The bulk of the AI work is going to be in v1.1.  It's almost impossible to make it produce a cohesive strategy given how easy it is for the human player to summon tons of units.  It's an O(N^3) issue.  

Basically, it boils down to the need for a game AI to be able to have N strategies. In a typical game, say GalCiv II or Civ IV, you'd have the AI have several different general strategies (rush, boom, turtle, etc.).  But in Elemental, there are a number of unique challenges.

For instance, you have sovereigns who are very powerful. This isn't a new concept, Total Annihilation had commanders. However, when the enemy commander died, they'd destroy everything around it. Thus, you wouldn't tend to "Com rush".

Another challenge has been the issue of summoned creatures. With the way imbuing works, you can easily crank out a lot of summoned creatures without any real economic impact.

You take these two issues and it makes it basically impossible to write a challenging AI.  And yet, asking the player not to make use of the most obviously effective strategy would be insane and "gimping" the game is not an option.

What we are going to do in v1.1 is this:

Your sovereign is the powerful Channeler who generates +1 mana per turn. Each time you capture a shard (which in v1.1 willl have 1 seeded near where you start) it will provide +1 mana also as well as amplify certain spells.  When you imbue a champion, it costs -1 mana to maintain. When you summon a creature, it will cost -1 mana to maintain.  Thus, if you want an army of spell casters, it comes at the cost of having your sovereign being as powerful as he could because he's sharing his power with so many minions.  If you keep it all for yourself, you can only be in one place at a time.  It also makes controlling shards strategically meaningful because they are the source of the Channeler's power.

Thanks for this, seems like a logical way to balance it.  You shouldnt be able to have a giant army of really powerful summoned creatures AND very powerful spells, something has to give. What will be nice is that if you dismiss your army (presumably because they just conquered a few cities) then that mana per turn should go back into the pool to build back up so you can either summon creatures in another spot or just use it for nukes.

I also like the idea of making shards VERY important as strategic resources.  PLEASE make sure the AI defends these ferociously and also tries to capture a few enemy ones as well.  This will make planting cities next to shards even more meaningful to encase them in city walls.  Currently I really don't defend any resources since the AI doesn't seem to go around destroying them very much.

Elemental War of Shards

I'm not sure if I like the new plan you guys have for the magic system. The reason I say this is because I can still thoroughly stomp the AI without using a summon strategy (this is mainly because I feel summons like Stone Giant and Ice Lord is completely broken atm). What generally happens is that I imbue one or two hero to use as casters to support an army, then have the sovereign be my dedicated teleporter. Just to make it clear, this is me trying my best to be "fair" to the AI (not trying to abuse anything), I even give it a 50 turn "global peace initiative", and I still do just fine with ridiculous AIs. In light of the recent upgrades to spell damage, and how much of an impact shards has on them, I'm finding myself more and more warlike against AIs that has shards, It's pretty much like a floating target on their back. If shards is linked to mana regen (and not imbue), and every faction gets a shard, you are basically asking me to rush the nearest guy just to power my mana needs. Then, once I take out 1 capital, I'm looking at a 50% increase in power, making the next rush even easier. This quickly results in a steam roller effect, and one I think you would be better off avoiding ahead of time rather than afterward.

Edit: also wanted to say that the -1 mana regen would make imbue useless. I imbue FOR many regen, not to get negative.

So many problems with that are poping into my head about this preposed system that I cannot type them fast enough. To summarize, unless shards become far, far more plentiful than they are now (which would make the requirement for shards to cast some spells worthless), the all the magic would be sucked out of the game. Assuming the only imbued champion is my sovereign's spouse, two shards would be needed to have the same regen rate there is now. Please consider instead of having imbue cost upkeep giving each spell caster a "spell point" stat that limit how much they can draw from the pool per turn. The imbue can reduce this stat for the sovereign and give it to the champion.

Ok this is good, but please keep in mind that a lot of the best NPCs have abilities that require mana to use, yet they need to be imbued.

I'm confused.  If champions' spells' costs are payed out of a global mana pool and their summons are maintained though global mana regen, why does the imbued champion need an upkeep as well?  I understand that changing Essence to a binary value removes the one downside to imbue as it stands (and makes imbuing a no-brainer), but couldn't a more reasonable balance be struck?  What if an imbued champion's spells cost x% more to cast?  Or what if the act of imbuing actually reduced your maximum available mana?  The proposed solution will take imbuing off the table for all but the very end game without other supporting features.

Isn't it a bit weird to have additional channelers have exactly same upkeep as summned monsters?

I mean, while giants are cool (probably because they are overpowered anyway, and have their own "spells"), most lower level summons like familiars or anything from summoning school (imp, bear) is just plain pitiful.

Current mana regen is already a pain (if it wasn't an issue people would not mass imbue more channelers), and new solution dosn't help in that regard.

Also, another thing to factor in is that channelers are permanent, while summons can be dismissed. What happens when player loses access to the shards, while having several channelers.

Guys, this is not as terrible as it sounds...  and he's just stating the BASIC concept, I'm pretty sure magic research will buff that in many ways...

Remember right now the sovereign regains one point per turn, in the future he will add that point to a pool, its just the same thing but better since right now if you sit at max points you won't regain anything, but in the future you will still get points...

And another thing, YOU are the channeler, YOU are special, not your champs...right now imbue Janus, have him kill a couple of brigands and voila, ANOTHER sovereign...  might be fun, definetely OP (specially now that magic IS strong), but not balanced or especially not LORE fitting at all...  now extra mana  will come from their proper place, the SHARDS (remember that was the titan's screw-up in the first place!)

Fix to heroes special abilities should be easy, remove their mana cost and have them on a CD or similar , or X numbers of times per combat...

I'd like to make a suggestion, it's hard without knowing how the system will turn out exactly but here it goes anyway...

Multiply all the mana numbers x5 or x10... meaning, sovereign will produce 5 or 10 points and a fireball will cost either 15 or 30...  the reason...  I'm worried about the mini buff spells, +1 food or +2 attack  shouldnt definetely cost the same maintenance as a fire giant!  so they would be free... which wouldn't be so bad since after all you are kind of BUILDING them with your RESOURCE called mana, but if they were to cost something, it should be just a  fraction of the said fire giant or similar... also these numbers will make it easier to assign different costs to different summons, for example a familiar could cost just a fraction of the stone giant, etc...

I like the basic idea but it sounds like the upkeep and ways to generate mana would make mana generation a bit too slow, especially if you're in a serious war. Maybe there will be additional ways to boost generation, though.

Also this certainly makes children quite valuable since I assume they won't have an upkeep. Maybe they will even generate mana.

In order to give non-imbued champions more personality I would suggest giving them more interesting special abilities, escpecially at higher levels.

Personally I feel this to be completely balanced. From my POV, the idea is choice, not see how many summons you can get out at a single time. In the early game, you summon familiars because they are easy to get to and are easy to get out, but as the game progresses, you will trade your old familiar for a fire giant. While it might make sense to rebalance the familiar a bit, the decision as to whether to keep your lvl 10 familiar or trade it for a fire giant would be a huge decision.

Issues I see potentially.

Weak summons, which are already bad due to arriving as late as they do (require a book of summoning, which is a fairly late magic tech), will now become even weaker.  Maybe certain summons should be free, and certain summon shsould cost 2.

Is the limit of one summon of the same type per caster still in effect?  I'm assuming yes- and that should stay.

enchants should also cost 1.   High essence for the channneler should also raise mana gained per turn, maybe channelers get 1 mana for every 8 essence?

Essence should be the cap in tactical battles, and would tactical spells affect the global mana pool?  (I'd almost consider an argument that they should't, but strategic spells shouldn't be castable in tactical battles period)

You are going to have to do something about the # of summoned units if you're going to increase the cost of having a bunch of normal units, which also should be done.

Some have mentioned using a higher system then 1, then balancing based on that.  That may be an inelegant but more balanceed solution.  Maybe a 10 base, so instead of 1 it costs 10, some summons/enchants cost less then or more then 10?

That said, it is a good thing that we can talk about gameplay changes instead of mostly bug fixes- that's a sign that the issues with the engine- a lot of hard work has been very effective in fixing most of them.  Step 1 in making Elemental what it should be, is pretty much complete (there's always bugs to squash, but I think the major work is done now.)

Sounds interessting. I´m curious about it. But to get an opinion i have to play it with these changes.

To OP:

+ Organized Sovereign Ability removed -> I´m happy about this. It was too strong.

+ Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15. -> Now i have to think about where to send my sov. Good.

+ Research costs increased -> Like it. Last Map with 1.07 i had research breakthroughts every 1-7 turns. It felt like "Ok, another on and another one and another one". But it should feel like "YEAH! A breakthrough".

Good idea with the global mana pool, but that takes away one of the big advantages of decendants.  Their built in mana pool is what makes decendants special.

Suggest having both the soverign and all decendants having mana usage without any maintance cost, while keeping the global mana pool maintence for everything else.