You make a good point on that.  There wouldn't be any point to any kind of trasport if the cost and effectiveness of teleportation out stretches it.  The people would eventually evolve into teleporting turrets, like those daylek things on Dr. Who.

'Now in this new age of magic, my people, you no longer have to leave your bed, all things can be brought to you directly with my power!'-sovreign via telepathic projection.  All of their units would have 0 for all of their stats except inteligence, and mages with teleport, telepathy and telekenisis would be the entire work force, nay the entire population! You look threatening? well I'll just throw you into the sun with my telenesis! We'll untill they can ascend all earthly things anyway.  

It's a slippery slope... to Nivanah.

Agree.

Those of us who are competitive will play on the hardest difficulty and do everything we can to win. Getting the most out of heroes, troops, the Sovereign and our magic is part of that. And if one school of magic is stronger than the others than that school of magic becomes an obvious choice. Just like getting a grand amount of studies now and going up the Warfare tree and maxing Armor.

The main point is that we shouldn't have to make houserules. Ideally, the game should be balanced so there are several valid ways to go. At the very least, they should try to not make one school of magic more powerful than the others.

Yes, I know that Life magic in Master of Magic was really strong but that was a designflaw that shouldn't be repeated.

I don't see it as an exploit, sorry. 

Let's see. If I don't rush an AI in the beginning, don't build units which have more defense then the AI units, don't trade with the AI, don't build more then one study per city, don't city spam, don't attack the AI after it declared war against me again, don't build archers, don't build super stacks of doom, don't use spells, don't use raise or lower lands to bottle in the AI...

... well, hey. E:WoM is actually a balanced game with a good AI now! (After I've removed about half of the game features, since the AI can't cope with them.)

And now, you seriously say you don't see a problem with that? Just make some house rules, hey, balancing is hard, let's not even try. What, you can't bring yourself to not set some tiny houserules that make you ignore half of the gameplay? Hey, you, you have obviously no self control!

You know what, BlackRainZ? Shove your contemptuous advice up somewhere and leave this discussion to people that have an inch of understanding about gameplay in a supposedly strategic game. Since you obviously don't.

Limiting the range (or scalling cost to range) would be anouther option for nerfing teleport to more manageable levels.  I don't find myself using it very often anyway,usually the return spell is enough for me- and is usually used to shorten travel time for my exploring sov.

You are perfectly right to be frustrated with movement! When I criticize teleport I understand how people may go "oh god he wants me to spend another 100 turns going back and forth!!"

But that is not the point, because what I am trying to convey is that movement itself is wrong in this game. In Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, things are balanced, units's speed is just right not to make you mad about the slowness of the game. Cavalry can get you around a medium size kingdom in just a few turns, just to cover from quick attacks, while heavy infantry becomes a necessity only when dealing with strong units. Boats and flying machines also have a critical use in that game when teleport is not used.

If AOW had a system as good and complex as that of EWOM to develop technologies (ports, flying machines), I would still spend days and resources developing them because they would be useful in AOW! With teleport, instead, they become just useless.

In AOW things are well balanced: mounted troops (and flying units) are necessary to explore (horses should be available very early in the game!!!), infantry is used to conquest and defend newly conquered cities that would otherwise rebel. Wizards are used to freeze a lake and have units cross it, make units stronger or give some support in combat. Of course ther are also stronger spells to defend one's coutry (only effective artound wizard towers), there are healers that travel with troops and fix their hit points, units that are faster or invisible in woods... there are tons of tactics that are not even contemplated in EWOM (partially because they become REALLY fun only in multiplayer)... in EWOM, instead, turns go by the dozen before anything happens.... and I completely understand that people gets frustrated when they realize they have to move a unit all the way back by foot!

But instant travelling is just a cheap solution! A lazy, simplistic solution for the developers that can only accelerate a boring game. It makes parts of the game useless (building ports, having horses, roads, a complex terrain...), it kills strategic options and doesn't add anything to the fun. It only makes the game end sooner, and do I agree that, at that point, ending the game is a pleasant thing.

They should just check how movement works in AOW and start from there!

@Kantok,

Hehe. I just had that same thought on the other side of the forum. City Portals would be a great way to differentiate a single race or shard. If properly balanced, it would mean that society could build light garrisons in every city and be sure they can all come together for defense. It makes an island strategy more feasible too. The most reasonable implementation though, is a world wonder at the end of the tech tree or from a very challenging quest. It could be great to have two continents sending armies back and forth, a small logistical advantage at the cost of late game mega-spells. 

Many fantasy-genre type RPG or strategy games have some form of teleportation. Good ones balance the valid points the OP makes by making these spells very expensive. This is slightly harder to to in Elemental than in, say, Dominions (whose magic system is much more differentiated -- and which has a number of quite expensive teleportation options). In Elemental, there are few constraints on magic besides caster ability and mana cost; to avoid making teleportation a "no-brainer", it could (1) be given a high mana cost, (2) require a very high casting ability, (3) be delegated to the "research" area of magic so that only powerful casters with a certain level of research can cast them, (4) be given another form of constraint, if necessary, such as a downside, e.g. having the caster be disoriented for 1 round after casting or something similar. Surely at least some of these things can be done in Vanilla and the rest in modding. Despite all of this, the main problem will exist that certain things are difficult for the AI to use because their worth and their correct implementation are difficult to evaluate; certainly teleportation (or other forms of spatio-temporal resource manipulation) is one of these. I think that should not mean that these elements should never be in a game, only that players should be aware of the weaknesses the AI will have with these and try not to exploit them.

I always enjoy your threads BK even though I don't often agree with them and rarely post.  Be warned this is going to be one of those walls of text.

That aside, I have played a famous tbs game where Teleport was (mostly) successful and the lead is now employed at Stardock.  Fall from Heaven 2 did have a city teleport system that was balanced because the game's tech trees were so very divergent, awfully expensive, and independent from each other but also very effective.  Sure I can bite the heavy cost and go beeline gates but it will burn me everywhere else and unless if it is key to my overall strategy I'll really feel the pain later.

E:WOM does not have the same type of balance because the game uses a separate research system for tech and magic.  First, TP is not exclusively anchored to cities.  Second, TP here is more tactical than strategic.  You don't have to make the same long term sacrifices plus changing and adapting accordingly to your opponent is less necessary because teleport is so incredibly flexible.  Those are the pros and cons.

You've made a very good argument but my best guess is SD's vision is to have TP primarily implemented for less but better equipped elite groups with one spell caster at each head and the sovereign himself.