You are clearly misunderstand my points.

A balanced game = everyone has a fair shot of winning. Civ 4 is a good example of a game that is balanced. I can play Japan, I can play England, I can play Americans, whoever I want. Now for example if Americans started by default with an entire continent of cities while everyone else had a settler then that would not be very balanced.

That is clearly not going to happen in Elemental and so the concern shifts to faction strengths. From what I've seen so far no factions seem to be overpowered and the bonuses benefit certain play styles more than anything else.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up EU3. It's not balanced and it's not meant to be. It is balanced in that everyone has the same sliders available to them, but clearly some nations start in an extremely advantageous position. If I did a one on one game between France and Milan, I can guarantee you in 9 games out of 10 France would come out on top. The starting positions are not balanced because they are meant to be historical. Can you see the difference there?

That doesn't mean Milan can't beat France but all things being equal they are extremely unlikely to. I don't see this as being particularly relevant but my points stand on their own. A major problem with looking at the Eu series at all is that there are no really set goals. Elemental is far different. Except for perhaps roleplayers the goal WILL be to destroy your competition by force or otherwise.

I'm not preaching anything. I am telling you how the game is.

To me and to most people who play multiplayer games, balance is important. It is clear that it is not important to you and your friends and that is fine but it has little bearing on the actual discussion at hand.

Justb because you don't like what you are hearing, doesn't mean it has little bearing on the discussion. Elemental doesn't need clan support, and it doesn't have to be balanced. It probably won't be balanced.

I've already said I see no reason for clan support. I've never been in any kind of multiplayer clan so it is not an important feature to me.

I disagree very much on your other point. If they will bother to include an MP feature, it ought to have balance. It doesn't have to be a perfect balance, but it should be generally balanced. Unless a particular faction is *meant* to be extremely powerful in comparison to others, it shouldn't be. A good example would be Lord of the Rings type games. Mordor is often more powerful than other factions because it fits the story.

All I'd like to see from Elementals MP system is that the factions are balanced and the sovereign types are balanced. You should be able to play a fighter or a magic user with benefits and drawbacks to both and factions should be roughly on par with each other with special abilities benefiting certain play styles. That isn't too complicated and it isn't overly demanding.

The two features I deem necessary for a solid MP experience are also required for a solid SP experience. Players will make their own sovereigns and (mod?) their own factions. Nail that one down and you get two birds with one stone.

Maybe they can introduce a point system of some kind, like a multiplayer mode that only gives you so many points to create factions that are balanced as opposed to messing with the original faction ideas that are in the single-player. In your example, if you think mages are powerful, it would cost more points to chose that sovereign over a fighter sov. This way they're not sacrificing anything in single-player and providing an user created only faction map sort of thing.

GalCiv II isn't balanced mainly because its a single-player only game. I think the real fear for those who don't play multiplayer is that the singleplayer component will be penalized for multiplayer. Stardock already said they were doing multiplayer so that's not really an issue anymore. I don't know how difficult it would be, but it seems like if they allow you to create your own factions as they say they do, it should be okay to create some sort of system for multiplayer maps to allow balance without actually changing anything about the single-player game at all.

Even if I get yelled at for bringing it up yet again, in EU3, some of players will pick the smaller countries for a greater challenge. It's pretty cool to have portugal or scotland take over the americas. For Crusader kings (totally different game I know), the smaller kingdoms are easier to manage and the goal is not to take over the world, so to speak. You can't really do it with CK without cheating. You're just trying to get a strong kingdom/dynasty going to last or some other set goal. Then again, both those games have rules for war. I've not heard that there are any rules for war in Elemental. Sounds like standard Civ affair to me.

I agree with what someone else said, a very compotent in AI is essential for SP and MP.

Master of Magic was a good game for the time, and it has a charm too but again SP made balance unnecssary. I don't remember it being hugely unbalanced, but then again I was pretty young.

Just because some of you have such a big e-peen that need other real people to beat them with it, doesn't mean that there isn't some other people that is more than happy (and being challenged) with(by) the (good) AI (done by Frogboy). Plus MP (usually) implies (as much as possible) flat factions in the name of balance.

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong. Go play War of the Lance or Centurion Defender of Rome on their max difficulties I guarantee you it will take you a lifetime to beat them. AI's can be strong provided they are given the love to be so. Those two games also have stood the test of time in AI programming and challenge. Plus I highly doubt you beat Master of Magic with 4 computer opponents playing impossible difficulty on a LARGE or HUGE map. I've read these socalled I beat the highest difficulties and then later find out they beat them on a small map with only  1 or 2 opponents and they grunt rushed them in the beginning to win.

So NO playing MP isn't the endall of every game. MP isn't the most challenging because I have played moron humans that are worse than the AI. So don't give me that crap about playing other ppl being the real challenge.

lol

i beat them NERFING myself

cause with life book it was nearly cheating

life was just too strong with torin and invulnerabilty champions after few lvls becomes machines

not talking about the combos like life/nature  and such

How do you figure? Right now, it's pretty balanced if you look at the five factions on the Kingdoms. No one of them is significantly better then the other.

The only potential real balance issues right now are in a caster sovereign in the magic tree vs a melee sovereign in the warfare tree, and is anybody REALLY going to argue that one playstyle should completely dominate the other? Considering the number of threads in the ideas and beta forums with people arguing the exact opposite (that the play styles should all be competitive with each other), I already know the answer. Oh my god, people are worried about balance! The game is ruined!

The other potential issue is Kingdoms vs Empires... and since Empires have been enabled for so short a period of time I really don't know the answer there. But again if the Empires are vastly superior and win most games, how is that a good thing for single player? Aside from psychoraven, most of you don't want a game where if you're Empire playing against Kingdom you can win on impossible, but as Kingdom with Empire opponents you can only win on normal. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense (and would also require a lot of AI cheats to make the story mode work).

The disconnect that appears as soon as someone mentions "multiplayer" would be pretty funny if it wasn't so ridiculous.

Wow lads...what the hell is going on in this topic? Seriously who cares that X player likes MP, while Y player hates it? If you don't like it, don't play it. The OP's question was simple...and the topic itself turned into a sh*t throwing flame fest. 

PS.

We have a proper answer to the OP's question anyways, so chill out:

like i said

its stardock not nasa

As was said, if people have ideas and we like them, we'll use them. If this thread is just going to be an argument rather than a platform for ideas though, it's outlived its usefulness.