Elemental war of magic game guide

It was still quite ancient as forests go in this part of the world. The forest, however, gave away quickly to the grass lands that surrounded the village that was set just outside the Keep of Outpost. With his prize in his pocket, Xander began his trek out of the woods and back to town. As soon as he left the woods, he could see trouble coming. Three boys were coming his way.

Xander knew they were coming probably before they knew where they were going. The boys knew he was an easy target. As an orphan, he had no standing in the Kingdom. He had no proof that he was a proper citizen or the descendent of the so-called blood traitors down in Kraxis. As a result, in matters such as these, he was on his own. Soon enough, the sloshing on the soft ground the boys made marked the beginning of the confrontation.

At this point the forest was a good hundred yards behind him and the village that surrounded the keep was still in front of him. The big one, Morlis, had always been big for his age which more than made up for his lack of wit. He had been a bully for as long as Xander could remember knowing him. He knew the answer but in his mind, Xander was weighing every option he could think of as quickly he could.

You know what we want. Oro was the most dangerous of the three. He needed only a little more time for several options in his mind to converge to avoid the beating the boys intended to give him regardless of whether he gave in. You have no ma or pa so you scurry around the keep. Xander inwardly sighed with relief as their window of opportunity closed and many different options now presented themselves to him. The three boys froze instantly. Behind them walked the Princess Angenica. Besides being the daughter of the lord of Outpost, Angenica had a unique magical talent, anyone would do whatever she commanded instinctively.

Everyone but, ironically, Xander. The three boys instantly obeyed without hesitation and did exactly as she asked without question or resistance. Geni was astonishingly pretty for a girl her age. Being the daughter of the ruler of this province, she had utmost personal confidence but more than that, her magical ability ensured she tended to get her way.

Of course, as was quite well known, Xander, like most people, had no magical talent unless luck could be considered a talent. He just tended to know what to do to avoid trouble or find what he wanted to find. Geni considered the 3 bullies squirming on the ground, now thoroughly muddy. It would be still some hours before the sun set. Geni turned back towards the village that surrounded the keep and gestured for Xander to follow her.

Lord Ambrose was a powerfully built man. In his youth, he was a warrior without peer. His skill with weapons was only surpassed by his ability to lead men. Until he had been assigned to lordship of the Henge, Ambrose was a well known adventurer.

The years out on the Henge had not been pleasing to him. He desired to return to the wilds and continue his adventures. Lord Ambrose had not seen Tandis since he was a small boy. His coming meant the circumstances were dire. But since the death of his wife 3 years ago, the Fallen had not troubled the Henge. So fierce had been his wrath against the tribes of Fallen that not a single Fallen had been seen in years.

Ambrose was a champion of men. Unlike his daughter, he did not possess the ability to force people to do his bidding. Instead, his magical ability were undirected. It was sheer presence. Things and people just tended to go his way no matter what. But leadership skills were real and required no magic. He won friends and allies easily while foes feared but respected him. His once jet black hair had begun to gray around the edges.

Like most of those who descended from channelers, he had been sent to the city of Capitar to be tested to see if he could channel the magics in the shard that was rooted there.

He learned he was no channeler. Instead of disappointment, he felt relief. He had no desire to sit on a throne but rather he sought to adventure across the world which he did for many years. Only a channeler could legally inherit the throne of the kingdom. Without that power, the kingdom would likely break up into petty city states again just as the lands of the Fallen had done so when the last Channeler of the fallen had been slain many years ago. His daughter, Angenica, would turn 16 this very Summer and with that would come the testing where she would travel to Capitar to see if she could summon the elemental forces of the shard to her bidding.

Lord Ambrose had mixed feelings on that test. If she succeeded, a heavy burden would fall to her in the future. If she failed, it would mean that the Sorcerer King would continue to have no viable heir and he was long past the time when one would have expected him to make way for another. Lord Ambrose had not sensed anything out of the ordinary in recent times emanating from the east. He had begun to send his scouts further and further East to try to confirm the misgivings that the Sorcerer King had but to no avail.

The Fallen seemed to have disappeared entirely from the world as far as his scouts could discern. Looking through the tower window, Ambrose could see the country side. In the distance, he saw his daughter running and laughing back towards the village with her urchin friend. Those two had become close friends since the death of his wife. He knew why she liked him — he was the only one who seemed immune to her power, something he had promised to look into someday.

Having a friend who you knew liked you because of who you really are was a feeling that his poor daughter would ultimately have little experience with. Turning his glance to the north, he could see the riders that accompanied Tandis trotting towards the keep. Their horses looked weary from what appeared to be a journey made in haste.

At that moment, a knock came at the tower door. Mirdoth would be there. Ambrose continued to watch the travelers make it to the keep wall and then turned to Mirdoth. The years had been quiet and that time had been gentle on Mirdoth. Now in his 90s, Mirdoth was coming to the end of his service to the house of Aereon.

Despite his age, Mirdoth appeared far more youthful. Most men only lived to theirs 70s. His eyes were long and his face lined from years of serious study combined. But his eyes still glowed with a sense of mirth that was notorious in his youth. His hair had had been black once but was now white as snow. In Mirdoth, Ambrose could see a shadow of things to come for him if he lived to be as old as Mirdoth.

Have you sensed anything of the evil that our lord king has sent him to warn us about? But when the king sends the Arnorian this far from the core of the kingdom, the need must be great. Ambrose frowned. Tandis the Arnor or Arnorian as Mirdoth liked to call him, looked like a mortal man but it was known by some that he was no man.

He had appeared as he is for as long as any living man could remember. Some said he even had fought in the wars leading up to the cataclysm.

History had written that it was Tandis who made the difference in the battle of the Henge when the Fallen had recruited the Black Dragon to their cause and had laid waste to much of the combined armies of the Kingdom. Tandis alone fought the dragon and smote it with his mighty sword. Ambrose beckoned him to show the Arnorian in and Mirdoth and Ambrose sat on two of the 4 chairs that surrounded a large wooden table. A servant came in ahead of Tandis and placed glasses of ale for refreshments.

Lord Tandis entered the tower. He looked unchanged from the last time Ambrose had seen him. He had brown and silver hair and his face had been lined over time with the cares of the world but was untouched by age. Unlike most men, Tandis had no facial hair. I would so much rather spend the evening having a great feast in celebration of your visit. My father told me of the great gatherings that his father and you had after the triumph in the War of Magic. One could tell that while Tandis had led a long life with many struggles, he was the kind of man who was no stranger to feelings of love and joy.

His voice filled the room. Neither loud nor quiet, the voice of Tandis had a soothing quality to it that seemed to project itself exactly where it needed to be. A terrible thing is rising in the east. Ambrose was struck by a foreboding. For war to come now when he was in his declining years with no male heir to stand in his steed was wrenching.

Don't have an account? Sign up for free! Ask A Question. What do you need help on? Cancel X. Elemental is a fantasy strategy game set on a world filled with magic and ancient lore. All of the items available can be purchased in your Store either immediately or after 1 tech discovery, making the point investment meaningless. I am not even going to list the options. On the other hand if you wear boots you can't wear leg armor, so there is a trade-off. In future versions I hope to see the current options replaced with unique equipment only available at character creation.

You can customize a number of things including name, colors, your symbol, whether you use the Kingdom or Empire trees, etc. One particularly cool thing I found was the "metal color" option - try changing it to pure white or blood red for some interesting-looking weapons and armors!

Not only do you have short- and longbows available from the start, but because the game thinks you have the tech researched it lets you 'skip' ahead in the tech tree so for example I was able to research "Smiting" as the Empire as my very first Conquest tech - see This 'skipping' is of no benefit to Kingdom players, as the only tech after Archery is Advanced Archery, which you don't need because you already have longbows.

Not sure how it would. Less materials or time for pioneers? Does nothing. Caravans already produce roads instantly once they reach their destination. I thought maybe this would increase the base move of a caravan, but no. A Champion will only accept your proposal if your reputation is higher than their level.

You can see your reputation on the Kingdom report screen. If you get married you will eventually start having children. Note that you do not need to keep your Sovereign and spouse together for this to happen.

When the children grow up they will inherit some of their parent's abilities and can then be used as Champions themselves or even be used in arranged marriages between other factions. Expect it to take around turns before you start having kids and then another turns for a kid to grow up rough estimates. The primary benefits of arranged marriages are a diplomatic boost with the faction and the potential for grandchildren down the line.

When married your male children will always stay with you and have the other faction's daughter join you, while your female children will always go to the other faction. Horribly sexist, I know. When grandchildren grow up they have a chance to join either of their parent's starting faction. It seems weighted towards their joining their mother's faction, that is, your son's kids will probably defect away from you while your daughter's kids will probably defect back to you.

It isn't set in stone, just seems like it happens that way more often. Because children inherit the abilities of their same-sex parent you can end up getting the abilities of other Sovereign's this way.

So for example I marry my daughter to Kul-al-Kulan's son, they have a boy, that boy grows up and joins me, now I have a grandchild with the Organized talent. The formulas that determine children starting stats are still a little screwy, for example even if both parents have 2 base move I frequently get kids with 1 base move, which sucks. One thing I do before sending my daughters off to marriage is level them up a bit and equip them with a basic set of armor.

It only takes easy battles to get them to level 3, put the level ups in hit points or dexterity, and buy them whatever armor you can afford.

This increases their survivability considerably even when controlled by the AI. Of course the safest thing to do is simply not marry off your daughters, especially if you are pursuing a conquest victory. Cities in Elemental actually take up multiple tiles on the world map as they grow, meaning whenever you construct a new building in a city you will need to pick which tiles it will occupy.

This is why availability of open space is a factor. At present you can not build on these tiles: water, coastline, forest, and mountain. Also note that the only building you can build on a beach tile is a harbor. This means that if something needs to be "within five tiles of a city" then you count from ANY tile that includes part of your city. This is especially important when founding cities close to each other, as you can not build a city improvement within five tiles of another city's improvement.

However I will not be allowed to build any improvements to the right of city A or to the left of city B. Distance from city A is now calculated from G, and that means city B's improvement is no longer legal. City B will get to keep its improvement, but it can no longer build in that direction. When picking a city location to harvest nearby resources, you have a choice between building your city directly next to a resource or leaving space for your influence to eventually include the resource.

Each decision has its merits. If your city "touches" the resource then it will be included in your city's defenses; however, it will also take time from your city's production queue to build the improvement. If the resource is within your influence but not touching your city, you can build on it without it taking turns from your city's production queue but the resource will not be defended by your walls.

Empire, and will update all values accordingly when I have the data. When it is different I will denote it as K: or E: Food: Food is the stuff that your people eat, at least theoretically. In practice food is used to set the limit on how much housing you can construct in a city. Food is also a prerequisite for certain economic buildings. Food is one of those resources that you will either have not enough or way too much of. Gold or Gildar is predominately generated from claimed gold mines, but can also be generated and increased by certain city improvements.

Gold is needed to pay for construction, unit training, unit upkeep, city upkeep, hiring heroes, buying equipment, and more. As such it is vital to generate as much gold as possible per turn.

Gold can also be earned through adventuring, either as a reward for defeating enemies or found in goodie huts. You can never have enough gold. Materials can be generated from lumber, stone, clay, etc. Materials are used in all sorts of construction, from units to improvements. The availability of materials in the early game can be very challenging, but by late game you will probably have a gigantic surplus.

While having a source of metal is certainly desirable it is not strictly necessary for victory. Metal currently has no use other than unit training. You will either need a lot of metal or none at all but probably a lot. If you do the magical research necessary you can provide your units with a variety of useful trinkets. Crystal currently has no use other than unit training. Some neutral faction cities can provide crystal each turn even without an associated Crystal Crag visible on the map once conquered.

Be aware however that horses and wargs seem to be some of the rarest tiles in the game as of 1. Progressing up the technology tree provides many benefits in Elemental so you will want to control as many of these as possible. You will never have enough Tech. Your overall strategy will determine how important Arcane is for you; you can succeed with just a small number of low level spells, or you can research all the way up to the game winning spell. Like Tech you can never really have enough Arcane.

When trying for a Spell of Making victory you will need to get to spell level 10, then research the spell itself. Having more DC than your opponents will improve their opinion of you. You can trade DC in the diplomacy screen, but personally I hang on to it for the relations bonus. You seem to get DC sometimes when you kill an enemy Sovereign but I haven't quite figured out how that works yet. There is no way to get a per-turn source of elementium.

Elementium is required for certain high-end magical armors and weapons. This Pact allows each side to travel through the other's lands, and prevents attacking the other sides units. The Pact lasts 99 turns and can not be broken or ended early. As you research the Kingdom's Diplomacy or the Empire's Cooperation tech trees more diplomatic options will become available: -Trade Resources: Allows you to trade materials, metal, crystal, mounts, and elementium. You can trade resources for resources, or you can trade resources for gold or diplomatic capital DC.

Like resources you can use any combination of resources, gold, DC, or other Champions to trade. Each side will receive a boost to their gold or tech production. The treaty seems to last indefinitely, or possibly 99 turns; you can only cancel it by declaring war. Doing so will increase relations and provide the chance for further offspring.

You do not have to join them if your Ally is the one to declare war. At present you also do not have to join in any pre-existing wars when you sign the Treaty. To be honest at present there is no penalty if you do not come to your Ally's aid either.

Sounds like a deal. You can often get paid to do something you were about to do anyway. Controlling all the shards means one of each element earth, fire, water, air. Basically if you can keep the net sum of the above factors positive you will not be attacked, and vice versa.

You can not sign an economic or trade treaty with an AI if their opinion of you is negative. It is always cheaper to sign treaties as early in the game as possible because as the AI Sovereigns get more powerful their perceived value demands will grow substantially.

So even if you are far stronger than an AI late in the game, they will still demand exorbitant amounts of gold to sign an Alliance treaty. It is a viable strategy to sell resources you have an abundance of materials, metal, etc. Likewise you can try to buy resources you are short on from an AI that has it in surplus. Selling Champions to the AI can be especially profitable.

The resource can appear right next to an existing city, or up to 15 tiles beyond your current border. More quests will be introduced in 1. Unlike Quests, each discovery can spawn goodie huts of its level OR LOWER, meaning when you unlock level 4 you may notice more level 3, 2, and 1 goodie huts. Resource tiles will be 'near' your territory but are not guaranteed to be.

On higher difficulty settings the AI also gets a bonus to the quantity of items, meaning they can get multiple gold mines, ventri mines, etc. This can be quite profitable for you. You can see exactly which techs raise which levels in In no particular order until I come up with a better system. I should say up front that if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm the kind of player that likes figuring out the rules and the "most efficient" way of doing things.

I also recognize not everyone plays like that. So please take my Strategy suggestions with a grain of salt; there are certainly many strategies and the only 'right' way to play a game like this is the way you have the most fun.

I call these the Fundamentals. Rather than a step-by-step, the Fundamentals are a checklist of early to mid-game goals that every aspiring Sovereign should worry about.

You can hope for a certain number of materials in the early game from goodie huts, but ultimately you need to be producing your own each turn. By late game you will probably be producing more than you need, but oh well. Every game you will have a 'Fertile Land' tile near your starting location; I recommend you build right next to it and develop it soon.

Grab every food resource you can. If late game you have more than you need, oh well. If you do not have at least one Lost Library tile you are probably in for quite a challenge.

Grab all you can. You will survive the first 20 turns or so because you start with gold, but once it runs out your growth will stagnate until you get some Gold Mines. So arcane knowledge is a 2nd-tier priority for me. In fact you can play a whole game with no metal, it just means you have to rely on different kinds of troops.

Unless you get lucky probably won't have a crystal resource until mid to late game. For units you WANT: -All the Champions you can afford to hire; there is usually no downside to having a bunch of Champions, even if you are not actively using them.

For cities you NEED: -Three cities: In my opinion three cities is the minimum needed to lay claim to a sufficient portion of any map to make sure you have relatively secure borders. Space the cities about tiles apart. For cities you WANT: -More than three specialized cities: Ideally you will have at least one city focusing on gold, one on tech, and one on arcane from city level-up bonuses.

In a 'perfect' game your cities would not overlap on those three resources - your tech city would have no gold mines, your gold city would have no arcane temples, etc. Of course this isn't always possible. And since you can never have too much Tech, Gold, or Arcane the more cities the better. Once your Fundamentals are in place you can consider yourself established in the world of Elemental and can go on to any other strategy.

Exact order may vary depending on circumstances. Otherwise ignore this step. Ideally it will be right next to a fertile land but not touching any other resource tile, but also have a gold mine or lost library one tile away.

If I have to take one step to achieve this I will, but I will not move my Sovereign enough to end turn 1. Hire him he's free. He and any other Champion you hire will have. Move him into your city's influence if he isn't already. Open the Store S and buy a pair of Traveler's Boots if they are available.

Equip them. Then do the same thing for yourself if possible. The boots may not be available depending on your race. You are hoping for materials. If you manage to find more than materials depends on faction start building a pioneer.

If you have found enough materials through exploration to develop your Fertile Land do so now. Otherwise you will have to wait another few turns to start it.

It takes 25 gold and either 2 Kingdom or 5 Empire materials. Develop them or any other resource tiles. After that its up to you. If possible start training another Pioneer. By now you are approaching turn 20 and after that everything depends on your overall strategy. This is generally what I used while writing this guide so I could do things like get to the end of all research paths, research all spells, try different Sovereign talents, etc.

The nutshell version is you are going to use the diplomacy system to keep every rival faction happy with you, while you rake in tons of gold by beating the AI to every goodie hut all over the world. You will use this gold to pay for champions and the alliance treaties that will win the game.

In between you do whatever else you want. I expect to have to adjust this strategy after 1. You can do the same basic thing with Empire but Kingdom is easier tech-wise. This strategy is more effective on larger maps with maximum opponents at ridiculous difficulty, but can work on smaller settings as well. Start out using the standard tactics outlined in I try to found at least four cities total. Since this is a turtle strategy I don't need more than four, but I'll go up to ten if there are enough unclaimed resources nearby.

Beyond ten cities and I figure I may as well be playing a conquest strategy, so that's where I cut off. The order of technology research is important.

I would suggest using the following logic: on the chart below research the cheapest tech starting at the top and working your way down. So start with Exploration, when that is too expensive move to Diplomacy, when that is too expensive move to Warfare, etc.

When you hit an "ANY" which tech you pick doesn't matter for this strategy. The Warfare is to build up just enough military presence to keep the AI from seeing you as an easy target.

If you can manage to sign a treaty on the very turn you meet an AI then they don't have time to decide they don't like you. Wait on signing any non-aggression packs for now.

Build at least one in each city, two if you can afford it. Once you unlock Logistics try to build at least 1 four-man group per city, but you probably do not need to rush it. Check your power rating in the Kingdom overview screen and compare it to the other AI's power rating on the diplomacy screen; as long as you are close to their numbers say within 10 you are doing fine. All of your champions add to your power rating as well.