It's already been suggested, but make it a "jump" across a fixed distance over any terrain. Say 3 squares +1per air shard, and this allows you to bypass a mountain range, small lake, or other obstacle. It would then be a air caster's counter to an earth caster who rings their territory with mountains. A knight movement in chess, rather than air dropping a queen onto any square on the chessboard.
There's a great opportunity to make the champions / dynasty interaction work here. If the sov falls, whomever is left should try to pick up the pieces to keep the kingdom going, but not the entire kingdom. An enterprising champ who's squirreled away in a back corner may suddenly decide to go independent, and a new neutral city is formed. All those +10% production and +20% farmers come to mind. The spouse of the sov and any kids would probably try to stick together, unl
I see that each resource in use has a tag that shows which city it belongs to. It's nice to have that info, but is not very accessible or instantly recognizable like the resource lanes between a planet and an asteroid belt in GalCiv 2. Would it be possible to draw a faint or dotted line showing the specific area of control for a city? It could represent the 'province' that is dominated by that city. To avoid cluttering, make it an option for the zoomed in view (not pre
Twohawks, I like your tweak to it - having an npc sit in town does nothing currently, but a research or production overseer would be wasted roaming around killing wolves. This gives the non fighters something to do, and could tie in a bit with having the sovereign sit in the capital city. It should be a major deal to have the sov + guards leave the seat of power, to go to war, tour the provences, meet with another sovereign, etc.
The topic of exp gain has certainly been touched upon, but mostly focuses on the result of leveling, rather than the cause. Currently we have exp gain via combat. A tried and true method, but one that limits access to future generations of champions and channellers looking for a spider to kill, as Grandpa Relias cleared out every beast on this side of the mountains 50 years ago. There are a few methods, I will touch upon briefly: MoM: hire a hero, wai
The problem with standard fantasy races is exactly the standardization. Orcs - are they Tolkein, warhammer, warcraft, or from some goofy flash-based strategy game? Their popularity has made it so they are almost the 'alien of the week' from Star Trek, with a different set of forehead ridges and a goatee. Little is done to bring their history to light and make it special. Developing these factions with lore will help gameplay hugely. Look at how Sword of the Sta
I echo pad152's comment - adventuring and magic are not fleshed out for the public betaers (is that a word?). With the better spelunking / tomb raiding / scavenging techs we might see more points of interest pop up and offer more substantial items than a wooden spear or 1 def shield. An old armory of standard plate would rule - 10 suits that you can use free of resource cost, and once they're assigned to a unit, you're back to the standard method of armoring troops. I'm not
Some sort of black market type system like in Sins of a Solar Empire, but I would go a step farther to keep it from over-balancing the mechanic of limited resources - rather than the exchange rate go through the roof, make it so there's 17 metal for 5 turns, and it doesn't replenish if someone buys it all. Next 5 turn 'period' 49 metal is available, and so on.
I see the point cost for the books to be a magical version of the racial picks that allow you to make 'yithril bows' or 'demon armor' or whatever. A specialty - IF you can secure the proper resources to use the item (is there a special wood tile by the way?). You aren't guaranteed metal nearby, but it is definitely more common than shards. Otherwise you get the general equipment available, but don't have the super item. Likewise, any caster can throw fireballs with som
A few thoughts: Regarding battle duration, most fighting should take the better part of a day for a large battle, but should have an 'army fatigue' feature to keep it from going on forever. Not even the best troops would be able to keep up a fight in chain or plate, bashing a broadsword into the enemy's lines for hours on end. If the troops are a bit sullen after the SEVENTH charge into the enemy pikes for no gain, and the commander hasn't seen his brother i
A single world-wide coinage can make sense, if it can be explained. In ancient times, countries all had different internal coinage, but trade and tribute were done in talents. THe conversion rate differed, so Egyptian talents were 160 coins, but Roman were 200 of their own, for example. I think a talent was the equivalent of 28kg (or so, there were three versions) of trade item, such as furs, grain, etc. Grain was a big one in those days. W
Hmm this quick reply thingy doesn't like the iPhone very much... Anyway, I know its a rhetorical comment, but 300 checkboxes or 50 sliders is over-kill no matter what systems is used. The UI has to be something like 20 items (I'm thinking the custom race designer in MoO2 as an example) or people get bored with it. Here's my idea for a compromise - a slider with 5 ticks. So using appearance as an example: 2 right is godlike beauty, +20% marria
Speaking of personality tests, the Tarot card choices at the beginning of Ogre Battle were cryptic and entertaining. It decided starting troop makeup, special abilities, and some other things. Quartermaster - increased army support, 1 turn less for supply gathering (so 5 wood is needed for a bowman platoon at 1 wood/turn. You get it all in 4 turns instead of 5). Small bonus, not game breaking. Senechal (house lord) - Capital city production increased
In the dragonlance series, things were ok, although the lead priest guy was getting a big ego or something. Then one day the gods threw a mountain at the city of Ishtar. Various natural disasters occured, and all religious magic disappeared.
Well, Morrigan was a word for terror or greatness in Irish (thanks wikipedia! [e digicons]:|[/e] ) so maybe it's what people called him in stories passed down after he unleashed the idea of twisting creatures and men upon the world. Or... maybe in this lore it was a male name, sorta like Leslie or Stacy, which was male but is pretty much a female name now. So to tie in the traits and weaknesses dev journal, some sort of high cost trait called "Student of Mo
As previously mentioned, Total War's ancillaries and traits were comprehensive, but I did lament the need to move generals out of towns into castles in Medieval 2 so they wouldn't all become corrupt sloths. A few talents come to mind, some with a tied in weakness: Scryer - Ability to remotely view areas of the world map or neutral / enemy cities once every x turns. I'm playing a game of MoM at the moment, so think the 'earth lore' spell Fallen Ance
Awesome. The Krax sovereign has a katana and a katar.
Hopefully this has't been mentioned in other places and I just missed it - Until this journal there were 6 fallen and 6 man factions - why the change to 5 each? Making room for custom factions on each side? Just curious.
I really like this - we're not talking about men = good and fallen = evil. The side of men may have sick, despicable jerks along with nice quiet hobbit-like folk that want to eat six times a day and celebrate at the local inn every night. The fallen might run from peasant sacrificing death priests to deformed, mis-understood folk who just yearn to do right in the eyes of their creator/titan. I am glad I pre-ordered!
This might be my first time posting on the Elemental forums, so prepare the scathing remarks! I like the starbase comparison - but with more physical barriers on the map (rivers, mountains, the bog crawling with trolls) the area bonuses need to be reduced, if used at all, and they should mainly strategic structures that force the issue or make a chokepoint even harder to break through. All sorts of fun things could go into a fortress: Training areas, forges to upg