Well I did not add Housing, Barracks, Mine, Mine Training, Training Halls and Mana Generator since I don't have any creative ideas for improving them at the moment. The list I created provides new ideas or suggestions for improving existing buildings which provides the greatest benefit for our beloved Stardock developers.
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I did not add Mages Guild, Monasteries or Churches since these have a high chance of being race specific buildings. I'd need to create a general section, the empire section and the kingdom section. I just would not have the time to maintain/update all of them while also adding/updating new topics... my work has me unpredictably busy so I might vanish for a week or two while being swamped with work.
if its not broke, don't fix it right?
I think it is kinda important to talk about churches, mages guilds, and such. Just because there may be a differece between mana generators, reseach generators, and unit creation buildings. This becomes especially true if you require 'tech tree research' seperate from 'spell book research', for example the library might give the 1st where only a mages guild would give the 2nd. And a 3rd building (mage academy?) would be able to actually PRODUCE mages for the battle field.
We have a similar deal with mines. In this game, if things like swords are created on a per unit basis, rather than just a lump sum to represent all the production required, then how are we to divide up money and resource income?
Is a mine going to be all we need to produce metal weapons? is that all that a mine does? is a mine going to produce gold or multiply gold production from trade goods (the generic 4X game style) then another building, like the smithy, going to be the one converting gold to actual weapons? If mines only produce gold, are they going to give a bonus to the cost of the smithy to convert gold into swords? Is the same building that creates swords going to be what creates armor? these are important questions in the building ideas.
The training hall or whatever else allows for you to train/specilize troops I figure would be pretty standard. Once you have the trailing hall, you unlock the ability to train troops up to a certain level (I figure you'd need multi-tier training halls, saw a level 1 just allows you to produce the units, tier 2 training hall lets you train up a couple of levels, and tier 3 lets you train up to level 5 or something like that). The tiers of the training hall I figured would also be dependent or your 'training tech'. It has been mentioned that in Elemental, rather than having the generic tech-tree, you instead have several areas in which you can research and advance. So if one of these areas is military training, then as you advance that the maximum tier your training halls are able to reach would also expand. The techs (and buildings) I see would be:
Training halls (related to standard war training) > effects all fields of training, but to a lesser extent of specialized, also allows for bettering armor and weapons directly as well.
Archery range (related to archery training tech) > trains archers, javilin throwers, and slings
stables (related to the mount-training tech) > horse, bear, and other riders, directly betters the abilities of the mount rather than the rider, so it allows for 'war horses' and 'war bears' over the regular mount choices if it goes up, then the associated riders would also recieve small bonuses worth of exp
Magic academy (related to the magic-training tech) > mages, priests, necromancers, magicians, and whatever else you can name
I figure the best way it could be done is general training points would allow you to increase the base-starting exp of units (pay more to start at higher levels), but the other training would allow bonuses.
So lets say you have starting exp of 1, Tier 1 general training adds up to 5 starting exp, Tier 2 gives 10 (arbitrary numbers for right now)
Now at the same time, specilized magic training would allow for additional spells then gives another extra +50% starting exp for mage units.
Lastly, your mounts would be tougher as the tiers go up, so tier 2 would give 'war bears', 'war horses', 'wargs' or whatever would be the level up for the mounts. Stat wise they would basically get a level up, but only on the mount side of the stats.
So your tier 2 training hall/tier 2 stables could produce exp 10 bear riders on War bears. The tier 1 training hall/tier 2 mage academy/tier 1 stables could create only 7 exp bear mages (mages on bears) and they wouldhave weaker bears, but they would probebly still fair out about the same in combat terms (now, tactics is probebly a major factor when it comes to spells, but that isn't the point. I'd make spells cost more most likely)
I know this is as much about the tech stuff as it is the buildings, but thats kinda how it has to be. of course we'd have plenty of balancing on our hands to make it all flow, but I think it sounds much like what they have in mind from just what we have.