Teleport is WAY too powerful for the cost

no friggin way.  it is way too painstakingly slow to get around in this game.  leave teleport alone or add railroads.

I'm not with the OP on this...I actually think there ought to be a non-territory teleport too... I surely think the mana cost is appropriate...I mean you have to wait 5 turns to get that mana back presently... maybe cost more mana to move your army with you or something of the like.

Actually, if I had my druthers, I would have a teleport scheme where your range was determined by sovereign/hero stats in some fashion. Limited early on, but expanded late game.

Seriously...I would hate to have to wait till 250 turns in before I could use teleport. Unless they make moving around alot easier, Im keeping my teleport. If anything they should balance the AI to make strategic uses of their teleport/spirit walk.

I would like teleport to scale with the number of troops transported, or perhaps the distance travelled.  Seems to make the most sense, and this way it would scale late game.  As it stands it is a huge crutch that you can use to defend your territory.

I think that Teleport should be move to skill level 3 or 4. Imbue Champion is what everyone starts with.

THEN, the Sovereign gets a cheap 1 mana spell with a long cooldown (10 turn) that allows him to teleport (and only him).

I believe the kingdom teleport spell is currently not working as intended. Reason being, there is another teleport spell, called 'teleport friends', which is a level 5 or so spell and casting it is three times as expensive, yet does exact same thing as the teleport spell kingdom starts with.

Thus i think the first teleport was meant to only teleport the caster of the spell, and not the whole army that is with him.

The only alternative I could think of would be to add a cooldown effect to the teleport spell. I don't think you should raise the mana requirement because some of us don't play casters. I have, for example, never had above 15 mana in any of my games. I also don't really want to have to wait 25 turns to cast it once and then be out of mana... for a quarter of my child's early life.

Do you realise how powerful Imbue Spellcaster is for the Empire factions?  Having 5-6 casters leveled to 10 essence early on is brutal, especially when you research demon spy and can summon one creature each, with the ability to do 10 dmg to all enemies.  Thats an easy 60 dmg to all opponents on the field waay before the kingdom can get magic that good (the kingdom dont get demon spy at all).

Teleport is good, i like that the 2 factions are different.  Moping about overpowered abilities leads all too often to all races/factions becoming equal, as in the same.  Having different levels of power in different areas is what makes the game strategic, ie empire have early game spell power, kingdom have early game logistics power.  Deal with it.

Another note, when playing the kingdom there is (was when i last checked) a second teleport spell you learn that says it teleports your caster and army (if one) to your territory.  Oddly, this is also what the basic teleport spell does, makes me wonder if basic kingdom teleport is only supposed to port your sov, without his army. [stax77 beat me to this]

kadrasar

PS: I like Dagwood's ideas on non-territory teleporting and teleport range (but only as it applies to non-territory porting).

Wow, that would certainly be a problem and it would make much more sense.

And I agree with the OP. Want to defend a lonely city somewhere - recruit troops for it's defense force.

If you could only teleport your sovereign, I'd be okay with that. It's that the optimal strategy is now to create a stack of death with all your strongest units and teleport them around - that kills the strategy.  If you want a fast moving sov, you can use points to level up his movement, buy him a horse/ring/cloak/boots, and give him adventurer and organized traits. Build roads with caravans across your territory to speed movement. If you play on a large world, aren't you looking for "epic" scale? How does the ability to zip back and forth across the world in an instant add to the epic scale? Want to send you soverign off to explore the other side of the world? Shouldn't there be a compromise in taking that action - namely that he can't be at home to defend? For me, the teleport spell as is turns a large world into the same strategy as a small world, but with more micromanagement of resources. There aren't enough forced trade-offs in this game for my tastes. There are never any unavoidable set-backs and not enough consequences for poor strategic planning.

That seems to be the case if you look at the names but in the descriptions they both say "and army".  I agree with most of the early repliers that teleport should be left alone because exploring the map at 2-3 squares at a time is tedious enough as it is. Also, because there is no "open boarders" type treaty available without a non-aggro pact it is way too easy to get your soverign and army boxed out away from home territory. Imagine having just built up your first decent roaming army, getting boxed out away from friendly territiory, and having only the ability to transport the soverign back. A huge disadvantage.

The teleport spell should stay as it is. I think the one you get later on should be "transport soverign and army to any exposed tile on the map not currently in another kingdom/empires control" . trying to get around the map late game is a real frustration. Especially when doing quests where the target location is 3/4 of the map away and across 3-4 other factions territory. I don't even bother with those. This teleport spell would make mid-late game much more enjoyable 

Imbue champion is like a level 2 spell for Kingdom. I always have 5-6 early stage casters on Kingdom, because this spell is so easy to get. I usually get the spell before I get get enough gold to recruit the champions to cast it on! Doesn't make much of a difference in making Kingdom and Empire different. I have my stack of death with my Sov casting teleport and the other casters doing the combat spells. I could try not to use this strategy, but somehow deliberately holding back when I know I could do it is equally off-putting to me.

I would like to see two teleports as mentioned.  The first one being just the sovereign, and then later on being able to teleport a stack.

I also wouldn't mind a third, super expensive teleport to anywhere you have uncovered the fog of war.  I would be fine to make the three exponential.  first cost 5, the second costs 25 and the third cost 125.  If you have that much, knock yourself out.  Hope you don't have to fight.

Good point.

I still say teleport should be avail to kingdom from start, but some restrictions could be fun.  Costs in crystal?  Channeling time of N turns to cast? (time for a surprise attack to do damage before porting reinforcements).  Only able to teleport to a dedicated channeler garrisoned in a city with the correct building? (amount of units able to port is dependant on dedicated channeler's intel or essence).

Theres plenty can be done, heres an idea for the modders out there.  Give some of these ideas the community is generating a go, and post feedback here.  I'm sure stardock will love that.

kadrasar

Well I think you could just add a cool down time to teleport, say 2-3 turns

I have already been working on a random event that erases all of these types of spells from the game. It would really be a kick in the face if they were deleted from the game or pushed back to a higher mana cost. I think teleport is a good example of a seriously good spell. Maybe the range needs to be limited or even based on inteligence. I would settle for us starting with a less usefulful spell like endurance and then teching up to teleport. Faster movement is a valid source of strategic variety and should be expanded, not erased.

That is unless it is part of this:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395697

I think you can teleport only if you recrut Scotty !

i wouldn't mind a more expensive version to teleport to uncontrolled or allied territory. 

Disagree.

On a Huge Map without TP it would be torture to play.
Both sides get Teleport, and with the Advantages Empire has atm, in Weapons, and Spys, and Deamons.

No need to change it. Also I do not think I have seen the AI use it as of yet, but would be a bit hard to see it.

My few thoughts YMMV

Lee

I can see that teleport can speed up exploration and movement in huge maps, I think those are valid comments as it does take a while to move around. I would argue though that if speed is important, there are other options to move more than 3 spaces a turn. Cloaks, rings, boots, horses, roads, using level-up points to boost movement. If speed is important to you, you have to commit resources to developing mount technology and other speed items at the expense of other priorities. It is perfectly possible to have a 6+ movement a turn sovereign by mid game without using level-up points.

What really bothered me in my recent game however was that I had this rich gold city (3 mines) that I had neglected to defend for 100+ turns and was on the border with an AI Empire. In a rare and precious moment of lucidity, the AI decides to bring a powerful stack to take the city. So what do I do? Teleport my stack of death from the other side of the world where I'd been crushing things left and right to build experience and level-up. I had clearly made a stupid strategic decision, but teleport allowed me to effectively defend the city instead of forcing me to plan ahead to defend valuable cities, take distance and response time into consideration, and decide whether gold is better spent on cool champion armor or more troops for the front line. There may be other ways to address this without getting rid of teleport all together, but I really think it kills a lot of the strategy in a large/huge map.

I don't really see why its torturous to play with an expensive teleport spell on a huge map.  Being able to send your Sov out exploring, take a city, and in two turns be able to teleport back home across the world and then back again with a massive replacement force is crazy.  Nevermind that I still will have a decent mana pool to cast whatever combat spells I need.

What I would like to see at the start is teleportation stones randomly placed on the map, which if you control allow you to cast your teleport spell next to them.  Then later a spell that lets you teleport anywhere on your territory alone, and then later still teleport with your army as you chose.

With the upcoming changes allowing essense(wisdom) to contribute to mana regeneration, the 5 mana cost for teleport is going to get worse. It's ridiculous still to require a high mana cost because this is a spell that's too powerful to be available only to people who invest HEAVILY in wisdom.

Instead I simply propose making it cost 75% of your maximum mana to cast at any given time. Keeps the double casts away without using an item, and keeps the costs fair for all sovereigns.

My first game I lacked the good sense to take the organized trait.  If it weren't for teleport, I might still be playing that game.

Perhaps a range limit on teleport that scaled with map size?  Maybe the base version of the spell is only castable to teleport from within your own territory (move from one side to the other)?  I'm generally not a fan of mucking with casting costs until we have a better feel for what mana availablility is going to look like longer term.

I would also point out that it is my mainstay strategy to train three or four very weak and cheap NPCs to be my Teleportation Specialists. After three or four temples of essences are up and running they have like 100+ essence to spend on unlimited teleports. Upping the cost would not stop me from doing this.

Way I read it was that the 1st spell only works to teleport into your territory, the second one works to teleport into any Friendly territory, ie any allies. I may be wrong on this and have not actually tried it.