Elemental War of Magic

[dragon]

Decided to pick up the game as I saw it at Walmart. Only had a short chance to play but at first glance has some potential but some issues. Was wondering if anyone has played more into the campaign.

[Lonewolf187]

I was in the beta for the game. I haven’t played the campaign yet, been too busy playing the sandbox game. My impression so far is that the game is great, it has some serious potential and I'm enjoying it immensely. They just updated the game yesterday to 1.6 and it’s taken care of a lot of issues.

[Stofsk]

I didn't know it had been released. I loved Galciv so I'll probably give this one a go eventually.

[Stark]

The UI suxxx and the faction creation is manual xml editing because after 90% of people said 'making a faction' was the best faction they externalised it.

Fuck stardock. BTW the bad guy in the story is THE DREADLORD. Someone stop Brad Wardell.

[Stofsk]

The UI suxxx and the faction creation is manual xml editing because after 90% of people said 'making a faction' was the best faction they externalised it.

Huh. It can't be all bad can it?

Fuck stardock. BTW the bad guy in the story is THE DREADLORD. Someone stop Brad Wardell.

oh wait lol

[Stark]

The best part about the UI is that it doesn't change with res and the fixed options don't fit in the areas designed for them, necessitating scrolling with tiny, tiny buttons. FUN!

The combat is horrible shit, the magic is lame, the unit design is crippled for like an hour until you unlock 'big sword' (a tech upgrade to 'small sword'). A mod might save it, but seriously I'd rather play MoM.

Also your cities are on fresh/evil ground reclaimed from the wilderness rigth, except it never, ever expands outside your 'influence area' so it looks RETARDED.

[weemadando]

GiantBomb did a write up on this. Here's the highlights:

What Is Going On With Elemental: War Of Magic?
Added by Matt Kessler on Aug. 25, 2010
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according to the article at PC Gamer, the game is chock-a-block with game-breaking, showstopping bugs. Francis describes some of the problems that the publication encountered with the launch-day version of the game:

The game crashes constantly.
The game's battle system only works 20% of the time.
The game's multiplayer mode "hasn't been switched on yet." Simply put, at this moment, the game's multiplayer function does nothing.
AI-controlled races will oftentimes not leave their town or defend it from attacks. That's like a truck race where the other truckers don't race.

And according to Francis, that's across multiple testing machines.

Elemental's woes don't stop there; since the game's launch, Stardock has released two patches in an attempt to try and salvage the game. The first, smaller patch apparently did alleviate some of the game's crashes, as well as fixed the battle system. However, the second, larger patch that had "been in the works for a month" made the battle system totally unplayable again.

You read that right; Stardock's latest "fix" to Elemental patched out a key gameplay feature that a previous patch had fixed.
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However, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell doesn't seem to think that there are problems around the releases of his games. In the all-purpose thread for Elemental at the Quarter To Three forums, Wardell responded to hostile claims that his company's game plays "like an early beta" by asking players of that mindset to, "...please stay away from our games in the future. I consider [Elemental] ready for release and if others disagree, don't buy our games."

Wardell's stance is especially harsh, and in sharp contrast to the Stardock mantra of respecting its paying customers (hence, no intrusive DRM in Stardock games). Elemental could very well be fixed down the road, with Stardock ironing out the rest of the game's issues. But these are issues that should have been fixed before the game was sent out to retail. Constant crashing and broken AI shouldn't be day-one patch material, right? As a result of the game's bugs, Francis told the readers of PC Gamer that, right now, they shouldn't purchase Elemental, saying that the game is currently too broken to recommend.
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[Stark]

Yeah I need to find it on the forums, but Wardell has gone TOTALLY INSANE. He's been banning people for being critical of the beta for some time.

Ironically, the beta was actually better. The release version is fucked.

Stardock is now 0/2 major releases, having fucked Demigod and now fucking Elemental, with Civ5 about to release and corner the entire market. What a pack of idiots. Play Star Ruler or MoM instead.

[weemadando]

It's like he actively wants to be compared to Derek Smart.

[Stark]

He may well BE Derek Smart. This is the Fox-supporting lolbertarian who didn't want to use the MoM licence because Atari (the licence holder) has corporate policies around social responsibility and would need to make sure no Stardock facility uses child labour etc.

He seriously said in an interview PFFFT WHATEVER HOW STUPID.

[AniThyng]

Huh. I guess you've really failed when the corporate gaming mags pan you

[weemadando]

He may well BE Derek Smart. This is the Fox-supporting lolbertarian who didn't want to use the MoM licence because Atari (the licence holder) has corporate policies around social responsibility and would need to make sure no Stardock facility uses child labour etc.

He seriously said in an interview PFFFT WHATEVER HOW STUPID.

I don't know, I don't think he's quite reached a Derek Smart level of insanity.

When Wardell trashes a vending machine after a bad meeting (which Smart did in the Take2 lobby) then we might have a new contender to the throne of vidja-game-egotist-crazy..

[Xon]

Honestly the most anoying thing is the fucking memory leak somewhere in the save/load/new game process. Start a new game or load a save after having an existing game running and it'll hit's ~1.5gb memory used and then crashes with an out-of-memory exception (stupid 32bit app).

[Stark]

If only someone would hack MoM to run in a window, we wouldn't even NEED Elemental.

[Stofsk]

He may well BE Derek Smart. This is the Fox-supporting lolbertarian who didn't want to use the MoM licence because Atari (the licence holder) has corporate policies around social responsibility and would need to make sure no Stardock facility uses child labour etc.

He seriously said in an interview PFFFT WHATEVER HOW STUPID.

Whoa what? What the christ.

This sounds fucking awful. Galciv 2 was fantastic, and from what little I heard about this game made me interested. Fantasy setting TBS? Yes thanks. The bit about him going 'don't like it, don't pay for it' is just over the top. Thanks Brad, I'll keep my money in my wallet instead of purchasing your product.

[Stark]

I mentioned it above, but seriously he's a fanfic lunatic and after writing a stupid story (seriously, there's a fucking novel) a survey of the forums showed the favourite faction of 90% of players was 'make your own'.

It's now impossible to make your own faction without manually editing xml files. The story is also alarmingly Galciv in nature. The lolbertarian stuff is just funny, because his outrage that any factory/etc that Stardock used to make boxes/etc would have to comply to Atari ethical standards. OUTRAGEOUS!

ENJOY BRAD'S FANFIC OKAY?

[jessenclerk]

Well, The game might have it's flaws, but if you're going to rail on it you should probably include evidence that you at least played it. This review is garbage and should honestly be taken down and redone by someone who will do more than just read the box.

[AniThyng]

Well, The game might have it's flaws, but if you're going to rail on it you should probably include evidence that you at least played it. This review is garbage and should honestly be taken down and redone by someone who will do more than just read the box.

considering even gamespot gave the game 4.0, there seems little reason to doubt any negative reviews of this game...

[Vendetta]

If only someone would hack MoM to run in a window, we wouldn't even NEED Elemental.

You mean like Dosbox?

[bobalot]

Well, The game might have it's flaws, but if you're going to rail on it you should probably include evidence that you at least played it. This review is garbage and should honestly be taken down and redone by someone who will do more than just read the box.

Care to elaborate?

[Spoonist]

Well, The game might have it's flaws, but if you're going to rail on it you should probably include evidence that you at least played it. This review is garbage and should honestly be taken down and redone by someone who will do more than just read the box.

So a Wardell lackey actually took the time out to join an internet forum only to say that a review is bad. Without any supportive argument or explanation for said view.

[Thanas]

He's a spammer. Stop replying to him.