IMHO This is the best idea I've read so far to fix this 'issue' (sorry, but if you don't like teleport.... it's not like the AI uses it).

I think this is a cool idea, though I think it should also consume a units entire movement points to do. This way units can not teleport if they have no moves and a newly teleported unit can not attack after arriving. Maybe there could even be some kind of short teleport debuff to make teleported units a bit weaker at defense ( this way a single group of troops couldn't effectively defend all your large size cities ). 

Functionally they're equivalent across genres, but I think the term "teleporter," "transporter," or "gate" is used more in sci-fi and "portal" or "spell-x" is used more in fantasy. Other than the terminology though, they're more or less equivalent, although a lot of the time in movies the two "ends" are locked to specific locations or dimensions (more often than not I think).  

Hmm. The moongates from Ultima.

They literally were moongates because they only appeared at certain stellar constellations and where they led also depended on the phase of the moon.

That doesn't create as much strategic choice as possible, though.

So... let's invent the (working title) astral gates.

• A limited number of them exists in the world at creation.    Their location is completely random.
  They should probably be limited to land.   Otherwise a lot of gates would lead into a watery grave without water walking/flying units.
  However, that shouldn't be an argument against that because those gates are just magical - they do not care about how easy it is for you to use them...
• Gates are invisible to you until found / discovered / quested.
• Once you have found such a gate, you have to "meld" a magically summoned Gatemaster creature with it to take control.
  That creature would be part of the magical research.
  That enables you to enter the gate.  You can send units through the gate at this point but without controlling both sides of it,
  there is a certain chance of your units taking damage or even dieing, lost forever in the astral plane.
  Even greater chance of failure when another faction is controlling the "other end" (has a Gatemaster in place) and you do not have a non-aggression pact with them.
  That makes a quick assault risky when the enemy is controlling "his" side of the gate and very hard when he is actively controlling the gate.
• Gatemaster creatures are the only ones that cannot cross gates. Would be too easy to just send disposable units through until one of them makes it. =P
• Once you control both sides of the gate, you can move both ends of the gate at 1 square / turn.
  That makes it important to control them or at least prevent your enemy from doing so.
  Gates controlled by the enemy are not invisible to you, even though you still cannot access them without the proper technology or whatnot.
  There must still be a way to do something about it when your enemy creeps a gate deep into your territory...
• The "doing something about it" would consist of sending an army to kill their Gatemaster on at least one end of the gate.
  That is what you can always see.  Seeing the actual gate would require research.
• This would allow very fast (but not instant - there should be travel time!) transportation but you could not instantly move the end points across your entire empire (as with Teleport) so you'd have to decide where such a gate would benefit you most.
• You should be able to guard or garrison the end point of such a gate.  The Gatemaster should be able to be part of an army.

Yes, we all know that you are Anti Teleport Guy.

But you should accept that your super power of saying no can not solve every problem.
Slowing the game down does not automatically make it better.

I have already suggested several approaches to integrate Teleport.  Fast travel all by itself is not the problem.  Is how it's implemented.

To add to my earlier idea, there should be a global spell that prevents enemies from using teleportation magic in your zone of control, and possibly a detection spell that will reveal the location of a stack that used teleportion magic in or near (say within 8 tiles) of your zone of control.

Excellent Idea

This just makes me want the original Restore Lands spell back, with or without a sovereign requirement for settlement founding. Making 'zone of control' directly connected to essence magic just makes sense, except that none of the magic so far really makes much sense as anything other than random decoration for a medieval wargame.

Hmmm Teleports are indeed powerfull for the player. Since i got caster only dynasties its actually pretty devastating with a half dozen of my children (each around 15-20 Mana). 

But i did run into one problem. I can deal with one short front line or one choke point (in both Atack and Defense) but teleports are long-range stuff. I can also deploy a half dozen stacks in one single turn - maybe i can do that in lategame twice - after that i am normaly out of mana (or rather out of the amount i like to spend) for a couple of turns. To Date it happend to me twice that i got into a multifrontal war and more often the Ai used many smaller units (other players, bandits and monsters but mainly pioneers and heros) to flow around my stacks - right in the phase were i am out of mana.

The deploying of Megastacks is useless:

- if they are themselves to slow

- i cant teleport them often enough

If the Ai would consider these two things you would have some leverage against heavy teleporting players. Some ways to get around porting players i can think of right now solely ai vice are the following that may or may not build up on each other:

De- and Restack for attack and Defense

If a "Mega"-stack appears right of my troops i would do the following. Draw back and avoid fights as much as possible (thus flee) and then destack my own army into a number of smaller units. These 4 or 5 units (hero+trooper normally) can path now around the Megastack with different paths*. I might loose a certain number of troops but in the end the bigger number of my troops gets around the Megastack and restack to take the city or whatever. 

The Megastack has two choices though: Destack itself or run for one of the smaller stacks. A good player might Destack to get all my smaller stacks which is on itself not that bad - it steals thought time. Enter: "the second row" - behind the first line of attackers or defenders could be a second row of smaller stacks that Restack with the fleeing troops to anhilate the parts of the Megastack.  

Mobile-Guard-stacks

The Ai should have Stacks stationed around the country-site (to kill the monsters and such). Normaly for wolves etc. small stacks are enough but if you have quite a number of them the AI could restack them into a fair army to counteract. Its expensive though to have mobile guards. Station troops in between Citys on the roads.

Hit and run strategy might be good on tac-map too. A small stack engages takes out one or two units (by archers and magic) and flees again. If you get some spiders into your guerilla team that web down the enemy its even better.  

Mine-fields

Following up the mobile guard idea : if you dont know where something will appear make sure you can control where it can appear and which conditions/paths it will find and can use. Keep empty but guarded zones between Citys such as Forrests or other slow movement zones which edges are guarded by faster units. Use "raise"-land and its counterpart to create artificial chokepoints (also works wonders for atacks). Do "burned earth" tactics on minor Setlements instead of defending them so the player cant create a bridgehead. Burned earth works also wonders for hit and run on the Game-map to shorten the supply of the player/enemy. 

Scapegoats and Bait.

If the Ai "knows" (thus has seen a stack being teleported f.e.) that the player has 1 or two "mega"-stacks which he ports around and the Ai is attacking it can use scapegoat tactics to lure the Megastack(s) to somewhere else. The Ai could circumvent parts of the enemy territory and store a Megastack out of plain sigh. Then another unit does a Full Frontal Attack onto something. If the Player now ports his megastack its most likely bound because the caster lost lots of Mana. The Ais Megastack can now advance to take out some target or another. Or it could destack and take out resources and kill traders more sophistcated is:

Seek and destroy

As follow up use seek and destroy. Sort your targets into category for example make casters primary targets. If in a city is a price or princes advance with a small stack of archers (or own casters) and take him/her out. As soon they are dead flee from the battle. Take out resources with fast raiding troops like light cavalary thus destroy the supplylines and shorten the supply. Start with highclass resources like crystals or ventri andgold mines. Take into account distances if you want and avoid enemy troops if possible.

Take a city and move out again to get the next target. Avoid monsters and attack right after the player has taken care of them (thus might be lower on mana and injured)

* its Pathingwise a bit strange because you have to take into account not only the position of the enemy stack and a rough estimate of its range but also the other paths. Birdflocks react onto predators like this and there is 4th rule for boids for that behavior.

Btw. Portals are part of many modern fantasys. Many phantasy settings with multiple worlds use them like DnD, TDE, MTG (i have to say elemental reminds me to MTG in its beginning phyrexian war phase). Teleport was also in many phantasy games like Diablo(1,2,3) HoMM and so forth. In folklore you have also 7 mile boots, elves with secret paths and what not that essentially work like a fullblown portal.

Black Knight:

It would help your case if you used more argumentation in your posts. Anyone can make a statement "X is not good for Y" or similar. Try to explain why.

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I think most of it boils down to killer stacks and how you feel about them. A single very powerful force, not even an army, which is used to defeat 95% of enemies. It really gets tiresome after a while. A lot of fantasy is about extraordinary heroes, but there are also notable examples of down to earth fantasy. Black Company is about fairly ordinary people and soldiers. They do have a few magicians, but they're pretty unremarkable and their existence is kept secret so as to not attract attention of the really powerful mages. In Black Company, it often takes them several months or even a year to get somewhere. And they get there on foot, because they can't afford horses for every single soldier and not everything is a coastal city. They don't use magic balls, mirrors, or other euphemisms for telecommunication.  You can certainly do fantasy that way, and Black Company is regarded as one of top fantasy books.

When easily accessible teleportation comes into play, a lot of strategy (positioning, maneuvering) goes out of the window. Fantasy games are especially notorious for their use of killer stacks and teleportation. They often have multiple levels of experience, and units/heroes get exponentially more powerful. I'm sad one of my favourites, Master Of Magic, also belongs to this category. At least in MOM there are multiple varied ways to boost travel - there are enchanted roads, floating island, pathfinding, water walk, word of recall (teleport), gates (very rare spells, you're likely not to find them at all in a game). If Teleport is common and effective, it sets the bar high for all other movement boosters. Then need to be close to Teleport in usefulness, because Teleport is a no-brainer.

In Dominions 3, there are ways to teleport, but most of them only move a single commander without units. Teleportation spells have drawbacks and fairly high costs. If you rely on teleportation, you'll have a smaller army.

I think it speaks very well of AoW community that they dislike teleportation. I like AoW because it's not so much about your perfect force gaining experience forever, and reloading each time you lose a unit. There are only 2 higher levels of experience: Veteran and Elite, and they're nice but not overpowering. Compare to MOM where elite units get +1 hp (which for many units means double durability) and +1 to hit (for most units +33.3(3)% damage dealt). That's huge, but wait there are Ultra Elite and Champion levels too. In AoW teleportation gates work one way, and destination tower needs at least a basic Wizard Tower. So it's a late game tech.

A magic strategy game without teleportation sounds strange to me. So far I like random_target's idea best, but I think we should also have something in the way of a magic spell.

I think the Riftwar by Feist is a good place to brainstorm from. In that story, they had rifts that were part device and part spell/magic. So we'll say that fits in pretty well with what random_target was saying.

As far as spells go, teleportation came in 3 types as far as I recall.

Firstly there was the memorized pattern method, where magicians could only teleport to those rooms where they were familiar with the associated pattern imprinted on the floor. This can also be applied to what random_target suggested.

Secondly, there was line-of-sight teleportation. Pug used this on Kelewan to reach the elves. This would be a good spell to have, as it would limit the distance you could teleport, and it could only be done if a caster is in the group. Also, if there were hills or mountains in the direction you wanted to teleport, then those hills or mountains would be as far as you could go in one teleport (if they were in sight range). This would make terrain a more serious consideration when founding a new city.

Thirdly, there was a latitude/longitude teleport. This was best accomplished by Miranda. The downside is that it is very risky, as you could teleport into a mountain or the wall of a house or something else solid, or the bottom of the ocean if you weren't exactly sure what was at those co-ordinates (not literally numeric co-ordinates, but rather a sense of distance and direction).

There are a couple of ways that this could be implemented. One way is to have a percentage chance that teleporting will go bad and cause the group to be stuck for N turns (or pay X mana to negate). Another way is to apply a 'summoning sickness' or in this case teleport sickness, where for 1 or N turns the group is immobile, prone and vulnerable (i.e no mana, no counterattacks).

Also there were teleportation devices (manufactured by the Tsurani Great Ones), expensive but with limited usage, so that could be a consideration as far as in game items go.

I would also suggest that by late game, and with specializing, a player could have the 'Epic' teleport, i.e. relatively cheap, unrestricted, no penalty, and applicable to any group of units. It would be a lot of fun as well, if the player could use a teleport spell on enemy units if they fail a resistance check or if they don't have an ability or enchantment that protects them from that.

As a strategy game player, I look for the quickest most efficient way to dismember my enemies. I don't have one "killer" stack, I have multiple strong stacks that take apart many enemies on many fronts, making the whole idea of teleport awash to begin with. It's not about a "killer" stack, it's about stacks that are strong enough to defeat whatever opponent is in front of you. You don't need a division to beat a company, you'd use (worst case) a battalion and best case a platoon. I don't mind the concept of heroes since we're in a fantasy setting, but heroes should'nt be able to beat a well equipped & experienced 4-man squad unless you have some "world wonder" type weapon. I see "magic" as a form of indirect fire artillery in a fantasy game, so it's sort of out-of-proportion to its size, which is fine (so is a radio).

It only gets tiresome to me if I can win all the time (i.e. weak AI), at which point I usually start playing another game.