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[SeaBee]

Elemental had all the time sunk into the engine, so almost no lore/content after the too early release.

Brad Wardell's Fiction novels

Oh god, don't remind me.

Elemental had plenty of lore, but it was all very bad lore. Wardell destroyed the game from the start with his ego, others paid for it dearly (with their jobs).

As far as this game goes, I'm still not sure if I even want to play it anymore. I'm going to wait for some serious content patches or something first, then I'll give it an honest, fresh try.

[Bluerobin]

Thirdly, the AI loves to just straight up donate money to you for paltry returns. Once you get an alliance with people, almost every single turn they'll spam you with really dumb trade requests. Things like giving you 100 gold for 14 mana...

That's really odd, I have the exact opposite problem. I have 5 opponents on a normal-sized continents world and I can't for the life of me get anyone to be friends with me, even the guy on the other side of the world (so no "your borders are too close!"), who's enemies are the same as my enemies AND we share a religion. Plus everyone demands money or mana from me every three turns or so, even the people I'm friendly with. And if you say no to a demand it's instant war. I do hope they give the AI some serious work, I like diplomacy and it's one of their (four or five) selling points whenever I see the game for sale.

[umiman]

Yeah, probably the AI is just completely dumb. You're either best of friends or worst enemies. No in between.

[SeaBee]

There really aren't enough games with decent diplomacy.

[Dariush]

There really aren't any games with decent diplomacy.

Fix'd.

[Deon]

Okay, I've just learned a bit more, and it's NOT Civilization 5 engine. Also it's not developed by Paradox, Paradox are publishers, It's developed by a russian company, and they used the engine of "Codex of war" and totally copied Civilization 5 interface because they considered it perfect (and probably lacked a graphic designer). The more you learn...

[lastverb]

There really aren't any games with decent diplomacy.

Fix'd.

GalCiv 2

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I don't mind that they cloned Civilization 5's interface and combat mechanics. The rest of the game is pretty original, sometimes even innovative -- including the economy, unit tech system, city building, and use of resource tiles. I'd rather they copy something that works than reinvent for the sake of reinventing, otherwise you'll get more Elemental: War of Magic disasters, where smart people work on good ideas, but are brought down by core mechanics that don't really gel.

Elemental was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Master of Magic, but forgot to do one of the things that made MoM work so well: blatantly clone Civilization. Warlock's developers didn't openly claim such pretensions of being a MoM successor, but it's obvious (I've seen Rjakh and the Dark Rituals spell) that they were greatly inspired by it. Weak diplomacy and shallowness of content seem to be the big problems for Warlock, not the things it imported from Civilization.

Although, while I find the God-driven magic system conceptually interesting and certainly original, I think I prefer the Dominions 3 and Master of Magic system of just point-buying levels of magic schools on character creation.

[ThtblovesDF]

My AI keeps breaking the non-aggression pact (without attacking at the same time - but it is moving troops in position for a tactical betrayal), but I'm being a douche and just offering a non-aggression pact (+they pay me 50 gold) in the same turn, resulting in endless income.

Sadly the game bugged out for me now, it tells me to select a spell to research, but if I choose any of the 3 remaining spells in the research panel it just jumps back to the game screen - now allowing me to end my turn, since i have to pick a spell to research (which i can't?).

Also have a endless duel between two vampires going on in the desert, they both use death magic and are immune to it, while even if any of them do damage, the regeneration heals it up right away - and the 1-2 dmg that remains is taken back the next turn thanks to lifesteal.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Deon]

Welp, I've played it quite a lot, and it's a decent exploration wargame. I love many elements of it, but it needs a lot of fixing .

The main problem is that the more cities you have, the better you are. So just spam settlers everywhere, which is boring and with time becomes a micromanagement hell. If it had upkeep for cities or you had a maximum amount of cities based on your capital size, it would be so much better.

[Neonivek]

Although, while I find the God-driven magic system conceptually interesting and certainly original,

It is a bit odd to me given that Majesty 2 hinted that the gods may be fakes. THEN AGAIN the missions are never given by the gods themselves but people of that order.

So it is less the god's favor but their followers. Which as Majesty 2 shown us involves laylines and could just be entirely different forms of magic outside the Mage's pure arcane roots.

[Deon]

Yeah, it's a good game on small and medium maps, and terrible on large and huge .

As I said, you can build as many cities as you want, and the more, the merrier. So it goes like that. You expand, and build, and build. With each additional city you train more units, and more, and more. In the end you have to move SO MANY units around that it takes 5 minutes to simply move them all... Because they are not in stacks, it's hard . A bit more design tweaking could solve this issue.

Also AI is quite dumb, I steamrolled 5 opponents on normal difficulty with warriors and archers. I should bump the difficulty up (maybe it's my Civilization experience, hehe).

And I like how they have both promotions and equipment, like in Fall from Heaven mod for Civ 4. They have simple promotions and simple equipment (almost never a choice), and not too many different units, but I feel like ALL units are useful, and that's a great design decision.

[IronyOwl]

New update.

Most noteworthy thing are "Lords and Artifacts," meaning they finally added heroes with an inventory. Haven't had much experience, but so far it seems like Lords are based off normal unit types. No idea how far that goes, like if there's a troll hero or it's just infantry, but it seems nice so far. Aside from having an inventory and being stronger and more expensive than normal, heroes sometimes, but I guess not always, have unusual abilities. The ratman robber hero had +5 gold as an ability called Pillage, for instance, while I think the goblin archer was basically vanilla.

Each hero has three item slots, but each slot is keyed to a specific artifact type and the makeup varies between heroes, so that's nice. Random merchants will sometimes pop up to sell you a random item, or supposedly you can find them in ruins and such.

They also added fairly halfhearted but fairly welcome events, namely the merchants and randomly spawned monster lairs. Nothing major, but I still think it's a nice touch. Heroes also come around as a random event, though I got a new one immediately upon my old one dying, and supposedly you can find them in quests or ruins and so on as well.


They also added the ability to disable certain victory conditions, which is nice. You can't disable ALL victory conditions, though, which is a bit unfortunate.

They also apparently upgraded enemy mage AI and slightly expanded diplomacy, as evidenced by the fact that an enemy mage was not only smart enough to offer me a non-aggression pact, he later expanded it to an alliance. He then also canceled said alliance for no reason, but then offered it again. On the downside, he seemed to be doing considerably worse than usual. Maybe it was a fluke or I was just doing better than normal by cramming cities everywhere I could fit them.


Finally, they added multiplayer. Haven't tried it and it's labeled "beta," so I'm a bit suspicious, but I guess it's there now and will probably get more bug-free as time goes on.

[Bluerobin]

I have to say, this game is a lot more fun than it was shortly after it came out. I might help that diplomacy with AI actually works (as far as I can tell, anyway) and that I got a rabbit hero. My little fluffy white bunny that was immune to melee and missile attacks was pretty great for taking out cities. Also, these heroes might actually make it possible for me to make some headway into the other planes, I'll have to see.

[Dariush]

I doubt they could have fixed the, frankly, HORRIBADFUCKSHITFAILY AI, but the changelog looks nice. Maybe I can waste another two hours on this...