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[Another]

Well, at least they look not worse than Master of Magic ones, so that will do for me.

Also posting in this thread to simplify finding new updates on Elemental. Thanks, Tormy.

[Sowelu]

Well, at least they look not worse than Master of Magic ones, so that will do for me.

I have to disagree with all my heart, but I am probably in a minority opinion here and either way it's nowhere near final.  Now I see why everyone hates releasing early screenshots. 

[Granite26]

Thanks, Tormy.

Ditto... This is my main source of information about...  something I'm extremely excited about.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

I like the art style!

Shiny~

[Tormy]

City screenshots don't look easy to use (looking forwards to real interface shots), and the tactical shot with the fog and stuff looked very, very ugly.  Let's hope their shadows do what they're supposed to, but the colors and the cel shading look WAY off in combat to me.

That screenie is an ancient one. I agree that it looks a bit weird...it's too blurry or something. Hopefully they gonna show us some new combat shots soon enough. 
Also, never forget: We will be able to create gfx for everything in this game, so I am not really worried about the vanilla [unit] graphics. The art style is fantastic imo, and I really like these city screenshots also. 

[Rockphed]

I like the cut of this game's jib.  I love me a good 4X game.

[Tormy]

Hm, I guess I will pre-order the game. I generally hate beta testing games, but this one really "deserves it". Anyone else plans to participate in the beta?

[Areyar]

it is a nice detail in those combat shots, that hurled troopers drop their weapons.
Too often in games the models have their armaments welded fast to their hands and never drop them even in death.

I'm not sure about the cellshaded/cartoonish aspect, but not too concerned either. Like ascii, it could stimulate the imagination and add depth through abstraction.

[Shadowlord]

It *sounds* like it could potentially be great, but then so did Spore. And we all know what we got there.

I wouldn't pre-order it, personally. I'd wait until it comes out, and check out the reviews of it, before even considering buying it.

I'd also prefer to try the open beta, if there ends up being one, since demos tend to be short and can be misleading, and GalCiv II got very high ratings in reviews, and yet manages to bore and annoy me. I'll put this in spoiler tags so it doesn't spam up the thread as much unless you REALLY want to read it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have it and even got the first expansion pack since it was supposed to make it better... it was still boring. I had quit playing it and concluded that I never should have bought the first expansion by the time the second one came out, and wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

One particular incident of note was that I decided to see if I could take advantage of the game's design as a tile-based and turn-based game with no reactionary movement or reaction fire on ships which are passing nearby on the strategic map, and designed warships and troop transports which could move far enough in one turn to travel from my territory out of sight of enemy ships, through enemy territory, and to enemy planets. I made enough ships to destroy the few ships which the enemy had on the same tile as the planet (which made them fight individually instead of in a fleet, making them easy to destroy), and enough troop transports to conquer each planet easily.

I was at peace with the target. I moved all my ships to their staging positions on the border in one turn (after having them all eventually arrive at locations further from the border), from which the enemy ships still could not see them. The enemy did not notice the buildup, did not declare war, and did not send any kind of warning.

On the next turn, I declared war, my attack ships entered enemy space, flew right past the enemy defense fleets unopposed, flew to the enemy planets, and destroyed all the ships at the planets. Then my troop transports flew right past those defense fleets as well, which just SAT THERE DOING NOTHING... and I proceeded to land my troops on every planet in that empire.

That entire empire was conquered in one turn by sending attack ships and troop transports right past huge defense fleets, which just sat there and twiddled their thumbs. Once the planets were conquered, the huge defense fleets just vanished or something. It was the most completely ridiculous thing I had ever seen in a strategy game. Spearmen killing a tank made more sense than this.

Anyways, I stopped playing after that. The game rules were just so very wrong for a space TBS game. Lately I've been playing Sword of the Stars with all the expansions though, and that's quite fun so far, the game rules actually make sense. (Even though I've been getting my ass kicked by the computer players, but that's probably because I haven't done any trade and I haven't gotten anyone to agree to peace).

[Tormy]

It *sounds* like it could potentially be great, but then so did Spore. And we all know what we got there.

This is a Stardock game. Have you ever played with Galciv 2. + the expansions? You should know that this company cares about quality. 

[Virtz]

This is a Stardock game. Have you ever played with Galciv 2. + the expansions? You should know that this company cares about quality. 

I'd also prefer to try the open beta, if there ends up being one, since demos tend to be short and can be misleading, and GalCiv II got very high ratings in reviews, and yet manages to bore and annoy me. (...)

[Tormy]

Oops...
Ah well, I loved Galciv 2. However it lacks 2 important things. 1. Tactical battles, 2. Multiplayer
Both of these will be available in Elemental. 

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Also.
Modding.

That's the most FUN part.

Unlike GalCiv, which can't be modded anyway (I regard GalCiv II as their re-entry title into games again. And... it works, because they got income from their non-games commercials, and their director is the AI scripter.

THE AI SCRIPTER.
That's what made the AI so great... when compared to other games...

(Also: Tech tree, well, sucks. I hope there would be no tech tree here, except for magic.)

[umiman]

I can name quite a few things I really don't want to see from Galciv in Elemental.

Those goddamn space stations and constructors you have to build constantly and all over the place.

The extremely boring combat and ridiculously dumb weapon names. This includes the rock-paper-scissors element, ugly ugly ugly weapons, boring weapon effects, boring combat scenes, and basically everything related to combat.

Dull tech tree. Seriously, "Sensors I", "Sensors II", "Sensors III"...

Weird diplomacy menu choices. What's influence points? Why do they have to list every single bloody ship on the menu Why can't you check what exactly you are giving or recieving?

The lack of superlasers. There are none in Galciv. For a space game to have no giant frikkin' beams of light scorching the heavens and destroying planets is an affront to all that is good in this world. Sure, there's that star destroyer thing, but that laser is comparatively puny and isn't glorious to watch at all. I'm not sure how this would fit in a fantasy TBS, but we need a Stellar Converter in there.

[Sowelu]

stuff

I've noticed that the enemy won't notice troop buildups on lower difficulty levels, but it will on higher ones.  Although the AI still doesn't please me.

Microprose games (Civ, etc) has that annoying feature where if you start getting ahead, all of a sudden EVERY AI DOGPILES YOU regardless of being at peace, and nobody will trade with you if you're ahead...  GalCiv2 shows you what happens when that feature isn't in; the enemy squabbles amongst themselves while you remove yourself from the fights diplomatically, and they don't care that the one guy in the universe who isn't in any wars is building up a bigger army than all of them put together, and trading tech to get on top of the pile.