Brad, I think you should go back to the War of Magic with this one. Dedicate Essence sacrifices for magical warfare instead of mundane city building. Or magical "investments".

Let's say Revive Land is renamed Seed of Life. You plant the Seed of Life and from it life starts to slowly grow back into the land. Initially, you are simply weaker with a small patch of grass. But it is an investment in power. When Life spreads long and far enough, the land rewards you with a Tree of Life that bursts from the ground. The tree is like a Shard of Life Magic. Or it can give its controller more Essence than was spent to plant the Seed of Life, making it possible to cast more powerful Life spells than you could without planting the Seed.

Death magic could be the opposite, spreading utter land death and creating death magic nodes at skeletons of powerful creatures. Perhaps the Cataclysm weakened the land just enough for death magic to completely suck out all remaining life. There would be three land types: post-cataclysmic half-dead, lush and alive and utterly dead. Or Death magic could be about sucking the Essence directly out of the land for personal gain without any Death magic nodes.

But I think it would be more interesting if Life and Death were competing Divine magic domains with Gods of Life and Death granting the powers.

Then I'd also include Sorcery or Arcane magic as the neutral option. You'd have Elemental Magic (Fire, Ice, Air, Earth), Divine Magic (Life, Death), and Sorcery.

Interesting choices, I'm always up for that. And think they should happen every so often. And not always have an immediate cost and or benefit to the player. Interesting choices, should come up often. Sort of the world events, or region events type of experience. From hiring independent NPC's who don't "Fight" for you but in turn go out and adventure in your name (or not depending on how diplomatic that may be). To getting chances to sponsor groups, as a patron. They go out and explore, and they give you a percentage of loot or lost magic items every so often. But they can also in turn stir up messes. Releasing hordes of low level monsters to roam the land, or the demon Ixthryl. 

Yes, interesting choices, will give the world a living feeling.

NPC's NPC's do NOT always have to follow normal logic that we think of. They may be desperate. And there have always been mercenaries in the world, who go out and will work for gold, irregardless of their master. But the truth is maybe they should have time limits or contract limits. With maybe a loyalty or affinity system to guide those choices. Such as each NPC could weigh and judge their desire to work, maybe even with an attrition system for their game gold, and when it gets to a certain threshold, they go in search of work. The more desperate they become the more likely they'll work for "Monsters" and vice versa.. monster's working for Men, because of the concept of mercenary lifestyles. There are certainly enough fantasy worlds out there that have monsters embrace working for the good guys, when it suits their needs. I would say look at the entire Warhammer Fantasy world, and their battles. Dogs of War, those NPC's who are a bit more expensive, as it were, but who don't follow the normal allegiance.

NPC's doing things based upon their needs, would be a great idea. And could even inspire loyalty, if there was an attrition system put in so you could pay them their "Upkeep" and maybe send them gifts. As well as them responding to gifts given and taken from them.

Spell's Oh my gods yes. Player's should start out with spells known, right off the bat. Let them know two or three. And make sure one is the equivalent of a Tactical spell so that way the player can focus on strength for melee enhancements, and intelligence for spell power in tactical battles. So instead of starting with 0 Attack, they could start off with a magical spell Mana Bolt, Attack 5, and then they can learn other spells that have, higher and higher attack values, and maybe a bit more enhancements to those spells, like a Mana Blast which is say Attack 3, but affects an area burst up to 9 opponents, where as Mana Bolt is more damaging against a single target. And so on.

With the key being add magic into the game so that way people know they can play a wizard and burn stuff without the old concept of running out of mana. (That's one of the greatest changes in D&D 4th edition, your bread and butter powers work all the time, from sword swinging to spell slinging. Because they've found that a wizard who can only cast 1 spell at level 1, once per day, was not only boring as all hell, it showed a gaming weakness. Because a sword swinging fool doesn't run out of swings. So why should a wizard be penalized. Again it started in 3.5 that they noticed that with the Warlock always being able to blast every round. Now, in 4th edition. Everyone can "Blast" all day long.) The key thing to this idea though is that there really should be basic spells to choose from at creation. And they shouldn't cost anything, other than they just start with those spells. Or from a choice perspective you could in theory provide a choice of Give up a spell for some piece of equipment. (As the idea of a king who wastes 10 points on starting with a piece of gear, is just odd, when they can spend those 10 points and have all troops with the king move at his speed. Equipment should be a point or two even for good stuff.)

Spell's #2 Yes. Should be prompted like new research. With time spent on researching new spells independently of the tech tree while also giving some spells directly from the tech tree to be unlocked and thus can be learned.

LOTS of spells, really need to be made.

City Improvement's I like the idea of a few general improvements, but I prefer to have basic improvements, and also as you learn new info, the ability to upgrade older tech stuff. Huts, turning into Houses, and so on. But I would also love to see 1 per faction things, but a lot of them so they can only be built in one city, and then it becomes a play style, stacking everything in one town or spreading it around your kingdom. And 1 per world's I like, but I think the idea of 1 Major version per nation, and maybe 2 minor versions of that major item, that can be learned by the other nations. And maybe 1 Unique per game world things too.

Empires vs Kingdoms *shrug* each will get more love as time is devoted to them. The balance of the entire package will be there when that becomes 100% focus for the designers. When they turn their eyes of game balance and fun onto the target we'll see it more fleshed out. But that's cool to hear about the Empires getting that balance love.

Interesting Choices.

I like the idea much better of having the Sovereign improve the land how about widening improvements even more?

1. Rip a vein of minerals from the land making a mine of one kind or another.

2. Force into existence a plot of food. How about a random generator with a bit of flavour text for example you get an Apiary and text reads at the height/climax of your spell with a picture of tiled fields full of ripe vegetables so clear you can taste potatoes a small bee lands of your curved thumb, for a second your considerable will shifts to the sweet taste of honey.

3. Eternal State of Sun light, Twilight, Happiness, Oppression or Perfect weather what ever that is per race.

4. Just random fluff Floating Picture of Sovereign and or Spouse and or Kids (How about a tree that grows as the family grows? You know you see it as a tree on the land and as you zoom in it turns into the standard family tree?) Fireworks or maybe all pets take of the Royal Colours?

 NPCs. What about a random generator for the champions just like humans there are all stripes but to keep it simple.

1. Willing to work for anyone if the price is right maybe staggered per race.

2. Only work for same race.

3. Will work for other race but only if there Charisma is high enough.

4. Will work for anyone at the normal rate (just happy to have a job type)

Quests. I agree with you on this.

Spells. What about a spell like Glamour which increases your Diplomacy for one turn or maybe a permanent Glamour like always looking your best groomed and dressed in your best outfit.

Spells #2. Queue up spell learning. Totally Agree with this.

City Improvements. I also agree with this.

NPCs: To be honest from an rpg perspective bribing is your way to go, if any of the fractions not coincide with te viewpoints of the npc the recruiter needs to put more money down on the table, simple yet effective, however for more diversity one could consider to link recruiting towards the caracter points of the hero or champion. If the hero likes magic or has magic bonuses he likes to appear near magical citys or elements and likes to be recruited by a magical fraction, if one is noble of sorts they appear at the gates of a noble player (kingdoms?) or can only be recruited by kindoms, however when the character is cruel it is attracted towards cruel players (empires), if a npc is human its easy to be recruited by humans, if the npc is not of de kingdom of man he is easyer to recruit by empires, and so for every NPC trait there will be atractions and dislikes, and the spawining point and point of bearing (where he is likely to ''quest'' or be found) is near the place he likes to be recruited.

Npcs deserve to be there own individual person, background story's are nice, but need to back up by quality's that match, maybe even hero specific or unique spells weapons or abilitys (class abilitys, are already in the beta i believe?). 

It would be nice if one could have the same bond with a party of adventurers as in a real rpg, a possibility would be to give a party specific quest wich makes sense according to the level and members of the party, and it will make the party pay for itself in the long run. (You are more willing to spend the money on npcs if they are unique and can get quests that give you the loot you desire). 

Quests: Not much to add here, difference and emergence is good, sharing is not bad in all cases, however when it goes against the fractions ideas or lore, it could be inappropriate and plain weird sometimes. what i do find wondering when watching the beta videos quest seem to generate fertile land, now i know that viligers have to live somewhere, from my persenal viewpoint i find it verry destructive, and i dont want to build my city somewhere without penalty just because there is a green patch of land, in a otherwise deserted land, but i digress.

Diversity in quests is always nice, And adding a certain RPG element is in accordance with the games idea, The sovereign wil get quests offered, kingdoms will do them out of the goodness of there heart or for the good of the populous, and empires.............well i want to see my subjects grovelling, dear sir and overlord please help us..........an option to kill them is always nice for the evil doer. 

An option would be to let them share most quest but give the quest an evil and good option, because my guess is that there are Evil kingdom players and good empire players, i doesn't make much sense according to the lore, but i hope this would create a sort of fun factor. however the trade-off is that with such quests there is little reason to play both kingdom and empire fractions, and coding would be more diverse and difficult, so in the end i would choose for empire and kingdom quests to be different, if the area coincides with the taken quest, (escorting a fair maiden for a kingdom quest should not end up in the middle of empire territory)

Maybe its nice to let an adventurer party hunt for other hero`s or for technology, when the party level is high enough, in any case the route taken by the quest independent of how full the world is needs to be full of peril. (but yet again my mind seems to wander) 

Spells: I am for diversity not quantity, there is no use for a fire spell and a water spell that have both a AOE and damage quotient wich is equel or slightly different, make them vastly different so it makes sense to choose and learn al four spellbooks and let us marvel at the different effects. For example, fire in itself does damage but not that many on the first strike, burns however haunt te victim long after the battje the land is always scorched, and smoke wil make it tougher to see the map, after effects can be a loss of production, especially when wood or other flammable smoking materials are involved and last but not least is the fact that fire in itself is not man made but comes from the earth wich gives you the possibility to let lava come in to play and spoil citys or the earth scaring slowing troops down or let them disappear al together(possibly in combination with the spell book earth?) .

Earth in itself is the heavy hitter, a fireball will hurt you, a rock will squish you with or without umbrella. earth is in itself not only the rocks we see but also the plant life which can constrict or flourish call forth monsters (maybe something for all magic classes?) rip walls down or create them, reform the land or even create natural barriers. Mud will slow down creatures or let them be swallowed, Etc..

Water could be place bound, powerfull rising tides at coastal spots, bring in food from the sea, bless trade overseas bring in mist, freeze people drown pleople, rain down on people maybe even poison or choke people etc..

Wind: the howling of the wind terrefies, to have the wind comming from the rear wil hasten soldiers blowing against them will slow them down, gives the ability to fly and creates a path of windy destruction. Maybe its even possible to gain loot by letting it be transported on the winds of a tornado, we are not in Kansas any more.  

About spell queueing use a spellbook, a book where all spells can be organised and cast from, your spellbook, your RPG.  or maybe an interface tab for magic, handy to let npcs cast magic to, however with a lot of spells this van become crowded and difficult to chain the so called spells. maybe its possible to limit the spell book choise of NPCs to one but i doubt if that will be fun. maybe a rightclick system is workable, in the interface a few empty boxes appear, just like items are shown, and with a right or leftclick a parcment like list would pop up of all your spells, which you then can select within the empty box wich then is filled with that spell, cast when clicked upon. (the amount of boxes depend on your level as wizard?)

City improvements: Small citys look alike, larger citys do not, the higher the tier buildings are, the more different versions could be made. (if smaller city's stay in existence even in later games there will be use for the smaller and lower tier buildings, maximizing the difference between city's even more, not to mention the use of different skins that do not go to waste because of the ''i need to upgrade every city'' drive). What we see in real live is that when citys become larger they specialize, they get many different industry's in one particular field, become administrative city's or focus on its port or trade. unique buildings should reflect this, options are one per city, one per city depending on a certain value (if the city has lots of goods it will get a goods producing building if it gets a lot of trade, or has a lot of markets it gets some building to emphasise that) one per empire (to pimp the capitol or at least make it the center of a great kingdom/ empire, to fight corruption maybe?) one building per amount of city's, linkable buildings with different skins (which was already mentioned i believe?) maybe even buildings depending on an NPC or sovereign housing in the city (electing NPCS as governors maybe?) fact is that not al citys will be treated as equel, lots of resources mean that it becomes a player invested city, we will look at that city more often, to see if everything is working properly, so for atmospheric depth diversity would be nice. As for the Game perspective specialisation needs to be rewarded, if you make a city weaker in one aspect it would be nice to see it excel in another.

Like spells quantity for it own sake does not matter much, I believe its not fun but tedious scrolling trough menus that are always the same, so in both cases when they become larger they should become more diverse without sacrificing its functionality upgrading buildings by tech and city size like we've seen in the beta seems to work in this set-up. my opinion however is that i get a strange feeling when having high level housing in the smallest of city's, it just doesn't seem to fit. (for game-play reasons i understand that this is necessary maybe there could be a single house and a housing block, where the housing block contains more citizens, and therefore is more attractive for larger city's, while smaller villages use the single and more rural looking house?)

Empires are more polished: I can not really comment on that statement as Iam not participating in the beta (alas i do not have the money to pre order) but then again empires are not in the beta yet as far as i know. Kingdoms need to be loved to, and because they are the fractions that are spreading the love, well it will all be just lovely.  i like the difference seen from the screenshot, where the empire is ordely and the kingdom builds with more Flair, maybe some streets would be nice, or dark mud whatever you prefer purly seen from an aesthetic point of view. Good luck with balancing out the fractions and let us know when you want opinions!

Comments: Iam loving the active approach towards your fans potential customers and intrested people in general, a game for gamers by gamers.....very few developers dare to risk that approach, but iam guessing the game will be a little gem and a marvel in its own right. I know that most Ive said is barging down an already open door,so I dont expect to be red  and if I am red don't mind the grammatical and spelling mistakes. I tried to be as general as possible, but the things I like always seem to get in the way. alas its the only help I can offer, so and after so many words I am hoping it does, Good luck.

All comments are welcome, 

Jasper

I would like to see reasons for the prices of npc Champions.  In the beta some are as low as 50 gold and others are 1k+ for no discernible reason.  We don't need a whole resume, but a series of pluses and minuses as to why the champion is charging us a certain fee.  That way we can tailor our kingdom to certain types of npcs.

Champions with resumes does make me giggle though:

Sovereign: (looking over Joffrey's resume) What can you personally bring to the Kingdom?

Joffrey: I have very good people skills and have a results oriented personality.

Sovereign: Very good Joffrey!  We have a few others to interview.  We will call you when we make a decision.  (Feeds the resume to the imp after Joffrey leave)

In order to avoid a player going after other faction's npc as to deny them to recruit them maybe a high level NPC of that faction could be added so that if a player killed a certain amount then this neutral npc would get pissed off and proceed to hand some asswhoopage by raiding your land, you could eventually deal with this creature but early game you most certainly couldnt. How early and powerful, well that would be up to you guys .

Another idea would be that this creature could join you by researching some deep adventuring tech and provide more interesting choices when choosing what research tree we would be focusing on.

Ohh more ideas, I read that you liked the enchantment slots that was mentioned in the forums and I liked the idea as well and I suggested that maybe champions would be able to add extra slots if they were imbued using this system. You could further add more choices like for example, if you chose to use a given champions slot for "channeling a debuff spell" then he could debuff all the units around him. Like a simple -2Def to all enemy units around him (if such a spell exists). If there was a buff spell being "channeled through him" then he would buff all the units around as well and (give +1 Def).

In this case you would be like "damn I can make my heroe a walking AoE debuff or buff, which would be more helpful atm for me" etc. I'm sorry for the messy post but I just came up with these and wrote em as I thought bout em lol.

Some spells I came up with that could be added (Im not exactly sure what spells are in atm, since the latest patch has been really buggy for me and slow down has been nasty)

Spell Ideas:

Termite Swarm: Weakens Catapults/Rams/ships/and wood stuff in general lowering their defense and attack (or could just do damage to them idk)

Magnetism: Units wearing Metal armor/weapons suffer a penalty to their movement (armor 0.2 per piece?) and attack speed(metal weapons). This could be OP idk just an idea xD

Summon a pretty pony (cosmetic): Need something to make use of those pretty flowers you just summoned. Lol

NPCs, stronger NPCs should be hostile, weaker NPC's should be able to join for the right price. If your nearest army has at least an 80% chance to win, then a strong NPC turns from hostile to "willing for the right price"

Interesting Choices

- I like the idea of founding your first city, but then after that you should be able to free your sovereign up for other duties.  So I agree with your assessment here.

NPS's

- I agree with some of the above mercenaries that NPC's are very much in my mind mercenaries.  I would think however, that depending on the race of the NPC the cost to hire should be adjusted based on your empires race.  If the race is normally not friendly with the NPC's race, then the cost goes up.  This could be adjusted by a high soverign charisma rating or a skill of some sort.

Quests

- I agree quests should be a bit more tailored to the "alignment" of the player.  Maybe taverns could have an alignment to them, so that if you go to an evil tavern you get more evil based quests and so forth.  It might throw some flavor into the mix if you were allowed to do any type of quest, but doing good quests when your evil could throw a monkey in the wrench with regards to your empires love for you.  Maybe it could start to generate some morale issues among your troops or unrest in your cities.

Spells

- I can't comment on those just yet.

City Imporvements

- I totally agree with you on this.  I like the idea of achievement and wonder buildings.  Being able to specialize a city to me is more important (and the terrain you build a city by is going to help you in this regard as well).

for city improvements, how about impressive buildings just for prestige? maybe effects all your towns?

 

Interesting Choices.  Being forced to spend essence to build a city is not a choice interesting or not.  I’m inclined to find some other use to revive land rather than forcing users to use it to effectively build a town. That is, we’d let the player build cities on the foresaken land. That’s a pretty big game change but when you add the new game behavior that the sovereign can only found their kingdom (after that, only pioneers can build cities) it makes things a lot more fun.  I’d rather see essence used to generate fertile land or something (as an example).

I like this idea.. this could also lead to  wild game, wood terrain, ore, crystal, or other type of improved land generating spells (again needing a commensurate essence cost to prevent over use...)  by allowing these types of spells, some random map locations that are interesting ( for example nice beach locations near woods but nothing else desirable)  could made down right awesome...

NPCs. Playing as a Trog today makes me uncertain why an NPC from the race of men would want to sign on board.  Should they just cost more? Or should they be hostile? Or what? Quests. I’m inclined to have quests have an Allegiance tag. That is, Empires would get different quests than Kingdoms. Right now, they share them. Relias, the do-gooder might escort some princeling to his estate. Verga, however, would use his bones as a paste.

I am inclined to agree I think that the NPC available to the empire should be mostly from their races.. allowing either kingdoms or empire to have a rare few turn coat or tru mercenary types is fine... I realise this might lead to 3 pools of npc's needed .. kingdom, empire, and mercenary but in the end it would lend more immersion to the game 

Spells. Need a LOT more default spells that you can learn. Spells #2. Need some way to queue up spell learning.

as I am not currently in beta have not much input other then more is usually good...

City Improvements. I’d rather see fewer general improvements and more 1 per faction (Imperial Achievement) and 1 per world (World Achievement) buildings so that specializing cities is more fun. Empires are more polished. Ironically, the Empires feel “better” than the kingdoms in terms of balance. Probably because they’ve gotten more love (polish wise) with the notable and obvious exception of graphics.

firstly let me state that I do like the idea of 1 per faction type buildings.. I am less inclined to like the one per world type , but i understand it allows for a representation of things like the seven wonders of the world type of things so that should stay as well but making sure each faction had its own unique one per world types (at least cosmetically) should also be considered.. For example one one great wall in our world however it is a very similar type of achievement the the pyramids as far as amazing architectural wonders..

Further,(again not yet bring in beta my input it totally shaded by only what I have gleaned here or in the videos) it seems to me that some buildings need to have a limit based on level of city.. for example a hamlet is likely to have only a very few merchants where a town would have several competitive shops of a similar nature...  one possible idea that may help differenate one town from, another while also keeping the "city of 42 merchants so i am fabo wealthy" towns from sprouting up all the time, would be to increase the cost in coin and resources needed to make, while decreasing the the potential gain once the city level limit is reached.. for example if a hamlet can have to merchants based on level(and for my example say each one generates 2 gildar .. then the 3rd merchant is fractionally more expensive and only generates only 1.5 gildar with the cost increase even higher for the 4th and less gildar generated...  just brain storming here may be a crap idea but tis a thought....

City Imporvements

I was just thinking how about 1 out of 3 or 4 specials being built per game.

Example Sovereign's Tower of magic (mage) or War Room (warrior) or Hall of meeting (diplomats) or Research Study you get the idea so that a player can pick any one of them for a special bonus but only once per game maybe even only in the city that holds the palace?

King/Queens retreat in a city that does not hold the Palace?

Not a city improvement but what a bout a random tile or wandering peddler/armourer/weaponsmith etc?

What about hiring peddler/armourer/weaponsmith for your town like the other npc's

One of the core problems with the current quests is the lack of epicness in the latter stages. Quests need to have neutral, evil, and good options as they increase in difficulty. Doing these quests should also give prestige to simulate heroes hearing of your kingdom's epic battles and choosing to see what all the fuss is about.

Also, why not have some quests that open up new quests in random locations near the end of the quest techs?

Ex: Defeating a Terrible Demon the wrong way, choosing a neutral option rather than good, merely split his being into several pieces and scattered him about the wastes, each partition growing ever stronger while you hunt her down till the last piece is cleansed from the earth.

THAT IS AN EPIC QUEST!

personally i think that NPC's could be simply made with an alignment stat.  it could be simple:

good: paladins are an example.  can be hired by good alignment, or neutral but never evil.

neutral: mercenaries are an example.  can be hired by anybody with enough cash.

Evil: necromancers are an example.  can be hired by evil or neutral but refuses to work for good.

or you could go with a more complicated route for alignment, similar to D&D and have lawful, neutral, and chaotic. along with good, neutral, and evil(maybe not have all of them but a few more modifiers).

Spell Tree

What if you could click on a building let's say  ... an academy or what have you - a spell research building. And a Spell Tech Tree would appear and you could map out a path you would like to go and it would begin researching or learning those spells separately from the original tech tree? Would that be dividing up mechanics too much?

The spell research tree would still be used of course as you would notice limitations within the Spell Tree - telling you need X research to go further up the Spell tree. 

You could have separate spell trees for every magic type and to progress would require certain lvls of research. You could build buildings to speed up spell learning and you could build building ofcourse to speed or research.

So there would be individual spell learning and spell research techs. May complicate things I am not sure. Atleast you would constantly by learning spells 

SIMPLE SOLUTION for NPCs

How about recruiting NPCs from inns and/or from the city instead of having to chase them down while they randomly roam the map? I can see this be of benefit from multiple standpoints.  First you can make it so that only NPCs show up that are of your own faction.  Second, you can use "prestige" of your city so that the more prestigous your city is, the more powerful NPCs you attract.  Also, you can make it so that you need a pub in order to attract NPCs to your city.  Also maybe your charisma can attract the amount of "rare" NPCs that show up etc.  

INNS and QUESTING

Another thought is that your can have inns generate multiple quests instead of just one.  The idea is when your sovereign visits an Inn a seperate screen shows up (much like when you purchase an item in your city) and you can either 1. "Ask the barkeep about rumors" (Quests) 2. Recruit NPCs 3. Gamble 4. Pawn items (give you better bang for buck when you sell them but can be bought by other factions)

Quest rewards

I think you should be able to accumulate prestiege like gold or materials.  When you complete a quest you also get "prestiege".  Likewise if you recruit a vilanous character or perform another action that is ill willed you have prestiege deducted.  The higher your prestiege the less likely AI will start war with you but on the other hand, if you have low pretiege or negative prestiege there are consequences too. 

Hopefully these ideas or helpful.

Cheers, Snarc

QUESTS (multiplayer/comp players)

As someone with limited mod experience for multiplayer adventure and rpg games, there are a few points I'd like to share for making questing a lot more fun.  Multiplayer in this case applies to comp players.

-Questing is sometimes more fun when your achievements effect other players, especially if it's negative.

-Questing can be more fun when it is competitive between players.

-Questing is sometimes better when two or more players are directly involved face to face so each has a choice to make.

-Questing is often more fun when more than 2 options are available and scaled to the game's escalation level.

First, the best quests involve competing players.  For example, let's say we have a quest where player A awakens an NPC magic shard guardian and it offers to form a covenant of assistance to protect the magic shard from the other channellers for x# number of turns until the guardian has fully awakened and if resources, caravans or a pioneer is given then a suitable defense can be built too. 

It may be in player A's best interest to help because the shard is too far out and close to enemy territory to protect by himself and would be claimed by a rival.  Plus the guardian will give magic points until the quest is complete. 

It may not be in player A's best interest because the guardian will REQUEST help by using the shard to teleport player A's sovereign plus army to the site for combat assistance when needed.  Depending on the outcome, if the sovereign declines, the quest may fail.  Key word may.  Angering another sovereign is a very serious matter.

So here we have a scenario where three options are available.  Both players get directly in front of each others faces when one tries to take the shard. Racing to the shard is highly competitive.  It offers beneficial and negative rewards.  It is a relevant choice with consequences, usually NOT a no brainer.

You can accept and be on call for x# number of turns and if you want to make defending it easier and last longer then you can give resources in various forms as a bonus to defense for both the shard guardian and your sovereign.  In return you temporarily get shard points and deny your opponent from getting it.  The guardian could also share vision of the area.

Quest Example #2

As a really old school fan of Trade Wars this must be included.  As an alternative to the sovereign death mechanic, let's make a ransom offer.  The local bandit lord has managed to defeat my sovereign in battle and are demanding a paltry sum of money in exchange for his life.  Do I take it?

For the problems with essence:

I think Essence should not be permanently lost, but rather be like HP, you can raise your max essence like a stat but you never permanently lose it.

Mana could still be based on Essence, but permanent rather than temporary.

If you lose essence temporary, though, it should weaken your sovereign noticably until you can recover.

This way you could still use it to revive land, build, and on quests, and it wouldn't be such a finite resource.

If you're at max essence your sovereign is at full power, the less essence you have the less powerful. (Bonuses/Penalties in various stats)

If the sovereign 'dies' he loses some temporary essence, but only if he's out of essence and then 'dies' will he die permanently.

It makes it so after using up a lot of essence, just like with HP, you want to go hide in a heavily fortified city for many, many turns (it should take a long time to come back) before venturing out again.

Example: Your Sovereign has 10/10 Essence, so is at full power. The Sovereign uses 5 Essence on a quest, and 3 on a spell, so now has 2 left. The Sovereign suffers a penalty to their abilities and magic casting potential, and must go rest for a while to regain it. If the sovereign 'dies' they'd lose another point of essence. If the essence comes back slowly enough (maybe 1 per 10 turns) then essence would be a valuable resource still, but not /as/ valuable as it is currently.

Also, idly enough, I think Sovereigns should get exp from 'managing' a town or being garrisoned, or at least something like that so you don't have to just beat up on wildlife constantly.

* Interesting choices -

I definately think separating reviving the land with building a town is a good way to go about it.  Sure, you can plop down a city on that forsaken land but you can't expect to build a garden on it or for it to grow in size. Keep the cost of reviving the land with essence low. You could also keep max essence tied to leveling up but allow players to regain lost essence through other means.

What if you regained lost essence when you:

- Defeat an opposing soverieign in battle.

- Revive percentages of the world map by increasing your borders.

- Uncover a way to regain essence by means of a dragon (friendly or not so friendly ways)

- and so on.

I would want essence to continue to be something not easily gained but it should not cripple the player either. If we are making the choice to lose something not easily restored, the effects of making that choice needs to be or at least feel epic.

*NPCs -

Since hiring heroes is an adventuring thing, maybe require recruting quests to be completed. If you attempt to hire a trog as a human sovereign, he gives you a quest to complete first to gain his trust. Maybe to avenge the death of his troggling or whatever their offspring are politely called.

* Quests -

I am more for allowing the player to choose how to complete a quest rather than making some side specific. Let your rewards/ punishments for choosing one way over another favor empire or kingdoms.

* City Improvements -

I like the idea of 1 faction and 1 world buildings. Cities all seem to start out the same way and end up not much different.  I want to prize a certain city because if its ability to output crazy research points.

You could also put in 1 specialized improvement building per city which requires all other improvements of that type, or a certain number of them to already be built there.  For example lets say one of your cities has all guild buildings and money making buildings, you then get the option to build oh I don't kno.. a loan office or something that you can't build in another city.

Interesting Choice:  I said this in a different post that i felt you should be able to build your first city on forsaken land.  However, now that there is revived land scattered through out the world, there is a choice.  You can either build where you want to for the cost of 1 essence or build on scattered revived land for free.  I wouldnt be opposed to the forsaken land idea either however.

NPC:  Different races joining you should be permitted but come at a cost of higher gold and lowered troop moral.  You could go as far as add in a special ability that some heros have that says (Joins any race without penalty). 

As an aside, I've been in that situation before and there's a solution: just build/recruit a bunch of other units with better combat abilities for your magically-powerful-but-physically-frail sovereign to tag along with. At the moment your sovereign seems to take damage last, so as long as you win the fight your sovereign's safe no matter how frail she is, and every unit involved in the battle seems to get plenty of xp if you win.

That being said, it seems easier - even if you want your sovereign to be a poweful magic user in the end - to focus on combat stats and equipment at first so you can level up quickly. There should be an alternative to every sovereign playing like a warrior, such as a Fall from Heaven-esque passive xp gain - say whenever you end your turn in a city with full movement (i.e. you didn't do anything else that turn) you gain a small amount of 'free' xp, enhanced by one of the caster stats (i.e. 1.5x int = 1.5x xp gain), and enhanced by any magic or maybe even research buildings in the city.

I mean, it's not like noob sorcerers should be wandering the countryside trying to beat in giant spiders with their staves, they should be studying back at the tower of wizardry in your capital. It should definitely work out to slower xp gain than a warrior slaying things personally (after all, he spends more on equipment and takes greater personal risk), but it should still be a viable way for casters to improve themselves without needing to play like a warrior.

Regarding Interesting Choices

I have written (and then erased) about a half-dozen posts on how much I hate essence and mana being tied so closely. At the moment, spells like Volcano are simply stupid to cast, because the hit to essence takes an eternity to recover from and being able to cast X fireballs/turn to decimate the enemy greatly outshines being able to cast one volcano. Further, if your city is not located near resources, you'll have to permanently gimp yourself just to recover.

I can see building anywhere as being viable. From a lore standpoint, people have had to survive the 100-ish years since the cataclysm, right? I doubt they didn't build a house or two. Perhaps tie in resources to it - you can build farms, aviaries, wild game hunters, etc. only on fertile land.

Perhaps, also, a building - we can build altars to harvest shards, why can't we build an altar to harvest the powers our Sovereigns tap? An Altar of Life and Altar of Death would spread restoration and destruction, respectively. These could be a faction-wide thing, so you can only build a single altar in any single city. Perhaps it could be viewed through lore as a distilling of life/death energies that naturally surround the Sov. It would be a slow process, but all other cities would either have to wait for the affected area to encompass a location before building farms, or to have the Sovereign channel essence to restore a location for a new settlement.

...mainly, I want to argue against having Max Essence = Max Mana. Ruins the purpose of raising other attributes, such as Intellect and Wisdom, when if you want to be able to do anything late-game with magic (a focus of the game, I'll point out) you are almost forced to put every available point into essence.

NPCs

I doubt that humans would freely work with the fallen - and by 'freely work' I mean do so of their own volition. Is it possible to give NPCs an alignment sort of modifier? Evil humans and good fallen will work with the others as well as their own people. Barring that...I don't see fallen and humans working together easily.

Quests

I vote allegiance tag OR multiple outcomes. Like you said with the noble, perhaps instead of taking him to an estate you take him to a city an auction him off? Or throw him into the pits. Hm...hindsight, go with allegiance tag.

Spells

Something I don't understand with the game is this...why is a fireball cast by Procipinee the same as a fireball cast by Relias the same as a fireball cast by...ad infinium. I mean, really...there's no variety to magic. This was a problem I had with Age of Wonders, too. It doesn't strike me as 'right' that everyone end-game would have the same spell set. Now, I have no intention of saying, "Give THIS spell to Relias and then give those two spells to Proc. That spell is only for the kingdoms, those four for the empire, but give..." because that's plain stupid.

If you want magic to be interesting, following the same tried-and-boring method of point-click-boom is boring. The gist of magic on 99% of games today is just a colorful arrow that may explode.

The main reason I want to see variety is that Procipinee doesn't think along the same lines as Relias. They are two different people, and something like magic is not a set-in-stone constant, but an ever shifting force that a character can grasp.

What needs to be done is something that makes magic less bland and more...enjoyable. Intuitive. Fun.

city improvements could be unlocked after lets say finishin 20 quests, you can build a statue of yourself, conquering 10 neutral cities you can build a certain building etc.

I think the whole NPC recruiting process should be deeper. Maybe add more ways to recruit those heroes. One NPC type could ask you to perform a certain quest before joining your party, while another NPC would only join you if you manage to defeat him in a duel.

Spells

I feel like spells should evolve through experience and the mastery of the spell book they belong to.  If I want to say learn how to cast a column of fire, I would need to know a) how to produce fire b) how to move it under controlled circumstances and c) how to manipulate its form. If I can do all that I should be able to cast a simple firebolt and not have to learn it separately. Maybe that is an alternative way to categorize them in the spell book screen.

Dedicating a lot of time towards a spell book should grant you some sort of bonuses. Lesser mana cost to cast them, greater the effect, etc.

Having more spells means more options which is great. I also like the direction Dragon Age attempted with combining spells. I think it would work in Elemental as well and offer players creative ways to use them even a small number and make it fun. So let's say there is a narrow gap of forsaken land to my city where an army is approaching from. What if I could

- Cast to revive the land in the gap.

- Cast grow forest in the gap to slow down there movement.

When they enter the forest and while taking a movement penatly

- cast nature corrupt to turn shrubs into thorns and damage them

or

- cast fireball and ignite the forest

etc..

In regards to forsaken land:

The visual difference between forsaken land and revived land needs to be increased - especially from the cloth view.