I single magic damage and resistance annihilates versatility for pretty much no meaningful reduction in complexity. It really is not hard to understand that "hey, my fireball's only going to do half damage against that thing with 50% fire resistances." IMO one only needs to worry about things being too complex when their effects are not obvious upon first inspection. Resistances & such are about as obvious as you can get - even more so to most people who'll be playing Elemental because they'll have seen it before.

... No, it really doesn't. For one, fire resistance isn't going to save you if somebody shoots you with a blast of ice, or lightning (under the assumption that lightning is air magic, but that can be neither here nor there). So sure, you go ahead and give all your units fire resistance. I'll sit over here and focus on my air and water magic, then laugh at you when your fire resistances accomplish nothing.

Your second faulty assumption is that imparting resistances to your regular, mundane troops is going to be a simple matter. It needn't be. Some factions could have minor innate resistances, some types of armor might provide minor resistances, and specialized gear/magic that imparts significant amounts of resistance should be quite expensive.

Your third faulty assumption is that the resistance types would only apply to damage, but they could also apply to secondary effects. A Yeti would be resistant to the damage and effects of an ice blast. If one school is going to have the strongest offensive damage spells, then it would have to suffer in other areas that would be the focuses of the other elements. So sure - resistances to that school would be the most efficient in terms of mitigating damage (assuming you are fighting someone proficient in that element - otherwise it's worthless), but they would be vulnerable as babies to the effects of the spells of other schools.

Did I or anyone else ever say anything at all about them being common? They should be quite rare, except perhaps in minor quantities. I have nothing against having 5-10% resistances here and there among mundane troops due to faction traits or equipment. Significant resistances should be quite expensive to impart to your troops, and should only be found naturally on fantastical creatures. Resistances being stat-based or trait/ability-based is irrelevant because the effect can be identical.

And an example is HoMM IV. It has resistances in the form of traits/abilities - these of course are not common. That doesn't prevent Nature from not having a single damage spell. Or Chaos from containing the vast majority of all the worthwhile damage spells - the exceptions being Hand of Death and ice bolt. It's actually telling, though - HoMM III had the problem of the 4 schools of magic being more or less the same. They all had powerful attacks spells, for one. Even between two sequels in the same series, one had this problem and one didn't. The only real difference between the two in this respect? One had the balls to make each school truly different, and the other didn't.

Sure, nature ward isn't as useful as chaos ward. But chaos ward is worthless unless you're fighting chaos-aligned creatures and/or a hero proficient in chaos magic. In this example, nature 'resistance' isn't as valuable as chaos magic, but that doesn't make nature magic bad. A powerful nature magician can utterly dominate an equal chaos mage... A hero proficient in life magic can negate a significant portion of a chaos mage's damage potential, order magic can be used to prevent said chaos mage from even acting at all, and so on. 

HoMM IV is different enough than what Elemental is trying to be that it is not a very good analogy, but IMO it's very clear evidence of poorly differentiated magic schools being a result of developer laziness or uncreativity, rather than the existence of resistances. I think lots of developers are afraid that if you concentrate most of the offensive spells into one school, people will almost solely focus on that school. But that is only the case if they can't come up with interesting, effective ideas for non-damage oriented magic.

Personally I find damage-oriented spells to be boring, except for their graphical effects which tend to be very satisfying. HoMM IV had all sorts of problems, but I thoroughly enjoyed its magic system because it dared to give us truly different schools, and a huge number of worthwhile non-damage spells. 

... No, not really. Like I've said several times already, as long as magical resistance equipment is rare and expensive, you will not be able to field enough of it to result in an actual rock/paper/scissors type of effect. You also have to consider whether or not it's worth the investment at all - is it worth such a huge investment to protect a few of your troops from fire magic if it's not going to help them at all against the other elements? That's a lot of resources you're using for a very specialized purpose, for a very small portion of your army. 

What does that have to do with anything? Of course I'm using a caster to cause effects to enemy units, what else would I be using, a toilet? Without resistances of any sort, it is impossible to to create a creature generally resistant to certain elements and not others. Personally, I think that alone is justification enough. With magic being as central as it is, the inability to differentiate between the damage done by a fireball and the damage done by an ice blast is crazy.

First of all, so you're saying that fighting against a channeler who has focused on Earth magic shouldn't be any different than fighting against a channeler who has focused on Fire magic, or Air or Water magic? It's all the same, I shouldn't have to adapt my strategy when fighting each one? I suppose fighting archers should be the same as fighting swordsmen, too. While I'm at it, why not just make one spell in the whole game that does everything. There should only be one unit, too, why bother with having more than one? It'll just be "unit" vs. "unit" anyway. Pfah.

Fighting against sovereigns who have specialized in different elements should feel vastly different IMO, and require very different approaches. Fighting against an Earth channeler? - expect him to slow your army down at every turn, block your attacks and try to slowly whittle you down. Fighting against a Fire channeler? - expect him to try to annihilate your army as fast as he possibly can, preferably before you can even engage.

Except in extreme cases like Dragons, etc (fantastical being with naturally high resistances to certain elements), magical resistance shouldn't form an integral part of your strategy. It should be a method of helping to preserve particularly valuable units that you'd rather not lose to a single, particularly well-placed/timed [insert spell here]. I hope we will never be fielding entire armies of troops with high magic resistances, unless as the result of a very powerful enchantment. So really, I don't think resistances would result in balancing problems at all, because equipment-based resistances would be more of a convenience than anything.

Quite frankly I don't care whether or not we even are able to make equipment with magic resistances. I'm much more concerned about natural resistances (although I definitely wouldn't complain about equipment-based resistances, either).

With some way to add modifiers, yeah. If all you have is resistance and all spells go against it, what you have is a fairly simple system with no way to do the odd things (like unit X being immune to something).

Which is why I favor that type of system. You get to keep the single stat resistance and most of the time that does the job, but the ability to deal with the odd cases (like fire elementals being immune to or even healed by fire damage, which I've seen in one game and really struck me as nifty) still exists. It's also a lot more modder friendly.

I think a system like MOM would be fine for this game also.  Creatures had special abilities some of which would be things like death immunity.  I can't remember if there were things like fire resistance or fire vunerablity but adding those would give the same effect as having a bunch of damage resistance stats.  Give give Ents a fire vunerablity 50% or some dwarven like creature a magic resist 25% and you get the same effect without making it into a spreadsheet game.  There do need to be magic damage types but this way would be a little cleaner assuming most creatures are have an average resistance/vunerability of 0.  Basically the same thing but you are only showing the ones the differ from the average.

Several magic resistances add little extra versatility (and even less when they are a weird case in the big picture) and add a lot of complexity (for little gain).

Well it appears we are at an irreconcilable impasse here, because quite frankly my imagination isn't wild enough to imagine a world were a small handful of magic resistances (whether implemented as stats or as traits/modifiers) hardly adds versatility and adds a lot of complexity.

I mean, I could probably explain the basics of magic resistances to someone who has never seen it before in one sentence. And I could probably expound on most of the subtleties of a given magic resistance system to that same person within a single short paragraph. If I can do that, then there is really not much 'complexity' there. It is not going to make a novice's head hurt trying to figure it out. If implemented as stats rather that traits/modifiers (things that only show up if relevant - ie non-zero resistances), the only risk is a cluttered infocard.

I have already covered the versatility front and I'm tired of repeating myself. If you still don't see my point there, then you are either stubborn, ignoring me, or our perceptions of reality (or understanding of the word 'versatility') are not consistent

That is obviously true, but that is what “opposite camp” says all the time. It is just very simple RPS system. It offers very little extra strategical and even fewer extra tactical decisions compared to general resistance. On strategic level you study to counter opponents’ magic, on tactical you just learn to not use fire spell against fire elemental (see I.P.Pavlov).

Also another issue is that this RPS system implies there will be lot of similar spells which differ only in type of magic. (this is just my personal assumption with no real-info of course; though many people seem to come to similar conclusion). If this is not the case, what other purpose those resistances serve? How will 17% air magic resistance counter “teleport enemy” spell? In the same way as 17% general magic resistance – it just wont. Yet with first case you have 6 additional stats, that wont be used most of the time, except for direct damage spells (which should be minority of spells).

Perhaps magical direct damage will be very common in Elemental, but it should be much more common than physical then, because we will have just one physical attack and defense stats (probably) and they surely will be used a lot. Having 6 stats for attack/resistance type which will be used in 5% (or even 50%) of cases compared to 1 attack/resistance which will be used in the rest is overengineered.

I think the last option is correct. I would add a different perception of word variability as well.

I would also like to point out what VicenteC said (or someone earlier in the thread), that lots of you try to add too much logical stuff into magic – eg. fire elemental being completely immune to fire (or even being healed). This is completely arbitrary and for every case of game/book/whatever where it is like that, exists one where it is not.

Also someone asked what else should be difference between spells than their type of magical attack. I really hope to see that direct damage magic will be only a small subset of all possible spells. Apart from traditional resistance, buffs (bless, heal), debuffs (curse, petrification) we can have lots of world altering spells (volcano, burn forests), adding abilities (fly, swim, run), unusual effects (teleport, mind control, freeze), summoning/construction (those elementals, but why not a defense tower or ditch as well) and dozens of more.

I sincerely hope that direct damage will be mostly concentrated in one or two schools (be it Fire or whatever) and therefore 6 magical resistances would be mostly useless simply because there wont be much attack spells in the rest and investing in those resistance wont be worth the effort.

Agree all the way,Heroes 4 is my favorite in the franchise and sure it has some problems,but also some really good ideas as well,totally different magic schools being one of them.Agree on damage spells,too...i can only hope Stardock will concentrate more on other kind of spells and not on fireballs,fire blasts,fire storms and armageddons.

I see your point, I just don't agree with it (nor the argument you used to support it), it's not so hard to understand. It's probably similar to what you think about the single magic resistance argument, but reversed.

Just to clarify, I wrote "...very little EXTRA tactical decisions..." (emphasis on extra). Obviously multiple magic classes system does create more possibilities for decisions than just single resistance. As I see it tho, they are more or less straightforward and dont add any real depth. Indeed, you can do monsters partialy or completly immune to something. But side effect of that system will probably be plenty of units with magic resistance stats like 8/12/9/18/3/14  %. (just equiped with cheapest items). Other effect might as well be very easy counterability of specialised player. That is if research for 6 shools resistances will approx scale to 1 type of magic (counter specialised attack is very easy 1/6th of effort), or on opposite, very rare use of resistances in case that approx 1 resistance research scale to 1 magic research. (then I should study magic instead, which I can use against other opponents later as well). Problem is that attacker has to pick "first" and you might try to balance between those two extreme cases, but you have to do a compromise which will either favour resistances or magical studies. The more types of magic you have, the bigger the problem is. Lets not forget that we can design our units so min-maxing will happen. Lot of games avoid that by having prefactored units.

On the other hand if you have just magic (of any kind) vs anti-magic system (that is one universal resistance) than you can make research of both somehow equal (obviously with some nonlinear scaling). So you can have "stupid" barbarians that are immune to your smoke and mirrors, but they have in fact invested as much resources as you had to achieve that. Plus they almost surely wont be "completly" immune as that is kinda privelage of a few. While balanced, this system preserves uniqueness of magic types (as long as the spells differs more than just in colour), because you can still choose which type of magic suits you more (or which node is closer...)

But truth is, that creating elemental immune just to fire would have to be done in some other manner (tags just for these special cases?). But this is sarifice I am willing to make to have actually balanced system, which is immensly important in multiplayer game.

It could always reduce the maximum teleportation distance. Resistances can reduce the effectiveness of spells. If a spell does damage, resistance would reduce the damage done. If a spell slows, resistance would reduce how much the target is slowed. If a spell does something like teleport, the range would be reduced. If a spell does something binary, but with a duration, resistances could reduce the duration... I think you'll find that most spells actually fall somewhere within these categories...

So you're saying that there is no logic behind a lava-dwelling salamander being highly resistant to fire-based damage and effects? Sure, someone could create a perfectly self-consist magic system in which lava-dwelling salamanders are hurt by a fireball just as badly as, say, an Ent. But it would be confusing, because it contradicts our reality-based preconceptions.

In fact I would argue that in most cases, resistances are indeed pretty straightforward. A creature whose natural habitat is, say, extraordinarily hot should be resistant to heat (fire)-based damage and effects. A creature that is made of flammable material should be vulnerable to fire-based damage and effects. And so on. A creature that bores through rock shouldn't have to worry much about being buried underground by Earth magic - not only is that its natural habitat, but it can always just bore its way right back out again...

The matter is complicated when talking about elementals because while a fire/earth/air/water elemental might live in fire/earth/air/water, they are also made of it. And so while they should be resistant/immune to the relevant damage type, a magic-user whose specialty is control fire/earth/air/water should still be very effective at countering them. For example, there could be a "snuff flames" spell in the fire element that, instead of inducing fire damage simply puts out fires. It could be used to disperse an opponent's fire wall, or fiery weapons enchantment, or even a fire elemental... This is an example of the complimentary nature of magic resistance types and disparate magical schools/elements; the combination allows, in this example, a fire elemental to be resistant/immune to fire damage, but not to every fire spell.

Of course this is what makes sense to me, and being as we're talking about magic here anybody is free to make up their own magical rules. Personally I prefer mine to be logical abstractions and extensions of reality than wacky contrivances with no connection to reality. In the latter case, the magic system would be complex. In the former, not so much. If I was reading a description of a Fire Salamander and all of a sudden noticed "Weak to fire, strong against water" I would be like "What the @#$&? Where did that come from?!" - and if all such resistances were in the same vein I would never remember any of it. On the other hand if I saw "Resistant to fire, strong against water" I'd think, "Ok, I can see that," and I would probably remember it from then on, because it is intuitive.

I suppose it depends. The best way to handle things like that is probably ala HoMM. 'Immune to mind spells' and 'Eyeless' come to mind; creatures with these traits would be immune to mind spells or blind, regardless of what spell from which element was used. Unless, of course, you want to be able to blind eyeless troglodytes, or hypnotize mindless golems.

Then your wording was unclear: "It offers very little extra strategical and even fewer extra tactical decisions compared to general resistance." I suppose that could be taken either way. Nonetheless I entirely disagree with your assessment that the only thing it adds is the obvious decision not to use fire magic against fire immune creatures. See my previous posts...

Why do people always ignore my previous posts when responding to a later one? The result is a discussion that just goes round and round in circles. Like I said SO MANY TIMES, in my opinion resistances for regular, trainable units should be more of a convenience than a major component of strategy. Honestly I don't really care all that much of resistances for regular units are even in the game - I'd like it if they are but I wouldn't particularly mind if they aren't. You cannot, however, design your own dragon, or ent, or elemental, or kraken - they are what they are and they have what they have. No min-maxing to be done and no 'picking' to be done.

I'm fine with the ability to focus your magic research in such a way that allows you to impart magical anti-magic properties to your units. That could be a fun way to play the game now and then, and could even be combined with the 'regular' aspects of magic to create something of a middle-ground.

Regarding the bold section: no it does not preserve the uniqueness of magic types. It is the exact same thing as a system without magic damage/effects and related resistances, with the ability to specialize in a typical 'barbarian mentality' (which I think was already ruled out by the devs). Nonetheless in that system I still cannot have lava-dwelling salamanders that are resistant to fire and weak to water, and so on...

Whether implemented as tags/traits/properties/abilities or as resistances stats in line with ATK and DEF is irrelevant. The same effect is achieved, and neither is really any more complicated than the other. Really, tags are slightly more complicated than stats, with the added benefits of being more versatile and visually cleaner. If you think stats would result in an unbalanced system but tags would not, then you are confused because they are in effect pretty much identical.

Elemental is not a multiplayer game. It is a single-player game with multiplayer functionality... Or at least that was the original intention. Brad has stated that he will not dumb down or remove features that are great in single-player just for the sake of multi-player. Don't expect Stardock to be tweaking Elemental every few months for the sake of multiplayer balance like it's Starcraft or a competitive RTS. 

This is not even a question. There must be damage types, otherwise the combat system will be an epic fail. This is my opinion. [85% of the voters said "yes" so far btw...] Just go and read this topic:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/367799

..or this:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/367578

Interesting topics I must say. I agree with Frogboy of course, some swordsmen or archers shouldn't be able to kill a dragon. What about 100 archers? Frogboy says: no...and I agree with him again. [Actually they are only talking about ATT & DEF in those topics of course.] However, what if we enchant the arrows, so they will do +3 dmg as fire? [Let's say that given dragon has zero fire resistance.] Those bowmen should do some serious damage in that case. It's simple and fun...without features like this, the combat system will be dull and primitive.

Either way [correct me if I am wrong], Boogie has stated that we gonna have magical damage types. So if this is true, we gonna have resistances & immunities also.