I don't think this is a very productive post. Stardock is very involved in the community. I'd love it if they would get more involved in the 'idea' forum more, but they are way more involved, in a good way, than most other companies.

Go read up on Fallen Enchantress. It is including many things that the community has asked for. I'm keeping my hopes up that it willl be better than WoM.

But if they aren't paying attention to the ideas forum how will they know about your idea that they should pay attention to the ideas forum?

Yep - exactly the way many of us feel about Elemental.

But...

How exactly is it changing? I know there are going to be certain special areas, as show in one of the design journals. What about everywhere else, ie: what I assume will be the majority of the game map? Will it all still be useless space with a few new special areas?

I honestly don't know for certain how best to 'fix' this issue. Maybe I'm just an old Civ guy, but I still think that the simple system there of different terrain types providing simple bonuses is good, with some  limitations. It never did a good job of allowing for mega cities to develop, since every city had to use local food (I think Civ II had food caravans or something), so in some ways Elemental has a superior model.

The bottom line is that whatever system is implemented should create interesting gameplay. I should have to think about where I put cities. Right now, it is all about the very rare resources...this is ok with the whole post-apoc theme, but the rest of the terrain should also be taken into account. This will force more difficult, interesting decisions.

I think we need a new journal on this topic!

https://forums.elementalgame.com/411155/page/1/#2981483

That is good news about terrain. Thanks for this unofficial tidbit on FE. Maybe if we knew more about the new design concepts, we could offer more useful ideas.

Also, a little journal about modding capabilities would go a long way towards soothing my unease about spells.  

Like stealing the way Civilization does it?

Like how each tile on the map has food/production/resources assigned to it, through terrain type and such.

Please don't. Horrible micro if you want it efficient, and the map ends up looking all civilized.

Can my eyes roll more than this? How would using a system similar to Civs be 'stealing.' Do they have a patent on it? In that case, Civ stole from the guy that invented chess. Bastards, Sid should have come up with his own ideas instead of making a game turn-based. Only chess can do that, damnit!