Is there going to be a patch for multi-core performance support soon?  I can't run it late game at all even if it's on a tiny map against one faction.  My computer far exceeds this games requirements and it's really depressing because I kinda like this game. 

I hope to see some improvement on performance!

I mean even with 97 objects, my Ati 5970 should not have any problems but my gpu is not used "between 0 to 5% maximum" on a clean formated and updated system.

So if we have some optimizations on the way the city is rendered does it mean the game will start using my gpu or just optimization that will give better performance even if the game just refuse to use my monster video card?

I come down on the side of "prefer fixed maps with fixed resource locations". I've already had several games effectively ruined by being put close to up to 4 gold mines to start... then walk a few feet away and see 3 clustered tech libraries?

I do agree there'd have to be at least about 20 very well balanced maps, ideally quite a few more, to make this not become boring fast.

The alturnative is to have a very complicated map generator that sprinkled the resources around in a very even manner. Have to give a value to each type or resource and make sure any given x square of grid didn't exceed a given value.

For those who LIKE games being decided largely by starting luck, this could be disabled by a generator option. For me, I find no pleasure in knowing I either won or lost based mostly on starting luck and the snowball effect these kinds of games provide to early leads.

Here's some suggestions and feedback (with a few comparisons to Heroes of M&M and MoM). This is all regarding race/faction differientation and customizing units and their combat roles in tactical battles. I think you, Stardock, can sympathize and understand most of this because you've already done it once - Galactic Civilizations 2.

Number one: Faction/Race Differences

Every race should have a passive attribute to their units. (Again, see MOM) Ironeers, for example, could have a natural magic resist. Men could gain morale for every other unit of the same race as them. Wraiths could have high magic resist, but take extra physical damage. The passive benefits already exist - but they're all mundane. They need to be more unique to each race and they need to have an effect in tactical battles to make each race different in combat (right now, all units end up looking and behaving the same). +1 move speed, +1 combat speed, etc.

Faction differences. Every faction should have techs that give their units unique abilties (Just like Champions get,I had one with Dominate? Something like, but specific to the faction). Now, what's great, is the concept I thought about to make this happen ALREADY exists. How do you make your base infantry more powerful? Train them as veterans or elites. It's perfect. Basic inexperienced troops get no abilities, but each level above them gets something, or an improved version of the previous. What kind of abilities? Perhaps wraiths can perform a strike that convert a damage percentage into mana that is transferred to the sovereign. Archer specialists can perform sniper shots, disabling a unit or some such. A faction can have calvary specialization in their veteran troops, granting them additional benefits of being mounted.

These two factors make every unit in your army unique to your army. In addition, it intensifies unit customization when you add the next piece.

Number Two: Damage types, resistances.

There should be at minimum, 3 physical damage types plus 1 magic damage type. Armor should be 1 type, and then their should be a seperate magic resist stat. This is my suggestion. Each of the 3 damage types (pierce, blunt, cutting) affect armor differently. Cutting does extra damage to zero armor units, Pierce ignores % of armor, and Blunt weapons temporarily lower armor for a turn or something (I'm not sure on the details, just some suggestions to get the brain gears chugging). Magic resistance should be for magical damage types (Golems, spells, etc.). If someone has zero resist, spells should do pretty awesome against them (This is also in part of the 0-X damage thing for spells, which is not fun).

Number three: Scout Pack, Medic Pack, etc.

These should be used as specific "trainings" for units. I love the concept of them, but they need to be polished. Each pack should add a combat ability (or in case of Pioneers, a city building ability ). Medic pack should allow the unit to perform a physical heal on an ally. Assassin Pack has a chance to ignore armor. Scout Pack allows you to position your units before Tactical combat, because you had the scout recon. Ranger Pack allows the unit to attack in melee even if they have a bow equipped. Etc. Etc. Endless amounts of packs can be put here, but you get the idea. These should, combined with race and faction differences, add more awesomeness to unit customization. Big important part: One pack at a time.

Number 4: Weapons.

Weapons need more fleshing out. There should be advantages to each, disadvantages to each (see damage types above). Two handed swords = no shield. Swords = slower than daggers. Spears = attacker cannot counter attack. Etc, etc.

Finally, Number 5. this is already in the game, you just need to apply it to the unit creator. COLORS. I can color my sovereign's clothes and my peasant's clothes in the faction editor, but I can't make my plate armor black or red? Please add this. And on a final cool note, I'd like to see a Standard Bearer pack that raises Morale of the army, so we can bring standard bearers with us. Note: Does not stack.

Please check this out. I'd like the players to read this and comment, too. Again, great game. Just needs polish!

Shortcuts would be a huge asset. More shortcut keys for things like inventory and end turn. A key bindings tab in the options would be a great idea too.

I am genuinely surprised there is no random map generator. To me I would have figured this would be essential in a 4x4. The ability to create user content does not make this unnecessary for an extended period.

Fixed.  This is just personal preference.  Random maps are nice and certainly add to re-playability and options, but I imagine for a lot of players (myself included) playing on non-random maps just creates a different set of issues and familiarity with a map presents new challenges that are appealing to many players - especially in multi-player matches. 

After all, empire-building and warfare in the real world never had a random map...

Again, the thing that troubles me is the complete lack of response in this regard.

I've posted many positive and supportive comments and all (just check my past posts), but the lack of answers about this issue is starting to push me to the other side of the fence. Will it take time to do a proper map generator (like every - EVERY game in the genre has, since MoM itself and presumably before then)? Well good then LET US KNOW. Will it take it a year? Well, ok, it's kind of a lot, but we will wait.

But if there's NO plan to provide one (because it's difficult to make, because it's too costly or what have you), then people, we DESERVE to know.

If no true, standard random map generator is coming our way, then I think I have the right to know, because if this is the case I will stop investing my time to learn the mechanics of this game and move on to something else (because let me be clear: a 4x game with no map generator is a joke - and as such should be reviewed. And don't talk me about balance because all the other games have managed to handle the issue). I wouldn't ask for a refund, because it is not my style really, but an unambiguous answer is not much to ask.

Overall fun game and very promising, a bit rough on the edges.  I rather enjoy the questing and such along with the world campaign.  One thing I noticed in my games so far is one AI dominates the others seemly early on, in my games so far it ends up being a 1v1 without me ever engagnig the other factions.

Misc Issues:
1) crash when I cast imbue champion at times, I had a stack of 5 or so heroes and I imbued one (would be nice to have a way to select which hero to imbue - maybe I missed something).  Imbue again and crash occured for me.
2) Janus (first hero/advisor) icon picture sometimes get swapped with spouse's. 
3) Battle with enemy soverign does not give gildar after victory (case I noticed the sov retreated). 
4) Control issues? - swear a lot of the times I click with the battle icon on and my unit ends up doing a circle around the target.
5) Inn/quest giver not always disappearing after quest complete (assuming it's suppose to go away...)
6) Age counter, not sure what the deal is..card said I was 26, spouse 26..but first kid was 19.

Improvement suggestions:
1) Scalable AI in game - option to increase/decrease the AI mid game.  Lot of times on one difficulty I dominate with any issue, scale it up one notch and then I get beatdown hard...be nice to adjust midgame.
2) More help text and details.  For instance I was trying to see if caravans generate any revenue and couldn't seem to find anything related to that (far as I can tell they don't give any additional revenue if trading between own cities - been using them just to build roads really).  There was a Trade: 0 and a Unit: 2 in the income summary, would be nice to drill down there to see more as well. 

Just 1 thing, GL with all the work   ! Think coffee ! ( alcohol is prohibited ! )

I agree with your entire post.  Devs, especially Frogboy and BoogieBac, are we going to get a true random map generator?  Because otherwise your game will be 3X rather than 4X, and a lot of people will give up after a while when they realize this.  And sooner or later, they will.

Best regards,
Steven.

+1 for a true random map generator as well.

Well, don't underestimate my lack of sense of orientation IRL. Going to work everyday is for me like a somewhat random process. It is seriously detrimental to my world conquest plans

Enjoy the time off, you've certainly earned it!

Yep, the different packs could be unlocked by different tech trees. These packs could be unlocked from the Diplomacy tech tree:

- Assassin Pack: The unit can reduce the population of a city by 1 without attacking the city defenders.

- Spy Pack: The unit gets precise information (defenders, production) of a city (that should be disabled without the pack).

- Thief Pack: The unit can steal 10 gildar from an enemy city without attacking the city defenders.

First of all: Tanks for the great job so far.

But even after patch 1.06 there are still some areas I would like to see some improvement to. Some or most of them have already been mentioned here or in other threads as e.g. UI improvements, the magic system, broken shards, magic resistance or (more) different damage types. Other aspects, which I have not seen so far or very seldom are:

SAVEGAMES

Before patch 1.06 savegames or rather reloading a savegame used to wreck havoc with certain faction traits by e.g. stacking the research bonus each time you loaded a game. And even if the patch removed this issue from the game, I still get the impression that reloading a savegame spawns magic shards on the map. With the shards broken as they are right now, this isn't so much an issue, but it will if they are fixed.

Also the whole point of things changing when you reload a game (formerly traits, now seemingly shards) leads me to the assumption that there might be something wrong with Elemental's way of handling reloads in general. Maybe you should check this aspect of the game in a more general way.

MISSILE UNITS

Lets face it. Long range units seem to be pointless right now. Bows are some way into the warfare tech tree and thus only available at a point where most units already have a higher defense rating than bows have max. damage. Three or six damage are nothing at this point of the game, when comparable melee weapons do 12 to 25 damage already. And their is also no further improvement on bows or crossbows (which are missing completely by the way).

My guess is that current state of missile units is mostly due to the "master archer" faction trait. Making bows more powerful would overpower this trait, which gives access to all the bows that are currently in the game, i.e. two. And two is way to few. There should be a comparable long range weapon on every weapon tire. And you could also add some diversification like normal bows (longer range, ability to do extra fire damage ...), crossbows (lower range, lower rate of fire, ignores X% of armor) and composite bow (can be used by mounted units, lower range).

THE DEEP BLUE (aka WATER, SEAS and RIVERS)

Water seems to play a negligible role in Elemental right now. Its only function is to act as a barrier you have to cross with the only type of ship availabe, the transport. Historically and thus most likely also for any fictional fantasy world, water played a way more significant role. Fishing was a major source of food (no fish resource in ELEMENTAL), shipping was THE way of transporting goods over longer distances (transports are rather slow compared to armies moving on roads and very few landing points), coastal cities were trade hubs (no sea-based trade in ELEMENTAL) and rivers were simply the veins of life (no rivers as well in ELEMENTAL).

And even if some things could be explained away by the cataclysm (all the fish died and the rivers dried up *shakes his head*) it currently not done. So I'm currently just left to ask myself why one of the defining elements (or Elements) of life is simply forgotten by this game. And one could do so much with it. *sigh*

QUESTING & CHAMPIONS IN GENERAL

In my opinion quest should be linked to individual champions. It just makes more sense this way and allows also for some interesting options like e.g. gaining experience by questing or getting rid of the current quest overview, which is not only hidden but also unwieldy as it lacks options to order the quest, jump to the quests locations on the map etc.

Also, what did happen to the idea of people approaching your sovereign with a quest? I have yet to get a single quest without stumbling into a quest location and asking people whether they need some help.

And on the topic of champions, their low hitpoints, their excessive equipment costs especially early in the game and their lack of individuality enough has been said already elsewhere.

FACTION TRAITS

Here my basic impression is, that several faction traits are simply broken right now and have no effect. The multipliers work fine now, but "Influential", "Civilized" and some other ... what's the point in picking them? I don't see or feel any effect. Also some mercantile trait is missing. Where are the traders among the survivors of the cataclysm?

Another problem is the fact, that custom factions are overpowered right now. With the 10 points you currently get you can copy any of the pre-made factions and still choose something extra. Also the pre-mades are in themselves not balanced anymore, if you assume that the points reflect to some degree what a certain trait is "worth". Take e.g. Pariden. "Influential" and "Civilized" equal two points, "Master Smith" alone costs five.

SOVEREIGN CREATION and EQUIPMENT

Same problem as with the general equipment store, but to an even higher degree. The items cost way to much. All the spell books cost the same as an oak spear? How do you justify something like that? The "Traveller's Boots" cost 10 points during the creation of your sovereign and just 10 gold during the game? Something is just wrong here.

Maybe you should just associate certain items with a sovereigns profession. A warrior gets some basic armor and weapons, an adventure some travelling & questing gear .... or you give us some separate points that can only be spent on equipment.

Rabenhoff