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TeeWeeHerman
TeeWeeHerman
Join Date 10/2008
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Experiences after a few hours of play

January 21, 2013 5:29:08 PM from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Just a few simple words after a few rounds of play.

One, this game is quite unforgiving, due to the scarcity of land that you can settle and the hostility of the wilderness. I haven't found a good way to get a good hang of things yet.

I find the user interface annoying. It hinders much more than it helps, obscuring things that shouldn't be obscured. Examples are:

  • Army management: why can't I organize my armies in situ. Drives me crazy. It can also eat movement points where it shouldn't if I make an accidental merge.
  • Army movement: give me army control via keyboard. Please. Simply NumKeyPad in the same fashion Civ does.
  • Sometimes, the actual point of interaction on my mouse shifts in relation to the picture of my mouse pointer. Misclick-galore is the result
  • Faction identification: getting a feel for the different shades of blue / purple / grey / brown is hard. Much harder than it should be. Changing colour schemes would be a great start.
  • Worse, I can't identify the owner of a piece of land just by interacting with the land. To be 100% certain, I must click on the structure that creates the ZoC (Outpost or city). If it's beyond my line of sight, I can't see it. Never make an aspect identifiable only by colour, always add an extra element to reinforce.
  • The map generation screens don't explain to me how you can make potential city sites greater (I think maptype Temperate does the job, but I'm not certain it does).

Things that should be extra features

  • Twin factions (e.g. two Altars) in the same map; this should be an option in opponent selection, not a default.

Actual bugs

  • CTD when it comes back from screen saver (I can reproduce this reliably; just let the game go to screen saver and reactivate; doesn't happen if you first ALT-TAB into your desktop and then let it go to screen saver)
  • Sometimes, yield-display just disappears from the map. Must restart game to fix this. Kills your game if you don't notice it, as you can scout for miles without realizing you've already seen lots of good land so you lose many turns.
  • Pathfinding is questionable for paths longer than 1 tile (see: control via keyboard!); for long routes, it breaks an army's effectiveness as it's prone to go back and forth as it calculates a different path around some obstacles every turn.

Enough feedback. Back to the game!

 

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TeeWeeHerman
Kongdej
Join Date 01/2012
+58
Reply #1 January 23, 2013 12:06:04 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

You have some very good points

I think nr 3 might be a bug? sounds like it...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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TeeWeeHerman
Andrew Meronek
Join Date 08/2007
+2
Reply #2 January 23, 2013 11:37:33 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Speaking of the pathing interface, I also have noticed that if I give a unit a multi-tile movement order, the scouting is done only on the tile that the unit arrives at, not the entire path. Highly annoying for scouting diagonally, necessitating clicking on every tile (or just about) in order to avoid leaving scouting gaps, especially at the 'edges' of the path.

For example, consider this scouting 'display':

ooxxx

oXxfx

xxpxx

xsxXo

xxxoo

where 's' is the starting tile, 'f' is the finishing tile, and 'x' is the area actually scouted. 'X' is the area that would have been scouted at point 'p' but is not.

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TeeWeeHerman
Stuie_
Join Date 02/2006
+12
Reply #3 January 23, 2013 1:56:22 PM
from Stardock ForumsStardock Forums

Quoting ,
quoting post

One, this game is quite unforgiving, due to the scarcity of land that you can settle and the hostility of the wilderness. I haven't found a good way to get a good hang of things yet.

For a more enjoyable map, try this mod:

https://forums.stardock.com/433981

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TeeWeeHerman
Kongdej
Join Date 01/2012
+58
Reply #4 January 23, 2013 6:05:13 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Stuie_,
reply 3

quoting post
One, this game is quite unforgiving, due to the scarcity of land that you can settle and the hostility of the wilderness. I haven't found a good way to get a good hang of things yet.


For a more enjoyable map, try this mod:

https://forums.stardock.com/433981[/quote]

Well I quite like this critique, while the mod might help him, its fantastic for the dev team to see so they either release some more forgiving maps, or atleast consider it.
Thank you anyway for assisting him finding a map mod

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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TeeWeeHerman
willie sanderson
Join Date 05/2003
+6
Reply #5 January 23, 2013 8:33:19 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums


The screen saver one is easy to fix "TURN IT OFF" lol

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TeeWeeHerman
Sanati
Join Date 06/2010
+18
Reply #6 January 24, 2013 6:33:46 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

I'd normally not agree with a suggestion like that, but honestly there's no reason anyone should be using a screen saver anymore. It was designed for early CRT monitors where a static image displayed on the screen for a long time could permanently "burn" the display. Screen savers do not save power, and having one running on a modern display instead of turning it off will actually reduce the lifetime of the display considerably since the backlight stays on even if the screen is blank. So this basically becomes a situation where you are using "third party software" which is causing the game to crash, it's not really up to the devs to fix that. They might anyway, it could be an easy fix, another easy fix is to turn it off on your end though.

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TeeWeeHerman
thiotes
Join Date 06/2012
0
Reply #7 January 24, 2013 9:58:18 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

A little off-topic, but:

The problem of damaged screens isn't quite dead yet. We have Macs at work, and those tend to get "imprints" from window frames and the like.

I put my task bar to the left, so maximized windows don't fill the whole screen. Where they end on the left side, there is now a line of darker color. Now screensavers wouldn't help there granted, because i'm working while that line doesn't move, but it still happens..

 

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TeeWeeHerman
Stuie_
Join Date 02/2006
+12
Reply #8 January 24, 2013 11:30:06 AM
from Stardock ForumsStardock Forums

Quoting Kongdej,
reply 5


Well I quite like this critique, while the mod might help him, its fantastic for the dev team to see so they either release some more forgiving maps, or atleast consider it.
Thank you anyway for assisting him finding a map mod

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Completely agree with you Kongdej!  Just wanted to give the OP an option while we wait for "official" map improvements.

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TeeWeeHerman
TeeWeeHerman
Join Date 10/2008
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Reply #9 January 24, 2013 12:20:09 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Sanati,
reply 7
I'd normally not agree with a suggestion like that, but honestly there's no reason anyone should be using a screen saver anymore. It was designed for early CRT monitors where a static image displayed on the screen for a long time could permanently "burn" the display. Screen savers do not save power, and having one running on a modern display instead of turning it off will actually reduce the lifetime of the display considerably since the backlight stays on even if the screen is blank. So this basically becomes a situation where you are using "third party software" which is causing the game to crash, it's not really up to the devs to fix that. They might anyway, it could be an easy fix, another easy fix is to turn it off on your end though.

I don't use the screen saver to save my screen. I use the screen saver to lock my screen automatically when I'm away from my desktop for too long.

Saying you can always turn off the screen saver is true, but not helpful. It was like telling users to turn off the UAC controls when Vista first came out.

Saying the OS is "third party software which causes the game to crash" is a bit... weird. Technically true, but weird. The user should not be the one to work around the OS, the developer is the one who should do this.

 

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TeeWeeHerman
TeeWeeHerman
Join Date 10/2008
0
Reply #10 January 24, 2013 12:21:57 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Stuie_,
reply 3

quoting post
One, this game is quite unforgiving, due to the scarcity of land that you can settle and the hostility of the wilderness. I haven't found a good way to get a good hang of things yet.


For a more enjoyable map, try this mod:

https://forums.stardock.com/433981[/quote]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm still going through the regular maps, might try some map mods later.

 

Unforgiving isn't inherently bad; it just discourages bad habits in a rather insistent manner

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TeeWeeHerman
Kongdej
Join Date 01/2012
+58
Reply #11 January 24, 2013 12:57:15 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting TeeWeeHerman,
reply 10
I don't use the screen saver to save my screen. I use the screen saver to lock my screen automatically when I'm away from my desktop for too long.

Besides, if you want to use a screensaver, you should, might be just to show off some pics when your computer isn't doing whatever you want it to do .
I am only slightly confused when people can't just let you use your computer as you want to within reason

I recommend you follow the "Bug Report" guide found on the support forum:

Fe support forum: https://forums.elementalgame.com/forum/1007

How to report an issue: https://forums.elementalgame.com/415301

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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TeeWeeHerman
Sanati
Join Date 06/2010
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Reply #12 January 24, 2013 2:31:15 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting TeeWeeHerman,
reply 10

I don't use the screen saver to save my screen. I use the screen saver to lock my screen automatically when I'm away from my desktop for too long.

Saying you can always turn off the screen saver is true, but not helpful. It was like telling users to turn off the UAC controls when Vista first came out.

Saying the OS is "third party software which causes the game to crash" is a bit... weird. Technically true, but weird. The user should not be the one to work around the OS, the developer is the one who should do this.

It's not really any different from being required to tell a firewall to ignore a game, or being required to open ports on a router. If you want to add extra security to your system then you have to take extra steps to get most games to work correctly.

Also being told to run an application as administrator is still one of the first responses you'll get from support if a game wont start. UAC still causes all sorts of crashes with many different games and game developers really don't have time to try and solve a window's issue. Just because an OS has an option doesn't mean you have to use it, and doesn't mean other software has to support it.

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