Interesting Choices: I like the idea of being able to build anywhere, though perhaps a penalty is in order for doing so on less-than-favorable soil? And the idea of pioneers being required for cities after the founding of the kingdom/empire is also pretty solid imo.

NPCs: I think it should come down to the intelligence of the creature in question. If it is something that is capable of understanding us, we should be able to have it join us, for the right price. Perhaps your sovereign would need to have a special trait or a particular technology researched in order to recruit the creatures.

Quests: I like the idea of the two different factions have different quests. Perhaps as you suggested, the same quest, yet completed in a different manner. Kingdom saves the village under attack; Empire crushes the village and gets loot.

Spells & Spells: The more the better, and the more varied they are the better. Also, a slight pet peeve..but how about Ice to Water? Ice is more of a sub-section of Water imo..But other than that, a hefty dose of both utility and destruction spells.

City Improvements: Agreed, anything to make each faction a bit more unique, give each one their own flavor. Having the one per world special buildings would be pretty cool. Like temples that allow for extra magic or warding of some sort would be awesome. I suppose it could be like what was done with GC2, those unique buildings were rather useful.

And will there be anyway to restore spent essence? Perhaps via research or epic quest?

Sunday morning? Really? You can't be _that_ far ahead. But anyhow, here are my thoughts:

Interesting choices - Having tooled around a fair bit with Beta 2B, I'm inclined to agree with the idea that using up essence to start your kingdom up and running is kinda bleh. Mostly because, as far as I can tell, there is no way to replenish essence aside from levelling and my experience thus far has had me deplete my sovereign's essence far faster than I would like.

NPCs - First, are there any non-human NPCs? If not, why? I figure since there's already a ton of stuff wandering around wanting to kill you, there may be some beastlies that are intelligent enough to talk to that Trogs and the like could recruit. Now as far as the human ones go, I think that should depend upon their own personal disposition. I remember one specific fellow who wanders around interested only in working for the highest bidder, and would gladly leave anyone behind that slowed him down in the slightest. People like that should have no compunction against working for non-human folk, so long as their gold was good.

Quests - I agree with this for the most part. Quests like the escort noblemen one likely wouldn't be offered to those that the questgivers know wouldn't complete them. But things like that telescope goosechase quest could conceivably be given to both sides.

Spells - Agreed. Maybe offensive spells that are weaker than the ones tied to elemental shards, but are also less powerful. Something that magic-based sovereigns like Procipinee can use in order to be effective in combat early game without having be equipped like a knight.

Spells #2 - You could just have it so that you can queue up spells you intend to learn, and as the required amount of spell points becomes available research will start automatically, that way you don't need to keep checking back. Also, the game should remind you if it's empty if you go a turn without researching anything, like in Sword of the Stars.

City Improvements - I like the specialization idea, and I think things like the Economic and Manufacturing Capitals from GalCiv would work quite well here too. Some thoughts I've had are things like a four tile structure that would let you train two or more units at a time, for military-centric cities. A 1 per world structure thats more or less like a super watchtower, for defensive cities on the frontier. A 1 per empire I'd definitely like to see is a super fortess type improvement, that replaces the wooden palisades around the city with a giant stone wall like Rome used to have. It would require access to at least one quarry for the materials alone, and would cost a lot of time and resources, but would be damn near impregnable. Perfect for capital cities, though an army well equipped with siege weapons would be able to take it relatively easily if there are no archers or other ranged units protecting it. Another one, may be a bit OP, but I was thinking of something that could channel the power of Earth shards to maybe revive the surrounding land slowly over time. Mechanically, it would be like casting revive land over and over, only at a slower rate. It would have to be built in the city that's directly harvesting the shard of course. I'd kind of like to see neat uses like that for shards, other than just strictly for spells. Like maybe if you had access to the air shard, you could build something that would let ships harness it's power to give them more movement. Another one for fire shards that lets smiths smelt more quickly, improving the output for workshops and mines.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. All in all, the game is shaping up to be pretty awesome thus far.

I think one of the main troubles with the current game is that it really doesn't matter where you settle, as your sovereign can just pump some of his magic juice into the land and make it green and pretty. If the quality of the land effected how well a city can grow / whether or not you can build gardens etc, I think that'd make a massive difference in terms of city strategy.

In GalCiv, your limiting factor in terms of cities was amount of squares on a planet and what bonuses you got there in terms of resources. In Elemental, there are literally none. The amount of tiles a city can build on (12 per level) becomes obsolete by the time you're anywhere up in the Civ tree. I had a rank 5 city with every single building possible in it. It still had about 30-odd city squares left. The only thing I could build more of would've been estates to be able to regen losses due to troop training, but they were ridiculously unnecessary.

You need to lower the amount of squares a city can have (or have special buildings take up more squares), and to make certain areas have bonuses that others don't. Say a wasteland should have almost no food growth ability, but should give bonuses to warfare (or maybe all) research (necessity is the mother of all invention, after all). I'd also like some sort of individual city resource (food, maybe) that requires linking the city up with other trade routes in order to share it. Caravans need a lot of work, though.

You sleep?

+1 to preferring the champions to have personalities, and possibly friendliness/hostility based on actions.

Got a feeling that might be a bunch more work/expansion pack material though.

Edit: one other thing that needs work: the speed of these forums.  When the game comes out, these forums are going to crash hardcore, plus they could be designed better.  Unrelated rant, but the SD forums are the worst thing about Stardock- admittedly for a worst thing to have, that's great, but still could be much better.

• Interesting Choices.  Being forced to spend essence to build a city is not a choice interesting or not.  I’m inclined to find some other use to revive land rather than forcing users to use it to effectively build a town. That is, we’d let the player build cities on the foresaken land. That’s a pretty big game change but when you add the new game behavior that the sovereign can only found their kingdom (after that, only pioneers can build cities) it makes things a lot more fun.  I’d rather see essence used to generate fertile land or something (as an example).

Cancel the Essence cost of "Founding a City" and have the essence cost come Solely from "Reviving the Land". To make this useful, place other tiles on the map that would make it worth it to revive the land around them so they automatically get included in your Kingdom/Empires boundary when your city "revived land creep" reaches the other area where you revived the land. Example:

There is a Mine and a Earth Shard a little bit away from where I founded a city. I founded the city where I did because it was next to fertile land, but I want those other resources sooner rather then later, so I go cast "Revive Land" between those two resources. Now when my city boundary/revived creep reaches the other area they automatically join together putting the second area I revived into my domain. Now I can build on those resources with a Pioneer.

• NPCs. Playing as a Trog today makes me uncertain why an NPC from the race of men would want to sign on board.  Should they just cost more? Or should they be hostile? Or what?

I think that should depend on if you're playing the "Scripted Campaign" or the "Sand-Box Game". In the "SC" (scripted campaign) I would say these two should have a strong dislike of each other unless the "Man" involved was a "Evil Man". In "Sand-Box" it should go by Diplomacy modifiers and values. Will the Man make more money working for the Trog then he would working for a human Sovereign? If so and "money" was the Man's primary want, he'd go with the Trog. If "Good Morals" were the Man's primary want, he would go follow the human Sovereign.

This would mean adding a limited "Behavioral Script" for each NPC type. Kinda like the "Behavioral Idea" I said about "Monsters" I.E. some like living in swamps, others might like living in deserts. Apply the same theory to different types of NPC's based on the NPC's Race, Sex, and Desires like "Money", "Power", "Honor", etc etc. You could call these desires "Wants" in script and give every living thing in the world it's own set of "wants". Example:

A "Fire Drake" would want: Monster_Fire_Drake Want= Fire, Heat, Dry, Fresh Meat. This would make the fire drake seek out places that were hot and dry yet near a steady source of food. Like a dormant volcano with a much traveled trade route near by. It would live in the volcano and come out and attack caravans when it was hungry.

Note: Not sure you'll have time to implement something like that though. It involves a little scripting be added, but not too much I don't think depending on the man power you assign to it. 3 or 4 guys could probably add "Want Tags" to every Creature/Npc in the game in a few days.

• Quests. I’m inclined to have quests have an Allegiance tag. That is, Empires would get different quests than Kingdoms. Right now, they share them. Relias, the do-gooder might escort some princeling to his estate. Verga, however, would use his bones as a paste.

I'm not sure I like that. I'd rather have all the Quests be Flavor Text based depending on what faction gets to them first. This way all the same quests can be gotten by every player regardless of Race/Faction but the quest would change slightly depending on who reaches it first. Example:

Quest, take the Princess to her Royal Estate. Kingdom faction gets to it first..

"Please my Lord, escort my beautiful daughter to her rightful beloveds city, tis not far from here and I will pay you handsomely. Or if you like, I would be honored if you could woo her your-self, my Lord."

Same Quest, Empire Faction gets there first...

"Oh Lord of Darkness, my unruly daughter has vexed me for far too long. She refuses to marry any suitor who comes to call on her and now I just want her out of my house, especially if you could procure some gildar for me as a dowry. Please, take my daughter and marry her off to who you will for as high a price as you can get and I shall reward you well for your trouble."

Now the Dark Lord can either deliver the girl and force her to marry someone, OR Force her to marry Him, OR just kill her himself and tell her father he got her married off and is ready to receive his reward. The Good Lord would either deliver the daughter as promised OR marry her himself.

The Quest stays the same, the Flavor Text is all that changes depending on if a Good or Evil faction gets to it first. A Simple Tag can be added in the Quest Script to determine which flavor text to use and to detect which faction the hero/sovereign that found it belongs to.

• Spells. Need a LOT more default spells that you can learn.

I've got TONS if Spell Ideas floating around in my head. I could fill the entire page of this thread with my Spell Ideas, even some that I conceptualized while working on UO. I have a "World's Worth" of fantastical knowledge locked away in this sack-o-crazy I call a brain. You want spells? I'll PM you about 50 Ideas for Great Spells. Better that then list them all here, trust me. I even have some of my old notes from when I was designing Necro Tokens for UO. If you want I can dig them up, these are spells. For Elemental we'd just take out the need for the "Necro Token" but keep the Spell Idea. The only reasons these were rejected when I brought them up to my old Boss on UO is because most of the effects I wanted to use were mirrored by other spells that already existed in UO for other classes (which oddly enough were my instructions when I began the project...). To my knowledge, these types of spells don't exist in Elemental. Some of these ideas for spells are so good you wouldn't want me to post them here. You'd want to save them as a "surprise" for launch and only use a few for the Beta. If you want them, let me know and I'll PM them to you.

• Spells #2. Need some way to queue up spell learning.

Add another Full Screen to the Kingdom Screen. Another research tab/page Just for Spells. Now add the list of spells you can learn, All the spells you have the "Books" to learn them from should be listed. Now add a row of boxes on it somewhere and "queue" up spells in those boxes to be learned as the time allows. Each spell will take so many turns and the right Shards/Mana to be able to "Research". This would also require that "Spell Research" be Specifically Separated from "Magical Research".

Edit Note: If someone whines and says "This is too much micromanagement I'll personally come stick my size 13 Harley Boot in their @ss. It's "Crunch Time", not 'Whine Time". Sorry, that's just how I feel. Honestly, this isn't much to add and it DOES NOT make things "More Complicated" by adding one extra research screen. If anything it will Simplify Learning New Spells. If you can't figure that one out, you don't have the brain power to be playing this type of game and should go play Pong or Spore or something more in line with your IQ level...sory to be a prick.

• City Improvements. I’d rather see fewer general improvements and more 1 per faction (Imperial Achievement) and 1 per world (World Achievement) buildings so that specializing cities is more fun.

I like specializing cities. Specializing Planets in GalCiv 2 was the same for me. If I had a Planet that had a lot of minerals and got production bonuses that Planet would be one of my main "Ship Yards" (I would put Ship Yard in the Planet Name). Cities in Elemental should be the same way, I should be able to specialize them. A City with massive population bonuses like "extra food income, scenic view" etc etc that would lead to High Populations would naturally make me want to use That City as my Main City for Producing Soldiers. Another City might be built near magical resources like it's close to Two Shards or it gets Research Bonuses, so That City would be my Primary Research City..etc etc...you get the point. This also means how-ever that the players need to be able to build more then one of the same type of building per town and the bonuses should stack for doing so. Meaning if I build Three Huts and Two Command Posts I should be able to produce soldiers twice as fast as a city with One Hut and One Command Post.

• Empires are more polished. Ironically, the Empires feel “better” than the kingdoms in terms of balance. Probably because they’ve gotten more love (polish wise) with the notable and obvious exception of graphics.

Having not really seen much of the polish in the Empires it's kinda hard for me to give you ideas on how to improve them. After I actually see some more and get to play with them some I'll be better able to give input.

YES...Please change Ice to Water. It makes a lot more sense to me that way, as Rath points out, Ice is more of a derivative form of Water. Please change it to being Called "Water Magic".

NPC's:

There are fallen NPC's correct? I'd say having them cost a small amount more for the opposite race would be fine, give the player a choice of whether to pay the extra gold, or kill them so others can't hire them. If they're always hostile, then you'll see a lot of NPC's dying off in the early stages, since if you run across an NPC of the opposite race there's absolutely no reason not to kill them as quick as you can.

Although it could be fun if you have specific very powerful NPC's for hire that would only be loyal to their own race. Something you couldn't kill or hire early on. It could be a race to see if a kingdom/empire could kill/hire them before someone else.

Quests:

Similar feelings towards this as towards NPC's. Have most quests be general and ignore faction, with a choice for evil or good. And then have a few special major quests that require fallen or men.

I think that some sort of improvement could be built that would generate Essence. It could be a mid-game "Imperial Achievement" to prevent it's spamming. But, it costs X amount of resources (probably something big?) but then it generates .1 Essence per turn, or something. 

You could also take something from Black & White: Worship. I don't think we want the Soverign to become some sort of literal god, but you could have something like "Approval" which slowly generates Essence because the "lifeforce" of the people wants you to succeed, so you happen to be able to draw upon it. Or something like that. 

For Empires, you could Sacrifice Population for Essence. Just like Warhammer 40k and the navigator things (it's powered by the lifeforce of thousands of humans a day). You basically "cull the weak" which will obviously temporarily hurt that cities' economy or Prestige but in return you get some essence to play with. 

+1 for op

my sovereign ran out of essence wayyyyy too fast. The only way to gain experience was to best beasties but i chose Principea (whatever her name is, the specialist magician) and that was not going to happen with her. So, what transpired was I would get my ass handed to me by anything that was capable of movement and i would run low on essence founding a city and a garden. I would be left with 2/3 essence points and no way of building it back up. lots of ideas mentioned in this thread are far better than the idea i was going to bring up so I'll just leave this as a post supporting those ideas  

Interesting Choices. In Beta 2B, you don't have much essence, many ways of spending large chunks of it and very limited possibilities for getting it back. I don't really feel like I'm making interesting choices, but jealously guarding my essence and employing clever tricks to avoid spending it.

I like the idea of sacrificing some of your own power to empower others, but most of this should be happening later in the game as deliberate strategic decisions, not as a 1/3 penalty to your mana capacity for failing to find fertile land in a good spot.

What if you simply got a free first casting of Revive Land? And then you could spend essence to further enhance it.

NPCs. This really depends on both the fiction and what the final faction customization options look like. Can a Fallen sovereign lead a human kingdom? Do Trogs have a reputation for attacking strangers, eating them and wearing their skins? If humans don't have a kill-on-sight attitude towards Fallen, then there are plenty of reasons why they might work for even an Empire.

If NPCs will have distinct character, then different attitudes can definitely be a part of that. Some are completely mercenary, others have preferences that can be overridden by money, others still will refuse to work with "weaklings" or "monsters" for any price. Outright hostility should be very, very rare. Maybe there is a legendary warrior who's dedicated his life to hunting Trogs, which makes him little more than a powerful monster for Trog Empires, but as humans, he will work for free if you are at war with Trogs.

Quests. My ideal approach would be to have a lot of quests with multiple outcomes, often involving moral choices available to both Kingdom and Imperial sovereigns. And then the choices you make influence what kind of quests you make in the future. But that's probably too much.

Different quests (with some overlap) are fine with me, but I'm still unclear on what exactly the correlation between Men/Fallen, Kingdoms/Empires and Good/Evil is. Your example makes it sound like Empires would be restricted to fairly nasty actions. I remember reading earlier that Imperial adventuring would be focused on recovering remnants of the past, not doing chores for random people in need. That approach would sit better with me.

Spells. I'm no big systems designer, but one no-brainer would be cheap, shard-neutral attack spells. Either some kind of generic Arcane Bolt, or some weak Life/Death specific spell, like a Searing Light (a combat spell that deals damage and debuffs the target with some kind of blindness or disorientation effect) and Life Drain (deals a small amount of damage and transfers it to a friendly unit) respectively.

Also useful would be some kind spell to help produce Gildar, which is currently very difficult without the Civilization tree. A simple enchantment that raises a city's money production by one seems kind of lame, but I don't have any better ideas right now.

Also, a question: What are the magic resources (Fire Magic, Arcane Magic, etc.) produced by the various shard-related temples? Are those on their way in or out?

City Improvements. Specialisations are good. In the earlier betas, when we had many buildings and able to build more of one thing in a city, the tile limits required some degree of specialisation. But once you can only one of everything per city, you no longer have any reason not to build everything.

You're assuming all NPC's are mercs, this doesn't seem very likely to me. As a fallen race, having a human champion among my ranks should offer a moral boost when fighting the Kingdoms. Same for the Kingdoms versus Fallen. Most NPC's should also have a loyalty rating that should take a hit if they are aligned with a race not their own. Of course there's no reason why you couldn't flag an NPC as some one who dislikes his or her own kind.

Interesting choice:

Yeah I can employ that handsome bearded human face puncher to lead my army of twisted monstrosities, but do I want to risk him turning on me in the middle of a fight, fleeing at the first drop of a golden coin from that silver haired wench? Maybe I can bribe him with some of my own evil essence to keep that from happening...