I like the idea (who doesn't), but there are a few problems with the implimentation: the "going Gandalf" idea tossed about in the earlier posts certainly helps, but we're going up against a fundamental fact of society. Namely, that power is autocatalyitc. This means that soverigns with more....... well...... "stuff" can use it to get even MORE "stuff" and keep that "stuff" away from soverigns with less to begin with. Geographic luck has been a pretty big driving force throughout history, and not making it appear in a game is tough. One idea of mine is that a good Gandalf system (requiring a channeler-centric magic system and powerful recruitable heroes that dislike big civilizations) could be coupled with a random map generator that actually "weights" resources and terrein so that while people can get radically different types of "stuff", they all get approximately the same amount... it's just a matter of making use of it.

Cheers, its really nice to get positive feedback on a forum once in a while 

Ultimately power in all 4X games I've played come from military might. In Elemental it will be a combo of military might and magic. Military might depends upon production output (speed of making armies), upkeep (how many armies there can be) and equipment (presumably increased equpment options with either tech or resources, and also magic enhancements influence this too).

Magic needs to be researched, thus magic is influenced by a production base. Magic is different, it can directly kill enemies, it can increase your production base (ie increase pop growth, decrease building times, give bonuses to research) or it can decrease your oponents production base.

So both are influenced by a production base, which traditionally is based losely on civilization size (ie more cities = more production). The smaller the map the more effect terrain has, the larger the map the less effect terrain has.

Unless there is a strong military or magic decision (ie invest my limited resources in military or magic) then I would expect to see something like Master of Magic, the biggest civ has both the best magic and the best military production (Fantastic Stables! Woo!). But if both military and magic are roughly equal, then the biggest civ will have the best overall anyway.

Ultimately, its hard to bluff in a 4X game, either you have a military to fend off your opponents or you don't and you crumble. No matter what Victory you hope to achieve, you need to be able to protect yourself because AI's love war. So then, how if you have been a low ranking civ all the game do you recover to win?

This is kinda tricky as traditionally pieces are in play and thus can be seen by spies. Items can be hidden until in battle or spied via special means. Unless a spell could make a "army in a can" item (think totems in Tales of Middle Earth).

I have more idea's but this post is getting too long....

I've been thinking of two extremes, military vs magic, and how to utilise their respective production bases (troops for military and research for magic).

Military production seems simple, get some people and give them sticks to poke with. It seems similar to Master of Magic, the town has a base production and it determines the speed of creation, buildings speed it up or allow better arms or mythical steeds, or whatever.

Magic in Master of Magic is very similar. More libraries equals more research. This seems too much like being the biggest equals being the best. Instead how about something like how research works in Europa Universalis III. Research in EUIII is a function of the average province income, thus having more provinces actually makes research slower if they are poor provinces. The real effect is not significant in the game, except if you have very few provinces and they are all mega rich, in which case research is better (but balanced by the "before its time" penalty). I could picture magic research in Elemental being somewhat similar. I'm picturing a trade off, the wizard with one town can increase magic research significantly by only having to construct research buildings in one town, and thus the average is high. The player who seeks a more traditionally military route sacrifices magic research for pure military production, many towns equals a bigger army but harder to achieve a high average magic research level.

Story arc. Magic research is a not a matter of people thinking about spells, its more about the population as a whole believing in it. Better research buildings increase belief locally. The more the belief in a wizards realm, the greater the speed of new discoveries.

I would picture gameplay-wise this would create two extreme playstyles, one focused on gaining more land and thus creation of more standard armies, and the second extreme being towards less towns, less standard armies and but greater magic. I kinda like the idea of one champion being a pure warlord while another being a wizard with a huge tower and not much else, but if you piss him off...... BOOM!

I remember reading how originally the idea was to have the avatar being able to choose how to use their magic, either by infusing many units/characters with some or keeping it for themselves and being a lone kickass unit. This could work with the above idea.

Agree. And if the one who comes back gains some "bonus" in order to help him, this "bonus" must be just a bonus, not something that flip completely the balance of power (magical and/or military) . Something like an hero, but not a powerful champion.

I don't think it'll see Gold if it ever sees light at all. It's an idea that seems just too different. And Stardock already has lots of works with many features and 12 different factions. I'd see it more as an expansion pack topic. I do like the idea of going Gandalf but such event would require:

• mechanics that allow my channeler to improve magic without research structures in my cities (as I wouldn't have any!!). Still being able to learn new stuff in friendly cities he visits.
• neutral kingdoms/empires that can be influenced by him. He would not control them but with some diplomacy (and maybe some quests and helping in battles), he should be able to influence them to fight for him some times (like mercenaries but "for free"). He couldn't have a similar strategy with player controled Kingdoms/Empires or those players would cry wolf about losing control of their lands (Not so bad, the Gandalf would be like a walking Mega Event... so other players would have reasons to kill him, or enjoy possible benefits if they don't).
• In addition to be visited sometimes by possible heroes/mercenaris to join him (to go with him or split and go somewhere else), he should be able to recruit in friendly cities (mercenaries, no population taken from city). And be limited about the number of heroes/mercenaries he can control (increased by level/fame/prestige).
• Adjustments in victory conditions?
• Dinasty system wouldn't make much sense? If he really goes Gandalf, he doesn't hold lands of any type any time. He is not Saruman.

Maybe it's not so difficult to implement but seems quite a lot of work for Gold?

That's a great classroom question, but seems too rich with complexity for the current generation of TBS games. It makes me think of the long-term consequences of imperial-style colonization (vs. the classical Greek start-a-new-city colonization), e.g. how Vietnam ended up in Vietnamese hands despite extensive efforts by France and the US to take control of the region. North Korea also comes to mind, thorn in the side of the PRC that they are.

I'd truly love to play a TBS that had some fun mechanics for that sort of situation, but it seems like a daunting challenge for both a coding and marketing at the moment.

I think one of the problems behind the game getting predictably boring because you know you'll lose or win is how the AIs are handled. This was the case in GC2. In short: as long as you are part of the middle-class potential winners, the AI would seldom attack early in the game. But if you became military weak then your civ was immediately up for grabs.

Natural? Yes, but not unavoidable.

What could be done is make sure that other factors than military (and econmomy) actually count in a critical situation. Such as:

Diplomatic ties: if important, it could keep you from harm even if weak.

Dynasty: same thing, and could make you powerful through inheritance without military and economic conquest.

Cultural/religious: maybe even the strongest kingdom would never attack their brothers of the faith ...

Non military magic: with spells included e.g. to take control of someones mind, manipulate them etc it could help you through a bad time and avoid wars.

Spies: you might seem weak but if you could attack in the dark you could quickly turn the tables ...

NB note that nothing of the above is based on chance, like random events.

I think the point is that the game has to be versatile, with many ways of surviving, attacking, getting advantages. Also, information should be hard bought through spies and not just available on the screen for everyone, to keep suspense and give you the chance to hide both strengths and weaknesses.

In conclusion, you should have the chance to DO something against you opponents (like attacking with spies) even if you are military and economically weak for the moment.  

Any kind of endgame saves should be player based. Things like convincing another player to come save you. Random events or getting bonuses will be either too weak to matter at which point they are not a reversal at all OR too strong which would make building up your forces pointless. Having a game where everyone races to get beat up the most for the bounceback bounses would be absurd.

Pulling a metor shower spell out of your pocket that you have been saving all game would be great. Having a metor shower spell given to you would be horrible.

The problem with having some other civ come in and save you though, is whats to stop them from beating your attackers off, then taking your civ themselves? They have to get more from helping you then killing you themselves. And having fixed teams dosen't really work. With fixed teams it wasn't really a turn around since anyone could of seen that your teammate was going to save you anyway.

TBH, power in 4x games tends to be visible and isn't really suprising. Why hide a troop of elite knights in the back lines when they could of been upfront keeping you from getting into a losing postion in the first place?

The only examples i can really think of are master of magic and civilzation, if another civ is ripping into you, and you finish a major summons early on. A fire gaint can smash a LOT of spearmen. But later on a couple summons just won't cut it. And pulling off the mastery spell isn't that much a suprise for anyone. You were probably being attacked because you started teching it. In civilzation going straight to modern armor or nukes could let you turn a losing situation around pretty fast if the other team is still using muskets. In both those situations though, you had to be preparing for the turn around pretty much from the start. You sacrificed your early/middle game to be able to dominate late game.

This sort of thing happens a lot in RTS games. EX. your 2 teammates act very aggresive and hold the other team off for the early game, but lose a ton of troops doing it. The other team pushes in, but before they can kill your teammates, you finish making a tank thanks to your teammates covering for you. Your tank rolls out and smashes the other team because you got it so easrly. That kind of thing would be the kind of comeback that works well.

Don't want come-backs artifically inflicted on games.

A "sneaky" Empire would be a guerrilla Empire. It would not have the forces for frontal assaults but it could face on equal foot pure militar Empires as long as it can amploy properly its spies to sabotage the enemy supply lines, poison the wells, perform selective assasinations... and obviously, fight dirty. It would require more skill for the "sneaky" player but I don't think that is something bad except for those without skill that insist in playing something they have no skill on.

At the same time, those spies (or a part, branches are nice) can be used for information gathering (which in itself is good not just for military) and other tasks (kill the adventurer party, sabotage enemy resources, steal defense plans, assasin the daughter of X before she marries Y...).

I want a good and solid espionage system, dammed be those who oppose the idea. I don't mind waiting for an expansion pack to happen (be it in the first or the second), but I want it.

Underdogs win 63.6% of the time if they use unconventional strategy. However, i think chances are so high because enemy isn't prepared to counter that unconventional strategy. In any case, a direct military confrontation seems to be a bad idea. Games don't simulate a significant number of factors that allows underdogs to win in real life. I think history teachs us that game must include some non-combat solutions that allow underdogs to win the game.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell

David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”

Natural land barriers come to mind, a faction that has deliberately gone small and spent spellpower on morphing the land around ther cities to become unreachable, so that they may completely ignore military power in favour of another form of victory. Perhaps they could still dimension door their channeller over to quest or consider themselves a good shot for a research victory. This way it doesn't invalidate the pre/mid game, as it is a gameplay choice from go, yet one that makes them appear weak.

And although they may seem meek/easy meat to powerful military enemies, such enemies would also be annoyed at the prospect of shaping the land just get to these "all-too-quiet" Rivans.

lol...watched that last year for a laugh...totally worth it