I was reading the "More attributes needed for Elemental" Post from NTJedi. Red1939 replied at some point with a post about adding abilities to the game, Personally i had been thinking about this before to, It didn't get any responses within the post so i decided i'd make a new post just to talk about that.

To Clarify what i am talking about with "abilities/traits" i will try to explain. Besides a unit's attributes it will sometimes also have an ability/trait, This will maybe be displayed in the info card by having text that says for example "Brace Yourselfs!" (The first attack made against this unit will only deal half damag) or "Leave no survivors" (When over 90% of the enemy unit stack is killed. This unit will deal double damage).

Now there are so many ways this could be implented, I will talk about a few that i came up with.

Basic

Let's start with the most Basic way throught the unit creation screen. It could just be another tab in the unit creation screen along with weapons/armor/equipment/(Traits). This splits to another several of options on how to obtain these, this could be through research or perhaps unlocking them by meeting certain physical prerequisted or even by statistics like winning 10 battles without survivors on the enemy's side will unlock the "leave no survivors" Trait. Perhaps not a brilliant example, but it will do to show you what i mean.Feel free to name any other ways you'd like to see of unlocking traits in the game in a post below. Ofcourse the amount of traits a unit can have and the cost of these can be balanced out later. Depending on how you want to apply the RNG factor can range from almost none to somewhat random. From where i see it this way won't make things to complicated for people that are new to the game or don't like complexity's but that's my humble opinion and it might be off.

City's with Character

This one crossed my mind when i read a post by cookie_1 called "The use of essence in building large cities". Units trained in City's that have a history will have a trait because they are from that city. For example the first city you ever build in this world will after a large period of time gain this ability and every unit build there will have the trait "since the begining of light" (When fighting inside your territory units get a 10% bonus to attack and defense). The family's of these people have lived her from the begining of your empire. In this case they have grown a strong gratitude towards you and will fight like no others to protect your empire. Just an example. So basicly what i am trying to say is that City's will sometimes unlock this abilty. The Trait soldiers gain when trained in a certain city with that ability can be made to relate to buildings/surroundings/timeline(build in a war in time of peace. First of your empire) of the city to give it some History. Ofcourse there will have to be limits and prerequisteds for city's to prevent city spamming. This can be done by limit it to a certain amount of city's or maybe find some other factors that you bind it to for example Sovereign level 1 city can get this trait for every so much Sovereign leves. Maybe you can even make an essence cost to this. Feel free to give ideas on this to. The thing about this method is that it does have a certain amount of RNG in it. Which for some people is a problem. Perhaps to limit the amount of RNG involved it can be kingdom specific. You research a kingdom specific research that allows you to build a unique building in one of your city's. This building will give the city the feature that every unit that is trained in it will get "a trait that that building provides for that city. I shouldn't go into thigns to deep as i will over complicate things for myself and others. I think you get the main idea. This idea would also be more complex then the previous and if i understood correctly Complexity is what we try to keep limited.

Achievements to unlock.

This will mainly be the basic way but a little more complex on the unlocking part of it so i thought it deserved it's on bold lettered title. In Demigod you could unlock achievements and score points with that that you could take from game to game and unlock items with those points that would be unlocked in every game you play. Now i don't know the details to this since i don't own the game but from what i understood of it, i thought it was a fun idea. It will give the player the option to develop his playing style not only personaly but also show it in unit statistics by lack of a better way to put this. On that note i am sorry for any typo's, grammar fails and misuse of words. English is my second languege and it sometimes prevents me from getting my point clearly across. So with this every account will get it's own achievement points counter and with those achievements points you can unlock Traits that you can give to your units the way i described in the Basic part above. Achievements points could be earned simply by playing a map. Winners get more then losers but depending on your statistics it will determine how many points you get. so that long games are a bit more rewarding. They could make a curve in unlocking points that prevents people from quickly unlocking all skills and negate the personal playstyle depth factor. Or maybe even limit the amount of unlocks you can have at a time and it will cost achievements points to switch them. Most likely this system will be ripe for exploit due to the moddabillity of this game(which don't get me wrong is a great thing). So it might not be the best way to go and i won't go into it to much.

If it won't kill you, it will make you stronger.

Combat..Experience. It the post "It is time to discuss....DEATH!!!! (or at least combat) from Frogboy. He mentioned that he would like to see experience being used as more then a modifier to the current stats. I figured why not mix it up in this idea post with traits. So i think it's pretty self-explainatory but just in case. When a unit gains enough experience from doing combat and surviving it it will level up. Now on level up it will get an increase in stats from what i get so far. Now along with the stat bonus maybe on for example level 3 it will gain a trait. This trait can be randomly selected or it could be picked by the player out of a pool of unlocked Traits. Maybe even selected by the game based on certain factors like units weapon/armor/misc/current area/City created in. So for example Billy the Soldier will get a trait when he reaches lvl 3 after a battle. It will be called "Now if you are running the full version like i am you can actually go overhere and unclick....ooh..i guess i can't.." (Drops the enemy morale severly). He got this trait because at the time of his creation he had to be in Frogboy's video thus that being the deciding factor of what trait he got. Hope that clears things up. Maybe high level soldiers can even unlock more then one trait but it will have to be balanced. As for RNG factor this can be decided depending on how to unlock the traits. Comlexity i'd say it would be decent.

Now i could keep going on with different idea's and all but i feel if i keep talking even the most patient and focused people get bored and wander off to a different post. So let's see what you guys think of this first. Feel free to post and positive comments or negative ones below. Idea's and additions are always welcome to. Try to keep it respectfull towards me and the fellow forums members.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. My reference to Frogboy's video wasn't meant disrepectfully, I have the utmost respect for everyone in the Elemental Team and i think they are doing a wonderfull job.