This is one of the best ideas I've heard.  It keeps the random factor in it while giving you a fairly specific direction of research.  I love it!

Sadly enough I disagree with this idea. Call me pedantic but dragons as the natural power supreme beings in the game they should be very rare otherwise they will lose their intrinsic value and would simply nullify most if not all of the other units in the game unless they are all scaled up to match the dragons and then you are in effect marginalizing the very thing that made them special in the first place.

I can see your point and to some degree agree with it but I'm still not persuaded to change my position. I think SD has made the right call with its kid-glove approach to dragons. Maybe that is because I'm a very old P&P gamer with many fond memories of doing tabletop crawls for 20+ hours at a clip only to come across a dragon on occasion. Oddly enough those are the gaming weekends I remember most - for what it is worth...

McFungos - I think you have your wish. 

Quoting the preview from Gamespot: "There are several ways to achieve victory, such as simply defeating all your enemies in the world. You could also achieve a diplomatic victory by gathering all to your cause (sometimes under threat of force). If you are able to collect all the shards of magic hidden throughout the world, you will earn a magical victory. Finally, you can recruit enough heroes to your banner to complete a campaign called the Quest of Mastery."

It's my thought the Quest of Mastery could end up being something like you envision.  I'm hoping its not the same quest type every game.  So one game you might destroy 60% of the demon force like you said, or in another game, maybe you have to obtain a rare treasure guarded by dragons.  Something like that would add a little more variety to the game.

@SackLunch

It would be good to have one random event related victory condition in each game.

@Spartan

Want uber event too

What a Drenghin invasion of the Middle Earth.

Stop smuggling Korx's anti-matter pulse rifles.

Sorry i can't afford to hire a Demigod.

Please tell the Vasari envoy that they are in the wrong galaxy.

@Spartan

Need a team heroes named Stardock

Beast master Frogboy

Elven archer CariElf

Elusive shadow Zoomba

Puppet Master Boogiebac

Martial artist Mormegil

.....

Averyone of them must have disputables traits

@Spartan

Your are right the beast master should be Yarlen who is trying to tame editors & game devellopers to sign with Impulse.

NB : Wow closing speedly to the 2000 replies on the elemental forum in one mere week.

If not Dragons it would be nice to be able to play as the various beats and what not, to be honest I have always dreamed of leading an army of giant bugs, wolves, and other mythical creatures to victory, though mainly the bugs and other animals.(The giant scorpion on  BFME II was my favorite then the spiders.) All in all a third playable faction that revolves around the "natural world" and animals would be sweet.

As long as I can lead an army of animals I would be happy LOL Dragons dont need to be included Though giant spiders, scorpions, centipedes would be just awesome!

Does this remind anyone of maybe something like Heroes of Might and Magic, where you have to go out and recover an artifact of immense power thats buried in the ground somewhere? Im thinking this, with a little tweaking would be pretty rocking!

I diskike the fact that there is only two races in the game... Even if the dev team doesn't want to make a clone of Master of Magic or other classic fantasy games, I suppose i'll not be the only one disapointed by this, I want to see Orcish cities, Elven, etc and units too... :/

Cervomix, there are 6 factions of each of the 2 races, so it's not that there's a lack of variety.  As for elves, yes, I would really like to see them, but from what's been said the devs didn't want to do the ol' human/elf/dwarf/orc crutch again.  I wish they did, and leaned on it heavily, but it's their project and the core of it is beyond our influence.  In the end I think we will be very pleased by the result of their labor.