Elemental - Now Fallen Enchantress

[JWIV]

I just want to highlight something that I fucking wish more developers  would do. 

Digital Download Only - 49.95
Download + Box - 49.94+S&H

Offer me the game for one damn price, and if I want the physical copy, I pay S & H as opposed to having to buy the god damn game again.

It's an absolute fantastic feature.

[Sky]

While I do like that Stardock will send you the box and let you download it, they're motherfuckers about dropping the price, or at least getting out word they're doing so. Still haven't bought GalCiv2. Wish they'd just give up on their stupid service and join the steamborg, I'd love to buy this title at the xmas sale.

[Sir T]

Their service isn't "stupid." I think Impulse is excellent, and far less annoying than steam. Especially the "Ok you've downloaded it. Thanks. You don't have to load up Impulse as well to play it. And if you don't want to spend an hour downloading an update before playing a quick game, no problem."

Steam is an annoying invasive piece of shit by comparison. And I'm really glad there's some competition to it.

[Sky]

Ok, it's a good service. I still can't pay $50 for it.

[Ghambit]

So, I guess for me this season my turn-based itch will either be served by Elemental or Civ5.  Kinda tired of Civ and Civ5 looks to be nothing more than a hexed version of the same game.  Time for something fresh... plus I just saw a video of Elemental wherein a worker was taking a dump inside a hut while his dog stood and watched.  That's just cool.

[Typhon]

I like it, glad I pre-ordered.

Reading his "play through" it seems like he's slowing things down a bit and making you make choices regarding what you build/tech/etc a bit more (in the current game you have a decent base and tech buildup well before having to worry about any other race).  It might just be his write up that is making it seem like this though.

Looking forward to launch and an (eventual) killing off of the memory leaks/oddities.

[Sky]

Looking forward to launch and an (eventual) killing off of the memory leaks/oddities.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[Merusk]

I stopped playing the beta once the turn-based combat was finally implemented.  It was exactly what I was hoping for, but buggy/ mem leaky/ slow as hell.  I'm anticipating they'll have fixed and polished it a lot since I last played.

Good to hear about the tech slowdown.  I was getting stupidly far in some techs before encountering another race.

I will say that as much fun as it was, I think mods will greatly improve the game.  It felt very much like they were just providing a base game engine for folks to flavor as they seem fit.  Even moreso because the "races" all were so damn similar.

The biggest strikes against it, imo, are the art - of which I'm not a huge fan - and the unit group mechanics.  You can build anything from a single guy to a troop of 20 for a single unit, but you can't combine 20 single guys into a single 20-man unit.

The way it works in combat also means there's never a reason to build smaller units once you get the bigger group technology.  If you can build a unit of 20 archers, then just do it, don't build 4 groups of 5. (at least vs the AI I played against)  That 20-unit group will do enough alpha-strike damage to take-out any stack their size or smaller and the smaller ones can't all gang up to take it out before the next turn.

[Typhon]

Looking forward to launch and an (eventual) killing off of the memory leaks/oddities.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Well, there's theory and what would ideally be in a "player's bill of rights!".  Then there are games that you like, and an honest assessment of how long it's going to take before all the uncomfortable anomalies get worked out of that game.

Look at how long people were willing to put up with sb.exe.  Some games you put up with more crap, others you don't.  This feels like one that is worth putting up with some crap.

That said, I don't have the final build, it might be completely bug-free.  Seems like even if it's bug free it will still be a work in progress and will get better with time.  In six month it will probably be worth that $50 dollars you can't afford right now.

[Typhon]

[...]
I will say that as much fun as it was, I think mods will greatly improve the game.  It felt very much like they were just providing a base game engine for folks to flavor as they seem fit.  Even moreso because the "races" all were so damn similar.
[...]

I agree, and I think this is what they think as well (the effort to create a tutorial on how to mod the game even before the game has launched seems to imply this as well).

[sinij]

Steam is an annoying invasive piece of shit by comparison.

... by comparison to almost anything.

[sinij]

I will say that as much fun as it was, I think mods will greatly improve the game. 

I think this is what they think as well (the effort to create a tutorial on how to mod the game even before the game has launched seems to imply this as well).

They spent entire phase of Beta testing map/event creator.

[Typhon]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.  So, ah, yeah, I'm pretty sure Stardock is assuming that this is just the beginning (that, and the Frogboy post that essentially says, "there are people much better than I am at creating interesting worlds and stories, I'm hoping to create an engine that allows them to do that" - can't find it, but it's somewhere in the Elemental forum).

[Stormwaltz]

Well this is fucking bizarre.

I preordered this game. I remember setting aside money for it last spring. I had the beta installed on my home and work computers.

Now Stardock has no record of it. It's not in Impulse. Worse, I don't have a receipt in my email archives. I've always saved the receipts. I have receipts from Steam purchases in 2004, for fuck's sake.

[Seraphim]

Everyone's beta-keys were disabled the other day Storm, will be back up in Impulse on the 24th.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390894

[Reg]

Oh good. The idea of Impulse just losing track of games I've bought annoys me.

[Ghambit]

Frogboy's writeups are fairly entertaining:

http://forums.elementalgame.com/390900
http://forums.elementalgame.com/390950
http://forums.elementalgame.com/391011

[JWIV]

Think I'm coming down with a sudden case of the nerd flu.

http://bit.ly/aql93q


The official release date of Elemental is August 24th. However, some retailers have broken the street date and to make sure that those who helped us in the beta as well as those who pre-ordered it don’t miss out, we are going to release a pre-day 0 version of Elemental tonight.

This version is beyond the digital gold version that reviewers currently have but it is not quite the day 0 version either.  There’s been a lot of polish, tweaks, and other improvements to the game in this version.

If you did happen to get Elemental early from retail, you will want to load up Impulse (which was installed) and update to the latest version.

This version should go live in approximately 90 minutes.

[tazelbain]

Downloading now.

[Reg]

Grr. I just bought it but it doesn't show up in my games list yet.  And yeah, I made sure Impulse is set up to show beta software. Oh well.

[jakonovski]

Oh god, I so can't afford this game right now...

[Sir T]

Apparently there was a crazy number of preorders and its taking them a long time to work through them.

[Reg]

Well, they're all caught up. I've received my email and am downloading after preordering about an hour ago. I hope Stardock doesn't make a fool of me and release a buggy piece of opening day shit.

[Sir T]

I haven't yet

[Maledict]

I pre-ordered on Thursday, and got my email notifying me at 6:22 AM this morning. Only had time to download and start it up before work, and it crashed on the race selection screen... :(

Thing is, there's a big "day 0" patch planned for this to be released tomorrow which apparently adds a lot and fixes a lot of stuff, so not sure exactly if it's even worth playing today, or whether I should just wait for the patch and not get annoyed at bugs that I was never supposed to see.

[Reg]

I've been playing through the campaign for the last couple of hours. I've had a couple of CTD's but aside from that it seems to be pretty stable.  It's not terribly well documented though either through the manual or through playing.

[Ghambit]

Stardock games are never terribly documented.  It's part of their charm.
Half the fun is spent figuring out wtfthisdoes and wtfeffectthishas.

edit:  where the hell is my DOWNLOAD?   grrrrrr
edit2:  there it is!  

[Stormwaltz]

Everyone's beta-keys were disabled the other day Storm, will be back up in Impulse on the 24th.

Oh, thank god. I never received any notification they were doing this... it was just gone when I went to look.

Non-edit: Installing now.

[Rasix]

I've had a couple of CTD's but aside from that it seems to be pretty stable. 

[JWIV]

Apparently there was a crazy number of preorders and its taking them a long time to work through them.

Brad reported a few days ago that the game had broken even off of the pre-orders alone.  So yah, it's a bit crazy.

[Sky]

Who would've thought people would want a good fantasy TBS? 

[Stormwaltz]

Tom Chick begins a multi-part review, starting with a bit of dodgy math.

[jakonovski]

Ha, the reviewer can't do math either:

It has somehow decided that 50% + 25% = 88%

We're talking bonuses so one way of stacking them is straight up multiplying:

1 * 1,5 * 1,25 = 1,875

Wasn't that hard, was it?

Edit: yes yes, I just noticed it's mentioned in the first comment. Shut up.

[Lantyssa]

So... crashes aside, how is it?

Will it replace MoM running in DOS Box?

[Modern Angel]

Nothing will replace MoM running in DOXBox.