair, style, logical cohesion, or whatever other term you might use to describe a basic milieu for a PC game that aimed to be a TBS-RPG hybrid 'spiritual successor' to Master of Magic.

The OP's core complaint is utterly valid: Elemental lacks a baseline metaphysics. Design work so far has focused on visuals and superficial aspects of 'game balance,' but there's no way to make Elemental-centered balance decisions without a core set of rules/parameters for how magic works in the un-modded game world. Best I can tell, it is a failure of imagination on the part of the dev folks and/or their leadership.

Visuals and music aside, there is not the slightest hint that the game design has made any serious effort to distinguish magic from technology. I'm an Arthur Clarke fan from way back, so I can accept the idea of a continuity thing there. It's just that I've been driven batty by seeing the game cosmology being treated as a moving target when I can't escape the idea that we've needed at least a handful of basic assumptions to even begin thinking about magic in Elemental.

p.s. I'm weak for vampire stories of many stripes, and the reference to the sparkly stuff...well, those kids need to learn better. Alas, I'm starting to think of Elemental's treatment of magic as a possible equivalent to what I've read about the Twilight franchise's very tacky approach to vampire stories.

What those guys above me said

Totally agree with the OP. I hope they fix this sooner rather than later (more spells, more variation, etc.). Because right now, the game is pretty boring to play, I'm sorry to say.

I have doubts about SD's ability to do magic right. 

You can see that EWOM has a much higher focus on tech than magic, because of their comfort level wtih Galciv.

The only hope lies in Derik. I'm not sure he alone can turn it around though...

PS : For a game with the word "magic" in there, there is a very distinct "tech" favour in the game and even in the spells... SD alone doesn't seem to have the "DNA" to produce "magical" spells like those submitted in the contest. Something in their design philosophy i bet preventing that, since it's trivial to come up with such crazy spells..

So if they changed the name to Elemental: War of Technology, would you be satisfied?

If they named it that at the start they would have lost 50% of their sales...

Lots of people including me.. bought it on the promise that it was a spiritual successor of master of magic,. except for the SD fanboys of course who would buy anything...

I agree with this statement 100% while having a magic on your side in the game helps having a broadsword and some plate a LOT more!

I'm glad everyone agrees with me i just hope frogboy reads this post and takes it to heart.  

Back in beta i private messaged him about his decision regarding the current magic system at the time and begged him to change it to a global mana pool before release.  He ignored my message and didn't even bother to respond which made me a sad panda.  =(

Oh well, at least they realized their mistake later. So they do learn...

Now here's a funny question. For the guys who agree with Recnelis2 , please answer the following questions

1. Have you played Galactic Civilizations 2?.. If so.. please also name expansion packs if any you played

2. Did you find it boring? 

I have a hunch, people who agree with Recnelis either didn't play Gal civ2.. or found it average to boring....

I assume you are a big fan of Master of Magic. But did they have a consistent "Game cosmology" ? Playing devil's advocate here..

The problem with EWOM i see is they have both a tech component and a magic component, and their natural inclincation is to do the tech part which overshadows the magic part. They could make magic way more powerful, but unless they cut loose with wild ideas, magic would be just tech under another name. So you can research "Tech" to get a weapon that does X damage or a "spell" that does the same.. Hmm...

If they did it the MOM way, where the only research is magic, maybe the constrast wouldn't be as stark?

twilight of arnor and dark avatar

I thought they were fun for awhile, but without tactical combat or multiplayer of any kind the game eventually became boring to me and was replaced by games that i was allowed to play with my friends with.

The growing of the city was the actual tech to get more powerful creatures you accomplished this through buildings.  SO in a way it was the "tech" side of the research.  

   "Yarp", I agree with Recnelis2.

   As mentioned in numerous threads many people find the magic system kind of flat. Now let me answer your questions & rehash as to why.

1. Have you played Galactic Civilizations 2.. If so.. please also name expansion packs if any you played

• Dread Lords, Dark Avatar, Twilight of Arnor, & a bunch of mods

2. Did you find it boring? 

• Hell no; but I'm a huge fan of EotFS. Hahahaha.... I spent way to much time designing ships while exploring my dark side.

   Ok, let me 1st say that for the most part I do really like most of the changes that have happened and that stability issues for me have been nearly 100% resolved. I only crash every now and then when I reload a map a zillion times testing a spawn or something. I'll note that I'm running a Vista 64 bit system, low end gaming box (hope you people still having crashes find a fix). Another thing is the simple fact that the guys from StarDock hung around the forums discussing things in regards to the changes needed. Thats a big + for me for them.

   But magic is not an essential part of the game & that bums me out. I to would like to dramatically change the world I'm in, etc. Also, curently using magic for battle does feel as though all I'm doing is chosing a colour at the expense of dmg/mana used. Back in version 1.09e when I 1st got introduced to the game magic was actually more fun for me. Each hero once imbued became a reservoir of mana, able to unleash it all. I had games where I had 20+ casters & was unleashing hell in tactical battles; as well as morphing the world heavily everywhere I went since I had the mana to burn at times. Still, certain aspects were redundant, but still fun in that limited way even if it crashed often.

   Now in 1.1 magic is diminished by longer research times, decreased effectiveness and a very limited reserve of mana to draw from. If I want 10 casters thats 10 mana lost per turn (early in the game thats impossible) & it's very slow to generate mana; also each of them draws there spell power from the mana pool. It means that I absolutely have to rely on weapons & armor for the majority of damage done in battle. Then mid game I'm so mindfull of my mana regen that I'll only use that 1 or 2 spells that do the most damgae for the amount of mana used. Makes it even more flat than before. Last thing, playing on the ahrdest settings means I will never have enough mana to kill thos monsters, not like before. ^^

   From there response in other threads, they have numerous ideas to improve magic for us. I hope that with all of your constructive critism they pick the best ones & give us a good expansion making EWoM trully magical.

PS: Why can't I sacrifice my populace? I want an altar of blood & death to further my Empires Domination. hehe

100% agree with Diardiamond and he brings up a good point.  Why is mana so hard to come by in a "world of magic"?

Unfortunately I have to rather agree with the OP.

And Rechnelis2's avatar rather makes my point.

I recently got MoM from gog.com and I've been playing the hell out of it.

You cast a perm spell on a unit, it glows. if you have magical weapons, mithril, adamantite.. you can see it in the unit-info.

I understand the desire for a tech-tree. And to a degree it makes sense.. .But there is the feel that it's more about 'tech' than magic, even if the tech is sometimes based around magic. 

I picked up Elemental, because it seemed like Stardock was trying to do a spiritual sequel to MoM... IMO, one of the best TBS/Exploration games ever. simply ever. The 'techs' varied per race in a manner, how the buildings would open up different units and other buildings. Not overly 'deep' in comparison, but something. The amount of varied resources... (adamantite, mithril, coal, gold, game, rivers, crystals, etc). while not as varied as Civ.. the goodie huts were varied by type.. and many had monsters. while true, there weren't as many resources (just mana and money), you could get spells, items, even added books of magic (not schools, actual levels of books)

you got a feel for the magic in the game. 

I miss this, and I miss how it's not in  Elemental.

Yes, I played far too much MoM back in the day. And yes, the game has at least the rudiments of a cosmology: the spell books have distinctive themes, as do the node flavors.

What I'd been hoping to see in MoM's 'spiritual successor' was more of that sort of thing, not less. My main reason for harping on the lack of a minimal core rule set for magic is because of Stardock's continuous-development approach, which I like in general but believe is a problem when it comes to magic in Elemental.

I've played more GC2 than I played MoM. I was in the beta for at least one of the expansions, maybe both, and I was the 'at large oddball' member of the Metaverse Council folks who helped/heckled Kryo while he was building the AltMeta. If my expectations-based problems with Elemental remain as bad as they are at the moment, I'm likely to spend most or all of my gaming time back in GC2.

I think this is what has gotten me and still gets me with EWOM. MoM was in 1994 and got these little things right with cruddy sprites. EWOM has this glorious engine but can't seem to nail down the little immersive things. I am sure they will get it but even now it still isn't up to par (yes, even with MoM's bug).

It bugs me far more than the CTD's or whathaveyou ever did.

Right , except you don't "Research" tech at all. The limitations are built in. I'm a Wizard-God, I should be researching magic not tech!

And worse yet Magic is not even 50% of tech... 

Ah okay. Was wondering what you meant by Game cosmology, thought you were referring to novels and all that...

To be fair, when I first heard SD was trying for Master of Magic name years ago, my first instinct, was... that they would not be able to capture the "magic" of MOM (crazy different playing styles).Bought prerelease anyway just to support TBS. 

Galciv alone was fun I guess but in a different way from MOM. At least this was my impression from playing Gal Civ 2, though I've read they added different tech trees for the later expansions, but my guess is it was still pretty restrained compared to the differences in MOM/HOMM etc

SD mechanics always seem to be Tech A, does +X to stat Y ... Or simple linear or RPS game mechanics.  It's a challenge for them to change.

I agree here. I still feel essentially the reason why Magic is so bland , is that they are trying to make things easy for the AI. Look at the spells submitted for the design contest and highlighted in the post. Every single one of them is the type of "crazy" spell that harks back to MOM days. I think it will be really odd if they just select one spell to implement, it will stick out like a sore thumb among the other spells. 

I really think there need to be a good mix of generic "fireball" spells and more unique spells. More isn't always better beyond a certain point (for example I thought DOminions was just showing off for the sake of doing so, particularly since it didn't do TC), but at this point definitely too little.

Okay so I'm wrong. I always felt while GC2 is infinitely more polished than EWOM, GC2 game mechanics are very close to EWOM.