Great work on the patch guys - I'm showing a massive improvement in performance!

How is the progress on the randomly spawning shards after save/reload?

Hotfix is now out. 

Performance is now minimally playable, if still far below what the hardware is capable of.

The balance changes are also particularly welcome.  Really, the main thing missing at this point is competent AI opponents - which we already know will be a focus in the future, even if progress on a system that complex is never fast and easy.

I also find the performance better, BUT the memory leaks seem to be getting bigger, just had my first game on 1.07 on huge map with my favourite custom sov,same setup as my last game in 1.06 which got to turn ~200, the 1.07 got to turn 145, but it was faster to play on my win xp sp3 32bit with nvidea 7600gs & 4gb ddr2.

harpo

I'm hoping you guys can nail the "out of memory" issue after ~250 turns or so on Win7 64/ATI systems soon (still happens with this patch), because there's just no point to playing at all since it's impossible to finish a game.

It's a shame because I do otherwise find it enjoyable in its current state.

Hmm, yea rolling 3 1DN and keeping the middle one (or randomly selecting between the middle and the high one) might help.

maybe (if you choose to go this route) there could be an accuracy stat (which goes up naturally with each level) which affects your %chance of pulling the high one rather than the middle one.

I'm sorry, I haven't seen this answered yet. Are shards now working in tactical combat to increase the damage of your spells?

Custom empires not getting tech tree and return button stops working on and off, other than that it seems mutch better

The problem with averaging rolls is that in case of two troops with similar attack and defense it will produce a lot of misses. One needs to roll big and another bad for attacker to be able to hit defender.

Been saving my thoughts for post patch.

The performance and stability improvements are an extremely welcome change. Good job!

The AI though is atrocious. I have played multiple games where the AI refuses to build the most basic settlement improvements. Their capitol has NOTHING built after 30 turns. No settlers, units, nothing. They did manage to get married though. I am playing on the Challenging level. I know this is not the hardest level, but I just want to emphasis that the AI isn't building ANYTHING in several sessions so far. Once in a while one faction will actually expand and build up. But so far I've run across 5 factions that just got stuck on turn 1 since 1.07.

The campaign really turned me off, way to generic and even though meant as a tutorial, it was such a bland offering that halfway through I just couldn't wait to check the 'completed it' box so I could go into the skirmish mode. I'm thinking the next book should be totally revamped presentation wise. Def. ditch the tutorial design for book 2. I kinda enjoyed how Starcraft 2 had the core gameplay but mixed in unique units (mercs) and abilities (uber spells) to spice up the campaign missions. I think this would be well served in Elemental if your main hero had some unique unit abilities not found in the skirmish mode. I'm assuming there's a story being told with the campaign based on the book, but they are just way to bland. Kill this monster to get cooperation (trying to avoid spoilers) or fetch this item. How about some variance in the campaign chapters, like, rescue villagers from trolls but instead of just a straight forward battle, have a situation where at some point the player only has time (or forced in a situation) where he is able to save only 2/3 towns. Two of the towns saved he gets a reward of gold or resource or something but the other town that is lost will give a penalty and a really sad guilt trip. But give the player the option to choose which villages to save and what penalty to take. Right now, it's just so bland. Save us from trolls! I kill trolls. Check the box, next trigger for campaign... boring! The campaign is extremely text driven but it's not very interactive plot wise. Remember those text driven mini-games in Space Rangers 2? Kinda like the old Zork/Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy dos games? How about some of those dialogue adventures when you are faced with a diplomacy type objective in the campaign? Right now, it's so bland. Walk to a trigger point and read the equivalence of "Sorry, don't want to go to war, need to wash my hair." excuse and off you march to the next faction to recruit them. Give the player a chance to actually influence how the plot develops. Maybe he can convince the faction to join if he plays it smart with his dialogue choices, get a small bonus if he plays it mediocre, or even has to battle his way out of the palace to survive if he's a total nitwit about it.

The tactical battles need lots of love. It is simply way to bland and stale. The special unit abilities added in late to the beta are neat but I want more depth. Basically, make the tactical combat portion of the game good enough where it could stand on its own WITHOUT the sandbox or campaign mode attached to it. That's when you know it's been developed thoroughly. I doubt most would load up Elemental just to play out a small battle between 2 armies composed of a couple band of swordsmen and archers and cavalry. Heck, it can still be fast paced. Look at Dwarf Fortress and the little battle logs of a Dwarf battling a stupid giant toad. It's barbaric, so much going on under the hood, but it's still fast. What you equipped the dwarf with, the armor he has, the skills, etc. All of that plays a major part of how that battle ends. That's depth! In Elemental, bows are just swords that can strike from many tiles away. Is there distance penalties? Cloth/Leather/Metal armor, Pierce, Cut, Bludgeon properties? Shooting over allies penalties? Elevation bonuses? Isn't there a larger difference between an army of guys equipped with staves as opposed to dudes with giant mallets? The only diff so far is raw damage and a small speed differential, if even that!

I really want to like Elemental, I'm still glad I purchased it, but I have to be honest with my opinion that it's just not that good of a game at the moment. I really want to have an awesome experience, but I keep playing and after a battle I'm always feeling, "that's it?" Or I discover an enemy factions capital and there's a spouse and a camp ground... and nothing else. It's just an overwhelming feeling of m()m when playing, rare moments of \(^0^)/... actually, none so far. That's a major downer.

Going to try another game and see if the AI actually builds in this match and going for the highest difficulty.

('-')y

I'm still getting the out of memory problems too. Wish they'd fix these suckers

I'm noticing a large amount of lag when switching between the clothmap and the 3d game map. Thats when my problems begin.

Otherwise, the patch probably made my game run about 33% faster. I like that, it's a pretty nice improvement.

I have a feeling those ones that aren't developing for you are the Minor Factions.  Because any Major faction I've seen has indeed been recruiting stuff left and right.  I'd conquer their cities and find tons of buildings (As a kingdom conquering an Empire I'm not sure if I should trash them or not!).  And they're sending out Pioneers aggressively in the worst Civ Fashion where I sometimes have to declare war for no other reason than making sure I can get my pioneer to the place 2 turns later instead of them with their horde.

There seems to be some weird thing where even when you select all 9 other factions as being part of the game (which is a bit confusing to begin with!) they don't show up sometimes, especially if you're using the remembered stuff of a previous time through the create a game stuff.

I'm glad someone posted my thoughts exactly. Every time I criticize the game people just say "get a refund and get out of here", witch is ridiculous. We bought a game cos we wanted to play that game, not get refunded.

I apreciate all the effort of SD to hurry with the patches and taking our feedback into major account, but we MUST NOT forget that these patches are merely COMPLETING an unfinished game.

These patches could really be directed into improving the AI and balance the game, but instead all the efforts are directed to fix several amature bugs that shouldn't be there from the beggining.

Still, I'm glad to see SD working non-stop to deliver the most critical fixes ASAP.

But I just want to remember all the people that seems overjoyed that they are doing no more than their obligation, both professionaly and ethicaly, and when these bug fixes are over we will need to change our feedback report efforts to balance this game, cos it's severely unbalanced and the AI don't deserve the "inteligence" on its name.

So I'm ready to start making more posts about AI's lack of action, strange behavior, instead of considering myself the "pro master player" cos I'm dominating a dumb AI, and I want to call upon other players out there that cares about the challenge of the game to do the same, since it appears that the stability of the game is quite stablished now, instead of just keeping making posts like "you are the best SD, you're fixing a broken released game! What are the odds!"

Let's help fix and improve this game.

Cheers.

I've seem the same stuck behavior by the AI, and I've checked: it wasn't a minor faction. Medium sized map, all factions selected, normal dificulty.

I've also saw something that other player commented here on the forums (don't remember in what post) about the AI cities having a lot of huts, and only that. So it's another way of the AI getting stucked.