Barisaxblue

Join Date 06/2008

Elemental: Is it worth it?

I've been playin Stardock games since Sins, and I've enjoyed em all. I have yet to try GalCiv, which for some reason feels slightly blasphamist, buuut I'll get around to it...eventually...maybe. Anyhow, unlike the past two games that Stardock has worked on (Sins and Demigod) Elemental's been gettin shotgunned to the face by the press and reviewers. I could care less for multiplayer, so is it worth getting? I enjoy Civ and I enjoy most RPGs. I'm just curious as to the current standing/opinion of the game, not where it stood when it released, which has been about a month or more iirc.

Edit: Weird. For some reason it's adding a second get with this "...buuut I'll get around to it...". Can't fix it either since it's not there when I go to edit. It's not a typo .

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Elemental has potential. However, the main problem I have run into with it is that it crashes a lot. It still has some memory leaks that cause the game to die with a pop up "Out of Memory". It also dies with nothing to explain it. In order to complete a game, you have to be ready to replay a portion every time you reload the last auto save. The game forgets itself from time to time as it leaves the pointer in it's last settting (talk to free hero to hire or attack a group). During battles it also gets lost when you control your men and want one to attack an enemy again. You sometimes have to deselect your group, reselect and tell them to attack. Other times, you simply have to let the computer auto calculate the outcome because nothing is responding.

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Mine crashes a lot too. I have a nice system. it does work better without SLI but it still crashes.

Other than that I find the game difficult to figure out.

overall = fail

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I've been reading more about this game including the couple of posts I've gotten here. So far, sadly, the bad out weighs the good. At least I never openned it and can return it for a full refund. I already own Civ 5 too, so I doubt I really need to get this. In fact, I own too many games as it is . Either way thanks for the opinions. After Demigod I know the game will probably never be fixed/finished. Oh well, guess the last thing is to figure out if the two Sins "expansions" are worth picking up. Once again, thanks and have a great Halloween!!!

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If you like Civilization, so then you should know that Kael, the creator of the most successful mod for civ (Fall From Heaven) has just been hired by Stardock as project manager on Elemental.

Many FFH players expect a lot from Kael...

It is also expected that the next patch (1.1) will address many known problems, including the AI. Actually, it seems that the real game will start at version 1.1 as it should be more than a simple patch, but a revision of some mecanics.

I thing it is good to wait a bit and give it a try with patch 1.1 at least.

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I don't think the price is going to drop any time soon, so I'd say its worth it since you can help adjust the development of the game if you can provide meaningful feedback. If you're not interested in doing that, then you should have a love for 4x strategy games. If you don't love 4x strategy games and don't want to contribute to the game's growth, then you should have a love for art. If you also are not a very big fan of art, or a fan of the other previously mentioned areas, then I would think you might not find it worth your time for another few major patches.

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Its a fun game, but I have stopped playing it until patch 1.1 comes out. Then I'll fire it up again. I have faith that stardock will continue to improve the game. I'm just dissapointed that they didn't delay the release to work out some of the bugs. I feel that it hurt them in the long run. Hopefully they learned from that.

Anywho, its a great game and its great news that Kael was hired as FFH was probably the best mod for CIV 4

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I agree with what ever others have posted. I enjoy the game, it has great potential, but at the moment it crashes too much. Looking forward to the 1.1 patch

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same here for the crashes and i have a new computer os windows 7 w 6 gig ram with a gtx 470 and not even runnnning game on max settings and crash often...

the one thing i hope they work on is the multiplayer lag .. it was terrible and i was playing a game against just the ai.. my mouse was freezing up the screen jerked around.. after 50 turns into the game... i can just imagine how bad lag would be playing against other people..

hope some patches to fix the crashes and lag are coming soon i really would like to be able to play this game.. iv been playing since alpha/beta and was hoping that the game would be more playable after the release than it has been.

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I don't like turn based games. I play Civ from time to time, and GalCivII, but after a while you have to nudge me to see if I'm still awake/alive. Everytime I pass this game in the store I almost buy it because there is nothing out there in the market today. Nada. Zip. Zilck. Niggadah. Nicoy. Zerooooo. I'm gonna pick it up and give it a spin next time it's on sale. I'm a little fearful of the art. I'm not big on turn based. But, you don't know unless you buy it.

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EWoM is not a RPG. It has no definitive in game RPG elements in it. I have been playing RPG's since I was in diapers. (exageration ^^)

If your willing to live with all of its shortfalls knowing that further down the line it will most likely turn into an awesome epic... then go for it. If you want a finished polished game and have little or no patience to wait for it then no.

To be perfectlly honest with you version 1.09e was more fun for me even with its numerous crashes than 1.1 is currently with no crashes.

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I am still waiting for a good deal like %50 off. Then I will buy it quickly.

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If you like 4x strategy games, and especially if you enjoyed playing Master of Magic, I'd say that Elemental is worth it. As of version 1.1 there are still a number of bugs that need evacuating, and hopefully some expanded features to be implemented in the coming months, but as is Elemental is worth playing and supporting. Scenario mode of Elemental is a giant sandbox, and, crashes and all, I'm having a blast playing with it.

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Without any doubt, it is worth to buy it ! Now after the Patch 1.1 and the statements, that they intend further to support that game, the addon, that will come - I like this game.

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I am planning to buy this game now that Kael is on board - if they take his consultations seriously, I think Elemental can be saved and I'm more than willing to buy into that.

Quick question though, since I'm weird and this matters a lot to me: Do armies visually consist of just one (or a couple) guys instead of actual armies?

This is an example of something that gets me excited: https://store.stardock.com/images/product_gfx/elemental_ss8.jpg

If I have an army, I want to see a horde of men(or what have you) battle it out on the map. That screenshot shows a dragon rampaging through *tons* of guys. I've looked and looked, but I don't see any videos of current release builds representative of what I'm looking for. Master of Magic had clusters of guys in units and it looked great back then, any chance of seeing that in Elemental now?

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As I could see it til now:

You can have several armies, each of it can consist til 12 units. Each unit can - depending from your scientific development - consist of 1, 4 (party), 8 (squad) or 12 (company) single pieces. So you can have max. 144 pieces (visually) in one army. Its not to compare with Total War series, but in this respect the "feeling" of Master of Magic is - for me - fulfilled.

I hope , I could help, apologize for my bad english.

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Great game so far. Still has problems Crashing. They really need to work on the Memory Leak. Other then that i have caught myself still playing until 3am having to go to work only a few hours later. It has been a long time since a game has done that to me.

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Quoting greendroid,

reply 15

I hope , I could help, apologize for my bad english.

That's actually a fantastic help, thank you. I'm not asking for Total War; what you described sounds like something I will definitely appreciate! Thanks!

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I'm of two minds here. One part of me wants to scream "DO NOT BUY THIS GAME", mostly because a publisher should not be rewarded for delivering a less than half baked turd of a game (as this one most definitely was).

The other part of me remembers that Masters of Magic was also basically unplayable until about 1.3, so maybe with some TLC this game may yet turn into something worthwhile down the road.

For my part I deeply regret getting excited and plunking down my hard earned cash for the pre-release. Oh well, guess it's back to playingMOM on DosBox for me. Stil to this day on of my favorite games and it still regually makes it into my rotation.

Also, if you are looking for a good fantasy turn based strategy game while you are waiting for this one to get to deliverable quality, you might check out Dominions 3. Pretty steep learning curve, but equally deep game play if you are into that type of game.

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