Orthanc

Pretty pictures are secondary to me. But I'd *love* to see the game include structures with both some Orthanc-like functionality (nearly indestructible, accessible only with magic key) and Orthanc's back story. Or at least the ability for modders to build stuff like that. An 'abandoned' analog to Orthanc could make a great follow-up quest site after you quested to find the key.

Structures like these add to the epic feel, so I think adding them would be very cool. However there should be resrictions to this. If the player could build these structures then you might be able to spam them, which seems silly to me. Finding and claiming these towers - even waging wars over them - seems very cool. These towers might give you something in the short term while slowly corrupting your channeler long-term without you noticing it...

I am sure some one more creative than I am can come up with more cool ideas. Adding these structures would be very cool if they will be very very rare.

The best thing I think about Orthanc, is in the description of when they appear to 'freeze' onto the walls and tear them apart like roots acting in rapid-time.  Similar to getting a good grip on a jar before you open it, only much much more so .

I would love to see something like that in a game - if anyone could convery that sort of strength in an animation if would be very cool. Maybe if there is one of the 'tangling vines' type spells in there Stardock would think about it? That spell category always looks a little lame, whereas it should really be a sort of inevitable slowly crushing horror, with anyone not initially immobilised having to desperately hack away at it (unless they have fire).

My initital idea was to make it your keep. So, you'd be limited 1x per player. Although...I like some of the alternate ideas mentioned above!

I am not sure if I am now wording it correctly, but I feel like part of the feel of both Emelental and Lord of the Rings is the mystique. Orthanc is amazing because no builders who still live could construct a tower like that again. If you however can build this tower yourself then the mystique is gone even though he functionality would still be the same. In the end if you care little about the mythical feel then being able to build these fortresses would be perfectly fine. Limiting one per empire or making them very expensive would be fine.

I maybe got over-excited by the name of Orthanc. It immediately got me thinking about quest sites.

Re customizing your channeler's home, I'm guessing that something like that is in the works at least for modding and hopefully for some in-game editors like the GC2 Shipyard. I'd be interested to see what popped up in a Show Off Your Tower Designs thread.

I just hope that we have plenty of cool attachments to stick on our towers.

Looking at the picture in the OP, I realize you could almost re-texture some of the ship pieces from Galactic Civ 2 and thow them in as random parts.   There are 4 fin pairs at the top (you'd have to do flat edged ship-fins, then put pointy fins on the edges of the tops)  with some pointy spikes part of the way down. 

The obolisk part I don't think could be crafted from GalCiv parts, but I think an obolisk piece is a much needed building block.

I agree that being able to just build one whenever doesn't seem quite right, but I do want to point out that Barad-dur (a much cooler tower, IMO) wasn't built by some ancient, long lost builders.

This brings me to a question I have. How much can we "parallel" Lord of the Rings? Will we be able to infuse essence into our keep/tower/fortress/etc to make it nearly indestrucable? Can we infuse most/all of our channeler's essence into an object (ring, armor, magical boot   etc) and use it to increase their power, but at the cost of if it is destroyed, we are destroyed, or another channeller can capture it and use it against us? Will we be able to reinact the entirety of LotR from the first war of the ring/last alliance all the way to the final defeat of Sauron? Can you tell I'm a huge LotR fan?

Oh man!!! Wouldn't a nearly indestructable tower be awesome? It would be a cool "final stand" scenario where the enemy couldnt necessarily destroy you're channler but your stuck in the tower because you're surrounded. Maybe you could teleport out of there or maybe just cast damage spells every turn on the surrounding troops.

I want this game to be out NOW! I can't take it anymore!!! 

I seriously respect Tolkien's novel, but some folks around here could care less, actually dislike it, or are only familiar with the visual treatments of the text. Those folks need to know that what you're describing has many more applications than 'paralleling' Lord of the Rings. IMO, in generic terms, essence mechanics like the ones you describe would add rewarding depth to the game and help it stand out in the fantasy TBS genre.

Let us leave parallels to the modders and give it a month or two. The LotR and Star Wars mods will be out soon enough.

You're right, sorry about that. I just assumed that, given the nature of the game, most people here would be familar with LotR, Tolkien, etc, but, as you point out, that isn't entirely fair of me. So here are my suggestions without the references, for those who stopped reading my post as soon as they saw "Lord of the Rings"

• Being able to infuse your channeler's keep, tower, hovel, whatever with essence to make it nearly/totally indestrucable. The advantage of this, obviously, is that you have an indestrucable building, and that your channeller is safe from everything when inside it. The downside of doing this is that your opponent can trap you in your tower, so your only options are to stay there and hope he leaves, or try to leave the safety of your tower and fight your way out. Also, since you are trapped, your opponent would be free to pursue the Spell of Making or some other means of victory. The only way for the tower to be destroyed is to kill the channeller.

• The ability to impart most, if not all, of your essence into an object, like a ring, helmet, sword, whatever. As long as you have this item equipped, your powers (all of them, along with your empire) are increased. If you loose it (but it is not destroyed) you are severely weakened, as is your empire. If you loose it and your enemy captures it, they can either destroy it, and in the process you, or wield it themselves, which grants them immence power at the cost of being currupted.

Those ideas indeed reflect LotR accurately and I applaud that you summarised them so well. However, those ideas will probably not be implemented because we all know that in SP games the player will probably not be lost ever, so those items will probably be overpowered and therefore not a very good idea to add to the game.

Yeah, they would probably be overpowered. I've been trying to think of why you would ever loose your ring/helm/sword, but so far I've got nothing. It'd be hard to do it like it happens in LotR without you just being defeated.

But this got me thinking, can you put essence into a building, period? Can you give a trebuchet the ability to fling magical rocks that explode on contact with their target, or turn a city wall into a wall of flames?

Re obvious, accessible focuses for power like the One Ring, ways to lose such a thing shouldn't be that hard to devise for a game with channelers and champions as map units that have their own inventories. Modeling Sauron's story tightly would require some form of channeler recovery along the lines of MoM's Spell of Return, but you could probably get in the neighborhood with some retreat functions mixed with the right stealth abilities that a channeler would keep independant of a major focus OAF like the Ring.

Building something even close to Orthanc should take essence and I hope we have some options along those lines, but IMO an enchanted trebuchet should work with just mana unless the enchantments are much more serious than the basic fire magic you describe.

p.s. Wouldn't turning an enemy city wall into a wall of fire help them defend against you? Or do you mean something more like a wildfire spell that starts with a large boundary and works inward?

I was thinking more along the lines of turning your own walls into fire, kind of like "upgrading" them, making it easier to defend that city.

MoM had a Wall of Fire spell like that. I'd like to see a mana-based version in Elemental, but unless the spell was permanent without a mana upkeep cost, I'd object to seeing it cost essence.

I for one see the firewall as a kind of a double-edged spell you can cast either on yourself or enemies, with the caveat that only the caster can remove it w/o significant effort: a ring of fire around a city makes an EXCELLENT siege-on-demand.