Another 1.1 Impression/Suggestion Thread

from Elemental Forums

I spent about 5 hours with 1.1, and ... I still don't know if I'm going to like it. 

Stardock loves vanilla and percentages and AI. I love unique, game altering/imbalancing abilities and could care less about percentages as long as I'm crushing my opponents. I don't think that Stardock can deliver on what I want. :(

Maybe it's that I just can't get IN to the game. There is still too sharp of a learning curve for me to appreciate the more subtle strategies. The in-game help is better, but I still have questions. (Like, how should I prioritize my tech research?) There isn't a great strategy guide yet for 1.1. I'll try reading the GameFAQs FAQ on my car trip tomorrow to see if that helps.

 

I'll keep trying to like it if you guys keep trying to fix it.

 

Anyway...Here are my 1.1 Suggestions:

General:

* Built Units just sit in a city - If you don't know you completed the build and aren't paying attention to the icons on the side of the screen, you will totally miss them. There isn't a handy popup telling you that your unit was finished. Why not have two popups: one for a city with idle build queue and one for a city with an idle training queue.

* Let us easily rearrange the queue order.

* Why must I earmark materials when I queue up a building or unit? Why can't these materials be consumed progressively through the build time or all at once when the build starts? This limits how many buildings or units I can queue up ahead of time, which means I spend more time micromanaging cities.

* If the material usage is incremental, wouldn't it be cool if we could emphasize training units over building new buildings? Maybe add a sliding scale control that would let you allocate more resources to one task or another?

* If I have unmoved units, can I have the option to NOT end the turn?

* I want to fight for some goodie huts. Don't just make them up for grabs. Give some of the early game ones teeth!

Tactical:

* Tactical combat is still way too slow. The animations and the delay between animations take too long, and we still don't have a way to control that. I want it MoM-fast. Attack-Counter-Attack-Counter-Attack-Attack-Attack. Not Attack...wait...Counter...wait...

* Tactical: In general, it would be better if the attacking unit crossed over into the defending unit's square during the attack, rather than have them trade blows across the squares' boundary. After all, it's ridiculous that a retreating unit would move to the edge of its square to face their attacker. 

UI:

* I suggested this before, but it's still a major pet peeve of mine. I CAN'T ALWAYS TELL IF I CAN MOVE INTO A SQUARE! It's those stupid mountains. Even when I turn on the faint gridlines, I still can't always discern where my units can move. I hate this about Elemental.

* Put the load button back on the option screen.

* Let us edit our custom soverigns.

Numbers:

* Why am I omnipotent and am able to see the kingdom info of my enemies? Shouldn't this be the result of a powerful magic spell or spying technology?

* I still don't have a way to know where my mana is coming from. I know I get 4 per turn, but what's the breakdown?

* I can't look up in-game what the traits of the kingdom/empire faction I'm playing. If I had a custom faction, I often forget my advantages.

* If my soverign is a merchant, how do I know how much guildar she's generating? Non-soverign champions show this.

Bugs:

* If I play on Tiny, my mini-map in the upper-right doesn't get completely filled in. What's worse is that I keep getting graphical artifacts popping up in the box.

 

elemental
9,555 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm still trying to like the game. I think it's the learning curve and the information obfuscation that befuddles my longtime 4X'er mind.

 

There's this really nice "Kingdom Report" screen, right? Does it give you a full kingdom report? No. You have to hunt for information. It doesn't show Mana income/expenditures. It doesn't show Tech Knowledge Point Income. It doesn't show Arcane Knowledge Point Income. It doesn't break down numbers in tool-tips.

 

You guys do an awesome job breaking down hitpoints (+x from Constitution, +x% from Race, etc). Why are you faltering on numbers that really count?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I bought Elemental when it came out, being a fan of the GalCiv series I was very excited. I couldn't even make it through the tutorial.

 

So 1.1 has been a definite improvement. I've played two custom games so far and tried the campaign, mostly just learning the interface and the options and game play. I'll say 1.1 is a vast improvement. Someone had said it feels more like a game now and I can agree with that.

 

So here are my pet peeves.

 

#1 I got stuck on the campaign where you're trying to find where the villagers fled to. Not only was I unable to figure out where to go, but I was tired of trying to figure out which mountain squares I could move on.

 

#2 I don't think I've seen the terraforming, mobility etc spellbooks in the tech tree. I don't like that you can't heal with spells outside of battle. Usually I autoresolve the battles and it would be nice if I could preset some spells to cast. Also, I don't like that I have to leave a city with my sovereign in order to teleport him and his army.

 

#3 The game kind of lurches in difficulty. I was doing fine exploring the wilderness, taking damage but surviving monsters. Then a bandit group jumps up out of nowhere and kills my entire party of hired heroes. Later on, I have a nice zone of control set up with my cities but since I'm not at war at anyone, I'm spending 50+ turns flipping through Domination techs to try to get from Level 2 to Level 3 goodie huts. Then I seem to speed from level 3 to level 4. I have no problems cleaning up most of the huts until I run into this giant spider inside a hut who 1-hits each unit in my army.

 

#4 I hate the building space mechanic, especially without a good idea of where I can and can't build buildings once a city is established and especially if I build close to another city. I had to end my first game because I tried demolishing shanties to get enough space for slums and ended up decimating my city. I get the idea that buildings have to be continuous, but it almost encourages the idea of building towns far away from resources and letting the zones of influence expand until the resources are in range. This seems counterintuitive to civilization building.

 

#5 I think the weapon tech tree needs to be reworked. There needs to be more intermediary options before the slashing/piercing/etc. trees and I don't think I've seen a reason to be in more than one tree other than archery and a single melee weapon. Also, the arcane stuff should indicate that elementium isn't produced. And is there really an advantage to researching armies besides being able to one-click train and move?

 

#6 I hate that hired champions tend to take damage and die before trained "grunt" units in autoresolve.

 

#7 I have no idea what ambassadors do, besides generate diplomatic capital and even then, it appears capped at 50. Why is it a unit instead of a building?

 

#8 Allow trading of techs and weapons/armor/steeds. Seems the only trading options are for gold/materials/metal/crystals.

 

#9 Allow existing units to be upgraded with new units, preferably with a mass upgrade option.


#10 I think champions should provide some kind of bonus to their army. If not, why have a champion in an army except for his STR rating?

 

#11 A preview of what spells you learn if you research a spell level would be nice too. I'm at spell level 8 and wondering if there's anything else to get.

 

#12 Seems when I adventure, I spend half my time trying to chase down a monster or a recruitable champion or an army because both it and I move 2 spaces.

 

I think there is a good game here and the patch helped a lot, but there still needs to be a bit more to keep me engaged.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

After more time playing the game, I've come to the conclusion that I can't stand it yet.

 

Why? The UI gets in the way.

 

Tactical combat is sloooow. (See previous comments.)

You can't rearrange the build queues.

You have to pre-spend your resources on things in the queue, which means your queues are often shallow - too much micromanaging.

Managing multiple units on the map is a nightmare. You can't easily see where they are going. You don't get a confirmation when they accept a pathing route. You don't know who all still needs to move. You can't skip units set to "guarding". You spend more time herding cats than you do making key strategic decisions.

 

The core mechanics seem okay (if not bland), but the UI just butchers any enjoyment I can have of the game.

Sorry... I'll try again in v1.2.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I've been playing it for a couple weeks, and have the following comments:

 

1)  The game crashes all the time.  I'm playing on a medium or large map at hard difficulty with all the other kingdoms loaded up as opponents.  This game crashes incessantly on a machine that can run other games for weeks without an error.  I use a KVM switch and accidentally left a copy of Torchlight running on this game for a week, so I know the box is stable as hell.  Elemental craps itself almost continually.

2)  This game is hugely short-sighted in its core game play model.  Make a sovereign with minimized social and magical traits and maximized combat and speed traits. Focus your first city on building up population fast, then building nothing but about ten or twelve tech research studies.  Then put all of your research in Warfare.  Focus entirely on arms and armor and mounts.  Once you have your sovereign in all heavy plate and on a mount, start roaming the countryside and kill everything.  Virtually nothing can touch you at this point, except for a couple 2nd-tier heroes that might accompany some of the other CPU-controlled sovereigns.  Romp every city you come across and build a couple heavy plate soldier units as a holding army.  Continue to tour the countryside and take every town you find.  You will suddenly be generating tons of research, so put three or four levels into arcane and get the legendary armor and weapons (waaay too easy to unlock so soon in the tree) and the start pumping research into exploration and civics.  You should be getting 1-turn discoveries at the lowest levels and about 8 to 10 turn discoveries at the highest levels.  The explosion of gilder from capturing towns should fund a complete set of legendary armor, shield, and weapon.  You are now a one-man army that can pretty much decimate the rest of the world without ever taking a point of damage.

Why is this short-sighted?  Because highly imbalancing techs are available way too soon.  Because weaponry is vastly outweighed by armor, dodging, and blocking.  Because there is no penalty for taking towns and holding them... there is no period of unrest... they are absolutely yours with full production and benefits the very turn you take them.  Because speed is king in the overland map and you will typically have heroes that move twice as fast as CPU opponents... meaning you can run around spanking their pathetic forays before they even get close to your towns.  Because linear prerequisites without cross-dependencies means that you can run all the way down and entire tech tree and have abilities or equipment that vastly outstrips any opponent who tries to take a balanced approach.

3)  The Legendary Armor set is bugged and missing a piece.  In the tech tree description the Legendary Helm appears twice and there is no set of Legendary Arms.  (Just breastplate, greaves, and helm.)

4)  The campaign mode doesn't have an auto-save?  Because the campaign is more lightweight starting out, it didn't crash for a couple hours while I was trying to follow the vague plot objectives around the map and figure out why boats act so wonky.  However, the game inevitably crashed and I only then discovered that the game doesn't do any auto-saves in campaign mode.  I'll never try that crap again.

5)  AI needs some serious work.  Why did I find the enemy with a stack of two dozen pioneers (all singles) standing in the same spot?  I can see speculative creation of one or two... but later on when there is no arable land left to build on?  The AI also doesn't seem to understand that this game's design rewards front-loaded highly optimized fighters.  

6) I had a combat where half a dozen moderately powerful enemies jumped my band of heroes where my main tank was escorting four other unarmored and damaged guys I just hired.  What is the key here?  It is to figure out where the biggest danger lies... and it is not the best idea to try to chase down the 2nd-stringers that are no threat, but to gang up on the on guy who is going to eviscerate your army one man at a time.  But, no, the AI spent several rounds chasing around my new hires while I hunted down their fighters while only having to deal with one of them at a time... too some damage, but never had the risk of having them mob up on me.  That's poorly thought out AI that is trying to speculatively snipe without actually being a threat.

7)  I've yet to see magic spells make a shred of difference in the vast chasm between poorly equipped troops and moderately well equipped troops.  (Say with light plate or better.)  Spell casting and magic research seems a lot more work for a lot less result when compared with straight up warfare arms and armor research.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

FYI: The campaign does have an auto-save. It's a different auto-save than the free world.

 

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Ok... I was too harsh in my last post.

 

While I can't stand moving units around (can't see where they can move to/can't see how they are getting there/etc), and I hate the slow combat speed, I think the game has potential.

 

I rated the game when it first came out as 1 out of 5 stars. I'll give it 3 out of 5. It's better, and it's playable, but it's not a great game yet.