The thing I curse the most in Civ4 is that God forsaken worker AI.

If you go with workers, I'll curse my existence if I have to manually control them and it's anywhere near the level of Civ4 requirements.  If you automate them though, we need control.

Things that personally piss me off: fort spam, road spam, and trashing existing improvements when open tiles are still available to turn into the exact same things.

An options list to go with the worker would be nice.  Like where to build roads, an empire connect list would be of extremely high value.  Only connecting cities and resources would be another one.  Giving your enemy roads to travel into your empire from isn't nearly as useful as leaving a buffer zone of wilderness for him to crawl through while you zip along to block his entrance.

Don't try to make them smart enough that we wont need options.  It's impossible.  If you can't give us enough tools to customize them into our perfect automated worker, just follow KISS.  There's nothing more infuriating than a self optimizing moron worker blowing up your improvements because you emphasised production to finish building something faster and lost all your cities...

From what I've seen, exterior improvements should be fairly minimal, just having caravans of supplies and workers travel out and build whatever it is you manually placed should be the best way to go.

I guess you know this but you can set workers in CIV IV not to build on existing improvements. I always do this. I control workers manually for the first half of the game and then let them roam freely.

It still doesn't help hinder the road-spam though ... I think there should be some bonuses to letting land stay wild (regenerating lumber, ect?), or sans that (and more importantly) once you start paving/cobbling roads in some way, other than a simple dirt road, there should be some sort of regular maintanence upkeep.

As a caveat to that... all roads should have a maintanence upkeep.  Cobbled roads should improve trade and movement better than dirt roads, but all roads should have an upkeep cost to keep them from washing out or going back to the wilderness.  The better the road, the higher the upkeep.  That should at least reduce unnecessary road spam.

That's why we suggested 3 tiers of roads. Tier 1 are the "trails" people simply beat down from travel. They're not endorsed or maintained by your empire, thus they're free. They also convey minimal bonuses, and simply spring up on their own.

Tier 2 are maintained dirt roads. You build them. They provide larger benefits, but cost upkeep.

Tier 3 are stone paved roads, or some other type of nice road. You build them with some high end tech. They cost a fortune both in time and upkeep, but provide *major* bonuses.

What you'd  see with a system like that is the minor roads developing organically, and strategic building of the better roads for trade or millitary purposes as the expense allows.

For the actual mechanic, I'm fine with just saying 'build road' and having a drawing tool to do it. Certainly I wouldn't want to see worker units with the way the game works right now (but I also think you should be able to capture a resource without having to build a city at it, so maybe something will happen there).

This post is without a doubt the most encouraging post I have ever read from a developer. If you guys stick to your guns with these numbers, I will personally buy 6 copies of Elemental for me and my friends to LAN!

Yes, the actual "road" roads will/should have maintanence, while travel-crafted trails would simply develop organically (reminds me somewhat of the rummage value), and these "major" bonuses for really good roads would be an absolute increase in troop movement speed, although as far as economy, it should be percentage based ... so it would only be worth building your best road if it was a bit more than a village or town (large town/small city should be where it starts to pay off ... unless of course its a very merchant oriented village, in which case it would be making money at the expense of having specialized in some other form of economy (like research or military production or population growth)

I honestly don't like the resource system that you describe.  It is abstract, and not logical at all.  How can you start building something that you don't have the components for, just because you found the resource? 

I don't like game mechanics that don't follow logic, just because they make the game easier to play, because they always break the illusion that you are actually doing the actions, and not just trying to play some games based on arbitrary rules. 

If you were to remove the first two points where you get 1 unit without roads, and 2 units with roads, it would remove that issue.  Making roads increase the rate of caravans bringing material is logical, and would give a good reason to build them.  Being able to control where you want to send your raw material would really help as well, so you can stock up on the material you may need in the future at the towns you figure you will need it.

I kind-of have to agree that Caravans (or some road-based feature like Camp 3 on the economics scale) might be better, and all non-Caravan connected cities might be able to get the "rummage" value, but you can only "rummage" if your capital (or somewhere) has access to the resource, and the Rummage value is based on distance from capital, so a far-away, non-connected city would have a much lower rummage value than a nearby core-city under seige.

But that's not what 'rummaging' represents... It represents the fact that even if there are no forests near a city, there might still be some trees, or there might be wood in other forms that can be recycled, etc. I really like the rummage idea, I just wish it'd be combined with an actual resource storage mechanic. Rummaging would be yet another feature that'd reduce any tedium that might crop up with local storage. It'd allow people to undertake small-scale projects in cities that don't have access to all the required resources without having to ship resources from afar (although that would be done automatically if a caravan could get there in time to speed up construction anyway - or the player could ship resources there ahead of time, but would pay for it in lost opportunity cost of the time it took to ship all those resources over large distances).

As you can tell, I refuse to give up on trying to convince Stardock to give local resource storage a chance

merg, fine. Rummage value could be universally the same ... but you do know there will be a rummage value for Iron Ore and everything else right? for lumber I see a basic even number, except for in the middle of desert ...

meanwhile, rummaging for Iron Weapons, (probably rummage value of 0.2) ... you think will be the same in a colony 1000 miles in no-mans land as in a city under-seige a mere 7 squares away from your capital?

In any case, I would kind of like localized storage of resources ... I mean in Dominions 3, sure there was only one resource and it was called "resources" ... yea, but ... each city had its own stockpile of resources for building units. I think that certainly, caravans and trade ships will be able to ship a great amount of goods from one city to another, but I think a global bonus for resource should at least have some sort of distance modifier. I certainly like the rummage idea ... but I prefer the idea of specializing cities ... so that a City near the Iron-mines will be more likely to build Iron-plate clad soldiers, and will do so more quickly (or something) ... ergo will have acess to more of the resource (hence the distance modifier). Although I suppose if its significantly difficult to equip good troops, and the player is made to be acutely aware of the consequences of various armors and equipment ... then perhaps it will solve itself. But I like the idea of one city making the best plate armor, another city able to make the best archery, ect, where everything will not inherently be everywhere at the same time.

Make roads via a low level spell. Cost of the spell depends on length, type of terrain, etc. Upkeep for roads in a $$ value, again depending on similar factors as the construction cost. You can build roads any length you can afford on a turn by turn basis, so it may take several turns/castings to go halfway across the map. No workers to micromanage, get to draw roads where you want them to go.

OR....

Have a roads via magic as a secondary way to make them, only no upkeep costs for a road built with magic, vs a road built by more mundande means.

I do like the upkeep costs for roads, and if you run out of gold, roads furthest out from the capital should start to crumble away 1st, and the rot should spread toward the core of your empire, until the financial situation stabilizes, etc...this makes no upkeep costs for a road built via magic very attractive...Maybe as a Level 4 road on the scale mentioned earlier? Though the spell to make roads at that point should necessarily be of higher level than the first one mentioned above.

Now that I think about it... -> "Late battles might have 10,000 soldiers involved." Wow...the battlefield must be huge enough to support 10k units. I mean what if I create 50 groups of units? 100 Soldiers will be in each group. That means that they will occupy 50 tiles on the battlefield when the battle starts.

if we have tiles, and if we do ... I would still prefer hexes. Also, I think a hex or a tile should simply organize a certain distance of land. If a tile is big enough, you can have several units in a single tile. And as I said before, you can organize similar soldiers into cohesive "units" of anywhere from 10-100 perhaps. I understand what you mean though. A battlefield should be quite sizable. There should be no way to cover the entire width of the battlefield with soldiers "imo"

Indeed. Perhaps the size of the battlefield should be dynamic. IE: the size of the battlefield should be adjusted automatically, depending on the number of units. [Example: 20 group of units / 200-500 soldiers -> size of the battlefield: 15x15 ; 100 group of units / 1000-10000 soldiers -> size of the battlefield: 50x50++]

dynamic battle-size would work. I think instead of groups of units though (as that seems rather optional), we go on the sum of the size value of all units ... as an abstract integer perhaps? and we have values that are basically the same.

For instance ... 1 dragon vs 1 dragon might need a bigger map than 1 man vs 1 man.

I'm still hoping for no tiles, personally.

at least not a type of tile system that affects how you move your units.

Well, considering that the system will be continous turn based, I doubt that we gonna have tiles on the battlefield. This does not means that the size of the battlemaps cannot be based on tiles however.

Well, considering that the system will be continous turn based, I doubt that we gonna have tiles on the battlefield.   This does not means that the size of the battlemaps cannot be based on tiles however.

I don't follow your logic. There is nothing about continuous turn-based combat that inhibits tile-based mechanics. In fact tile-based combat might even be more 'natural' for continuous turns than a free field would be. 

Hm....continous turn based: Baldur's Gate style. There are no tiles in that game. Correct?

So? Baldur's gate also doesn't put you in charge of armies, you have control of a small handful of characters. There is nothing about continuous-turn based combat that inhibits the use of tiles. Tiles just wouldn't make sense in a party combat system, particularly when the 'battlefield' is just the regular map. Everything is small enough scale that everyone is always in range of everyone else; it doesn't take much to move a few meters...

Brad uses Baldur's gate to explain how the turns will work, its combat system has no bearing whatsoever on any other aspect of tactical combat in Elemental.

I would prefer that an organic mass of  soldiers "unit" is not limited by an angular, inorganic tile system.

If there are tiles however, I would prefer hexes.

Er...okay...but you can pause the game in the RTS games also. Just think about Kohan: AG for example. The game has companies -> group of units, and it's an RTS. [No tiles of course] So basically the battles in Elemental will be similar to KAG's battles. [There are differences of course, but you got the picture.]

We know nothing about Elemental's combat besides the fact that it's turn-based and encompasses vast armies. Maybe it's tile-based. Maybe it's not. There is no way of knowing unless Stardock tells us. Also, being able to pause is not a fundamental necessity for continuous turn based combat - it's merely a convenience (one that of course they'd be silly not to provide, especially considering the target demographic). But continuos turn combat does not require the ability to pause.

Assuming it's going to be the way you'd prefer it to be, especially without any real justification, is setting yourself up for disappointment The combat could be like Kohan or Total War just with continuous turns instead of full-blown real-time combat; but it could just as easily be like HoMM combat with continuous turns. Or like MoM/AoW's combat with continuous turns. Continuous turns is only how time is dealt with in combat, it does not (or needn't) affect any other aspect of combat...