The purpose

There are two things in the game that, I believe, could be improved. Both have to do with Elements.

The first one, as I noted in a previous post, is that shards have a pretty passive role as of now: you find them, you build a shrine, you upgrade it. So, the interaction is quite limited. This is not bad in itself, since they are a resource, but since the game name is Elemental, I think it would be more fun if we could interact with shards.

The second one, is a stronger role of Elements during the character creation phase. Maybe it’s because I am MoM fan, but I think that playing a Fire mage should feel very different than playing an earth or water mage. And not only because you use different spells. Now a fire mage is different from a water mage just because you pick fire magic at the beginning... but you can develop the same skills as you exp your sovereign in-game, so this choice during the character creation does not define so much your sovereign.

So, here is what I propose.

[EDIT> The Idea: Elemental Allegiance, Shortened Version]

You can decide to pledge alliegiance to a single Element, e.g. Fire, by spending character points. This implies that:

1. You cannot exploit shards of the opposite element (Water), but you can destroy them

2. You and your champs cannot use Water spells

3. You can mutate Air/Earth shards into somewhat inefficient Minor Fire Shards, to augment the bonus on fire magic at a cost in terms of mana and loss of efficiency. Balance here is paramount so that mutating shards is not always better.

4. You are more skilled in Fire Magic and get special stuff

You can also choose not to ally to any element and be a Generalist, which is the same as it is now.

[end of EDIT]

The idea: Elemental Allegiance

In this idea, the first step of the character creation is to choose whether your character has sworn allegiance to a given Element or not. If not, he is a Generalist, which is basically the same as it is now, with the twist that one earns special abilities if during the game it manages to control at least one shard of each basic element (Fire, Water, Air and Earth). It could be that all spells have reduced cost, or something more creative. The other option is where things change quite a bit. Swearing Allegiance to an Element costs 2 points, grants one level of spell knowledge in the chosen Element (hence the net cost of the option is 1 point) and gives additional powers and limitation to a character, as described below. In the following, I will use Fire to refer to any of the four basic elements, Water to refer to its opposite, and Air/Earth to refer to the other basic elements.

1. A Firesworn sovereign despises its opposite element, Water, and has sworn never to use it, nor to allow his champions to use it. Hence, all water spells are forbidden for the entire game. He also considers disdainful building shrines on Water shards, which cannot therefore be exploited as normal. However, he can destroy them. In fact, Firesworns are given an Extinguish Water spell that can be cast on any Water shard in their ZoC, and instantly generates 50 mana by absorbing the energy contained in the core of the shard and transforming it into a (useless) water splinter. Later on, they can discover the Consume Water spell, that consumes a Water shard in 50 turns generating 3 mana per turn. [EDIT: destroy a Water shard and you collect an Elemental Spirit]
2. A Firesworn is given the power to convert shards of the neutral elements Air/Earth into a Minor Fire Shard, which differs from a Fire shard in that it can support only 1^st and 2^nd level buildings once the appropriate techs are discovered. This mutation is obtained by casting a Will of Fire spell on an Earth-Air shard in the player ZoC. The mutation takes 20 turns to take effect, in which the shard is passive and no mana is generated. If the player loses control of the shard during this time, the spell fizzles. Shards which already have temples and shrines built on them roll a resist check once the 20 turns have elapsed, so that the spell can fail. Clearly, this allows a Firesworn to focus all its spell power on Fire, but also leaves him the option to exploit Air/Earth shards as usual. [EDIT: you consume an elemental spirit whenever you mutate a shard]
3. A Firesworn  is naturally more skilled in the use of Fire magic. One can think of many advantages. For example, he gains +2 initiative on fire spells cast during tactical battles and has +20 Spell Mastery on Fire spells. He is granted additional fire spells at the beginning of the game (e.g. one random spell for each level). Firesworns can build a Fire Obelisk in their capital, available right from the beginning, which counts as a fire shard for spell-boosting purposes. Firesworns automatically summon a lesser fire elemental at the beginning of each battle at no mana cost, for the duration of the battle. Firesworns’ capital is granted, at the beginning of the game, with a free, fire city spell, which does not count for the maximum number of spells on that city. Once a Firesworn controls 5 Fire shards, he can summon a powerful Fire creature, e.g. a Balrog, normally unavailable. One can come up with all sort of bonuses here to make it fun and balanced.

I like points 1 and 2 in particular since they also change the way shards are used in the game. Note that one can destroy or mutate shards on enemy territories by flipping outposts, which expands strategic decisions quite a lot. My feeling is that the option to swear allegiance to an Element would make a much bigger difference in playing a Fire mage as opposed to an Earth mage, thus enhancing the already high replay-ability that the game seems to have. One can swear allegiance to two non-opposite Elements, with interesting strategic implications (e.g. swearing allegiance to Fire and Earth gives different options regarding Water shards, which can be destroyed, exploited in the classic way or mutated into Minor Earth Shards).

So far, I have not discussed Life/Death Elements. One option is to treat them as Spiritual Elements, as opposed to the four Material Elements, and hence give them a different role. This could be not to allow allegiance to these elements, since belonging to Kingdoms or Empires is already a choice of allegiance. Alternatively, one could make sovreigns initially unable to use Life/Death magic, and open up this Elements only of one chooses to swear allegiance to them. So, initially, a Kingdom sovereign would be able to use only the four basic elements, and in order to use Life magic should spend 2 points (1 net) and swear allegiance to the Life Element. This way, Life/Death magic must be earned, making for even more possibilities during character creation. This means that if you don't spend any point in Elemental Allegiances, you can only use the four basic elements provided that you have the required abilities.

Finally, let me say that all these changes seem to require only minor changes to the game as it is now, with the only exception of the AI programming. For what I have seen, the game now seems very good, and I hope with this brainstorming to provide useful ideas for the Devs to make it even better.

Looking forward to hearing your comments on this idea guys! (even simple comments on whether you like it or not)