[suggestion] Dragons must fly!

Search your heart Stardock... you know it's true. Look at Elementals own intro screen.

Dragons should either hover in the air above their tile, or fly in a radius around their tile. On the strategy map, flying units--other than graphics and animations changes--simply means it can occupy the same tile as a land unit or structure, and can cross tiles that land units cannot, and probably travel faster than land units. Mounting a sovereign on a dragon would be cool but optional for now.

In tactical combat, dragons could cast special abilities from the air, and be susceptible to archers and cataputs, but would have to land to engage in melee combat, or to be attacked by melee. To balance things, they could suffer a penalty from ranged attacks while in the air.

I'd also dump the squads of dragons idea. Fitting four dragons on the same tile looks pretty sad. If a unit is so large that they have to be scrunched together to fit on the same tile, then just allow one unit per tile and balance from there.

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And should be ridden, and must be able to fight in combat as well as it's rider.

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A dragon may be tempted to eat your unit of archers.

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More dragon suggestions:

When a flying dragon dies, it's death animation MUST be as close as possible to the scene in Dragonslayer where...

Spoilers...

The old wizard exploded and the dragon fell into the lake.

End Spoilers.

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Also I propose different dragon races that can be recruited:

Fire: Red, breathe fire, direct damage + damage over time burn effect. Similar to the young dragons now but red.

Earth: Green, breathes toxic fumes, direct damage + nerf to strength, constitution and other attributes.

Air: Blue, breathes lightning, high chance to miss but high chance to crit with very high direct damage, also maybe a stun effect, and higher chance to hit against metal armor.

Water: white, breathes frost, direct damage + slowing effects on movement and combat speed.

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One thing I really like is how the diplomacy tech tree can be used to recruit intelligent spiders, bugs, and dragons. I already like diplomacy when it can be used to get the AIs to fight each other, but recruiting monsters adds that cool-factor to the tree.

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Sounds great. How long to get even one dragon with this new economic system???

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[Suggestion] Dragons must fly in 2011

Sounds like one of those ideas that will definitely take a looong work to implement...

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If Stardock wants to start small, then flying creatures could behave exactly like ground based creatures, except their animation puts them a little ways up in the air, and they would have to be invulnerable to melee attack (unless they land).

I don't know if there are any examples so far in the game of creatures existing in Elemental in two or more different forms, say like a spell where one polymorphs into a bear, I don't recall any examples, so a dragon flying vs. landing would be a matter of replacing one creature (airborne dragon) with another (land dragon). Shouldn't be too tough to program.

The next level of complexity is airborne dragons can travel over squares that ground units can't, and get a speed bonus.

Finally, give them the ability to occupy the same tile as another ground army or unit, which I think already exists on the strategy map... there are times when I am trying to attack an opponent and my army moves on the square instead, but without attacking, and you can "scroll" through the two armies occupying the tile by clicking on it. On the tactical map this admittedly might take some doing. Okay that would be a 2011 project.

Later on there could be air battles between flying units... but for starters I don't think it would require major changes to existing game mechanics, much beyond new animations, and could increase the "cool" factor of dragons and dirigibles and maybe even floating castles sailing a couple inches above the landscape.

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