Total agreement. One of the things I always hope for in a 4X game is the ability to "settle tactically." I'll take the risk of over-expanding early in order to hinder my opponents' expansion. Choke points should exist in a map's design, and smart players should try to exploit them.

Really glad Jon is a SD employee.  Makes FE all the more exciting.

I hope Stardock have taken/will take Jon's advice about city specialisation:

"Let’s say you’re playing a 4X game and want to specialize a city for the production of money. If this can be done equally well in any city then there’s really no special considerations to make – after all, if every city is just as viable you might as well just flip some coins to decide. Which, for the record, isn’t terribly interesting or fun."

So city specialisation should be limited and not just take place as a generic level-up function.  Maybe according to the resources contained within the city walls?

True, although that was a decision based on the fact that no AI of a grand strategy game has been able to handle boats well. Wasn't that why it was dropped from elemental as well? In regards to the AI in Civ5 it didn't do much good though...

What he's talking about, and I agree (Even though it demonstrates my weaknesses as a designer) is that choices need to matter. Don't have lots of choices of ambiguous meaning, have fewer choices that have very obvious meaning.

To this day, the formula in Galactic Civilizations II for determining approval rating on a planet is an incredibly complicated formula because there are so many things that come into play.  It's a bad design.

In Elemental: War of Magic, we tried to have too many things have meaning and you end up with bland.

In Fallen Enchantress, by contrast, it's fewer choices but they are distinct and meaningful.

Choices that have a dramatic effect gameplay make a game really interesting. In a TOEE RPG Modd you could 1) foil a plot to sabotage the construction of a castle and trigger the appearance of a castle on the main map, 2)  sabotage the castle's construction and gain a favorable introduction to the big bad or 3) take no action the watch this RPG world develop in a semi-random fashion without your character gaining any benefit from these developments. Each result had a dramatic; but different, effect on the game.

Likewise; on another modd, there were several ways to fulfill a quest to retrieve the egg of a giant eagle - each one had its consequences. First 1) slay the druid guarding the path to the eagles nest (this made the druids your enemy) - most players choose this method initially and suffered the consequences. Method 2) was to put the druid to sleep and steal the egg while he was sleeping. They key was stealing the egg before the druid woke up.  Sending a single fast moving lightly armored character up the narrow path to retreive the egg was the solution; however, it took several reboots/replays before most players discovered this. Method 3) was to have a character move silently past the druid in the shadow of night (yep - you could sneak past the druid guard at night - but not during the day). Last but least, you wanted to time your foray up the path to arrive at the nest when the mother eagle was not there (or was sleeping) - else risk attack by the giant Eagle.

Similarly, in a TOEE Keep to the Borderlands Modd you had a quest to quietly acquire 100 swords - and there were several ways to to this. 1) Steal them, 2) Purchase them from the smithy in the Keep and raise the suspicions of the local lord that would trigger consquences for the baron that hired you, or 3) venture far and wide to purchase 100 swords in different settelements. Each solution had dramatically different consequences.

Last but least there was the time based Keep Mod, once you discovered that the keep was to be attacked; IF GOOD you had x amount of days to reach the keep and warn them. Arrive late and you would find the keep in ruins and its defenders slain. Arrive early and your assistance may ensure the victory of its defenders.

Oh?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I ll agree with that. I dont care if there is plenty of choices or just few, i just want them to have a real effect on the long run. 

I would not say "Make the game better" but rather raise the level of complexity or the level of details.

For example, the "Wizard kings" board game use a plain hex map as a board:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/200018/wizard-kings

But movement looks much more complex than it seems. First, you get mobility boost if your unit start and ends on a road. But most importantly, there is a limit in the amount of units you can move into a hex for each hex side. So an open plain hex side allows you to move in 2 units, while an hexside with a bridge or mountain only allows you to move in 1.

So this creates a dynamic where in order to send a large force into a target hex, you need to be able to surround your enemy. It also create interesting simulation of blocking a bridge to prevent the enemy from passing since he can only send 1 unit at a time.

All that added complexity also increase the possible effects that special abilities, like spells, could affect. Instead of having spell that increase movement or ignore terrain movement penalty, you can also add abilities regarding the hex sides and roads.

So restrictions increases the complexity and details of the game. It open what I call "the area of effect" of a game which is the possible elements that can be affected by a special ability. But it is not always the best thing to do. In some design, you might not actually want that extra level of complexity and detail. In video games, complexity is more welcomed because the computer can compute stuff for the player, but  it's no the case in board games.

I am talking about the Temple of Elemental Evil computer game. As originally released it had 1) GREAT TACTICAL BATTLES, 2) poor story line, 3) no serious consquences for player actions and 4) no built in modding tools (aka NWN); however, player modds added new spells, quests and adventures.  The most popular mod is  available from www.co8.org and the game itself can be purchased from www.gog.com for $5.99USD. If SD does an Elemental RPG I would like to see it include tactical battles based on the TOEE system.

Interesting. Yes, 'open-ended' complexity is bad ... but a decent level of behind the scenes complexity is good ESPECIALLY if the UI does the bean-counting for you ... just look at the BuG mod for Civ IV BTS. (Or at least some parts of it)

While some object to the bean-counting that Bug does (some call it "playing the game for you") When we have the extra complexity in Elemental, that is, the Role playing element, I think it is worth it to allow "we-done it for you" UI bean-counting so that the player can focus more on the Macro + RPG elements and less on the Micro.

But that is the thing, I think there should be restrictions, but I think there also is a Space available for microscopic details ... but only in situations where they are needed. (and these should be few and far between, but still should be/could be present somewhere I think).

Now complexity for complexity's sake isn't desired ... but, say for instance in the City Conquering/unrest departments, it may be needed.

Yes this is the biggest problem I have with most strategy games. I couldn't agree with you more. When games can be automatically won simply by building up a big enough stack then they become boring. In the context of this thread you need to limit large stacks so that players are still faced with choices even when they have a killer stack. This is not to say it should be impossible to get a large stack but rather a player's ability to use them needs to be limited. The ability to build a stack and then send it out to conquer city after city totally ruins a game.