how about

- initial city gets walls

- cities with walls require seige tech to attack if defended (OPTION - only units with ranged attack may attack units in city, units in city get an automatic ranged attack to represent throwing rocks from the walls, units in city may leave and attack normally)

- soverign gets 1 spell for free if INT is 12 or above, and gets 2 spells for free if INT is 14 or above

Providing Seige tech is on a non military path then the additional time taken to reasearch it would allow the AI to create a reasonable defense.  The additional spells give int based soverigns some initial defense.

Dexterity might increase attack speed.  it might just be cool to have a hero that can take out several normal people per turn.

But the game should be balanced enough so that house rules like that are not required (or at least minimised)

Perhaps because your first city is being founded by your sov your sov could also automatically buff the city with a one off spell which grants a bonus the the stats of defending troops. This buff could last for 50 turns and take one mana to maintain. You could cancel the spell at anytime to get that 1 mana per turn back or after 50 turns the spell fades and you get the mana per turn back anyway. This would give other nations a chance to survive an initial zerg rush from the above strategy yet has the advantage of still allowing the zerger to feel like they have gained something by choosing their setup as they could explore and rain death on any faction silly enough to leave their starting capital while they are about.

This has been bantered around a bit in other threads... generally, I like the idea that the capitals should be buffed in some manner to make conquering them a mid-game endeavour. I'm all for open warfare from the get-go but roflstomping the AI would be more difficult if the enemy capitals were protected. There could be warfare over minor cities, resources, etc but taking those all-important capital cities should somehow wait until late-early game to mid-game in my opinion. There were some good ideas on how to do this from the community but I think the simplest solution is to provide:

• AI capable of defending it - probably difficult to code as players can easily use force magnification and zerg, the AI not so much, especially the variability of teleport as it is today
• City walls requiring siege technology - probably easy to code
• Some kind of special SOV buff (maybe like the one you can select at custom SOV creation) that permanently buffs the capital
• Archery/magic towers that provide ranged offense against any attackers
• Some kind of mixture noted above

I think it would create some interesting situations early game if the Capitals were essentially off limits until near mid-game. There could be all sorts of battles over resources and land that we don't experience today and the overall experience would benefit.

I've always played on medium maps, max players, custom SOV's, & ridiculous level AI. Maybe the experience is different on larger maps but I did try a 1v1 on tiny once and just stomped the AI in like 30 turns. Thanks for listening, that's my two gildars.

I think some of the problem is early game weapons are OP.  Oak spears and warstaffs especially.

I'd also like to see an interection between weapons, kinda like what was done in Civ IV.  Makes perfect sense in Elemental

Unsure what the actual relationships should be, and if we did this, we'd need to add polearms like glaives into the game.

This is a bad, bad idea. It's already bad enough that if an enemy sov poops out a poorly placed city on one of two resources you wanted, you have to go 2 tech out of your way to get rid of it and place a real city. At least you can take it from them now. If you couldn't even do anything about cities without researching tech... That would be rough.

Intelligence DOES do stuff. It should have more interplay with the game mechanics (spells in particular) than it does, but Intelligence is how you make Arcane Arrow the most powerful spell in the game.

This right here would be a giant bonus. A simple attack spell (5 Damage per cast, range of 6) would go a very very long way to offsetting early game chicanery.

MOM had a solution to the grunt rush through city walls.  Rather than needing siege tech, you had to attack at the doorway to the city.  This meant that you had to:

A) actually reach the doors, during which time archers were killing you with a + to their attack (due to altitude) and a - to the attackers archers (due to protection from the walls).

Once you were at the doors, you were in a 3 to 1 combat.  You could only attack the unit right behind the door, but the units in front, to  the left, and to the right could attack back.  Ranged attackers could attack from anywhere, so it was a grinder.  I could see this getting better as you upgraded your city walls.

So, I agree that easy, early walls are part of the solution, but it needs to be implemented in TC to be effective, not just a straight denial of attack if they have walls and you don't have siege equipment, then it takes too long to start actually having fights.  Siege walls should make holes in the walls that allow additional combats to occur, again in the TC.

As a competetive player (particulary of RTS), I understand the importance of balance. I also believe you should be able to do early attacks. The reason they are so effective in Elemental is because the game is designflawed. You couldn't rush A.I in Master of Magic on a challenging difficulty lvl. Norr could you in Age of Wonders (any of'em). But in Elemental....

Needing siegetech or siegeequipment to assault towns is a bad idea.

Why?

Age of Wonders.

You had to bring along a unit with wallcrushing, wallclimbing or flying to be able to assault a town with walls.

What was the result of that then?

In the early stages, you brought along a batteringram or two. They were slow (20mp) and a bit vulnerable. If the defender destroyed your batteringram then you had to abandon the siege unless you had a ranged unit advantage (the sieging players ranged units had to go up against the wall to have any chance at all to hit the defenders. And up against the wall they had a 50% chance to miss.

That doesn't sound that bad, but the A.I wasn't good at controlling their batteringrams so you simply attacked the A.I when they were coming to your cities and took out the batteringrams. Alternatively you could do it if they ever attacked you.

In the later stages, you could use flyers and more importantly, regular units with wallcrushing (Dwarven Giants anyone?) so walls weren't a big issue anymore.

That system hindered early aggression though and kinda forced you to bring in catapults or a ranged unit advantage since you wanted to take over lots of towns.

Age of Wonders II and Shadow Magic solved this problem. ANY unit could attack the walls so any peasant or swordsman could take over a capital if it was unguarded. If a city had walls though, the defending archers had a substantial advantage since they gotted a higher Chance to Hit due to height difference.

And even if you managed to smash down a gate, you would face three units against one of yours since the gate is a chokepoint. You get the first strike though. That's the benefit you get for putting yourself in a 3v1 situation.

Gave karma to werewindlefr and Winnihym for defending the belief of early attacks and particulary for arguing against suggestions to play simcity for 100 turns.

Eh, just give every faction's initial city a midgame-level guardian unit (that can't move outside the city, of course).  It'd stop quick kills, both by players and NPCs.

My "rush" attack is as thus...

Sovereign has the mobility spellbook, the terraforming spellbook, the adventurer perk for +1 movement, and the trait that also increases movement.  I buy him speedy boots and he starts with a movement of 5.  Start by rushing around gathering locale freebies while uncovering the map.  Battle as much as possible so you gain levels.  If it will take you more than 5 turns to get home to heal OR you need to get home quickly, allow a wondering monster to kill you.

The goal here is to build towards some armor while uncovering a quest that will give you the Sword of the Sovereign.  The quest requires 3 midnight stones, but that is rarely a problem with the heightened movement rate. 

With the movement, you can get to level 3 or 4 very, very quickly, find plenty of gold for armor upgrades, complete the sword quest, and then single-handedly conquer nearby sovereigns with very few issues.

The nice thing is that this approach only requires tweaks to your sovereign... Any other end of game strategy will work - this just lets you take down a few of the near-by enemy sovereigns which opens expansion and earns you a few nice towns.

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Don't quote me as I am not 100% on this but I believe Stat distribution is a player choice.   my heros tend to become mirror copies of my sov, let's call it a casualty of my playstyle and choice.

I find that Intelligence besides amping up a few select damage spells does the following:

+ Improves Spell resistence attribute

+ Improves the chances of spells cast to not be resisted.

+ Required to be a minimum amount to to even be able to cast many higher level spells (Spell Dependent). 

Dexterity for:

+ Dodge

+ Accuracy (speculation on my part- its possible that this is Strength and/or both Dex/Str related) Accuracy is used for to-hit calcs for melee and bows

Str For Damage modifier

Charisma for Hero recruitment and diplomacy modifiers (speculation)

Constitution for HP

I roleplay a Wizard-Sov and my sov stats look like Str ~10/ Dex~10 / Int MAX / Cha ~10/ Con ~10-12

I need the 10's for the early game before I have spells and any significant mana pool.

I eventually make all or certainly most heroes into casters and their stats grow to be usuall like my Sovs except that Dex and Cha are Don't Cares(DC) for me.  (playstyle choice)  Str ~10/ Dex  DC / Int MAX / Cha DC/ Con ~10

This is just my 2 coppers...

Part of the reason rushing doesn't cost economy, is because you can't use the unit queue for anything BUT building offensive units. If combat units costed more, or you could build economic units instead, THEN there would be a trade off between rushing and economics.

I see two solutions

The Easy and Predictable Way

-Combat units cost more population. Like way more. Every 'model' costs 5 citizens. The more expensive the units, the more citizens it costs to make.

The Fun Way

-Add in cheap 'unit packs' that allow you to train units that provide resources or special bonuses. I saw something similar to this in the XML files, where an early game ability was to build 'loremasters' that would increase your mana pool. Totally overpowered, but it could be utilized for something similar. You could have 'unit versions' of buildings, allowing an economics focused player to utilize the power to double build queues.

-Make building scouts much cheaper. That way you have a trade off: build scouts to find new resources, or overpower your enemy?