Elemental: War of Magic - Catch All

ANyone catch the PAX demo? I missed it, darnit.

It was Suwwweeeeet. Got the whole spiel from two developers and asked alot of questions. I also sat through one of Brads presentations.

Its forming up very well. The graphics look good and I got to dicker around with the editors a bit.

At one point they casted a volcano spell on an enemy town. At the end there was the city wall, surrounding a whole fricken volcano. Neat.

Yeah, but months to finish a game? Seriously? Even Civ 4 is usually 4 or 5 sessions for a long game...

He's talking about the campaign, though, which considering how lengthy these types of games are in this respect (HOMM, Disciples, Age of Wonders, etc.) it doesn't sound outside the realm of possibility.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some type of option to play something similar to a single "normal" map or skirmish that most TBS games have.

I seem to remember on some blog post of Brad's that because of the way the engine has been designed it will be possible to use absolutely massive map sizes (unlike, say, the engine for Civ4 which was really constrained). That's probably where the 'months' comment is coming from.

On another note, I finally gave in and pre-ordered the game for fear of missing the beta cutoff, thereby abandoning my plan of waiting to use one of those mythical Demigod playing time coupons on it. Really looking forward to getting a closer look at the development process of this one with the beta.

Brad has posted some PAX previews on his blog.

http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/art...

If anybody was at PAX and grabbed any pics from the Stardock crew, please let me know.

The new map sizes are designed to be like the maximum map size from Galciv 2. THOSE maps are almost unimaginable huge. It will take you weeks just to move across it from one side to another.

This doesn't mean you HAVE to play on such a big map. But they want to cater to those people who like big months long games.

Okay, that's more like it.

Man, imagine playing the same map of Civ IV for two months and then losing to a diplomatic victory. I would be totally stressed out after that.

The idea is that you can scale up the game to ridiculous levels for those of us with super computers at home. But then also being able to scale down to the point where you can play on a netbook. Sure the graphics would be paper-map only, but that didn't stop us from playing MoM.

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

The small map was unimaginably huge, and he said the large map was 10x the size. I can easily see how a game could take a couple months if you played say 8 hours a week or so.

I'm getting goosebumps.

Yonder wrote:

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

Just saying, but they don't charge you until the game is released. I know, I'm a bad bad man.

Gunner wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

Just saying, but they don't charge you until the game is released. I know, I'm a bad bad man.

Gunner wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

Just saying, but they don't charge you until the game is released. I know, I'm a bad bad man.

You get charged when the beta starts, not when the game ships. So, you really need to keep an eye out for when the beta starts and Stardock comes a calling for their money.

garion333 wrote:
Gunner wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

Just saying, but they don't charge you until the game is released. I know, I'm a bad bad man.

You get charged when the beta starts, not when the game ships. So, you really need to keep an eye out for when the beta starts and Stardock comes a calling for their money.

Hmm, I suppose you could interpret it as charging you at the time of the beta. Depends how you read the line "when the product(s) are available and have been processed." I took that to mean when the game was actually available.

Guess we'll find out pretty soon (hopefully)!

I preordered at PAX and I was charged.

That was probably different though since you didn't order through the online system.

Pre-orders will be charged when the public beta starts.

If you pre-ordered at PAX I'm going to assume you were charged immediately because it was a portable system they were using.

Gunner wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Gunner wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I really want to pre-order this and get in on the Beta, but I spent so much money on Labor Day weekend video game sales...

I'll probably buy it anyways because I am a weak, weak man.

Just saying, but they don't charge you until the game is released. I know, I'm a bad bad man.

You get charged when the beta starts, not when the game ships. So, you really need to keep an eye out for when the beta starts and Stardock comes a calling for their money.

Hmm, I suppose you could interpret it as charging you at the time of the beta. Depends how you read the line "when the product(s) are available and have been processed." I took that to mean when the game was actually available.

Not to belabor the point (too much more), as Island Dog cleared it up properly (I was going to point you to the Elemental forums), but it's a poor business practice to allow people into a beta without charging them. They can then preorder, play the game in beta, get bored (or whatever) and then cancel the preorder before retail hits. That just wouldn't work. Entry into a Stardock beta is really a symbiotic relationship between us, the user, and the developer. They get money and beta testers, and we get to play the game early and possibly influence its design. Win/win. Stardock's smart.

garion333 wrote:

Not to belabor the point (too much more), as Island Dog cleared it up properly (I was going to point you to the Elemental forums), but it's a poor business practice to allow people into a beta without charging them. They can then preorder, play the game in beta, get bored (or whatever) and then cancel the preorder before retail hits. That just wouldn't work. Entry into a Stardock beta is really a symbiotic relationship between us, the user, and the developer. They get money and beta testers, and we get to play the game early and possibly influence its design. Win/win. Stardock's smart. ;)

Yeah my bad. I just read the email I got and incorrectly read "product is available" to mean "released." Of course it makes more sense to charge when the beta is released.

That pre-order system seems to have worked in the past. It made Sins: Entrenchment into a pretty solid product on release.

Ooo, this new mechanic looks fun:

Frogboy wrote:

In Elemental, one of your abilities will be the governing ability. The more cities under you control, the more overhead cost there is to run your ever growing kingdom. At some point, it may become advisable to turn some cities into vassals. A vassal state is a city (or group of cities) that is originally founded by the player but has been made independent by that player. It becomes its own independent faction controlled by the AI. Initially, as a vassal, it is allied to you. But being independent, all bets are off of what happens in the future. It may join up with someone else, combine up with other vassals to form a new kingdom, or even go on its own to try to become a major faction in its own right through a path of conquest.

Kinda reminds me of Paradox's Middles Ages game Crusader Kings. Anything that increases the number of interesting diplomatic interactions while simultaneously decreasing micromanagement is a big win in my book.

That does sound interesting. There was some space tbs game, don't recall the name, that had a similar mechanic. The player's "time" was one of the resources, you could only take so many actions a turn, any other actions had to be delegated to governor AIs. The idea being that the ruler of a multi-system empire wouldn't have the ability to micromanage his entire empire.

The vassal system is an interesting take on that idea.

Also seems like it would bring an interesting mechanic to multiplayer games. Your empire got wiped out in the first hour? Soon an ally will have to separate off a vassal nation anyways, you can just take control of that.

You would add more political intrigue if you didn't only take over your old allies vassals, but instead inherited your old empire. Now you have IC and OOC reasons to rebel against your parent state!

Just an FYI, when the pre-orders start charging an e-mail will be sent out to let you know.

Ooo, this new mechanic looks fun:

Sold. Reading the dev logs and seeing that the beta will take place on a cloth map *increases* my anticipation of the game.

So do I have to preorder to get into beta? Or can I wait for impressions first?

Staats wrote:

So do I have to preorder to get into beta? Or can I wait for impressions first?

I think there will be multiple phases to the beta. One is coming up soon and another will be next year before release. But I bet beta testers will be under NDA so you're probably not gonna get any impressions.

Latrine wrote:
Staats wrote:

So do I have to preorder to get into beta? Or can I wait for impressions first?

I think there will be multiple phases to the beta. One is coming up soon and another will be next year before release. But I bet beta testers will be under NDA so you're probably not gonna get any impressions.

But can I enter the beta at any time? I'd like to take part in the beta just to see how Stardock handles it and it's very likely I'll pick this up eventually anyway, but January's much more open than, say, the 2009 release season.