I understand why some people would get mad at that (the gal civ 2 thing) but personally I enjoy the minor races being able to put up a fight (especially if its against an enemy) I just think that having a few underdog stories would make players be more aware of where they should attack. and by technology I mean who builds the best weapons or armor.

I just think, especially since this game will be medievalish and not so much about lasers and massive weapons, the underdog should be able to have a better advantage in defending its home territory. not so much on attacking the massive empires.

yeah... scoutdog said it.   best civ = largest armies + most spells + ability to cast said spells most

I'm not sure how the underdog would have a better advantage of defending its home territory than the... well, not underdog.  Like that just doesn't make sense.  pre-renaissance warfare was entirely about having the biggest armies.  It wasn't until the begining of the renaissance when things like crossbows, complicated war machines, and guns started to appear that allowed for anything other than biggest army to matter.   I mean there are a few exceptions where there were particularly well trained troops (spartans, romans, byzentines) and those elites totally kicked everybody else at the time's asses.  I wouldn't call them underdogs, nor would I use them as any kind of standard example, since they were much better than everybody else at the time, even when outnumbered. But if you were not one of those super trained guys (or happen to be the only people on the battle field with a chariot, as it was in the ancient age) then it was 100% the size of your army (cavalry counting for more than regular foot soldiers, obviously)

Sadly in a world with things that can fly, burrow, teleport, become incorporeal, transform earth to mud, disintegrate, breath fire, etc castles and all types of fortifications we are used to see in our world are totally useless.

Castles are nice and make sense in a game like Civilization, but in a world with those things defensive structures and tactics will have probably evolved pretty different than in our world (an old Dragon Magazine had a great article about this subject).

  As Scoutdog mentions there should be defensive spells and wards as well... you even named one of them = earth to mud.  The spell earth to mud is a defenitely a spell to prevent an advancing army from reaching gates so easily. 

 In regards to flying creatures a good defensive castle should have ballistas, magic domes, and mages ready to cast something like Double Gravity as seen from AoW:SM. 

 In regards to burrowing... I like this game idea however it's highly unlikely we'll see burrowing being used on the battlefield or world map.  Even in the rare chance it is available only a few limited units would have such a powerful ability.

 In regards to disintegrate it would have to be a very very powerful mage to disintegrate an entire city wall... so powerful it's something I would only give to a powerful independent, such as an angel, devil, etc., .  Also in regards to city walls they can be enchanted by ritual spells several weeks before a battle occurs... these spells may take longer to cast, but can provide extra strength and resistance for the wall.

  Well I could continue....  but the point being that within a fantasy world there are actually more ways to explain defensive bonuses than less ways when compared to real world history.

first off i want to thank you guys since you really came up with cool ideas and what not. but ya i do agree with landisaurus and scoutdog that most "underdogs" (however you define that) should not be able to beat the large empires or kingdoms. it is true that the spartans, austrians, romans and whoever else had elite troops, won many battles with other local forces but I'm comparing who's the underdog in a specific war.

ex. spartans were underdogs against persians, austrians underdogs against ottoman empire (lol i cant really think of anymore right now)

so in my opinion there should be the odd "smaller" civ that can compete with a large civ on the battlefield. this would require the large civ to try and use espionage to win or block off tading routes to stop economic prosperity.

and personally i think fighting in your home area should be an advantage like napoleon vs the russians or the english vs the french "coureurs de bois"/natives. basically you know your home territory better and can use nature to try and beat your opponent (this kind of links to the whole element thing lol) and i dont mean like trench warfare i mean like guerrila warfare and magic/spells kind of stuff. 

Or to destroy the earth where the walls are resting.

Castles have walls because attackers come walking from the ground. In a world were attackers can come flying, roofs make a lot of sense. And if you need roofs, you can't have structures as big as castles as they would be incredibly hard to build.

Not to say that ballistas lack accuracy, rate of fire and turning capabilities to be effective anti-air weapons.

The thing with disintegrate or many other spells/abilities is that they only need to affect a small portion of a defensive structure to be extremely effective. And the only way to protect against them is warding/enchanting/whatever the whole structure, which is so much expensive that it doesn't make sense. The costs of attacking and defending don't balance at all.

Those types of castles make more sense with flying creatures yes.

I'd just like to point out, that even if it's fantasy, it still has to make some sort of sense.  Why would destroying a wall have a different spell cost than building it?  Especially if it's the same spell just being used differently.

Same-spell stuff aside, the devs (or custom spell writers) could come up with all manner of 'logical' reasons that destroying a stone wall might be much harder than creating one. The simplest thing that comes to mind is that the defender has strength with Earth while the attacker does not. Instead of being able to grasp and undo the defender's Earth magic, the attacker must use one or more other elements to break down the results of the spell rather than the spell itself.

Of course that raises the question of whether we'll have any 'metamagic' spells at all. Dev journal on magic, pretty please!

Yes, it's true the devs can do whatever they want, that's why they are the devs. But players usually expect things to make some sense and follow some internal rules, even when speaking about magic. Or to be similar to other examples they know so they have an easier time understanding how things are supposed to work (for example, similar to D&D, a game the devs have named several times already).

In reality, there are always more ways to destroy a defrense than there are to make it. However, from a strategic perspective, defenses HAVE to carry SOME level of value. Therefore, we need to come up with a way to make it esier to build than to destroy. The first thing that springs to mind is a magic system in which it always takes more energy to undo a spell than to put it in. There does not need to be a reason for this because it is a law of physics, the same way there is no "reason" why protons and elecrons are attracted.

Agreed, I have neved discussed that. I have argued that traditional defenses (and for the same argument, traditional military tactics like close formations) don't make so much sense on a fantasy world.

The problem is not only destroying (that you could be solved as you say), it's ignoring. If you can make a magic wall, why I can't make a magic bridge over the wall? How do you explain that?

Ofc probably the game won't allow that (which is a pitty, but well). And btw, protons and electrons have a reason to be attracted, I really think I haven't understood that sentence because it's like Physics 101...