I'm really enjoying watching your series and I really hope the devs take some time to watch because your feedback and suggestions would make huge improvements to the game!

Hey I just pre-ordered and im glad I did. GALCIV 2 is probably up their with Civ 4 as my favourite game ever so stardocks a good bet in my books. 

Im not a strategy newb at all but I feel that with my first play through on challenging I shouldn't have been able to stomp a single AI in a very quick series of engagements. I was playing as Magnar and the supposedly challenging AI was Resolyn. The war played out as follows:

1. War declared Resolyn sends army consisting of 1 hero + 2 chaff units against my army of 2 Heroes plus 2 chaff units (very early game with me having just managed to field spearmen). I roundly defeat the Resolyn army with no losses. My army consolidates with an extra unit of spearmen and marches towards the Resolyn capital. Nothing wrong at this point. 

2. On the way to the Resolyn capital the EXACT SAME ARMY is fielded against me only a turn or two later.  It promptly is wiped out.

3. Next turn the capital is in sight and I send my army against it... seeing the strength of the army that Resolyn has behind her capital walls my army decides to retreat a couple of hexes away from the capital. 

4. It is at this point the AI really seems to lose it - sending its Sovereign alone out in front of my army to have it crushed promptly and then in the very next turn sending another lone unit out to be destroyed.

5. With the enemy weakened I attacked the enemy capital to win with no losses. 

They wouldn't have lost if they hadn't have decided conduct suicide by 1 unit vs 6... I didnt attack their capital initially because I knew I couldnt win. 

Answering your questions:

1. About right. I like the general rogue-like feeling to the start of the game in regards to what spawns near and around you. 

2. As pointed out above I think the AI's tactical decision making is very poor.

3. Challenging - I really hope you guys to can get the AI to where I felt it was at challenging level in GALCIV 2 - I rarely witnessed obvious AI mistakes at this level it was awesome. 

4. I played as Magnar and I used firebolt on my main. I also had an assassin hero both at level 4 but it wasn't what I did rather what the AI did that let me beat him.

5. The reason ive stopped playing this game now and will anticipate its release is because my first war was a walkover on challanging difficulty without any previous elemental experience. I have no doubt you will fix. Im still very glad I pre-ordered and from the taste ive had I can see this is going to be a true delicacy of TBS when its delivered. Keep it up I reckon you have a classic in the making here . 

I suggest you don't judge the AI by either Resoln, or Pariden. Right now there's something buggy with both of those AI, and they are always on the bottom of the beatdown list in my experience. In Resoln's case, I think it's because of their blood trait, but the same can't be said for Pariden (who has a pretty awesome blood trait).

Then again, the AI can't seem to handle a serious war with the player unless it has somehow managed to build up a huge advantage before hand. As such, early rushes are almost always an easy affair.

Ok I kept playing despite an easy early war vs the AI... I ended up losing because of a Death Demon army which I assume was a wandering army took my capital. Nice I like roguelike elements to any game and I firmly believe that 'losing is fun'. I made the decision to send my armies far and wide and left no defence at home and the game punished me for it.. I think I am now addicted.

I also noted that scorewise I was well behind the other AI factions so perhaps my points above are mute. I will say one thing tho, and that is that fireball and flame spells in general seem to be VERY powerful. I dont think a nerf is in order because after all one of the fun things about this game is throwing around powerful magic that has an immediate effect on a battlefield. The answer here is effective counters that the AI uses well rather than nerfs.

So, after giving my Champion reasonable killing power by modding my start champion, AI mobs that spawn close to my starting cities is no longer an issue. The big ones still give me pause (Drakes, Spider hordes etc), but a Troll spawning right next to my start location can be dealt with by a judicious use of mana.

However, another issue is now giving me pause. The beast AI seems to completely ignore the sovereign AI. I just played a game where Magnar and I started relatively close together. He spams pioneers and cities (which raises another issue: does the AI not understand that growth is slowed by continuously spamming cities?) But, Magnar also managed to build two cities right on top of beast camps. I'll highlight the best one. I know it's not on the screen right now, but the Shrill Lord and his army are in the FOW presumably... but the army was there last turn and there is no way in hell Magnar could kill it. Notice just HOW MANY beast mobs are around this newly found city. Just to get this screenshot I was already attacked by one Shrill mob, and the rest are now chasing my sovereign around. I originally didn't found a city here when the game started because of how powerful the enemies in this area are. Yet Magnar was able to not only able to walk by a Shrill Lord without aggro'ing it, but was also able to place a city. This city has been here for maybe... 5 turns? And no attacks.

I have to say I agree with the posts about how long is takes to level up.  I feel like the game has lost the fun factor and repeat playability.  I felt three main factors for fun game play is being lost.  They are: leveling up characters; doing quests; and exploring the world. 

It now takes so long to level up to each level that I feel forced to select a certain trait or the game is doomed.  This make the game feel stale.  A character should be able to be developed several ways and be successful in the game else there will not be much replay value to the game.  I used to enjoy this part of the game a lot but not anymore.  I would rather see the game allow the characters to level up more often but dial back the the amount of the effect of some of the traits.  Example are: I like the flame dart but I think it can be too powerful early in the game.  The blind spell allowed me to take out a drake because the drake missed it's attack like 10 times in a row.  It made the encounter not very fun.  The percentage should either be lowered or spell should wear off after a number of turns.

With the other faction racing to gobble up all the resouces,  it took the fun away from doing quests and exploring the world.  It narrows the options of game play.  I think if your first 30 turns are always the same then why have the first 30 turns.  Expansion of factions forces wars to early.

Right now the game has too much of a RTS feel in a turn base game. I realize that some people might like that style of play.  If this is the direction the game is going I will be disappointed.

If the game play for normal or easy was somewhere between this and two version ago would be nice.  Leave the expansionist for the higher levels.

One thing to think about is that because this is a turn based game there is quit a commitment to each game played, so each experience needs to be a great one. 

I started writing a post that I would post here but it grew too long so I posted it in its own thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/425000

I tend to play on normal difficulty with an Epic progression so a longer much slower game in general.

Stability is now something I am very happy with the original games was fun but unstable btu the current incarnation has not crashed once which makes me very happy indeed.

With regard to AI my biggest concerns are probably two fold

1.  Land Grab.. all the opponents don't seem to focus massively on logical progression and develop of resources and cities indeed they tend to just slap down as many towns and outposts as they possibly can to take as much land as fast as they can, which in turn forces you to do the same simply to ensure you have somewhere to expand too properly later on... and this also takes me to the second concern.

2.  Monster to AI relations, one thing I have noticed time and time again is that the vast majority of the time monsters will ignore AI rules and thier forces bypassing them and thier outposts and cities almost entirely in favour of targeting me with a single caveat and that being that thier forces, outposts of settlements lie in the monsters path to me and my settlements/outposts.  I have even testes this further via the teleport code by intentionally placing monsters next to AI forces and settlements to see what they would do.  Rather than attacking the Ai the monsters make a bee-line straight back to me even if that means crossing the entire map to do so.  It seems a little unfair that the monsters show such bias in targets when they should ideally be responding to nearby threats equally.

for example if I place a settlement near a monster lair and my area of influence falls over said lair then the monsters on it displace and move to attack the settlement whose influence extends over them.  But the same is not true with regard to AI settlements I have seen them settle directly next to monster laids with thier influence over them and the monsters on those lairs TOTALLY ignore the AI settlements completely.

As a little side note it would be nice to see Ships included at some point for moving units around a maps coast.  And additionally it would be really nice if we can garrioon outposts with a single unit in them like settlements do (though as noted just a single unite not many) just so that if we place a unit on them in guard it doesn't fill the left hand side of the map with an inordinately large unit list as it would help keep the left hand rosters manageable and less visually messy.

Oh two final points the LEGACY OF SERRANE faction trait that states your caravans cannot be destroyed is not working as intended as at least twice now despite having this trait I have had caravans destroyed by wandering monsters.

And can we PLEASE fix it so that if a settlement is destroyed the tile it was on can be BUILT ON again please.  It is SO annoying not being able to rebuild on the exact same tile again.

Ok here is where I am going to post a few issues that I have found, that either, needs to be fixed when the game is released, or change on how you do your code.

1) Monsters being random is great and all, the problem is when you get, let's say, those Knights of Asok near your starting city.  I understand you want the game to have walls requiring you to level up and get troops to clear out your land.  The problem is not that, but the fact that monster only become roaming when YOUR influence is over them, NOT the AI.  If you make the city influence different than an outposts, that could solve it.  Also, the aspect of city razing.  When you, or random monsters, raze a city I noticed that the land that was currently being used by it become unsuitable for a new city.  Not sure if that was what you guys where going for, but it does force me to reload or restart upon loosing cities to monsters many times.  For those nasties sometimes get some insane roaming ranges.

2) The AI are interesting.  I made my own nation that gives me -10% to research and I still out tech them on normal.  Taxes are on Normal for the whole game also.  The other aspect was that one game I found Queen P and she had Merchant 2 and both Path of the warrior and Assassin.  Not to mention she was only level 5.  I finished a game on easy with a level 23 hero, and no merchant was allowed, let alone the fact that you get to pick your first trait at 4, and the soonest I got my second path was around 10.   I understand the main hero should be hard to kill with your troops, but you should also consider to program the expansion aspect of them, to expand after, or in safer locations.  That could also take too much coding, but you could have them focus on clearing the land that they currently control, and when monsters are in there land they lower there expanding rate.

3) I started playing on beginner, to understand the mechanics, and game a little.  After that I realized that even on easy I was getting the feeling of being overpowered by the 200th turn on Epic.  Now I play on normal.

4)I made my own faction and Sovereign.  There are two things that I want to state on Factions.  It would be nice to be able to save your crafted armies for future use.  Lets say I make a spearman unit with armor that auto upgrades.  they should be saved when I play that faction in the future.  The other is that it would be nice to have two options at the start of the game, one for sovereign, other for faction.  So that you could play different factions with the same sovereign if you want a change of troops but same hero or vice verca.  Now onto Sovereigns.  The first and largest cheating move I found was that if you pick your profession last you can make a sovereign with a -1 point.  Allowing you to essentially make an overpowered starting unit.  The next part of Sovereign is that I found that death takes so many turns regardless.  You should make it grow.  Like lets say, +1 for every death in turns.  that way you could penalize players, or AI that try to kill everything and anything with said hero.

- another part that you did not address was one that I think is lacking.  That is special abilities your troops can get.  It would be nice to be able to know when you will get upgradeable abilities for your crafted troops.  Lets say the +1 level ability.  I would like to either look in the crafting section and hover over it to find the required tech to use it, or have the tree tell me what abilities I will get.  The former would be ideal.

- Last but not least I have found that the save game ability sometimes fails to save everything.  That being troops mostly.  I can't count the number of times I have seen Pioneers disappear after I load a save after realizing I was stupid and failed to do something important many turns ago.  Or load a game after getting back to the game, and realizing that some of my military went AWOL.  I now know how it feels to a commander of a soldier that vanishes on you.

With that said, I know I strayed a little here and there from the AI focus of this post, but I believe that there are a few things that would make your game just epic.

Hello, 

just wanted to give you some feedbacks after 2h playtime of the current FE Beta. I am a day one Elemental purchaser and never get in the game because "there was something missing" - But now FE:

WOW

I really loved the first hours (and this is unusual for me most games i play for some minutes and then ...), i really like the game flow, the graphics, the challenging monsters (overall the challenge( i HATE games which feel like a cakewalk with tooo many rewards)), the changes you made compared to Elemental. I discovered no bugs so far (beta, what?)

Please keep up the good work and PLEASE NO CASUALISATION!!!

Thank you again. I really probably will buy the game again if everythings alright.

maruo

Game is really feelng "epic".

Hello, forgive me if I'm posting on the wrong thread here, is there a better place to supply feedback on FE beta 3 version .915? Also, I apologize if I'm repeating issues and bugs already addressed elsewhere.

OK, so I'm one of the people that got the free download due to the dissapointment of the original Elemental. I played the original extensively and have played FE all three betas extensively thus far. Unfortunately I always break weak and choose to play instead of finding a place to offer feedback, until now. That and I'm not experienced at gametesting and reporting, so please bear with me.

Perhaps I am alone in this opinion, but after playing FE so much and then reading a few forums on people's experience, I wonder if too much focus is still being put on the begining of the game? Even with the many bugs (many less than there used to be, though, which is nice) I usually choose to forge ahead and keep playing until the game eventually becomes unstable and keeps crashing, which still happens every game when played on a large map with four or more opponents? I am yet able to finnish a complete game on Expert or Ridiculous due to the game crashing (getting too overburdened with everything?) unless I quickly conquer my opponents as described below. With that said, let me just say that I love this game and am still hopeful for the potential that is here.

In no particular order, some observations and thoughts:

Someone already mentioned this, but it is sooooo frustrating that I shall repeat it... during many animated battle screens (some with only a few enemies and only one champion or sov) it slows way way down to the point of ruining the experience and making continuing pointless. Is this a memory leak? I don't know, but its a dealbreaker because watching the animated battle is so much of the fun of this game. It does seem to happen more frequently later in the game.

The AI seems improved in many ways, especially on Expert and above. However, it seems utterly unable to deal with any terraforming magic such as created mountains or raising land bridges... I easily beat the AI when utilizing this magic, which takes the fun out of it. The most irritating bug when using terraforming magic is that the display on the cloth map becomes rendered horribly inaccurately, forcing a game exit and reboot to render the spell changes to the landscape correctly.

As someone else stated, this is very situational, and while pleasingly balanced in some situations, the AI is not in many others. Here are a few more scenarious that the game is easy to get ahead on... playing a Beastlord sov with Natural Leader trait and a kingdom/empire trait of Master Scouts and Betrayers. Playing a sov equipped with Porciphine's Crown makes it even easier. Although one bug is that sometimes after saving a game and then returning to it later, the AI "forgets" about my Master Scout ability and everything starts attacking my peeps, which I'm not set up for strategically since they're not supposed to be LOL. Utilizing existing terrain to my advatage (a la Sparta's 300) is often too easy, the AI just keeps sending hordes against me since it seems to only read the number score that says it is stronger than me.

Although I noticed a few more dialogue tidbits in the last update, I still cringe all too often when our sovs or the opponent sov reps share in discourse. For example, the all too often said "it will be your head on a pike" shows up when it really doesn't make any sense, such as when first meeting a new faction. As this flavor text was such an entertaining part of GAL CIV II its such a shame to be so lackluster thus far here.

Should a faction I am currently at war with still offer to trade tech with me? Is it advantageous to trade in the same tech, such as when they offer to trade 37 magic for 37 magic?

IMHO shouldn't there be a range limit (based on a unit's visibility) to powerful spells such as Earthquake? Like having a recon team on the ground to "paint" the target city with a laser target for the missile lauched from 100 miles away lol? If I've ever been able to see a city on the map, it seems I can target it indefinitely from then on whether I have units close by or not. Seems too easy.

It would be nice to see what a champion has equipped when in a trade screen with my sov or another champion, so I know what I should be giving them. Also to see what their traits are (such as warrior, mage, assassin, etc) so I give them the best gear.

Its a bit frustrating, (but acceptable if this is intentional for the sake of the faction alignment) that when able to recruit champions from either faction, even though I now have units who can use death and life magic, I can only harvest one or the other type of shard but not both.

The biggest frustration with the newest version is just that it crashes once I reach a certain point deep into the game (sometimes within forty turns, but usually not until several hundred turns or more), with no discernible pattern other than theres just too much going on for the game to handle. Once I've reached that point, I can exit and restart the game any number of times but it still will crash, and almost always on the same turn.

Please advise if this is the type of helpful info you are looking for, and I will continue to post more as I have been compiling a list of stuff (that I foolishly didn't make sure I had readily handy when I started writing this post). If I'm addressing points that aren't of much concern to most others then feel free to let me know, I won't get all butt hurt lol. Oh, and I am definitely of the Goonies generation. Great reference lol.

1. Monsters a little too weak.( I think it should be random where they are, not kept away from starting positions, as was mentioned)

2. The AI players were no threat, no wait, they beat me like a step child.

3. I started on challenging and couldn't hang, then normal, then easy and found I could eke by. This is weird, because I used to destroy strategic games.

4. I have been playing Altar since the last patch.

5. Obviously, I didn't think the AI was too easy.

Some errors:

1. After I get well into the game, like year 250 or so, the game closes when I try to save. (I save it in about 5 different saves, is this bad? take up too much space or my comp not bad enough? Intel t6500 @2.1GHz x 2.1 GHz, 4 GB ram, 64bit, 94 gigs free space, Toshiba Laptop)

2. A lot (most always)of the times whoever on my side goes first in a battle, doesn't get control choice buttons. Have to quickly flip the auto fight button on and off to pass first players turn.

3. A lot of the time, after attacking an army of npcs or monsters, their icon stays on the map for several turns, I think until I save usually.

Sorry, if these have already been brought up. I don't have a lot of time to read everything lately.

I just tried to download the update, it's been a while since I did that, and had an issue right away.  My norton security suite said it was a virus and deleted it.  While I know I can get around that if I need to, It is something that needs to be looked at.