I've been pondering the movement rates in Elemental.  I broke out my Warlords III game recently, to keep me busy until 1.1 arrives.  In that game, units have significantly faster rates of movement (Witness the air elemental which has 36 movement, or 18 'regular' squares of movement).

One of the glitches I've encountered before in Elemental (pre 1.09) is that I'd click on a city building menu, but then when I clicked 'done' I'd be stuck in 'city scale', and my units would be moving on the city overhead map at their usual 'movement rate', but obviously at 1/2 speed now since the city view shows 4 squares for every map square.

This got me thinking... what if units moved at a double rate, but on the city scale instead of the world map scale?  So a Sovereign's 'base move' would be 4 instead of 2.  On it's own, this sounds pretty minor in the big picture, but opens up some very interesting options for items and such that increase movement.  As an example:

When you develop Horse tech, it has several sub levels.  Your basic 'nag' horse adds 2 MP.  A better horse (next tech) might add 3. Fast horses (next tech) would add 4.  Warhorses (yet another tech) might only add 2 or 3 MP, but also add an attack bonus.

This would also work in the other direction.  Wearing armor would reduce your MP's.  Full leather by say 10%, Chain by 20%, Plate by 30%, as an example.  When you have 2 MP, You'd normally not see a reduction (1.4 movement is often the same as 2.0 for game purposes).  But at 4 MP, plate reduces movement by 1.

And, if you increased MPs by 2.5 or 3 times, then what you wear becomes more significant.  Plus, moving 6 MP is always more interesting than just moving 2 MP.  6 MP at map scale is considered too powerful (one of the reasons we saw the removal of Organized).  6 MP at city scale is much less disruptive.

Along these lines, perhaps Traveling boots only add 2 MP, but Longstriders add 3 MP...

Also, when you are boosting your Hero or Sovereign's move ability, that .5 (or .33 if you triple MPs) suddenly looks more tempting!

Plus, this would 'unify' the game a bit.  If the entire game is played at 'city map' scale, then you don't have to think in two different scales.  Plus, it opens up more options for more interesting terrain.  That 'partial forest' in the big square may only occupy 1-3 little squares, so you might be able to utilize the clear parts and avoid the MP hit for moving through that big square.  Road paths also become a little more interesting.  That 'partial forest' might have your road passing through the clear part, with bandits lurking in the forest parts...