I'd say more enemy penalty, since that seemed to happen more (I don't recall anyplace implying in any way that the orcs and other creatures were in any way encouraged or supported by the eye, just the fear and fatigue the eye caused the hobbits). 

Total ripoffs aren't all bad, since its presented in a different medium.  Taking from books or movies to inspire things for a game is the way to go.   I play burning wheel all the time (or D&D and other RP systems) and my PCs constantly tell me how awesome my stories are, but I always tell them.  I'm not really being original, I'm just ripping off a bunch of games and movies, stringing the events together with some half baked plot logic, and disguising the events by changing names and such so you don't instantly see exactly where I got the ideas.

***added: I forgot the reason I came back to thes thread ;

I wanted to mention a wonder idea that was brought up in the weather thread, though I think unrelated to weather.    It was the idea of turning old battlefields into places of power where you could build a great wonder.   Like the wonder could only be built in a place that has seen many many deaths, like a wonderous tomb or grave site that perhaps could perhaps help channel undead powers or something.  I could see it acting as a crastyl/node but for life magic rather than the other elements.

Also talking about weather, another wonder idea:

Weather control machine > lets the channeler influence the weather effects.   
Fire:  Increased chance of ash falling form the skies or forest fires
Earth:  Increased chance of sandstorms
Wind: Increased sail and flying movement for the user and increased chance of tornadoes
Water: Increased chance of rain (perhaps better water movement as well)
Life (death):  Increases chance for snow?
Life (not-death): stable atmosphere, almost no way for other negitive weather effects to occur.

Could also be the place where a hero or a channeler is dead, like in The Empire Strikes Back: "This place is inhabited by the darside of the Force."

The Wonders Feature would be appreciated, but it should be a game option where players could enable/disable the feature.

Having them as an option purely allows them to exist for those who want them.  This allows gamers "the option" of playing the game without wonders whether they want to try a different type of game or view a few wonders as unbalanced or if a wonder is somehow bugged/broken.  Having a critical feature such as Wonders as an option is a good thing instead of forcing everyone to play with them all the time.

You know how wonders that confer a bonus to just the city/planet they're built in tend to be washed out in larger maps? Like in GalCiv, having one planet that can produce slightly faster ships really stops being helpful in huge maps, where you have maybe 30 ship-producing planets. I thought of a way that that problem could be somewhat solved.

Let's say you build the War Academy. It provides +100 XP to all military units trained in that city. But in addition, it could be possible to train 'Expert Quatermaster' units or something there, which can be used like Great People in Civ IV: you bring them to another city, have them use their ability and the result is a permanent bonus for that city. In this case, Installing an Expert Quartermaster in a city could provide a +50 XP bonus or something (one time bonus, can't install multiple in one city). The total number of these units that you can train could be a function of the number of cities you own, and they could be proportionately expensive.

Any takers?

Seems neat. So building wonders allows you to attract the expertise to build mini-wonders elsewhere? Makes sense, but balancing it might be difficult.

AFAIK, Brad's current position about core Elemental design is that the single-player experience is the most important thing and any multiplayer work should be avoided or dropped if it detracts from the game being solidly satisfying when played with no active network connection.

As long as that's a roughly correct statement about the dev plan, IMO, 'balance' talk should be strictly relegated to the multiplayer context. For the core game, anything you might call 'balance' is irrelevant because it is not a competition. Instead of considering how 'balanced' every given idea might be, for non-multiplayer ideas, let's focus on how interesting, fun, frustrating, confusing, and/or amazing the idea might be.

(Do I need to say "But" or "However?") This is something with which I completely agree, except I'd use the adjective 'scalable' instead of 'balanced.' If I tried to make a small set of baskets to sort my gripes and frustrations about GalCiv2, the fullest one might be labeled I Want More In-house Testing on Really Big Maps.

I don't completely agree with you there. Single-player also does suffer when there are major balancing issues. It forces you into playing a certain way (unless you don't care about intentionally handicapping yourself). Unit X is crazily overpowered (not really strong but really hard to get - that's balanced. I mean really strong for its cost/difficulty to obtain)? Then most viable strategies involve building as many of them as you can as fast as you can. If a feature like this were to make certain wonders so powerful that any strategy worth its salt involves building them first (or at all), that is a balance problem that needs to be fixed.

Balance is still important, even for single player. But, given that, it's also much less important in turn-based 4X games than in RTS's. 4X games are a little more forgiving due to the scope. Not to mention I don't think you'll find as many people crying 'nerf!' about features in a 4X game, both because of the different audience and the type of games. So long as there aren't any major balance issues, encountering unbalance-induced adversity is just another challenge to out-strategize.

Maybe it's just something I carry with me from Civ/SMAC, but I really, really feel that exclusive one-per-civilization buildings (Super Projects, Wonders, etc) should affect the entire nation and whatever local effect it gives should be "a side order of fries", not the meal itself.

In this case, for example, I'd very much prefer for it to just give a flat 30-50 experience boost to to all cities. Because you know that you're GOING to have that Expert Quartermaster in every major military-producing city anyway, and in those cities you weren't going to have one anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Probably. But I'd have to beat myself with a stick every night before bed, because infantile stupidity needs to be punished.

I guess I agree with you, actually. I'd rather avoid the problem all together rather than have something like my idea implemented.

Also, on a separate note: the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of discoverable items/instructions (not researchable) that allow for the construction of certain wonders. They could be found in ruins, could be quest rewards, and maybe there could be a magic spell that attempts to locate one (at random). Wonders that require a special item/artifact could be completely unique, while ones that require just a set of instructions could be built by multiple people so long as they all find the instructions.

Not really. It's one example why wonders should be balanced. If they can't or aren't balanced, then they should be optional. And I wouldn't mind there being an option anyway for the crazy people out there who don't like wonders

This talk about the Eye reminds me of my wacky idea about choosing 'Shard Size' during game setup, with shards being jewelry/tool-sized, cow- or elephant-sized, and landscape element-sized. The early map art leaves me thinking that the devs are planning for shards to be special tiles on the map and not mobile items of any sort, but they asked for ideas...

Anywho, in a game where we can equip champions with magic items, shouldn't we also be able to build wonders that are as small as the One Ring and almost as awesome? In AD&D terms, I'm thinking of the difference between 'ordinary' magic items and Artifacts.

By that logic, the whole game should be one big option. That exact same argument can be applied to every single part of the game. Swords might be unbalanced compared to other weapons, so swords should be an optional feature! Oh, magic too. Also, fire magic might be unbalanced compared to the other aspects, it should also be a game option.

I am not opposed to wonders being optional unless Stardock implements them such that they are an integral part of the game; but the reason has nothing to do with balance, it has to do with user preference. And an option to disable wonders seems like an easy task to implement, so you're right - there probably aren't any reasons why wonders shouldn't be optional. There are exceptions though; for example, if some factions utilize wonders more heavily than others, then removing them from the game would disproportionately weaken those factions. If Stardock implements wonders in such a fashion, then wonders should not be optional.