I have to say, my biggest question by far is how someone who is as familiar with the english language as you clearly are could misspell "shard" as "shrad" every single time?  

More on topic, I'm not sure I like the idea because of mainly one problem: the better a player is doing, the better chance they have of finding more shards (and thus becoming even more powerful) than players who got off to a slower start. It could turn into one real big snowball effect.

I also think that once you find/capture a shard, it should be yours - at least until someone else wrests it from your control. It would be really frustrating to lose whole armies or, after devoting resources to taking a shard, have it turned over to another channeler. To me it would be a case of an interesting game mechanic causing more frustration than fun. And, I get the impression that shards are going to be map objects - you won't be taking them home to your channeler. Could be explained as shards being too big to carry easily, but it's also necessary for gameplay: If you can hoard all your shards with your channeler, enemies can only take control of your shards by destroying you (and vice versa).

I do like the idea of hidden shards though. I'm not sure how it would work, though. I mean judging from screenshots shards seem big and shiny, hard to miss. It would be awkward if I need to send a scout to comb through some grassland in order to find a large, glowing object right where my army had just passed through... Any ideas how this could be implemented if shards are map objects?

Ok then! Although I disagree, based on your posts you seem to be a better speller than the average american. Anyways - is it possible for you to change the title of the thread, though? People will probably take this thread more seriously if Shards is spelled correctly in the title.    

Point taken. I guess either way it would depend on the details of how its implemented. I think that the two things that should determine a unit's chance of finding a shard should be scouting skill and magic affinity.

I agree, actually. I like a degree of randomness, but where randomness is involved needs to be carefully considered. Good randomness doesn't frustrate me - it excites me. Poor randomness makes me load to a previous save. If I discovered a shard with my giant army of doom, and it all of a sudden deserts - I would load. If I discover a shard and for some reason my troops hand it over to my sworn enemy, I would load. On the other hand if one of my troops discovers a shard, accidentally triggering an appropriate random spell of moderate power (beneficial or detrimental), I'd take the effects into account and keep playing.

I'm glad they're unmovable. If you can hoard them wherever you please, nobody could ever wrest control of a shard away from you. Conquering enemies' shards should be a viable way to weaken them, while strengthening yourself. Another problem with being able to hoard them is that whoever deals the killing stroke will almost invariable gain possession of ALL that channeler's shards. Personally, I'd rather that every invader have the opportunity to take control over said players shards as they take territory.

Yeah. I realized that I was thinking too much about how the shards look in the screenshots in the media section (big and glowy, in large structures) - as in very hard to miss. But then I realized that they're symbolic representations, not to scale, and the structures can be passed off as being built once you find the shard.

Also, I think that some shards should be visible, requiring no exploration - but should be heavily defended, probably by beasts. 

I figured it would be similar to the nodes of MoM.  You would find them, but their magic power draws the strongest of beasts to guard it.  So you have the first trouble of just capturing it.  I liked in MoM how you had to bind your wizard to them with a magic spirit, unlike AoW which you just kinda claimed. 

I think that having them visable from the begining vs. having to explore to find them should be an easy option to have for the game.   I mean it could be a check box in "map settings" pretty easily I imagine. 

I think they should be hard to take from other players.  Like you should be able to fortify them or something to make it harder to steal.  If nothing else, stealing shards requires a certain amount of culture or channeling to occur to "change the flow of magic" and allow the new channeler to assume control.

it wasn't the garrison in MoM, it was just binding a new spirit to it.  The only defenses was setting up a garrison (so they couldn't weasle their own spirit through your army) or by using a special guardian spirit that was only available to the life wizards.   It was actually a pretty weak part of the system, so I agree with you.

Pigeonpigeon-Thanks for saying I spell better than most but I have deceived you-I just try to avoid the words the give me trouble.  Good idea about changing the mispelled title of the post -but since this is my first thead/post not sure how to do it.  Will have come up with another solution.

Interesting discussion- I agree there should be a boost to find shards by scouting skills or magic and that they should be found in various states -unguarded, part of monster hoard, held by independants... And it would be fun to have spells specially to find them. 

I still think it would be fun to have them movable and hoardable.  Folks have given some very good reasons why this might not be a good idea but here is a few last thoughts from me about it.  I do not think it would be a game breaker since it has been stated that acquiring all of the shards is only one way to win- I read this as meaning that while owning one or more shards gives a significant advantage, there are ways that other players can overcome it.  Since there are only 5, and a typical civ-like game can have 10 or so opponents-even early on it will be clear that not everyone is going to have a shard- in that case the advantage to having one cannot be so great that other cannot often take them away fairly often (otherwise game outcome is decided very early on).  So, if it is not that big of a deal to hold one, it would not be that big of a deal (just one of many strategies) to hoard or hide them (if moveable-see my first post).

Another thing to consider: game size.  With the new really-immense maps being proposed for this game- old game paradimes (that can't be spelled right) may not hold.  A really gigantic map holding only 5 shards means that they are really spread out -finding and holding them could be a real problem and frustration for many players.  I would hope that there are viable alternatives.  Those luckly enough to find and hold a shard should gain some unique powers but it should not hand them the game.

I really like some of the game mechanisms proposed for finding the shards.  But it may not be worth developing them since there are only 5 -so in many games a player may not ever find one on his own.  I also hate to give up on the idea of finding movable bits of power.  So if the 5 main shards are indeed immovable. maybe there can be smaller bits of the crystal also hidden accross the landscape?  We could call them...oh, i don't know....shrads! (problem with post title solved!).  Sure they have less power (maybe just boost spell casters up a lever?) but are worth finding and hoarding.  It would make searching for the crystals (or as I now call it -the shard-shrad complex) more interesting since in any one game you are unlikely to find a shard.

Edit:Oops-I have just reread the lore section and now realize that there will likely be many more that 5 shards. That sounds much better. Still dont know how to edit the title.

Well nonetheless, your vocabulary of words that you know how to spell ain't too shabby!

paradigms

Ahaha, good one! 

Yeah. If there were only five shards on a map then I would agree with making them moveable. But seeing as that isn't so, I think they're better off being stationary. The idea of being able to find some more minor sources of power that you can hoard is good, though. But I think that should be taken care of through the item system. You should be able to find some ancient/magic items that can grant abilities/bonuses to your channeler/hero/nation. It would be cool if items could include much smaller crystal fragments, too.

I hope it will be possible to turtle. I hate it when games try to force you to go out and be aggressive. Sometimes I want to play aggressive, sometimes I want to be isolationist and defensive, let me play the way I want to play! The devs have also said they're planning for the game to be winnable in many significantly different ways, so hopefully the game will even be winnable if you decide to play a completely defensive game!

While I'm also a turtler, I would prefer by a lot having shards immovable, as it would increase the number of ways to attack one player. How fun would it be to fight against one player with only a single, extremely powerful, city with all shards moved there? The only thing you could do against him would be to assemble a stack of doom and attack his fortress, nothing else. With immovable shards, he would have to send some of his army to defend them or take them back from you, making for a more dynamical game.

One example of a game were turtling wasn't discouraged is AoW2. There the multiple points of attack are the cities, since while city defenders have great bonii, it is impossible to put enough troops in all of your cities due to upkeep. So you have to engage incoming armies or you'll have to take back your cities.

I prefer to turtle more often than not, but I do enjoy shaking things up and playing aggressive sometimes, too. But nonetheless I'd also prefer immovable shards. Like multiple people have already said, being able to hoard shards wherever you want would cause some pretty big problems.

Honestly I don't like the idea of a very small nation gathering up a disproportionate number of shards and bringing them back to their stronghold. If you want to control a whole lot of shards, you should be forced to use diplomacy (make peace with anyone who could threaten your precious shards) or to expand and really split up your forces/essence. Turtling can still be an effective strategy, because you have much less area to protect, and you don't have to invest very much of your channeler's essence into anything. Likewise, if you're constantly shoring up your defenses, even very large would-be attackers would have a tough time breaking through - for one, all your military would be in one small area, and your channeler probably wouldn't be much worse off than the attacker's.

What I would like to see is really small, pocket-sized fragments of shards that can be found as items. They would be significantly less powerful than the shards themselves, but would have the advantage that you can hoard them deep inside your territory. 

The result was a gang-up on me, followed by his subsequent rape by their combined forces. Over and over again. Once he started to move out, and we learned to work together, we truly turned the tables. That being said, I'm easily a bit of a turtler myself, under the right circumstances. With the same friends (-1), we ran a number of free-for-all skirmishes, where I continously tried to keep out of the warzones, letting them beat eachother senseless over scraps, while I suddently swoop down in a moment of weakness and steamroll them both, one after the other.

In 4x games, I'm a huge turtler, because I throughly enjoy just building my safe, secure and strong Empire. I will never forget the game of Civ3 I played with 2 friends over LAN, though. One of my friends, Rome at the time, was being steamrolled by Germany. It just took me so long to get everything underway, and then my ships kept getting sunk, that by the time I got a single ship over to him, it was pretty much too late. Great baaawing ensued.

In short, I hope that under certain conditions and with certain nations, being "the great bulwark" of stability and turtling will be truly viable. At the same time, it shouldn't be an end-all solution. As a turtler, you -should- be susceptible to a variety of attacks, like continous harrassment, great magic, or long-range artillery of various sorts. Even if turtling should be viable, turtling should -never- equal stagnancy of any sort. A turtler needs to be on his toes, because suddently, some bastard have gone through Holland and Belgium, and you're standing there with your pants down, baguette in hand.

And of course, confer some minor special attribute(s), just like any other part of a city does.

I think there isn't anything wrong with turtling.  And making the shards/nodes stationary won't prevent turtling.  It might encourage compition over resources encouraging conflict, but turtles can deal with that just as they can in every other game where there are stationary resources on the map.  It doesn't matter if it is gold, minerals, crystal, or magic... turtles find a few good sources of the stuff and then setup camp.  Turtles won't come out of their shells to compete, they will build bigger shells so that more resources are included inside the shell!  Thats how a good turtle plays the game. 

I like to imagine the idea that the shard could be set in a very difficult terrain location.  Like the center of a crater or on the top of a mountain.  Someplace a bit more exotic then in the center of all the cities.  AT the same time, a shard with a castle built around it sounds really cool too, so I guess it just comes down to what kind of feeling SD wants to make shards give.

In MoM, the nodes of magic were so full of magic that other spells had a VERY high chance not to work.  I imagine the reason they were stocked full of things like earth elementals and phantam beasts is because the terrain and everything living there was warped and changed due to the extreme amounts of magic.  That being said, I cannot imagine many normal people living in such a magic rich environment for long (especially on Myrrer where the magic seemed to turn everything dark and scary).  So if shards are like a non-IP infringement version of old MoM nodes with the same core-idea, then I don't think that cities should be able to build around them (though I DO think cities nearby should be effected by them.  Like a nature shard causing the nearby cities to be covered in a forest of plants, or the walls near a fire/chaos shard to be burnt, black, and warped.)

The garrisoned troops would be help in things like watch towers and are not normal everyday people anyway.  Heroes can verture to the hearts of very strange lands and back with no problem.  Its raising families in such places that cause problems.  (OMG, a city next to a chaos shard randomly having the equivilent of 'chaos channels' cast on it at random from time to time)