I agree that if there are magic-using units in Elemental, they should break out of the usual mold of being overpowered archers. But I agree with Denryu that if you can give each individual mage within a squad its own orders, then they cease to be a squad. It'd be like ordering each individual archer in a squad of archers to fire on different targets - it might be realistic but it would be a real huge pain in the ass to deal with. Instead of 3 squads of 50 archers each, you end up with 150 archers, each with their own individual orders. Maximizing combat efficiency in this case would be an enormous exercise in micromanagement.

I do love your idea that you train magic-using units which spells to use. It would be a major departure from the norm but in a very good direction. It would also go very well with the unit customization that's been talked about.

Also, channelled spells would be a nice addition for buffs/debuffs. The standard way buffs and debuffs work is through turn duration. But it would be awesome if you can choose to cast buffs/debuffs as a one-time deal with a turn limit, or to channel it resulting in a much stronger spell at the cost of occupying the attention of your mages until you stop. 

This is off topic but it just came to me. Ranged units should have actual range limitations. If combat is more like Total War combat, then I'm sure that'll be implemented, but if it's more like HoMM then it's no so obvious. But either way, ranged units should have actual ranges, not that annoying "can shoot as far as you want but you're gonna suffer a 1/4 damage penalty" crap. I want to be able to strategically position my forces so that my squishy casters will be mostly safe from my enemy's archers; and conversely I want to have to strategically position my forces in order to reach my enemy's squishy casters with my archers.

I'd prefer wizards were individual units, but the essence system makes this fairly irrelevant.  We're not going to be training wizards.  It would be nice to have the ability to create magic users in some way besides essence transfers to heroes.  Being able to imbue rings with specific spells to cast would allow for some very interesting groups if they could be combined together with different sets of rings.  You could accomplish your multi tasking mage group that way.

I wouldn't say that so soon.  I'm under the impression that essence is different from magic.  Essence is something a bit more potent I'd guess.   So I figure we are going to be able to create magic users, but they would not have the powers near the same level as heroes or the main channelers.  Pretty much all the games mentioned to inspired elementall have magic throwing units (exception is x-com? I really just mean MoM, HoMM and AoW) but the units can't compare to the heroes. 

I mean the name of the game is "war of magic", that would hardly be a war of magic if only a select few in the war could use it.

The magic rings idea that psychoak mentioned would solve it.  You'd still be creating mages by adding the magic powers during the design, you'd just design the magic rings they wear.  It would be for all practical purposes the same thing as just giving them the spells, except now they had a reason that made sense with the lore.

(if they make mages by giving them magic rings, I am so building my army of planeteers with a unit of earth-ring users, fire-ring users, wind-ring users, water-ring users, and heart(life)-ring users.)

If you do that, you had damn well better name your channeler Captain Planet. Or maybe name your channeler Gaia, and name your most powerful hero Captain Planet. And impose upon yourself the rule that Captain Planet can only be used once each of your 5 types of ring-bearers use their abilities

Thinking about the nature of the game, who is to say a magic-using unit couldn't be imbued with all sorts of powers? I'd love to see inspiration drawn from things like D&D for the availability of spells. Sure, you could have traditional mages, but why not some more creative magic-using units:

Magic-Using Archer (Ran one of these in a Champions game, though he used a rifle) - basically a normal archer with the ability to imbue his arrows with power of the elements.

Warrior-Mage - Heavily armed and armored soldier who uses magics of earth and life to sustain himself in battle, for defense and restorative purposes. Might be far more expensive than without the magic, but could survive for three or four times as long. (Perhaps as an addendum - maybe different levels of magical ability related to cost. Not just a case of weaker magics being equated to lessened cost, but perhaps significantly less usage. i.e. A ring compared to training.)

Scout - Unit of basic armament who uses magics to either aide in cloaking himself or transportation, or perhaps both. Minor teleportation or invisibility?

Three ideas right off the bat. I'd love to see versatility which would allow us such things. Then you can easily get into the nature of mages, geomantic magics (minor control over the land itself?), necromantic (Oooh, dead enemy. More forces!), divination (long-range scouting), energy (abilities to ennervate and empower), telepathic (confusion and control), telekinetic, elemental, constructive, destructive, ad infinitum. Imagination is the limit. So much of it could be designed by the creative tools that we're being promised in the final result, at least from a graphical perspective. I know the kind of flexibility I would prefer would be incredibly complex from a technical perspective.

I wouldn't. The wizard spells are a D&D flaw that has existed in every edition (though 4th tried to make a change with rituals) I feel that D&D does a piss poor job of spell availability, and the spells are often boring, generally unoriginal, largely way too specific to be useful. the 'warrior-mage' idea for example does not well workin D&D since in D&D they seem to think a breastplate would somehow hinder your ability to cast spells (explain to me how you can't do finite hand movements because you are wearing something on your chest.  It wouldn't be any different if you were just fat) Sadly, we are forced to do so with the whole 'spell book' concept from D&D since we can't have a the ability to make a fluid and dynamic spell system that wouldn't be at least a bit limited with any kind of reasonable to budget.   

sure.   Again I like my idea of just adding magic abilities and spells to the build queue the way you would swords or shields.  This would let you create caster swordsmen, casters on horseback, casters on bearback?, casters with bows, casters with scouting skills (I assume you add skills the same way you would spells and weapons)

You do point out the warriar mage would need buff spells.   Since there is no such thing as a 'wizard' in this game, in that we are not limited the way D&D is, we would want more than just a single 'magic weapon' spell so that guys can go into battle and buff themselves.

Master of Magic has plenty of spells I can see easily putting on units to create warriar mages.  Stuff like endrich weapon, flame weapon, bless, and other unit buffs I'd put on my warriar mages and have them cast it on themselves 1st turn of combat while the enemy is still on the other side of the field.   Its something to consider though, since we want to be sure elemental still has a spell list that can help our warriar mage troops.

Land, I don't want my troops to cast Giant Strangh on themselves, I want them to cast it on my entire army. I'll make a special unit with NOTHING except the ability to cast a specific spell, and send it to support my troops.

Same goes for offensive spells. My swordmen have a job in melee, giving them fireballs would only hinder them. I will make a specific unit with NOTHING but fireballs, and use them as artillery.

The idea of caster units is to combin those two specialist cases (and many others) into a single versatile unit. Or maybe into two, one defensive (buffs/healing) and one offensive.

That's true. They often are. Then again, I speak of that as one inspiration, and I speak of more than simply wizard spells.Look at D&D, look at WoW, look at the words of Tolkien and Robert Jordan.

guys, do you see frogboy's unit creation screen being part of the process of creating magic using units? That's how i'm seeing it. Maybe there is a tab you click to create magic using units. Once here, you *have* to impart essence to create a single unit, then you get to choose spells similar to how you choose weapons/armour but those spells are confined to spells you've researched (maybe a seperate spell research tree that is specific to units). Maybe the inclusion of each spell makes the unit more expensive (time/resource/essence). The amount of essence put in on initial creation defines how much 'mana' that unit has to spend per day/whatever.

This way you *could* create a sword and armour wielding battle-mage but it would be prohibitively expensive to create more than a few (in essence and/or something else)

Basically, yes. I think it would be cool if we could but i'm not sure how this could fit in with the philosophical differences between nations. maybe unit specific spells are defined by that philosophy?

We know so little about mana and essence so far that I don't think anyone should feel that certain about a given game idea. Like others of you, I also want to see spell-casting 'regulars,' preferably as single units, possibly members of an 'officer' class. I think it'd be swell if you could have a late-game scenario like the Ideal part of Gazing's OP, but it should be a Truly Great Battle that puts all your other forces at greater risk by stripping them of their mage regulars. Mage units, yes; teeming hordes of spellcasters, maybe not so much.

I'm hoping that imbuing essence will not be necessary to enable this level of spellcasting, but perhaps channelers can form a link with trained mages to provide access to a greater mana supply. A spellcasting hero (imbued with essence) should be fundamentally stronger, basically Mid-size when compared to the Small regulars and the Large channeler.

certainly, WoD is a decent example.  Better than D&D anyway.

using the less known system was actually intended.  I personally like Burning Wheel a lot.  better than WoD even, and I wanted to generate curiousity so people might buy it.

Well, Brad's second exerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth" mentions battle mages that are both trained to magic and connected to a major magic item (stronger when closer to it). Seems encouraging for the caster units cause.