But if you like strategy, you should play all three (AoW1, AoW:SM, and EUIII:Chronicles) at some point.

In order to possibly be of some help to developers, I want to try to list things that I'd like to see in the magic system. Feel free to say that you agree or not, that some are more important than others, or to add more stuff.

1) Many more spells. Some additional point:

  1a) no big disproportions in number of spells between schools

  1b) interesting characterization of each school (on this one, I think they are on the right track)

  1c) more strategic spells that affect mechanics on a large scale (e.g. see MoM spells Evil Omens, Crusade, Meteor Swarm, Time Stop...) and more tactical spells that affect all units on the battlefield (I adored MoM's Call Lightning, where a lightning was falling on a random enemy unit every turn for the entire battle, but see also Black Prayer, Warp Reality...)

  1d) cooler city spells with mantainance cost (magic protection, increase trade, increse healing for troops in the city, increase growth, create a gate to be used to teleport units between cities, but also negative ones: famine, anger, despair...). Personally I think that if a powerful fire mage can raise a volcano, a powerful life mage should be able to shield a few cities against it at a proper mana cost.

  1e) random/quest spells are a cool idea, but a significant chunk of spells should not be random - it is good to have randomness in a game, but not a random game

  1f) possibly add an Arcane school (like the base spells we have now) with some utility spells. Some examples: enchant shard (friendly units within 6 tiles from a controlled shard receive a bonus to magic resistance and healing rate, or a different bonus depending on the shard - healing for Life, evade for air, attack for fire, defence for earth, movement for water, +%critics for death - to make shards into stringholds that are easier to defend than to attack), Connect cities (takes several turns to progressively connect two cities with a magical road).

2) Avoid the fact that during the sovreign creation phase one can spend points to specialize his mage into, say, death magic, and find no death shards whatsoever around his capital. Possible solutions: a) shard generation takes into account traits allow the player to choose 2 minor shards to have near the capital c) allow for prismatic shards that count towards all magic schools, and let us find a minor one right at the beginning d) surrender to the fact that people will probably not take school-specific magic traits when creating their sovreign, or start again and again until they find one - so lame!

3) Make magic worth using in the first half of the game compared to focusing on, say, armies while piling up mana (I am sure you have this issue very clear in your mind, but still...)

4) The sovreign should be able to cast spells all over the world, but champions... shouldn't they have a range?

What about this easy implemention of the "teleportation sickness" idea mentioned previously?  Derek, what do you think about this way of balancing the power of teleporting armies with the need to strategically balance teleport spells so it's not just a case of strategic nullification of zapping in from anywhere on the whole map and attacking with full strength?

Best regards,
Steven.

Some ideas for new spells (level depending on the strength of the effect).

  a. Acid rain, Tactical, Fire&Water: units in a certain area get x damage and have their armor reduced by % until the end of combat

  b. Holy Purpose, Strategic, Life: All friendly units are filled with holy purpose: those within your Kingdom borders receive ++ damage and resistence rolls, and those outside your Kingdom borders receive + damage and resistance rolls

  c. Excruciating Pain, Tactical, Death: target enemy unit receives x damage; until the end of battle, whenever this unit receives damage this is increased by %. This additional damage is illusory and is healed at the end of the battle if the unit survives

  d. Water of Heaven, Strategic or City, Life and Water: City fountains spill waters that comes from the heaven. Friendly units garrisoned in cities you own heal at +200% rate and have +% life and def when fighting in a city you own

  e. Eternal soldiers, Strategic, Death: whenever one of your units is killed in a battle but you win the battle, a zombie unit is summoned in its place - you can make this tactical and have the zombie raise during the battle, but die once the battle is over

  f. Reaper's concession, Tactical, Death: during this battle, your units die only when their health reaches -20%. At the end of the battle, all units with negative health are destroyed.

  g. Impervious Skin, Enchantment, Earth: the unit skin becomes as hard as steel: all non-magic damage is decreased by %. Any further damage reduction bonus from worn armor is not applied.

  h. Call Lightning, Tactical, Air: Stormy coulds gather above the battlefield. Every turn 1-2 random enemy units are striken by a lightningbolt dealing x air damage

  i. Choking smoke, Tactical, Fire: summons a smoke cloud on target space(s). Units within the cloud cannot use ranged attacks and must resist every turn or skip their turn. Units within the cloud also receive % less damage from ranged attacks.

  j. Depression, Tactical, Death: all enemy units receive -x attack unit the end of the battle. When this spell is cast, any active Inspiration spell have a % chance to be dispelled

  k. Inspiration, Tactical, Life: all friendly units receive +x defence until the end of the battle. When this spell is cast, any active Depression spell have a % chance to be dispelled

  l. Whispering Wind, Strategic, Air: the wind whispers in the ears of your champions, revaling things seen far away; all your champions have their sight range increased by x;

  m. Pathfinding, Enchantment, Earth: target unit and all units in its stack do not receive movement penalties from terrain tiles

  n. Guardian Winter, Strategic, Water: A winter storm hails within the borders of your territory;

  o. Ambush, Strategic, Earth: target a friendly army on the world map; if this unit attack this turn an opposing army outside a city, your units receive a % bonus to their initiative in the first round of combat

  p. Frostbite, Tactical, Water: all enemy units on the battlefield receive  damage and their attack speed is reduced by x until the end of battle

  q. Blessing of Soil, City, Water: city crop yields increases; target city growth rate is improved by x; any Famine spell on the city is dispelled.

  r. Famine, City, Death: famine spreads in the city; population drops by x, and city growth rate is decreased by y; if target city has an active Blessing of Soil spell, either Famine or Blessing of Soilare dispelled with a 50% chance. (Famine could spread to friendly cities connected with the one infected).

  s. Elemental Ward, City, any element: target city have a % chance to resist enemy spells targeting the city from the opposite element (e.g. Air Ward is an Earth spell that protects against Air, et cetera); all opposite element spells cast during a tactical battle in this city have a % chance to fizzle.

  t. Inquisition, Strategic, Life: while this spell is active, you are not allowed to research magic, and all spells that you and your champions cast cost twice as much mana. In all your cities non-magic research is increased by x% and unit production is increased by y%.

  u. Bone Guardians, Strategic, Death: if one of your city is attacked and there are less than 8 units defending it, skeletal berserkers units are instantly summoned in the city to make a total of 8 defending units. For every two skeletal berserker units, a skeletal mages unit is also summoned. These units die once the battle ends.

  v. Master of Winds, Strategic, Air: all flying units you control have their movement increased by x, and all flying enemy units have their movement reduced by y

  w. Lust, City, Fire: citizen in target city are enflamed with fevering passion; growth rate in the city is increased by x, while research and production are decresed by y.

  x. Poisonous water, City, Death and Water: city population decreases by x; growth rate decreases by y. Units stationed in the city do not heal and lose % health each turn.

  y. Dispel, Universal, Basic; Attempts to dispel enemy spells from target unit/city; the base probability of dispelling is 50% and is affected by the number of shards you and your enemy sovreign control, the level of the spell to be dispelled, your mastery in the spell's opposite element (if you are Archmage in Light you are better at dispelling Death magic spells), whether the target is in your or his territory, and whether your sovreign or his sovreign are in that city/army.

  z. Divine Shield, Enchantment, Earth and Light: target unit is immune to magic

Final comment: I have never played E:WoM so I am not sure if all of the effects listed here make sense...

For element related ailments:

Burn (fire) -afflicted unit takes more damage (easier to crit them and/or lowered defense) until cured/end of battle/ or resist

Poison (poison)- afflicted unit takes damage each turn until resisted (or x turns for more of a sickness thing), cured or end of battle

Stun (earth)- afflicted unit losses a turn (and cant counter attack, attack or move), may be resisted (shorter duration than others usually only 1 turn but shuts down their options)

Slow/freeze (water)- unit looses x amt of movement, chance to dodge reduced, may be a 1 turn thing or fall under the till end of battle/cured or resisted category

Knockback/Disorient (air)- unit may be knocked back (position changed) or unit looses accuracy, and cannot use ranged attacks until resisted/cured or end of battle (or chance to do some damage to itself on a failed attack)

Just some ideas for thematics on the elements, I wouldn't completely limit any of them to a given element (as one effect could be applied to multiple applications just by changing its name) but giving some keyword ideas or traits to each element to help guide the type of spells preffered could be helpful (as long as it isn't upheld too strictly).

An idea just occurred to me.

When we find recruits in the wilderness, some have a certain profession assigned to them (acolyte/wizard, farmer, assassin, merchant, etc).  Although these heroes provide the towns with prestige and a certain bonus to production (of what I don't really know), I think there should be a way to assign their productivity as well as arranging marriages to them since there is a population in every city to begin with.  I mean, once I recruit someone I don't really see them anymore unless there is war and I have to provide the farmer, for example, with a sword...?

I'm just wondering if it would be beneficial (or necessary) to micromanage these heroes to better allocate their productivity during times of peace and of war alike.

For example, if we were able to arrange the marriages of the heroes, their offspring (every 2nd or 4th) would have, say, a ~25% chance of becoming a specialist as well, likely following the same profession as their father -- or we assign their professions with a certain change of that being a success.  Wizards beget wizards; merchants beget merchants; assassins beget assassins..., etc.  Also to balance this out, death of a hero (due to age/natural causes, an illness or whatever) and more interesting, the desertion of a hero (or offspring) to an enemy faction; espionage, betrayal, treason.

And when it comes to magic, why must the sovereign 'imbue' the wizards?  If breakthroughs in the knowledge of magic are achieved, then shouldn't the wizards also gain the knowledge of the skills learned? [[Maybe they presently do, but since I can't get enough play time in (due to work and the frequent CTDs) I have not been able to determine this]] So basically, if there is more of a global micro-management of our kingdom/empire, instead of only the sovereign, then that would essentially require a deeper level of interaction with the units (ie heroes) and cities in our control, which would only provide a better gaming experience.

-.-

Meanwhile, we already have 10 pages of complaints but no news from the devs... Maybe we scared them by saying all those stuffs ?

We're saying lots of stuff but I hope someone is listening (reading) to us ! I'd like a small update from them.

But the Unit Design (ship Editor) in Galciv 2 was awsome and it was made by Stardock so they can make a good one.

Amen !

I hope they're really listening to the kind of stuff we want to see and that they will come back to us with very good news.

I'm such in a hurry to read what they will say in their next news and what they think of our comments and how they will decide to modify the game accordingly.

I don't really want news about the game yet, I'm more in a hurry to have a comments from them to know how they will re-think the magic system or at least know if they're going to do anything about it and how.

I like you.

So young and optimistic.

I put a lot of hours into Galciv 2 but the ship editor was just an annoyance for me. It was nice if you wanted to play legos but I am more interested in a strategy game. I hated having to go back into it every few turns to upgrade to whatever +1 weapon upgrade I recently got. Not much as far as interesting choices in that editor.

It's a shame that they choose to go with customization units in Elemental as well. I would have much rather had more varied but preset units like in MOM or HOMM. It seems much more difficult to create an interesting and balanced combat system with totally customizable units.

I believe some of them read the posts (it's a 30 min/day job, and some of us might actually say something not entirely stupid at times ). However, they are much more likely to introduce changes that require little remaking, and most of all little rethinking of all the consequences of such changes. We know very little of all the mechanics in the game so far, and of how far along they are in terms of implementation on each of them. I mean, they are unlikely to change a feature in the magic system if this would require to undo one or two months of work. I believe that when they are reading our posts they are mainly trying to see if people keep being excited about the game, and if there are some cool ideas that are not hard to implement and fit well with what they have done so far. Adding some spells should be a piece of cake compared to, for example, removing unit customization and making more unique units themselves - since I believe they have aloready worked a lot on unit traits/customization, and this is also something they (Derek) strongly wanted since the beginning I believe.

So, if it is about opinions I believe anyone can write almost anything on a forum. But if you are trying to make suggestions that are somewhat likely to be considered, better go for interesting twists that do not require a big remaking of the game, or suggest a potential flaw in the strategic mechanics of the game, like "doing this would not make sense for this reason" - but again, we know very little about the game. And maybe LoA is right, I am optimistic and this is all just marketing