But how are teleporters going to be implemented? Are they going to be placed randomly (peppered around) by the random map generator or built in cities? In the first case the risk of playability and map quality is immense and while the AI would probably be better at finding the shortest path to go wherever; for players the map would just be a confused mess where the true distances between places become impossible to decipher.

In the second case (teleporters buildable by players, and therefore much harder for the AI to implement effectively) the whole ability of placing and organizing an army would become useless, since a single super army could be able to defend an entire network of cities.

Once again a strategy game without strategy an empire without the need of organizing a network of armies (which is the whole point of a strategic game) but just one super army jumping around. I can speak only for myself but I have seen that done (age of wonders I) and as soon players got that magic telepotation skill I KNOW that the game wasn't fun anymore.

The ones of you who disagree are just guessing or have they actually played games like that and liked them?

The whole point of an epic map is that it is BIG! Big means that my legions in England cannot defend Rome and going to Germany by foot takes a LONG time! That's the empire I want to play!

I've played games like that and liked them.  Sword of the Stars.  One of the playable races travels between planets it owns instantly.

It is possible to balance teleportation and have the AI properly take advantage of it.  HOMM5 had teleportation, and it was balanced quite well.

It certainly is possible that teleportation can screw stuff up if implemented poorly, but just because it can does not mean that it will.

I liked HOMMV and yes there were teleporters, but I only liked the campaign where everything has been planned by a level designer and not by the random map generator, also it's single player and I would have probably hated to see someone pop in my empire without me being able to stop him or destroy the damn gate!

Can't speak for Sword of the Stars, I tried it but I can't get to like it, for some reason I don't have enough the feeling of an empire in that game: has to do with lack of city development and a general sense of a very (VERY) basic sense of management.

I know tha most people consider Elemental a single player game, but I still hope there will be a multiplayer option, especially by email as I already stated somwhere else. Age of Wonders is still alive because of customization and multiplayer after all, and that's should definitely be a model for this game (even more than MOM if I can dare say so...)

 

FFH2 had a rather eligant teleport system- well a renamed "air drop system". But what you did was you allowed only a single soilder to be moved between a single city. For example I can teleport my ogre from Avaton to kinator, but now I can't telleport my uber hero from Avaton to Shamila.

This gave a useful troop movement system, but one which couldn't be used to make my cities "untakable".

 

Anyway I'm sure there are other really clever ways of limiting it, perhaps excessive cost or limited range ?

 

But ultimatly I don't really care if their in the game or not. I only care if their are so "uber" that you pretty much have to use them or hamstring yourself.

Personally I wouldn't mind if the Signeur (but ONLY him) could teleport from one city to another. That way it would became almost impossible to kill (ah ah)... Only problem: would the AI be able to use it as well as humans?

   The AI opponents from AoW:Shadow Magic and Heroes_3 had no trouble using portals(teleporters) which were placed on the map.   I'm not sure why the pathfinding would be more difficult for the Stardock developers creating Elemental. 

  Teleporters are very powerful and should not be allowed to be built at any city location... but this doesn't mean you completely delete the idea of teleporters from the game!  There's many ways to have multiple teleporting methods exist in a fantasy without compromising strategy.  Teleporters can be from even a low level spell, but the price of mana increases based on the distance and number of troops. (GameBalance).  Teleporters can be a randomly generated structure with many different costs... such as a traveling merchant requesting gold for the use of his teleporter OR a demonic circle requiring sacrifices OR a magical vortex where the units may be stuck in the fabric of time and space for a random amount of turns, etc., etc., 

  If previous older fantasy games which were very successful included teleporters there's no reason why Stardock should not also try to include them.

Obviously you've played other games where teleporters were not done properly and thus your view has been permanently damaged.  Teleporters are a big problem if the developers allow teleporters to be built in any city.   

As I mentioned in a previous post there's many ways to include teleporters which will make the game more interesting.  There should be multiple types of teleportation each with a unique cost and the cost is properly adjusted for game balance as beta testing progresses.  Here's the topic where teleportation ideas have been discussed:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/331599

Please keep in mind that Elemental will have a long beta testing where ideas and gameplay balance will be tweaking the game as it progresses.  Just because a few previous games did teleports incorrectly doesn't mean teleports should be ignored for Elemental. 

I take what Kyro said in post 14 to mean that the trouble with teleporters is not pathfinding through them - that is a relatively simple thing to accomplish; but Coding the AI to use the Teleporters effectively in strategy. Getting the AI to flank an enemy army through a portal is alot harder than getting them to use it as a shortcut.

 

*rewrites half written post on seeing NTJedi saying pretty much what I was typing*

Anyways eems like there's a whole bunch of all encompassing teleport hate here, but almost all the talk seems to be about full army teleport systems.

Smaller scale teleporting is basically the same as flying, but it diversfiys units thematically and also allows for some fun combat quirks. Having a unit that teleports 5 spaces instead of walking or has the option to teleport isn't hard to work the AI for and isn't game breaking at all.

AoW's teleport system was a bit overkill, but there are so many interesting ways to make teleporting balanced and not turn the end game into crap. I'll wait until the magic system actually has a purpose before opening that can of worms though.

 

I love the rift war saga first non kids book i ever read compleatly forgot it when i was thinking of my example nice catch Ragnar1.

its such a coincedance that two of my faorate things (books and games) feture stardock one as an acadamy of magic and one a creater of magical games    

Small scale teleport "similar to fly" is OK, useful to jump a mountain or a river (although it will be difficult for the AI to deal with), in the first age of wonder there was another teleport option which was quite fun: it was a spell useful to get out of trouble, which had a quite funny way to backfire: it would teleport a stack of units in a random location a few hexes away (about 20 I think). Then a player could end up in a completely unexplored area or stuck somewhere (an island or a mountain), and since casting the same spell again would take a few turns, he would be forced to deal with wathever happened before trying that again. Funny because of its uncertainity factor and acceptable because it was impossible to exploit as a device to win a game.

Its cool, they will prob just make it so that we have the option to enable/disable that portion of the tech tree, then we can both be happy. or someone will mod it in or out of the game, its really to hard to tell because we don't really know whats included in the finished product yet.

I agree that Teleporters should be built in cities because in AOW2 the maps wernt really all that big compared to say CIV. Teleporters should cost a lot and only a certain amount will be made by anyone. Say you could only build 5 teleporters in the world this adds the quirk of trying to capture them.

The reason you can only build so many is a Warcraft reason if you build a lot you tear the world apart.

Another way you can balance it is only low lvl units can teleport saying that high lvl units are to grounded in this world to do any shifting.

Takeing teleportation out completly is just stupid cause this is a world of magic and with magic there are alot of posibilities.

or ONLY extremely high level units could teleport, as plane-shifting would tear the very particles of a man asunder if he had too low of a will save. Food for thought :3

I'm going to cast my vote for teleportation... if it's more like how Dominions 3 used them.