I was not familiar with total war. I went on you tube and saw a huge battle. If we can get that in Elemental I am all for it. It would be way cool.

I am also again the super unit that is unstopable. Even in LOTR Sauron was defeated once with a lucky sword stroke. Maybe something like this can be put in the game. The possibility that a super unit will make a fatal mistake or that a regular unit will get lucky....

It was not a regular unit ..... it was a KING!!!

Admittedly some of these ideas has been mentioned.  Here is some of my wants about roads...

Roads should have its own progression of development.   Gamer should be able to make strategic decision on the design of road networks, especially as caravan is an important way to transport resources (and hopefully equipment during unit upgrade)

Tracks
Tracks are automatically generated due to heavy foot traffic,  may it be generated from repeated caravan traffic, or a huge army has just passes by.   There is no way to remove those tracks manually (short of casting some illusion spells), but they disappear if not used.   Negligible speed improvement, no upkeep needed.

Tracks appears between cities as trade/caravan travels between them, using a shortest path.  After gamer build a road to fine-tune their route, the tracks will eventually disappear.

Roads
Caravan travelling along a road will never leave it unless it is manually instructed by gamer.   This means gamer has a complete control of their trade routes by road construction.  Caravan will never take the shortest route to its destination when proper road is available, (e.g. to avoid anticipated danger).  Some speed improvement, upkeep needed to maintain it.  Costs $ to build.

Gamer can build road anywhere.  This can be used as an distraction strategy if wanted. 

Bridge: similar to roads. 

Forts
Forts provide defensive bonus; larger more expensive fortress provides higher bonus.  All caravan stops immediately at a fort.  When they resume traveling next turn, any unused movement point last turn is carried over , plus they got some extra speed bonus this turn.   Thereby, gamer can better protect caravans if they garrison troops in forts.  High upkeep.  Expensive to build.

Man-made walls
Walls are built between cloth map tiles, just like the river in Beta.  And up to 4 walls can be built by workers on 1 map tile.   Most Non-flying units CANNOT traverse to the other side of the wall.   There are infinite configurations possible with other on-tile structures like cities, forts, archer towers, mage towers, etc because walls will automatically connected to these structures.  For example, the Chinese Great wall can be easily simulated by a long row of map tiles made from a “wall+road+wall” configuration.  

Siege warfare on the Strategic map
Units with ranged weapon garrisoned on the Fort/tower automatically attacks nearby enemy without melee retaliation.   Normal foot soldiers cannot assault Fort/man-made wall unless siege equipments are researched & equipped (e.g. siege ladders, rams).   Siege weapons like Catapult, Giants`stone throwing can destroy a wall section and then allows normal entry. 

Workers
I like Workers unit.  I don’t like “Automated” workers unit (a la Civ4) as they never do want I want & too much micro.  EWOM should incorporate a “Way Point” system, this will reduce any need to have them automated.   Gamer draw a path on the map, the unit follows while performing one of the actions available; in this case, workers building roads & all other infrastructure outside city on the cloth map.

When workers are building roads/walls/forts etc,  a stream of caravan will supply the material needed e.g. stone.   This represents the difficulties of building structure in remote/enemy location.

Workers are usually not killed.  They surrenders and be captured by enemy instead.  They  can keep building fort after being captured, even if their new owner do not have the technology to build a fort.

I like all of Climber's ideas in the above post except for two; I don't like the walled road idea at all. to me both unrealistic and unfun. On workers I am not against so much as I am neutral. Whether there are actual worker units or roads just "get built" without creating a worker, both can be fun, so it doesn't matter to me. However, I do not like the idea that workers can be captured and then continue to build something for the captor that he does not have the tech to be able to build. I don't mind the part that they can be captured, just the part that they can continue to build whatever they were building regardless of the new owner's tech capability.

actually Athens would build Walls around the Roads from their cities to their Dockyards/Ports, so that they can more safely get to their navy when under attack.

enryu, Reply 104. 

Thanks for liking most of the idea above.  I am not sure what you did not like the "walled road" idea, I'll like to hear.   However, I've made a change about walls and have it updated it with the following:

Man-made walls
Walls are built between cloth map tiles, just like the river in Beta.  And up to 4 walls can be built by workers on 1 map tile.   Most Non-flying units CANNOT traverse to the other side of the wall.   There are infinite configurations possible with other on-tile structures like cities, forts, archer towers, mage towers, etc because walls will automatically connected to these structures.  For example, the Chinese Great wall can be easily simulated by a long row of map tiles made from a “wall+road+wall” configuration. 

Finally, I explain a bit more about why I like workers here if there is a Waypoint mechanism in EWEOM to simply unit's path planning.

Yea, walls being in-between tiles seems like the best option. I wonder if that will make walls harder to garrison though? Maybe not .. I mean, if ranged units start in a tile "defended" by a wall (a wall should have a front and a back, I think), then if they are attacked from the side which is defended by the wall, I think such ranged units should start upon a massive wall in the battle-screen. Perhaps the rest of units will have an option to use ladders to scale the wall in-case the opponent brings ladders as well? Mind you the wall should be in the middle of the battle-map, streching entire length left-to-right.

Should also be option to simply keep ALL soldiers on the ground behind the wall, and wait for enemy to either Blast their way through or fly over, if you think placing your archers upon the walls would not confer an advantage (or if you don't have archers).

I suppose most such "attacks" would happen at the location of a gate, but I suppose if the wall is meant to be "unscalable" then I suppose ladders are out of the question. Of course, mounted units would not be able to cross an un-gated wall regardless. For an enemy melee unit to cross ... would require significant investment in ladders, either from a resources perspective, or a siege perspective (or both)

No, I don't consider this necromancy. The new population system was merely the missing puzzle piece that could tie all the loose ends.

The new specialist system is the perfect solution.

Players should have the ability to build roads manually, laying out nice road networks where they are needed. The current caravan-controlled way is entirely random and often circumvents the exact spot where the road should be because it can plot a course through 5 cities around that spot... which results in a 3 times longer path when you want to cross that exact bit of map.

Even MoM had manual road building and the planning of roads wasn't a real problem.
I do agree that building workers and micro-managing them to dig out every single tile of road would be dumb.
So lose the workers.

To design a road you need nothing - maybe a basic research tech. No actual unit. Ever.
You click the "build" button and start dragging road lines on the map. That's it.
Deleting roads should also be possible the exact same way but not instantly. So you'd have to protect that highway into your realm when an enemy army is at the gates instead of just "erasing" the road to slow them down.

Now whenever you have unemployed specialists, they are automatically tasked with road building / deconstruction.
Or this could be done with a city improvement. A road master's office. Either way, somehow people are put to work.
 
Starting with the roads you designed first, they start building, slowly turning the ghostly "design lines" into roads.
When a new road can be built, they build this dirt track first.
When no new roads are scheduled to be built, they automatically improve dirt tracks to cobble roads. (provided this has any positive effect at all, such as a trade income or movement bonus = )

That would finally integrate road building into both the economic and military system.
You'd have to make a choice whether to use your population to train military units, produce stuff... or improve your road network, which could benefit both military and economy in the long run.
More choices to make but no massive micromanaging for the actual building. Just drawing a few lines on the map once in a while.

For the truly lazy player (and the AI = ) there should be an auto-build feature, enabled on the options screen.
When a road master's office has been built in a city, it will automatically link up all cities in a way it sees fit. Kinda like the caravans do it now.
Obviously this should spread out from cities with that improvement, giving the player some overall influence regardless.
Whenever the workers run out of roads to build, the next bit of road is planned by the road master.
This always leaves the player the option to plan a road manually at any time without having a big queue of "auto road orders" ahead of this manual order.

Yes, magical roads don't fit into this very well. How big a bonus would that be?
Double? With roads costing 0.5 moves already, that would quadruple the speed on magical roads with a cavalry unit moving maybe 12 tiles per turn.
Justifyable on large maps but on smaller ones that's not much different from a mana-free Teleport.

Enchant Road (and magical roads per se) was a very unbalanced spell in MoM. No need to repeat that. =P

#109 and the 1st part of 108 seem pretty much the same.  Both work for me.

Excellent idea but missing one crucial component. Integration into the magic system. Allow roads to be enchantable for quicker movement and possibly even safety or defense. Sort of like the road going through Mirkwood in The Hobbit, or in the woods in that book The Weirdstone of Brisengamin by Allen Garner? I can't remember, it's been literally 15 years since I've read it.

With current movement costs you don't have a lot of leeway in making magical roads even faster.
Roads are 50% so I guess magical roads could be 35% or something.

They'd soon turn into near-instanteous travel anywhere. That was a bad thing in MoM.
They could, however, cost mana upkeep. That would be the same as a low powered gate / teleport.

I'm not sure if "magic system integration" is doable in a cool and sensible way. I don't have a good idea for that in any case.

Just allow the player to lay out the route. Simple, effctive and if screwed up it is the players fault. AI just uses a best route algorithm. Who and how they get built is moot. The 50% bonus is all that really matters after they are in place.

It should also eliminate those funky roundabouts we get now when more than 1 road converges. They look ...unprofessional.

I still like my movable node idea from 18 months ago. LOL

Well yes it does sound a bit much if it's going under the 50% mark with no mana upkeep.

If that side of things is not practical, then enchanted roads may have other advantages. For example, units taking the road can't be attacked by neutral units. Non-neutral enemy units could suffer a bewilderment that acts as a disadvantage in attacking units on the road. Maybe something like a to-hit penalty or a random chance for loss of combat turn per unit each turn.

More of a stretch would be allowing one unit from the nearest friendly city node connected to the road, to join in a battle taking place on that road tile. Sort of as if that road is being patrolled.

It could also have the effect of increasing the population growth rate, as it helps immigration and emmigration when the roads are safer to travel. That could also lead to improved trade/income as well, so there are some options to consider.

Ok, here's my two bits.

Give each city some kind of "economy" stat, possibly hidden. Make it sqrt(population * total production) or something else deemed reasonable; since population will be generating taxes in 1.1, maybe "economy" would just be equal to gross gold production (though this would ignore mining cities and academic capitols). Based on this stat, each city gets a number of free, invisible caravans. These caravans each pick destinations (friendly cities or outposts; see below) and travel to them, wearing in roads as they go (much the way it works in Elemental 1.0x); on each trip, the caravan calculates its path (and possibly its destination) anew - taking into consideration the benefit of any existing roads. Roads would also decay naturally. In this way, roads develop (or become obsolete and abandoned) organically.

To add player control/influence on the road system, the player will be able to do two things; build roads directly (via some worker unit -- possibly just any unit -- and/or magic), and establish outposts. "Artificial" roads of this sort would cost to build initially, but would serve to accelerate or even redirect the organic road growth. Roads not "used by the people" would naturally decay and need to be refreshed by the player (at cost of mana or labor). Outposts would work like unattached city improvements (or, alternately, like zero growth cities), possibly built by pioneers, and would have an upkeep cost. They would generate some minimum number of the invisible caravan unit and would thereby serve to influence roads to/from them (and thus, beyond being a way to encourage road "hubs," would be a way to establish automatic upkeep for militarily desirable "artificial" roads).

In another game from the way back machine (Outpost), factories could produce road sections, which were stored in warehouses, as long as you had space.  Placing said road sections took a number of your worker population, so if you placed a whole bunch at once, you could tie up your entire population and not get any other buildings built until said sections were complete.  You could also build monorails, etc. as your tech progressed.

Come to think of it, since population is now a resource, it makes sense that you'd allocate a portion of your population to the road project.  To put this in terms applicable to Elemental:

Road Type----Population Required----Bonus

Path-------------------1-----------------+50% movement

Dirt Road--------------2-----------------+100% movement

Gravel Road-----------3-----------------+150% movement

Brick/Cobble/Paved---4-----------------+200% movement

Caravans would provide whatever bonus they provide 'upon arrival', so if they move 3x as fast, you'd get said bonus 3x as often.  Or you could simply increase the bonus by 3x if that's too complex, although I like the idea of 'caravan hunting' for gold, food, etc.

Using this method, you could build as many road sections as you had population to spare.  There probably should be a nominal Gold cost as well (say 1-8 GP per square or mini-square, based on road quality).  Simply click a 'build road' icon, and then click where you want said section.  And, perhaps you could only build paved roads on top of gravel roads, etc... Some materials may also be required for building (clay/bricks or stone).

Said 'build road' icon might be part of the City popup icon on the map, so you can designate which city is providing the workers for said road project.

Bridges (if rivers/streams ever show up again) would take 'x' amount of gold and workers to complete.  Bridges would require materials to build, be it stone, clay, or lumber.

Along this chain of thought, workers (population) would be required for any project you undertake, with the bigger projects requiring more population.  Also, along these lines, you could start as many projects as you wanted in a city (not just one), as long as you had the workers/population to spare.  Plus, once said buildings are built, they'd have a 'staffing' requirement.  Someone has to work the wheat field or do the arcane research, after all!

Outpost had three levels of population - children, workers, and scientists.  All required food of course, workers and scientists could build stuff, but only scientists could work in labs. Scientists were produced by building schools for them to study in, btw.

A similar concept could be used in Elemental (children, workers, researchers, mystics), if you wanted to get that specific...

Magic Total War would have been incredible, maybe next time

It's unfortunate a lot of games change or lose sight of the original plan then there is always lack of funds and expertise. I think one of the biggest excitements for me was when this game was compared to total war only in fantasy. I still think this games tactical combat can be great it just needs alot of TLC and a lead producer with a great tactical imagination.

ive always looked at such things this way - a wheat tile simply means that this place has optimal location for "wheat" so planting this here will increase harvest - and other places are better for other things


not a perfect way of looking at it ill give you as some things dont make sense when looked at it like that.

Nah .. the problem isn't placing Total War into a fantasy setting ... its placing Fantasy into the Total War setting

I'd love a magic-based creative assembly game ... and hope they make an expansion with a FFH2 scenario just for kicks and giggles

(and in this dream FFH2 scenario ... perhaps an entire "world" or most of it ... With Illians, Hippus, Grigori, Elohim, Infernal, Amurites, Malakim, Bannor, Shieam involved (at least))

I havn't read through the entire thread but here's my 2 cents on roads.

You should buildup roads as they were built in reality.

So:

Roads should be created by your people and not by you.

Stage 1:

A citizen will automaticly start finding the best path to you nearest city as soon as it reaches size N. Prioritizing the closest city, then repeating as needed to build up your empire's road network.

Stage 2:

After the road has been set you get small groups of travelers on foot going between cities. They give you very small bonuses and take a long time to reach their destination.

Stage 3:

After a few successful trips from the pedestrian traders you start to get carts. This is the final stage giving you a decent bonus to resources at a higher rate than the pedestrians.