I really like this idea.

At the risk of repeating something that has already been said (don't have time to read everything atm), mousing over building icons in the research and breakthrough screens should display a tooltip with the function of the building and all of its requirements including resources, prerequisite buildings, and maybe even city level. You could even have buildings that require multiple techs to build, and list them as well.

Likewise, a grayed out building that cannot be constructed because another structure is required first should display the name of the required structure in red at the bottom; just like insufficient resources are shown in red.

None of these things seem particularly difficult to implement to me...

If you want all or some spells to have no upkeep for intrinsic design reasons, that's fine, but having spells have no upkeep because you don't want to take the time to implement a non-tedious method to dispel is not right.

I understand the version we get in beta is not what you folks have, and I'm not basing the following comment on the beta but on the above decisions/questions.

I'm kinda troubled by how you're addressing these 2 issues.  They suggest you're taking shortcuts -- making design decisions to avoid a problem (especially the grayed-out improvement one) instead of taking the time to polish the interface/etc. to truly resolve the problem.  With the August release less than 2 months away I can understand the pressure/temptation to take shortcuts but I think the short-term benefit is at the cost of long-term success (and I look at Elemental as a game I'll play for years not months).  Perhaps that's a trade-off you're willing to accept and/or I'm incorrectly analyzing this -- in that case never mind.  Perhaps you're undecided about this and that's why I'm bringing it up.

Initial impressions at release are important.  Getting everything working and fairly well-balanced and stable isn't enough for a great release, the interface/etc need to be polished and then polished again.  Elemental is a great game but a lack of polish at release will cause it to not receive the great reviews it deserves, and many otherwise fine games have stumbled at release and some never truly recovered, even though they were later 'fixed'.

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Alright I've managed to play some (finally) yay!

Bug reports:

A) I recruited a group on NPC players. It said it cost me 533 gold or so. Well... it cost me 10,000. I ended up being -9500 which was very much a negative playing experience because I had no gold to do anything with anymore. No more building cities, no more building what few buildings I could... just run away with my newfound army, and destroy cities.

This ended up being rather humorous in the end, because even my SUMMONS would desert me. My familiar should NOT desert me because I'm in negative gilders (which I shouldn't be able to do anyway). This happened to me before all the time while building cities, but usually it would only be a few hundred, and my Markets would pull me out of debt quick enough it wasn't a big deal. 

I am not the US Government and my Familiars/Pets shouldn't desert me. Ever. I OWN THEIR SOUL. 

The AI can still build mines and stuff... sorta cheap. But probably intended. 

C) I would do these material quests all the time, but I wouldn't get the rewards unless I had at least one of the material. So I would be  "awarded" with 15 Crystal or 15 Metal... but wouldn't get any of it. 

D) Drinking defense potions doesn't work if your Dex attribute is below 10, or if you have a ranged weapon.

E) I ran into a problem where I would hit a research level but I was "unlucky" and didn't get any techs to choose from. This is a bit of a negative playing experience. I should at least get SOMETHING at every stage of the game, bar 1,000 turn games or something. What happened to the infinite tech tree?  

F) It seems like each level of Magic research increases the spell-point pool by one. Cool. Well, until you research the +8 spell point pool technology. Not only does it not award you the larger pool, it prevents it from ever growing again. 

Things that were good:

Familiars are fun. Bit strong, but fun (until they desert you, that is). 'course they SHOULD be strong, unique unit and all. 

New quests are fun.

Things that were bad:

wtf does summon mushrooms, etc do? Is it just pretties? 

Summoned creatures abandoning me (unless I don't have the mana or something to sustain them, that is). 

I personally don't like how we research spells... prefer how MoM does it. But it's okay. 

Feature requests:

Give a sort of soft color where peoples Prestige is. I had an issue once where I was thinking the prestige was the wrong way and I was like WOW THIS GUY HAS A TON OF LAND because I was walking out of the Prestige, not into it. simliar to how Culture works in Civ IV.

Better spell management... buying and finding. 

I would like a way to convert materials into gold and vice-versa. It wouldn't have to be a good rate (1 gold per 10 materials). Barring that, let me have an idle city that isn't building any buildings at the moment build "wealth" and convert it's excess materials into gilder instead. It represents people doing their own thing and then taxing them for their personal projects. Similarly, you pay them overtime to develop materials. If you don't want an on-demand "alchemy" as in MoM, you could make it a rate (eg, consume 50 materials a turn to turn 5 gold out per turn... goes with the "wealth" idea above) or have a hard cap in that you can only do 50 materials a turn. 

I shouldn't have kids if I'm not with my Queen... that's just sorta weird. Am I having astral projection sex? Teleporting to her and then back in the midst of war and exploration? Some sort of kinky spell? It should be one of the benefits of a Soverign who decides rather than to build an "exploring" Soverign with high movement speed or whatnot, and instead the +production and food bonuses to get free heroes (eventually) with their wife. 

A way to mind-control random beasts in the world map. It's incentive for non-magical kingdoms to hunt them down and kill them (for bounty and also for fear I will capture them and set them on them). It could be a high-tier unlock, but it would be nice to have. They could consume food as upkeep, or something, so having too large of an "animal army" would mean you wouldn't be able to grow your civ anymore. 

Make your forum not boom! <3

Ran out of memory at turn 40.

The special event screens (marriage and such) are too distracting on a high resolution, large monitor. They pull you out of the world with no notice. A window appearing would be better.

RE: the magic upkeep system. I saw people mention the Dragon Age system of upkeep, I think that would work well. Although the decrease to mana regen idea seemed fine too.

You could also just have each "permanent" last a set amount of turns. This would probably require a large amount of micro in the long run, but figured it was at least worth throwing out as an idea.

Last idea would be to have each spell have a set amount of copies that you could have activated. So the "enchant weapon" spell you could have 5 or so copies going without any upkeep, and something more powerful like "enchant farm" you may only be able to have 3 copies going per caster.

From a personal veiwpoint if buff spells don't require upkeep, then buff spells "BECOME" mandatory. It is one thing if you want a tradeoff of my personal power (Buffs) vs more magical power. But if there is no form of upkeep on buffs, then it becomes a one sided no brainer.

If someone wants to have a unit running around with stoneskin, flying, haste, fire breath, extra claws, extra damage, fire immunity, ice immunity, spell immunity and yadda yadda. there needs to be some form of built in limiter mechanic. Otherwise you are going to see what I just described on every unit a caster has as time allows.

I like this idea as well, you could increase your "slots" as you got more powerful, through research and maybe some powerful building that could be built 1 per game (like a wonder). You could get extra slots from imbuing champions since they would help you keep the spells up. I havent tried beta as much since its really buggy for me and I couldnt even get on the forums till now. Going to post some reports now

I don't understand the distinction between a per-turn magic cost, and a reduction in magic regeneration. Kind of the exact same thing, isn't it?

In any case: it seems to me that this world's lore supports no upkeep. Consider: the fallen were originally altered from men (etc.), but nobody's expending any energy to keep them different. I think essence and shard requirements on certain spells are enough to keep the resource management meaningful but not tedious.

I don't get this whole upkeep debate. Shouldn't buffs just last for X turns only? If you want to maintain the buff better recast. Don't most games do it this way?  

The problem with that system is that it turns into a micromanagement nightmare for most players.  Why settle for that when we can come up with a better subsystem?

Or add something like : each unit can only have ONE buff, unless you research "magical affinity" that would allow you to put 2 buffs on your units. "Great magical affinity" that would let you put 3 buffs.

Or give buff spells a good cooldown like 5 or 10 turns. You could research advanced spells that would let you reduce cost/cooldown or rise the power or change the stats or add effects to your spells.

For instance you have a fireball spell, you need to enhanced it to be able to target multiple units. And you could enhanced it even further to let it have a cooldown reduced.

MOM system was just perfect

also we have to distinguish between MAP buffs and tactica combat buff

its obvious a map buff MUST have some upkeep

while on tactical combat a buff can just be a spell you cast paying something and that lasts for the duration of combat (or even N turns, depending )

YAY!  

"Most" games?

In this genre theres basically Master of Magic and Age of Wonders, neither of which did that.  Both had upkeeps for spells.  I mean would you really want to recast some big powerful global spell every single turn?  Hell would you want to rebuff 4-6 guys every single turn? 

There should be combat spells that maybe last a battle (MoM/AoW both have those as well), but I shouldn't be required to cast Stone Skin on all my dudes every turn.  That would be probably the wost thing ever created for any game ever (even worse than the current spell research in 2B).

I like the enchantment's slots idea because :

a ) Requires taking meaningful decisions. As opposed to 0-upkeep where you still have to decide if you want to spend essence in the spell or not, and in which order, but once cast enchantments are a no-brainer.

b ) Does not require micromanagement. As opposed to mana upkeep costs where each turn you have to make a decision about maintaining or not each of your enchantments.

c ) It's manageable by the AI. As opposed to enchantments which last for a fixed amount of time which depends on a decision made when casting the spell (like ship finances in GalCiv); in that case the AI has to predict for how long it will need the enchantment, which is very hard. In the slots proposal the AI only needs to worry about what it is needed now and if there is a need to pay the essence cost to replace some of the current enchantments for one better in this situation. Harder for the AI than 0-upkeep though.

Enchantment's (and maybe summons) upkeep costs by slots proposal :

1.- The sovereign starts with a certain amount of enchantment slots.

2.- Each enchantment (and summon) costs mana to cast and after it is casts will use a number of enchantment slots.

3.- Units have a magical affinity stat. It acts as a discount on slots for enchantments cast on units. Casting enchantments on a unit which uses more slots than the unit's magic affinity will cause the excess to be occupying the sovereign enchantment's slots. I guess almost all units would start with at least affinity 1 so you can cast one minor enchantment on each unit. You will be able to have super buffed units using sovereign slots but not too many of them and at the cost of not having slots for overland enchantments.

4.- Cities also will have a stat like magical affinity. Probably starting at 0 and raised by buildings.

5.- There would be a line of research for enchantments :

  a ) Enchantment mastery : Extra sovereign slots

  b ) Summon mastery : Extra sovereign slots usable only for summons. Also Fire/Water/etc enchantment mastery

  c ) Minion Mastery : You may cast more enchantments on your units for free slots. You still have to pay mana though. (equivalent to extra affinity for all your units) Also City Mastery.

  d ) Mastery of minor enchantments : 3 sovereign slots usable only for 1-slot enchantments.

And here a graphical explanation of the system.

Edit : I just realized that canceling Enchant Weapon and Bless would not free up 2 enchantment slots since one of those was free due to magical afinity. Thus in my example there are only 4 options.

The only issue I have with this idea is that it means all spells with upkeep have the same upkeep cost. There's no flexibility to have one person cast several weaker spells while another casts one really strong one due to the higher upkeep costs.

"Most games" meaning MMOs maybe? In terms of 4X fantasy games, buffs are usually either only castable in combat (and expire after combat), or stay up permanently so long as you pay the upkeep (barring the enemy dispelling them of course).

It'd be really, REALLY annoying to use a lot of enchantment spells if you had to constantly recast them.

Weaker enchantments like Just Cause cost a minor ammount of enchantment slots. Stronger spells like Ice Age cost a large amount of enchantment slots.

Agreed. I don't get why players would have to run around dispelling things. If they're my spells I want to remove, a simple active spells list with a "cancel spell" button makes it pretty easy. If it's enemy spells... shouldn't I have to dispel them anyway? (AoW:SM had both of those for your spells and enemy world enchantments, which you could attempt to dispel by casting Disjunction. It was a simple UI, but it worked really well.)

edit - Here is what I'm talking about, specifically.

In this case, I'm Nekron. Damnastion and Darkland are both global enchantments ("Global" meaning they affect everywhere within range of my wizards towers). Dark Gift and Enchanted Weapon are unit buffs. With the remove button, I can cancel stuff pretty easily. If my enemies had any global spells active, I'd be able to see them in that list too (though to remove those I'd have to cast Disjunction).

Also agree. "Having no way to display it" isn't a reason to not display it. It's a reason to fix the UI defeciency known as "having no way to display it." People are left to guess right now just what is required and why they can't build something. I find it confusing, and I've had the game since beta 1. How is some newbie coming in at release going to feel?

The Civ 4 UI was pretty good for this. You could see what techs unlocked what buildings on the research screen (for all of them since you can browse the whole tech tree). When you have the necessary tech the building appears in your build list. If you don't have the pre-requisites to build it, it's disabled as an option and the tooltip tells you in big red text what you need.

It worked really well for the more complicated requirements like Wall Street (needs X banks in your empire, where X is map size dependent). It'd tell you both how many you need and how many you currently have, making the requirement pretty easy to manage. I can't imagine doing that where it doesn't even tell me how many of them I need to build the thing because I don't know its an option until I meet the requirements.

I find it hard to figure out how you say it'll be no problem to be ready in 3 weeks when the solution to a problem like this is just to leave a clear UI flaw in place.

I guess if you have a lot of slots yeah, but at that point I don't see why that's better then just taxing mana regen. The regen mechanic is already there, no need to build something new to handle it.

Because with mana upkeep you have to constantly make a decision about mantaining or not mantaining enchantments.

Say Enchant weapon costs 10 mana and has an upkeep of 1 mana/turn. For each unit with it which will not be involved in combat in more than ten turns it is more efficient to dispell it and recast before next combat. Thus you need to micromanage each turn to maximize.

With slots having an enchant weapon on a unit which won't be involved in battle for long is not a problem thus no need to micromanage it. As long as you do not wish to cast new enchantments there is no need to consider canceling enchantments due to upkeep. When you reach your maximum slots you will have to make a decision each time you wish to cast a new enchantment but that is more streamlined since you are already in the process of making a decision on paying the mana cost for the enchantment or not.

Spells should continue to cost a small amount of energy to maintain but not all spells.

Ones that are continuous effect like rains etc. and flooding or volcanos yes. But changing land to hills or mountains should be really expensive but after that no maintence.

Tooltips shouldn't prevent people from being able to read important information that they need to perform a task.

The thing tooltips are really good at is providing "background" information. If I mouse over the number next to the little bread icon and leave the mouse there, the tooltip should explain it's my food resource, and provide a summary of how much I have and how much I'm producing. Not putting the tooltip there means I have to break out the help file and search through a dozen pages if I just want to know "what does that thingy mean."

Unit stats should be on the character sheet in plain sight. But if I want to know how a particular stat is calculated or what it does, I should be able to hover my mouse over it and find out the details.

Heck the forum interface here uses tooltips for each of the buttons. I don't know what that little Omega symbol means in the editor. I leave the mouse hovering and it's explained. If I had to look that up in a help file I would have probably never done it and still have no idea I could insert custom chåracters.