I disagree Firefly. I like random placement...

None of these are very unique points, just supporting some of the stuff I read.

I love this game but I don't keep coming back to it like I do CIV.  Someone said something about "no hard choices".  I feel that but can't explain it well.  Here are some things I heard or thought about:

1) Ranged combat should reduce damage/accuracy the farther away it is.  LOS rules should apply too so you can use cover, etc.

2) Heroes are too random (though I like the way the new system works where you build up points and then they show up).  How about decisions we make (maybe with Random events, maybe by who we attack, because I built two archer units, maybe based upon how we handle quests, what buildings we build, etc.) attract particular heroes.  And they tell you why they showed up.  I don't mind choosing between a couple of them but it should be based upon something I did.

3) I like someone's idea about different factions having somewhat different tech trees.  It so much doesn't matter now.  

4) I hate city placement not being that important.  Could there be more land qualities that provide some uniqueness to a city? 

5) I don't like how there isn't a compelling reason to leave heroes in cities.  Could some heroes be able to train units if stationed with them each turn?  Could they be involved in building an improvement that they have to be there for while you are building it (with some story behind it)?  Could you send them on a quest (that you choose some parameters about but don't actually do - you just hear about the results) because of a random event (lose them for 10 or so turns) but when they come back, they come back with an item or info about an enemy, and a new skill or injury, etc.  It would be great if each had a personal quest that would trigger after x turns you have them, and then that character (and his/her skills) is central to finishing the quest.  I would like them to be more useful and busy rather than always walking around with my sovereign in a single stack.

Just my 2 cents.

Mozo.

I like it too. If I find the game too easy I just put the difficulty higher.

- My personal preference for Hex Maps.  I can understand these not being in FE/LH due to 32-bit memory constraints.  Hope to see this in the future evolution of the game.

- Lack of Campaigns makes the lore of Elemental pointless as there is no immersion or vested interest in the inherent races/factions.  From an "outsider" PoV the Factions aren't very interesting.

- Tech Trees.  in FE/LH, research focuses more on City Tech development rather than on Mage Development.  Playing Warlock 2 which had city techs bound to cities and research bound to mage development was a refreshing change of pace from FE:LH.  Think what I'm saying here is I'd like to see city tech development placed more in the city and not in the global research.  It bogs the game down somewhat.

- Spell Restrictions.  Having numerous spells that are pointless unless you happen to be fighting inside your sphere of influence.  Warlock 2 kept it simple by just doubling the cost of casting spells elsewhere.

- Instant Razing in FE/LH is just stupid & awful.  AoW included the ability to rebuild on the ruins for razed cities which was a nice touch. 

- City & Military Queue; Means that it takes forever to build up armies as you tend to spend a LOT of time city managing before you can really start sending out any kind of military force.

- Settlers & Outposts;  Settlers shouldn't be building outposts.  I would rather have Engineer units that do this, and tie construction/upgrade time to distance from nearest friendly city.  Outpost implementation in FE/LH is okay, but I think you can do better.

- Ranged Units;  Distance from target should matter.  AoW nailed this. 

- Line of Sight & Terrain Bonuses/Restrictions.  AoW nailed this

- Defined City Types; Fortress, Conclave, Town; Cities should (IMO) be more organic in their development.  A city is more often defined by the available local resources than from picking some arbitrary city archetype.

- Units that have an inherent movement greater than the stack they are in, should not have their movement points nerfed to match the stack

- Monsters Lairs should have a static set of Monsters on defense that generate random wandering monsters who are not part of the lair.  No more sending a hero out to loot all the goodies when a monster is off wandering away from home.

- Upon completing a quest objective, Originating objective's flag should change color to help identify return spot (for completion/reward).

- Adjacency should matter on the world map.  Moving next to/through an enemy's ZoC should cost the acting unit double movement points.

- No way to perform a simple edit of custom Factions / Sovereigns.  Currently you have to delete & re-create them

- Stacks of Doom:  I think it's still a bit of a problem in FE/LH.  AoW had greater scale due to making adjacent armies matter while maintaining 6 units per stack.  Army scale in Eador was based on the Hero Type which I thought was excellent.

Quick followup on combat.

While I actually prefer the squares on the strategic map (hexes seem like the latest fad with me, btw, I've worked with hexes since the late '70s in boardgames so they aren't new to me at all), I think they may make sense on the tactical map, IF we don't have facings.

With the limit of 6-9 units, it's hard to pull off a good line abreast, to protect each other's flanks.  In 'normal' mass combat, the units on each end of a line are of course more vulnerable, but the units in the middle have their sides protected.  So essentially they may be fighting off one, maybe two units at a time.

In Elemental, units often don't last long enough to pull off an effective line formation, so it is very easy to surround units, getting 4+ attackers in position on any unit.  Then swarm kicks in, which makes that unit even more vulnerable.

While I don't mind 'diagonal' attacks, perhaps there should be a to hit penalty when attacking from a corner of a square instead of a side.  This would help mitigate the '3 on 1' attacks, even when you are able to set up line versus line.  This is in relation to one of the comments above, about 'ganging up' on units being too easy in Elemental.

With hexes, you only have 6 'connected' hexes, versus the 9 squares, so this would mitigate this a bit.  However, I like the squares well enough, so simply penalizing the diagonals (disallowing I think is too extreme) should help a lot.

Facings might be fun too, with bonuses to attack flanks or rear (with some exceptions for certain creatures and such), but that'd require more involved combat mechanics, specifically having the ability to 'face' your unit after you complete movement.  This is more of a thing for a true tactical game, and combat in Elemental is sort of a hybrid.  That being said, as long as facing could be done easily, I wouldn't be opposed to it necessarily.

Just a thought!

If I had ONE problem with the game, and only ONE:

- The square grid.

Please get with the times and move to hexes

My main problem:

- The bugs and glitches. It really hurts immersion if borders do not update or spells/abilities don't work as described.

Other issues:

- City building has almost no impact. I love city building, but apart from the Research produced, most other variables don't matter much.

- Movement is a Pita. You often lose movement because of how stacks work and by midgame, all roads are blocked by 'friendly' units. Pathfinding still does not work.

This I agree with a lot, this has slightly improved over time with the abilities giving you some way to really customise your unit but it is pretty much choose the best gear more unit customisation options would be better. But that is only because I love the idea so much.

Even with the weapon abilities it basically boils down to slightly different ways to do damage. It's like lasers or phasers in a space 4x, one might be flat damage, once might pierce armor a little, whatever, it's still the tiniest fraction of ship customization in the games that do it right.

I guess to be constructive I'll expand on what I think is wrong exactly. For starters, customization is so interesting and works so well in the space games because most of the options take up the same space, putting one thing on a ship means less room for everything else. You can make a heavily armored ship, but it will be slow and won't do much damage. In Elemental, you put the best armor, the best weapon, and a mount, on almost every unit. The only reason not to is if you want to quickly mass produce something cheaper. There is (or was, I don't even remember right now, it keeps changing) some small drawback for using heavier armor, but it's not balanced in a way that matters, it's always better to have the strongest armor. There could be some sort of training cost limit that goes up with tech levels, similar to how weight used to work but just a hard cap instead of penalties, IE if you want to use the best armor you have to give up a mount and use a cheap weapon.

Second, there's virtually no utility options. The equivalent of support ships, like ammo supply ships, repair ships, shield boosting ships, carriers, etc. We could have units designed to do nothing but heal or buff other units in their stack, summon other units, or even units that could field train more units anywhere on the map. But then you should be able to make hybrids, units that can attack and buff, or moderately armored healers, but not as well as units designed just for those roles. There's a few dinky traits in the game, like shield wall, and there might be one that increases stack regen unless that was removed, but they don't even come close.

I can't tell you how much time I've spent just designing ships/stations in games like Star Ruler or StarDrive, ships that do exactly what I want, ships that seem like genius designs on my part (but probably aren't). That's what a custom unit system should be. Otherwise don't bother, and it looks like they are just ditching it for the next Elemental game so I guess that's for the best.

Aaah... yess... right on the money, that one.

It seems we miss a bunch of traits and gear in the unit department. I'm thinking about a trait to use anything other than say a spear ( two handed, mind you), and specialization traits to improve damage for a chosen weapon. Thus, for a heavy armor guy, you'd end up with Plate Mail trait, Sworduse trait and maybe even Shielduse trait. Is that  better than a leather armor Sworduse, Fast and Bloodthirsty? They're quicker and do more damage once you're bleeding.

Changes I'd like to see:

1- In a game with 6 AI players (on Large or Huge map), the AI is too passive.
  - the AI makes threats, but rarely makes an attack
  - AI is too passive; it is mostly the human player who has to initiate war
  - may be different with a 2-player game vs a 7-player game
 
2- end game not challenging
  - once you get a lead, the AI factions realizes that you are too powerful to challenge
  - the remaining AI factions don't team up against stronger player to bring them down
    - aligned factions could align against player of a different faction
  - it becomes easy as a player to pick them off one by one at your leisure
    
3- tech tree is pretty much the same for all factions
  - most games, it is possible to research pretty much everything..
  - a larger tree, where it not possible to research more than 1/2 the tree would make decisions meaningful,   
    and add more replay value
 
4- More faction-specific buildings?
  - one faction-specific building at each level (1 through 5) would make things different
  - buildings are too similar now
 
5- end-game quests always the same
  - can these be more random / randomized?
  - or have a larger set where some aren't always present?
  - the end game is too predictable once you've done the quests
 
6- if playing a Large map with many opponents, conquering every city becomes a hassle
  - if you defeat opponents, and don't want to raze their cities, the unrest gets out of hand (esp on a large map)...
    ...and there is not much to do about it.  It is hard to build an empire on a large map
  - Can a different mechanism be used to model unrest?  
  - More options to control unrest?
 
7- fire magic seems to be stronger than other types
  - I find myself recruiting fire mages, getting fireball, and then winning tactical battles easily
  - can other magic types be given more battlefield oomph?  more spells?
 
 

Played a game last night (had to quit when I realized it was 2am ).  I was quickly reminded about a UI feature that always bugged me: City level ups disable the ability to do anything until you choose the upgrade.  This is especially bad late in the game when you have a dozen or more cities, half of which are conquered cities.  I would like to be able to see the city in question, but the pop-ups cover the city and much of the surrounding terrain.

This also happens when you defeat a Wildlands boss and you need to choose which city gets the upgrade.  You're given a list of city names, all of which look like they are based on either Aztec or Kthulu lore.  This would work better if it unlocked a "one per faction" building, then I could go to the city I want and build it.

I see what you mean here, the unit needed to take the "Chain Mail" or "Plate Mail" traits to use those armours although to be fair that does mean you have to use a trait slot for this.

I was actually thinking the traits and some of the unique traits they added for certain races like the wraiths made it more interesting, but visually units can end up looking very similar with all the same armour and weapons as you say.

I agree though very strongly with what you say about them needing to balance things better so that you have to make more choices here and those design more meaningfuly different units.

I also agree adding more buff/debuff and other special abilities that maybe also limit what equipment they can use would be good.

I still enjoy making custom units but it's not really reaching it's full potential at the moment.

Initiative system (the way it's implemented) and some of the alternate victories.

N/A