Well given that this is not a new problem, I guess we should put our heads together and see if we can find a true "Balance" between Magic and Military. or even better, how best to combine the 2 so that even the Magic freak will have to have some troops in defense of his stuff, and visa versa or both singular focuses are nothing more than Loses in waiting...

What about do something similar to Master of Magic and have some spells that take more than 1 turn to complete.  for instance, that volcano spell.  you cast it on a tile. it takes 3 turns to complete.

round 1:  smoke issues from the ground obscuring vision a bit.

round 2:  lava begins to form on the surface.  any units here take x amount of damage.

round 3:  KABOOM, a new volcano appears, killing every unit on x amount of squares.

this way there is a little warning, if a person isn't paying any attention then that's their fault.  at the same time you can't just move a city UNLESS you got some serious magic and CAN move a city to elsewhere.

Personally if your stupid enough to charge your whole army down the dragons maw that's your own problem. Part of war is knowing yourself and your enemy. If your enemy has been showing signs of magic mastery (Has little development militarily, lots of spell research, many spell related buildings etc.) You should count on him using his big guns and throw a feint to draw his attack then follow up with your real force... That's basic strategy, it's called deception and is kinda the point of the game. I don't think anything needs fixing.

Depends. In too many games, you can save up enough mana or get a high enough mana regeneration rate that they'd recover fast enough to deal with your main force as quickly as their small force. Likewise, why use your big guns on a feint? A smart player would use their small guns on a feint, saving their big guns for the main force...

Seriously, if the only way for a player who focuses on warfare to beat a player who focuses on magic is for the magic guy to screw up, something is wrong.

yeah i agree with this, i think that EVERY strategy should have a counter strategy.  this is something i think could be learned from magic the gathering card game.  there should be near limitless counters as long as you can support them, magic or not.

It'll be interesting to see how much balancing is achieved in the ~3 month window between Beta 2 and release...

Balancing Magic vs. Military, Small Empires vs. Large, the Research Lines, Essence uses, etc. -- it'll be a fun summer!

Think about MoM. You had "Global Enchantments". A lot of the times these were less like "Enchantments" and more like "Spells of MASS Death & Destruction". When a enemy Wizard (Sovereign in our case) casts the spell, you get the option to cast a "Counter-Spell" or "Dispel". In Elemental's case I think the player should have to research a "Counter-Spell" or "Dispel" to be able to have that option, but, every time a Mega-Powerful spell like that is cast the player Automatically gets the chance/choice "Would you like to attempt to block/dispel this Spell?". Granted, you have to have the knowledge plus the mana/essence (casting cost) to actually be able to do it.

There should always be a counter against something that drastic though. A spell like Volcano "could" change the outcome of an entire game. There needs to be a chance to block it or stop it some-how to have fair and balanced gameplay. I'm absolutely positive the Devs know this. It's just a question of "How are they going to implement it?".

Yeah honestly the volcano Idea scares me. While iI have no problem witht he concept per se.

I would hate to see my capitol city just wiped of the map from a player on the other side of the map with no chance to foil it.

My armies not so much, annoying but they can be rebuilt.

Remember "Populous"? I had the first one on the um...Super Nes? Yes, I think it was the Super Nes. Anyway, I would get Volcano's rising in my capitol cities all the time. I just lowered the ground back to normal levels when the Volcano was done going off and my people rebuilt. I also loved lowering vast stretches of my enemies land into the sea. Great way to kill off tons of enemy population.

This strikes me as adding complexity for the sake of adding complexity. Essence and mana already control what you can cast in terms of spells, throwing arbitrary limits on what your champions can cast will just make it more cumbersome. (Especially since if you can pick the spells, people will just go for the best combat ones anyway.)

not necessarily Tridus, if the game has a wide assortment of spells, then there could be many very useful spells.  i know that if this idea were implemented then i wouldn't have all my champions just having combat spells.  i would have some champions that are useful in administration.  i would give these champions spells that improve output to the various buildings i own(like mines, farms etc).  then i would have special combat champions that do have some powerful combat magic.  HOWEVER, at the same time i would def have 2 or 3 champions attached to an army, each with spells customized to work synergisticaly with each other.

the main problem here is that the champions are just to generic.  i want to make them useful in diffrent areas.  not have every spell in the book on every spell casting champ.

I have to agree I don't want to see "arbitrary limits" either, my friend. I would still however like to see the Heros/Champions have to buy/learn the spells like the Sovereign has to though. It makes more sense to me that way. It's not like it will be the end of the world or anything though if they leave it like it is.

Counter-spells I think as well definitely need to be in there in some form. As long as the target has the knowledge and mana/essence to "dispel" the original casting cost + some, they at least need a "chance" to stop that volcano from toasting their capitol. The AI should have this ability too, not just the player.

I'm sure spells will have limited ranges as well not to mention you'll probably have to control several shards in order to use the most powerful spells. I'm sure it won't be as easy as most of you seem to be assuming to just throw a mountain at your enemy. Although I will agree with the counter-spelling Idea. Also Dispel options for global magic seems like a no-brainer to me.

actually that sounds like an AWESOME scenario.

But yea, they would have to be imbued with enough essence to cast a max spell to begin with

So will there be spells to undo things like the volcano? It would make sense; if you can raise a volcano, you should be able to remove one.

There are spells for "Raising" and "Lowering" land in the Beta, yes.

You will be able to ultimately repair the damage after things like that happen. You'll have to have the spells, mana/essence, and otherwise resources/requirements to cast the spells though.

Oh good. That makes sense.