How does Sphere of Influence add to the fun for Elemental?

In the beta, it didn't have any purpose whatsoever (except graphical). Then, I think around beta 3b, they made it a requirement that resources were within the influence in order for you to build improvements on the resource. This also meant that there was a tug-of-war with influence over resources near the borders. Then, in 1.08 they added bonuses if you were fighting in "friendly" environments inside the influence zones (kingdom players got bonuses in kingdom environment, empire in empire environment).

My personal opinion is that the graphical aspect of the influence zone is one of the coolest features of the game. I'm also extremely positive to the tug-of-war with influence controlling resources - this was a huge improvement from before, if you wanted to build on a resource your city had to be directly connected to it, or within x tiles (horrible). It made for really fun gameplay with a simple change.

The bonuses are kind of "meh". If there were more types of environments, it would be cooler. But now, I get my bonuses in half the enemy factions' influence zones because they're the same Allegiance as me. I'm hoping that is a "first step" and that they'll improve it a lot.

I thought the OP was talking about zones of control, not influence?

But since there are no ZOC's in Elemental, he must mean influence!

ZOC is typically used in games to represent a zone of control over locations adjacent to combat units, not (from) buildings/towns unless there's a combat unit in that town (in which case it's the unit, not the town, which exerts zoc). The OP is refering to zone of influence that is part of town' growth, totally unrelated to combat units or heroes.

ZOC could've been used very effectively on the tactical level to define front/side/rear facings for combat squads & heroes. A hexagon tactical map is always a better choice at the tactical scale than squares for this reason. The tactical combat system, as of now, is too simplistic to deal with combat facings, hopefully this will be added in the future to further enrich the game.

... there's a whole lot that can be done with combat systems that utiliize zoc. For fantasy type man-to-man combat like we have in this game, we can:

1) define f/s/r facings like I mentioned above

2) additional mp costs should be associated to move from locations zoc-to-zoc

3) shield bonuses or negations can be easily determined from zoc orientation

4) realistic modifiers based on side/rear attacks can be added to the system (which should also affect the defender's morale).

.... those are probably the main reasons games use ZOC, although effects vary with game scale (tactical squald level vs brigade level vs divisional level for example).

The Zone of Influence (which should really be called a Sphere of Influence even though it's not a sphere) is there primarily to determine who gets the benefit of resources. Plus it's cool to see your empire's borders expanding across the map.

Zone of Control is a separate thing as others have pointed out, and it's not in the game right now.

Yes, HEX rules. You can have actual flanking and back-stabbing, and put dual-wield units to effective use.

The Sphere of Influence has a lot of potential as it can be used for numerous different purposes in game. I am definitely with Heavenfall on this one, it is shaping up nicely and adds strategic depth the developing your cities.

In GalCiv 2 planets might defect if they ended up surrounded by another faction's ZOC / SOI or whatever you call it.  I wonder if something like that might show up in EWoM after they get other hi-pri items taken care of.

You're good. In any application of the term, it is understood it never represents a literal sphere.

Your influence zone ;

•  Changes the look of the landscape.
• Determines if you can build on a resource.
• As of one of the later patches I believe your units get a slight combat bonus in their own Zone of Influence (can't remember the details though).
• You only regenerate health in your zone of influence.
• Teleport spells can only move you to a target in your Zone of influence.
• Other nations can only enter your zone of influence by declaring war or signing a non-agression pact with you (so you can build cities near natural choke points in terrain to restrict you opponents movements.

Essentially it's the border of your nation and magical influence on the land itself. Actually I think it makes more sense in Elemental than it did in GC2, after all borders in space would be very hard to monitor yet alone control. If you are meshed with the land the way you are as soverign in elemental though that's a bit different.

1 Cute, but who cares

2 Good

3 Who cares since it is slight and we have no way to know anyway

4 Silly, one should always regenerate health, a little faster INSIDE cities and much faster inside cities with a hospital or a healer. This game is slow enough wothout forcing people to wait around in their territory every time they are a little hurt (for a rule that makes no sense)

5 Teleport is the DUMBEST way to speed things up after you have to wait around in your territory to regenerate health and having moved 2 tiles each turn.

6 Good

3 is not "slight" and you can easily find out what the bonus is if you pay attention to in-game tooltips.

Edit: 25% bonus to attack and defense in friendly environments, 25% less attack and defense in hostile environments

1. I care. In fact it is one of my favourite details within the game. It might be purely cosmetic, but it is a joy to watch as the world comes back to life.

Then you should play Age of Wonders Shadow Magic instead, where the domain spells have a powerful impact on the game: frostlings are invisible in their snowy territory, a life domain make cities produce more, a death magic domain spell covers the map in darkness... Things there are "cool", things here are "cute".

Right, I forgot in this game the manual is something you read when it decides to manifests itself...

It's alright they are working on things... Let's be patient!

1 I care, it may only be look and feel but it adds to the atmosphere.

3 Thanks to whoever clarified that it's a bigger difference than I thought.

4 I agree with you on this though I do think your channler should regnerate faster inside his own borders since the land is linked to his essence. I also think mana should regenerate faster in your own border though as of 1.1 this won't be relavent.

5 Teleports fine the cost is unbalanced at the moment but when you have a big kingdom being able to teleport a rapid response force across it in a turn is very important.

Really though I do think the key points are 2 and 6 in terms of what it really adds to the game in a non-cosmetic way. Also a nation should have a border.

Even when the information is in-game, you don't like it? Make up your mind. You missed it, you got called on it, move on.

A bump to healing rate for being inside friendly territory hardly counts as being "meshed with the land" for me. But then I was crazy enough way back when to suggest that conquering a city should require a mana and/or essence investment to complete the transition from one sovereign's ownership to another.

I'd also still like to see spells based on this sort of connection, e.g. an analog to GC2's Eyes of the Universe that cleared FoW on all your territory. If essence were still part of the land-healing equation, I'd also really like to see options for draining essence back out of land so you had some interesting choices for 'crisis' situations. Really need to build that Serious Smack-down Golem? Then you gotta give up the better part of your back forty to get the essence you need.

Originally you could not expand outside your sphere of influence without spending essence. 

That was a cool mechanic, however there were a few problems:    settlers were not really implanted at that time, influence did not spread quickly enough, the dragons that spread it on their own were rare and you could not tell what was habitable and what was not because they (I assume boogiebac) opted to use a very pale and hard to see green on the cloth map.  

As a result it got changed at some point I guess to be more like other games, and the sphere of influence only effects what can and cannot be built on in terms of resources.

I personally like the old system, but it was far too undeveloped, and now that its post released they'd have to do a ton of work to get it back intot he game without upsetting people too much.

AoW 2 had a great selection of those kind of spells, but the relative controlled area in Elemental is typically smaller then what some Wizards Towers would give you so they might not work as well.

But I sure do want to see spells like Watcher (clears FoW in your domain), Enchanted Roads (speeds up movement on roads in your domain), and Damnation (curses any enemy in your domain by lowering magic resistance and giving them vulnerability to Death based attacks). Some of those kind of spells were just fun to cast.

Forum burp and/or fingercheck.

I've no idea what the coding burdens for a change along these lines might be, but it seems that with how the launch went, the business of upsetting people is kind of a given, at least until the first full expansion pack. Then again, I'm one of those anti-fanboys who's decided to treat things as if the beta is still underway, so I might have excessive expectations for change in the next few months.

Tridus, your AoW 2 remarks make me think I might try when it hits the bottom of the discount basket at GOG. I avoided trying it so far on account of the lack a random map generator and what smelled like too much focus on MP. MoM had Enchanted Roads and a variety of other global spells that I've had in mind when I pine for magic based on a sovereign's connection to his or her realm. The AoW stuff sounds similar.

Focus on MP? Really? I've never seen anything to suggest that, other then that the MP works without disabling large swaths of the game. The single player is pretty good, though they didn't add a map generator until AoW:SM (which was a standalone expansion for 2, they play the same way).

Maybe put it down to the Users vs. Reviewers problem Brad discussed recently? I know the random-map gap was the deal-killer for me, and I can't recall much about how I got the impression that MP baggage was also a problem for the game for players like me. Maybe I just got misled by some over-enthusiastic MP booster talk for the game.