I'm working on a roadmap for the mod I'm going to be spending the next few weeks on. I've been doing bits and pieces just for myself, but now it's come to a point that I'm so bored out of my mind I'm going to try something that goes way beyond what my sanity can withstand.

The Roadmap

If anyone wants to take a look and make any suggestions for phase one, let me know. I've got most of the stat changes I'll be making mapped out and I'll be doing the tiles before I do the coding.

I've spent so long just spending my time paying off debt that I need to get back into programming, and doing a mod is the first baby step back to where I used to be. So for better or worse, I'll be trying to get the first playable version out in the next week.

--edit: I went and got a fever this week, and also after mapping things out it will be a while before a playable portion is complete, but I'll keep things updated here.

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Progress: Complete | In Progress | Pending

Pre-Alpha

• Collect list of suggestions from around the Elemental Forums and keep them on file for reference.
• Download several popular mods for examples and indirect assistance.
• Download all Elemental tutorials and keep them on file for assistance.

Alpha

Phase I - Resources

• Document Resource Tile Costs/Bonuses
• List All Necessary Resource Tiles

Phase II - Magic

• Map Out New Magic Schools
• Map Out Magic Spells - Levels, Effects, Costs, etc.

Phase III - Research

• Document New Tech Trees

Update - 2-23-2011

Just filed my taxes. Didn't take as long as I thought.

I'm still working on the research remapping. It's hard to do it and think about balance at the same time so I'm just going to do a single large research tree for now, and work things out later.

But for comparison, I counted each tech in each tree for both faction types.

Kingdom - Civics - 25

Kingdom - Warfare - 28

Kingdom - Magic - 20

Kingdom - Adventure - 16

Kingdom - Diplomacy - 13

Empire - Imperium - 20

Empire - Conquest - 30

Empire - Lore - 14

Empire - Dominion - 22

Empire - Cooperation - 13

My current tech totals and the names of the trees are here:

Restoration - 14

Arcane - 31

Technology - 21

Economics - 6

Diplomacy - 3

As you can see I'm sorting things out differently. Adventure/Dominion will be split between arcane and restoration, as they are mostly reclaiming the lost world. Cooperation/Diplomacy will remain roughly in the same category. Civics and Warfare/Imperium and Conquest will be redistributed between Economics, Technology, and Restoration. Magic/Lore will be mostly shuffled into Arcane.

There have been a lot of complaints about running out of techs to develop on long games, even on epic pacing. As you can see from the count in Arcane, I plan on greatly increasing the number of technologies for each group, and making pre-requisites dependent upon eachother.

For example, Carpentry from Technology and Shelter from Restoration will both be required for Basic Housing. Construction and Basic Housing will be required for the next step up (Currently split between Improved Housing and Mass Housing, for prestige and population increase differences depending on the route you take)