This made me LMAO

I was not assuming to win through brute force as such a tactic would obviously fail. What I am getting at is what would prevent you from becoming an expansion target? Would quests have macro/micro effects on your nation/world that allow you to compete with larger and more blessed nations? Will there be a quest victory path that does not require your nation to attain a certain size?

P.S.

Interesting though, raising land is possible if your leader has earth magic and an earth shard. Would it be possible for raised land to have a very small chance of randomly containing a tile bonus like fertile soil, minerals, ruins, ect.?

When considering magic of this type two things are evident;

1. as long as a nation contains and earth shard and their leader has earth magic then they are not constrained by water to the size of their nation.
2. the powers of raising land need to be stupendously expensive otherwise you will see land spamming...

I think it's likley to be world altering magic e.g. making land fertile, lowering and rasing that will need shards and or essence, short effect combat spells probably less.

I'm interested to see what they do with the empires to balance things.

Also waiting for news of 2A, I think reducing house spam is certainly a good idea so it sounds like some positive changes.

I think they are holding back on spells because they don't want to give too much away in the beta effects wise and to balance the game without spells first, which makes sense, then add the magic and balance that. That way we get to see how truly world altering magic is, when we try and take out a city with our mundane army and they get a kicking from a single imbued unit.

Even though they are ahead at the moment I wouldn't count on an on time release, stardock like to make sure they can truly be proud of a game before release.

Could there be a way to focus entirely on magical power and spell research and stay competitive in the game?

Minimal expansion, minimal armies but superior magical power and knowledge to secure and seal some shards for yourself. And a way to hide or forcefield your stronghold while you go for the Spell of Mastery. A high risk / high reward approach where once exposed, even a small army would destroy you. Would be fun I think.

Being able to make a whole town invisible is possibly one of the best spell ideas I've yet heard.

It must be done!

I was going to say that, but I couldn't remember how to spell hors d'ouvres...

I really like that idea, but it would have to be implemented in a way where magic evolves independently from city size. Last I saw, you still need to build arcane labs, etc. to research spells and studies/libraries to research spell techs. Someone without expanded cities would not be able to keep up 'spell tech' wise with bigger nations (if this was changed somewhere along the line, please let me know, haven't got much chance to browse the forums).

As a suggestion, what would happen if we made spell research and spell techs independent from research buildings and instead had everything focus on your sovereign? More intelligence means a faster rate of teching up spell research? Maybe sacrificing essence to get certain techs quickly (like demon summoning, that always requires a sacrifice, right? )? That way small nations could focus compeltely on leveling their sovereign and teching up the magic tree without mega-research academy nations teching up magic faster than you in 5 turns.

change does not always mean improve....

anyway, do you use / activate shards by simply move onto them? or do you have to fuse a unit with it as in master of magic? are they always guarded?

Surely you can't be serious?

*badumbum - ching!*

Though it does look very nice. Let me guess the earth shard grows fertile land around its base right?

More waiting to use magic...

Really want to see what you guys are going to do with gardens, and siege. Like if having certain buildings in your sieged town will help you last longer (gardens, farms, warehouses, town hall, etc...).

I hate to say it, but it looks to me like the guy is getting ready for a barbecue.

Only ways I can think of include:

- Using essence.  All cities have some essence cost, even captured ones (to hold back the devastation or something like that?).  This'd give few-city empires more essence available for magic/etc, than empires that spend a lot of essence on many cities.

- Using tech.  Civics techs would be required to get an increasing number of cities, so empires that skip those techs can instead focus on the magic line.  The smaller empires would need to be able to match the larger empires teching rate else the larger could research both civics and magic as fast as the smaller researches magic only.

There's still 3 ways to win (diplomatic, master spell, and master quest) for smaller empires but it'd be fun to have a viable small-but-puissant vs. large-but-less-advanced military struggle.

There's always modding!