Jesus Christ, dude. This is like the 50th post you've made about the damn teleport spell.

I promise that I will mod it out for you, myself, when the game comes out if you just give it a break.

Ya, all aspects of the game can be modded out, if they say killed your lover or whatever seems to have happened with you and teleporting. 

When they realize how unbalanced the game is in favour of air magic (and hopefully they will), the devs will have two choices: make teleport spells optional or make them available to everyone instead than only to air magic users. If they make them optional there will be at least a way to balance the game and play it as a wargame where strategic placement and movement play a fundamental role, instead than just seeing ONE superstack jumping around a beautiful but perfectly useless map (mountans, seas, valleys will be made useless by some sort of hyperspace infantry).

Because I have seen that happening in similar games I feel I have to warn them. Personally I won't play a hyperspace fantasy game, it's as simple as that.

I actually agree with Black-Knight. Easy army teleportation is not a small thing. Where other players will need multiple armies you will only ever need one huge one. Out exploring or questing and the AI back stabs you? No problem just teleport your entire army from across the world right to where you are under attack. Strategy, forethought, or planning; Who needs it when you can instantly move entire armies around. It also give players a huge advantage versus AIs.  I am not sure why they don't just make it caster specific. There are good reasons why mass teleport is usually a ultimate ability like in WarcraftIII.

You frankly aren't grasping the strategic consequences that yes exist in 1.3 as well.  It doesn't matter that you can only teleport to your territory because you can just attack normally with all your troops in one huge bunch and if one of your cities gets under attack you just teleport back. Teleport means you never have to split your army. That's a huge advantage over other players who can't move troops around instantly and thus have to station troops everywhere. Thus teleport allows some players to build "blobs of death" and roll over other players. So much strategy and planning is removed once you get teleport. A few fireballs won't help you if your enemy outnumbers you 4 to 1 because he can safely empty all his cities and just roll over you consequence free. There are tons of other cheap strategies as well. Think about real life, what would generals rather have: better guns, or the ability to move troops around instantly?

You can abuse this so badly. Say you see an enemy city that's empty. So you gather your sovereigns army and head out  to conquer it quickly. You are unlikely to be able to reach the city in one turn. So when you end your turn your opponent checks out your army and sees his is bigger for all the reasons given above, teleports his blob in, attacks, and bam your sovereign and your army is dead. Game over. Say another player attacks you on the clear other side of your empire in the next few turns. Normally you would have to plan ahead and hope you garrison was strong enough to hold them off, but you have teleport so you just teleport in and bam wipe him out to. Entering the territory of someone with mass teleport is instant death.

How does that compare to say fireball, or even earthquake? Mass teleport in the hands of someone who knows how to use it is inherently broken even if it costs ridiculous amounts of mana. Maybe if it was a level 5 spell with several limitations on it like it uses up all movement points, instead of a level 3 spell.

A simpler solution might be 2 teleport spells;

1st - Only for Sovereigns and Champions

2nd - For Armies, but its a 5th level spell and costs 500 mana to cast. Sure you can use it, but it is so expensive that you can likely use it only once or twice.

Okay you guys are making some very good points here. It is too powerful to disregard. I agree it should either be nerfed or split into multiple spells or something more brilliant like Inteligence affecting number of tiles teleported. I remember awhile back when we all thought we could use attribute based data to decide spell effect. That was crushed by realizing how bad some of those functions worked. They were really a mess. 

Hopefully the new game has all that cleaned up so that spells can reach their full potential:

ex: Airwalk -  Distance is Int./4, Cost is 10(Distance Traveled)(Number of Units in Party)

This would be a pretty fair compromise of mana distance. It could be useful to get around mountains and seas without creating the kind of strategy you all fear would ruin the strategy of the game. These kinds of balances are what this game needs. 

ex: Fire Dart - Damage is 8 + Int./2,  Range 5 + Int./10

This should be possible to add if calculations are usable in FE. I can't imagine this game going far without them.

If this game is good there could even be an added angel race that has even better teleport spells but at a cost of defensive capabilities and roads and limited access to any other form of magic. Ideas like that are what keep my dream of this game alive.

I totally agree with Black-Knight. Many games have had this spell, like the Heroes-series too, and it's always a game/fun ruiner. Plz nerf it drastically to a set amount of tiles you can move for free or remove it completely. It does not add anything to strategy or fun, and I have never liked it in any game.

Thing is, it's not necessarily broken. It just needs balance. Kind of like most things in the game. I do agree it's too easy to abuse right now, but that CAN be rectified right now without having to rewrite any of the game's internal code.

It seems like instead of trying to balance what the game has, they instead change how a whole system works.

I also agree that they should cut it, but I seriously doubt they are willing to do that. From the beginning the devs just seemed to refuse the evidence that teleport kills the game. Probably they are afraid that the maps, being so big, would make things tedious in the late game... While in fact the whole point of having a large empire is to struggle and keep it together when it is very big.

I still don't see the point of an item that forces us to "mop up" the game from enemy units when it is almost over... I'd rather see complications coming up in the late game, rather than a tool to just end it (and that is assuming teleport spell come out in the late game, because as it is now it certainly looks like we'll have to 'enjoy' them from the very beginning).

in single player games we'll have an overkill tool to exploit the AI, while in multiplayer the game will be about jumping around and all the efforts to trick the enemy will be overcome by their opportunity to just teleport back at any time.

Silly and sad.

Add stealth units that move undetected on specific terrain, instead! Add guerrilla strategies that can be applied against stronger empires, so that even when owning a large empire we'll have problems to deal with... Add depth and strategy instead than simplify the game, making it look like an arcade!!

i feel that if you increased the mana cost then it'll actually make a big difference.

If you have all your people in 1 blob, then all i need is a relatively week army to capture your towns, and i'll just send one every few turns to ensure that you burn up all you mana on teleporting around. Cheap high movement units can easily capture your towns if you go with massive blob idea and you'll quickly burn up your mana. The AI i noticed likes sending pointlessly weak groups at your town, and if you have to keep teleporting back, then yeah you're gonna kill your mana pretty quickly.

Even as it is, with all the random monsters and AI on 3 borders, i'm not making enough mana to keep protecting my cities without having to station units inside.

Personally I don't even understand the concept of "mopping up" the map in the late game. You are either tired of playing or you aren't... If you have to hurry and end the game because you are already sure you are winning and you are getting bored, then there is something weird going on!

Anyway I really don't think that making it rare or expensive will be of any help. It will still be a game breaker, because if you use it at the wrong time you'll be in trouble (or lose), and the whole game will be about using that spell in the right way or getting enough mana to use it again... having one single strategy to win all games will make the lifespan of FE really short!

Agree completely. Teleport as it is currently ruins the game as a strategically interesting game. There is just no questioning the value of strategic maneuverability for large chunks of your army. Most of the nerfs here wont really work either.

Limiting to Champions: Whats the point when, as Stardock has said and I personally want, champions are a viable alternative to a standing army. Even if you can only teleport your champions around you're still teleporting army killing stacks, or already positioned army buffing stacks.

Limiting distance to Int: Same problem as above, now you just limiting the spell to your already powerful casters, and if you were smart you'll have a lot of these. If other magic is even remotely powerful these will also create teleporting stacks that can take out anything.

Mana cost: HUGELY increased mana cost or place it as an extreme upper level spell. This is the only thing that really solves the problem, but this basically amounts to the same thing as removing it from the game or just making it very rare. I am okay with this.

Now if stardock wanted to include this type of spell slightly early they'd have to change a number of things to properly balance. Dominions 3 is great example. You actually have access to cross map mage teleportation rather early, and army teleportation is available later in the game. How do they balance this?

Several ways. Forced pathing on magic. Nations have what they have in terms of magic access, you can diversify but its hard. Thus they can weaken the nations and mages that can do this ways that cant be made up for the teleportation. Have a nation of air mages who can fly around the map like hummingbirds, then no or limited access to astral magic and its extremely powerful spells, or crappy normal units that cant hold their own in a fight and NEED you mages just to be equal to other conventional forces.

Extreme faction differentiation: similar to above but extending to all areas. Those that have access get limited in many other ways. Those that don't have access or limited access get buffs.

Assassination spells: A bunch of enemy mages just teleported, most nations have access to spells that can be used to insta kill those same mages without them having a chance to run away. Teleporting also usually means that you just hoped away from any defensive cover you did have. Sure you can teleport, but I can fry your brain from the safety of a lab.

A bunch of others. I'm a straight up newby and I'm sure there are other ways. The bottom line is that it might be possible to balance, but you'd have to make some VERY drastic changes to the way elemental operates in order to do it. I'm not sure I'd want any of these things in elemental. I kind of like being able to choose which magic you use, and think the assassination spells are kinda cheesy. Only one I'd want would be extreme faction diff but that's another post.

So long as Elemental remains so customizable(and I want it to remain like this), having an ubber spell like teleportation in the game basically forces you to choose that path. Especially if choosing that path doesn't limit or change the other options you have in any meaningful way. Its just too powerful.