Just wishful thinking?

You do have a point about the in-between lands of a faction. They exist primarily as the area traversed by units and secondarily as a possible location for a goodie hut. However, the mechanics you suggest do not necessarily make this land more interesting or compelling to control. These kinds of mechanics are incredibly similar to those found in the Civ series, though without the addition of tile improvements. All these mechanisms do would be to add up all the "workable" tiles and apply some static bonus based upon some calculation. Thus, in the most general case of such mechanisms, a type of geographic determinism would emerge in much the same way as the Civ series, wherein factions with a good starting location and reasonably good expansion possibilities would have an extensive advantage from the beginning. A better idea would be something more in line with starbases from Gal Civ, wherein improvements could be created in the in-between lands that held some strategic effect. Some possible ideas would be a trade post, which provides a bonus to near by trade routes, a guard tower, which houses units which automatically attack enemies within a certain range of the tower, or any number of lesser resource buildings, which would work the various tiles for a minor resource income. This way the player has more in choices as to how to use these lands beyond a standard mechanic.

Your idea about moving units through each other would be interesting, though there are many hurtles to making this both workable and fun. For instance, how do you handle a tile being attack which has 3 different units in it? How do you handle selection of each unit from the tile without additional levels of UI? In general, there are good answers to these questions and a whole host of others, but it is questionable is this one mechanic is worth the additional effort compared to others such as terrain considerations, flanking, or unit fatigue, which would all be more easily implemented.

As for your numerous posts concerning special abilities, these posts are intiguing and have a lot of interesting points, but the argument for these abilities was made much more powerful when presented with a mod, which easily showed both how easily they could be implemented and the extent to which they made a deep impact.

Diversity is a nice buzz word in general, not that it is ill placed in this context. In your first diversity point, you make an argument for unit types, yet unit typing concerns definition and distinction, not diversity. In other posts, I too have made a similar case for unit typing, though now this case feels weak under the weight of many other considerations. What makes a knight? A mount? Heavy Armor? Some kind of Lance? Beyond some metaphysical quality defining a knight, we might consider a knight as a sum of equipment and training. Thus, why not simply define distinction based on these points. As far as equipment is concerned, it has been stated that FE will contain damage types and resistances, and as has been proven by several mods, abilities can be attached to any equipment, even to the point of making entire stat based skill trees.

As for your third diversity point, it is unclear how interconnected research trees will make really make the game more fun to play. While it could be interesting to have a few cross branch interconnections, such as War Colleges requiring Logistics, each interconnection means further defining the possible paths of research. For instance, say we have 6 technologies A, B, C, X, Y, and Z which are connected as A->X, B->Y, C->Z. In this example, we have 3 initial choices of research, and no matter which we researched we will have 3 choices for our next goal. However, if we change the interconnections to be something more like A->X B,X->Y, X,Y,C->Z. The player can research all the first three choices, but then is horrifically limited when they arrive at the second tier. A more interesting thought might be to allow multiple paths with mutually exclusive technologies. So one might have two competing technologies, such as communal farming v industrial farming, with both technologies being prerequisites for the next tier technology. This would allow for the player to choice his technological path while also making his faction feel distinct based on his choice.

Addendum: Btw, you use boni numerous time for the plural of bonus, however boni literally means "good men" not "good things". In current venacular english bonuses is correct, though bona or bonum are both correct in terms of Latin meaing "good things". Boni Viri - Good Men, Bona Res - Good Things.

Thank you.

@ Kenata: You bring up a number of good questions, let me just briefly say:

One the one hand: Yes. While the Civ series has a lot of faults, the way that terrain works *in general* is not one of them; it makes land something worth fighting over. Currently, in EWOM, that is not the case, and is a serious setback for me when I try to play it as a 4X game.

On the other hand: No. Please note I only meant to sketch the mere bare bones of a basic kind of system and was by no means indicating that there should not be the kinds of modifiers you indicated as well -- I attempted to do that in my other posts on Terrain.

In other words: I disagree strongly with your claim that something like this would not make the game more interesting; I think any 4X game -- even space-based 4X games -- needs to have terrain with inherent value, or else expansion is moot. Additionally, making terrain have some form of valence would allow the player more choices: Do I attempt to maximize materials here (which would mean less food), or should I rather attempt to invest in long-term gains in food there (which would mean short-term loss in materials), etc.? More strategic choices = less no brainers = more fun.

Agree. The same questions I pose too. I attempted to answer at least a few of these questions (brief sketches) on some of my other threads on terrain. (hgaving problems linking because I cannot open other Elemental windows, they crash today). Granted, there will need to be some additional form of UI, but so many aspects of this game need an UI-overhaul anyhow.

PS. I am unfamiliar with a lot of English vernacular and believed to have read "boni" as the plural for "bonus" on fora such as these. ;.) Since English is a language without explicit flexion (except in cases of pronouns), how is one supposed to make *dative* plural?

PPS. Bah the forums (sic.) go boom again, I give up I post without links.