All units, races, features, events are believed to me moddable.  As is the AI.

Well I hope its easy like spore but not so simple that kids can do it. I also hope that stardock monitors the creations there not a bunch of crap.

The game is being built the exact same way you would mod it.  There's no reason to alter the source code.

Do you mean the source code for the modding engines, or the source code for the game algorythms?

Well, if it's something like units or spells or whatnot, then no, you can get by without any alteration to the game itself (unless you want to do something REALLY drastic like add a fifth element or make poisoned arrows).

There will always be reasons one might want to alter the source code. The game will never be as flexible and moddable as building a new game from scratch.

MoM has 5 elements.  I definitely want that.

That's interesting to read. I'd still be curious what applications exactly are thought of. Blender as a free tool would be best for custom art by the community allthough it's understandable if devs decide only to provide export/import scripts for applications they're experienced with themselves - of course - if at all...

There are already 5 elements. Fire, Air, Earth, Water and Life/Death.

*sigh* Here we go again...

"A: Channelers are beings who can harness the magic locked inside the elemental shards that are scattered across the world. When your faction (or an ally) controls a shard, you gain access from its type of mana (which is either earth, air, fire, or water magic). Channelers also generate on their own either life magic or death magic depending on the path they’ve chosen.

The maximum amount of mana a channeler can accumulate is based on their essence. At the beginning of the game, a channeler currently starts out with 20 essence points by default (though this number will change during the beta and will depend on how you construct your faction).  When channelers gain levels, their essence increases."

The Sovereign/Channeler is an "elemental shard". And all the mana (of any kind including life/death) is limited by essence. I count five (six depending of point of view) elements in that answer. Or is my English so really bad?

It's an element like the rest, it just happens to have a different mana source. That's my interpretation, anyways. Life/Death is a type of magic, with its own spells and mana type - just like earth, fire, air and water. There is a thematic difference, sure, but it looks like life/death will function exactly like the others in practice aside from mana generation.

Basically, if someone complains that there are only four elements (and MoM had 5!!) because they don't think life/death counts, they deserve to be smacked.

Really it comes down to this: the only real difference we know of between life/death magic and the other four elements is that there are no life/death shards. So if you don't consider life/death magic to be a magic element, then you believe that to be an element there must be a corresponding shard type. That's just silly to me... The earth, air, water and fire elements all have different sources - they just all happen to be bound up in shards. If the ancient powers that were decided to bind the different magical elements into separate vessels (one might have been in a crystal, maybe one in a table, they could have bound one in a race of people, etc). Those four elements happened to be bound into crystals, while life and death magic are not.

And ultimately what really matters from a gameplay perspective is the function. From everything we know, life/death will function exactly like the other elements regarding spells and the like. Seriously, anyone who complains that life/death don't count as magical elements or schools because they don't come from shards is being a nit-picking baby whingeing for the sake of it. The notion that some people might say "you don't get life/death magic from a shard, it's not an element!" even though everything else about it functions exactly like the rest of the elements just makes me mad. Especially if those same people would all of a sudden breathe easily and say "phew, now Elemental is five elements just like good 'ol MoM" if Stardock decided to include life/death shards.

If you go around saying that thematically there are four elements and one other 'school' of magic, fine - I couldn't care less. But if anyone actually tried to accuse Stardock of false advertising by claiming there to be five magical elements in their game because one of them isn't based around shards - ugh.

The same as those who demand four?

Complaining about those who understand that there are five elements, is to be so obssesed as those who complain about those who understand that there are four elements.

At the end of the day, they are just gameplay mechanics.