Yep, exactly. That's why I said it was scalable. You could do a lot of baisic stuff without scripting but for the heavy duty stuff you needed to be fairly technical. There were, however a lot of examples and tutorials out there for new modders to follow and copy from, even for the scripting. It seems to me like Elemental is similar in that you can do a lot of stuff with simple XML but for heavy lifting, you'll need to know Python. Myself, I love Python, I just hope they also provide some documentation and examples for us to get started.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough before - I'm not claiming a melee sovereign is going to be throwing spells around every turn and be able to match a caster in that respect. The melee specializes in killing things with a sword, the caster specializes in killing things with magic, and they both perform their specialty much better than the other can - fair enough, this aspect of the game is somewhat balanced. The problem as I see it is that my melee can create fertile land, imbue champions, etc and receive a very significant benefit from thus spending his essence - and it doesn't hurt his ability to hack things up with a sword. My caster can cast those same essence-expending spells, but it hurts his ability to cast normal mana-only spells every turn. Thus the melee can more freely use strategic essence-expending spells because it does not impact his tactical sword-hacking skills, while it does impact the tactical spell-throwing skills of the caster.

There is a balance problem there. A melee sovereign using his best ability (melee) doesn't suffer any permanent weakening due to it, and only has to focus on two stats (Str/Agi). A caster sovereign using his best abilities gets weaker by doing so, and has to spend on three stats (Int/Wis/Essence).

IMO Essence shouldn't be a buyable stat. The Sovereign should start with say 10, and gain 1 per level. Imbued champions start with 1, and gain 1 per level. Don't tie it to your mana cap (Wisdom can do that). Instead let it power abilities like imbue land, imbue champion, and super spells. Both types of sovereigns then have to decide what to spend it on, both face the same decisions, and both have the same number of stats to juggle.

Casters feel weak right now all game long (but particularly in early game where they get crushed by things that a melee sovereign can simply walk through), and I think having a more focused set of stats without the extra essence problem their melee friends don't suffer from would help.

This is incorrect, a melee sovereign most definitely needs to invest in Constitution as well, since he's going to be getting hit. This isn't the case for a caster, unless he chooses to dance around on the front lines.

I think this is mostly because we have no tactical battles and no spells for tactical battles. We have only overland spells, so the caster sovereign is being forced to go melee in autoresolve.

Well I disagree... On all your points.

Sure the Melee sovereign may spend all his essence on stupid crap like farms... Then whats he gonna do when i cast famine on him?

Ok, lets say the melee sovereign is great in combat... I don't think any amount of agility is going to bother a fire spell that does damage based on my Int%... Meaning his armor is useless.

You keep talking like there is a serious balance issue here and quite frankly I'm just not seeing it.

If anything the NEWB warrior sovereign who thinks that his essence his completely expendable because he prefers the sword will end up being beaten into submission by a barrage of debilitating spells in a flash.

Even a warrior sovereign will need to maintain some essence if only for defensive purposes. If an enemy sovereign is throwing spells at you and you can't counter them you'll only have your own foolish choices to blame.

As for game-enders they'll never even be a thought for a warrior sov who spends all of his time building strength and dex rather then the wisdom and intelligence needed to make them matter. Not to mention Essence. Essence will still be vital however for the buffing spells that even a low wis warrior sov can place on himself and his armies... Especially ones that defend against enemy magic.

Trust me, Essence IS significant as is... Whether you realize that or not is your own problem.

Sides how would you increases Essences "significance" By allowing warriors to buff their str and agi even further while their kingdom is rotted into damnation?

Seriously...

I imagine casters will need constitution too if they ever want to take part in a tactical battle; units will have ranged attacks after all, and a fragile caster sovereign should be the #1 target if the tactical AI is decent. None of us can really say for sure until we see tactical battles, of course - if maps are large enough and tactical spells have more range than any normal attack, a caster may well be able to hang way back and participate without ever getting hit. I'd be disappointed if that turns out to be the case, though, it'd make tactical battles with/against casters a lot less.. interesting.

Respectfully, I think we're arguing about completely different points here. For one I'm not going to touch the issue of melee sovereign vs. caster sovereign effectiveness in battle - it's a situation none of us know anything about, we have no basis for comparing the tactical effectiveness of spells and swords. I'm also not saying a melee sovereign should spend his essence down to 1 - I'm saying he can start with 15 and spend it down to 8 or 10 without worrying about the loss (this leaves enough mana for the occasional buff spell), and still be able to make full use of his melee abilities as often as he wants to, whereas a caster sovereign needs all 15 essence to use his spells frequently as he's designed to do. Even having 5 extra essence to spend on farms can be a significant advantage for the melee - I think this is a balance issue.

Or you're fighting someone with ranged units, or another caster. The melee sovereign is going to have more agility and thus more defense against the ranged units at least (not sure how spell defense works right now). A caster sovereign who gets attacked is going to get completely crushed without constitution. That and charisma are useful to everybody.

That doesn't help for sure. But you also start with no spells and are basically defenseless until you get some. The melee guy on the other hand starts with the equipment and stats to go cleaving heads immediately.

Who said essence wasn't significant? The problem is that it's more significant for one type of sovereign then the other. A melee guy can blow some and not worry about it. A caster can't. The melee guy likely won't spend points buying it back unless they spend themselves into dangerously low territory. A caster can't spend themselves down that far in the first place without crippling themselves.

As for what he's going to do while you cast famine on him... well he's going to show up and cleave your head off with the sword that you have no dexterity to defend against.

It works pretty well with six stats. There's two melee ones (str/dex), two caster ones (int/wis), and two shared ones (con/cha). Tying essence to the mana cap just adds another thing for casters to worry about more then melee when it isn't necessary. As a separate thing you can't buy more of, it lets you power your strongest spells, support enchantments, and imbue stuff. But it doesn't weaken a caster more then a melee to do the imbuing or use an essence costing spell, whereas it does right now.

But there are protection spells that a melee sovereign might not have access to. There's also a difference between being useful and being required. Every stat is useful. Even a caster benefits from Strength for when he runs out of mana during a long battle (or starting a battle with low mana), but that doesn't make it a core stat. Con is a core stat for the melee Sovereign because he takes damage from everything. It is not a core stat for the caster because he takes damage from much fewer sources, and has spells to help with that as well.

This doesn't really have anything to do with essence, though. Just starting conditions. I definitely think a Sovereign should start with a basic tactical battle spell. Also, at least currently, equipment (armor) for a custom Sovereign costs points, that a caster might not have to spend and have beefier stats or more/better talents.

So, basically, I don't see either of these things as a balance issue that revolves around essence itself. Spell selection/availability, sure, but the core system isn't inherently unbalanced.

I haven't seen any a melee sovereign wouldn't have access to unless they spend all their essence, which isn't very likely. It doesn't matter a whole lot if it takes you a couple more turns to cast it due to slower mana regen if it stays up permanently afterward. They also don't seem to scale very much, though maybe that will get fixed.

I'm just not seeing what advantage the current system has, other then that it's what is already there. What I do see is casters being disadvantaged due to using essence hurting their effectiveness more then it does a melee sovereign. The proposed system fixes that.

No it doesn't, but it came up.

If the melee sov is smart he WILL have most of those spells. Remember, he can pull all those useless wis points out and move them to int. So his potency is just as good as yours.

Simple... 50-100 turns back when he dropped himself down to 5 essence(i.e. just enough that he could insulate/buffer), he made 3 farms, and Imbued 1 other hero to be the caster beotch.  Meaning by this time he has 3-5x more city levels than you do... meaning he is SOO far ahead on the tech curve he will kill your caster sov without you even having a prayer... you know, with his 4x larger army, all armed to the teeth with high grade weapons.

Addendum: Honestly, you may not even see him, he may just send a horde of mounted or booted units to run you down before you can even get close enough to his cities, while he himself wisely empties out all the quests in his own area and expands his empire.

Please make changes to UI for the "SPELL" to look more line the spell book in Master of Magic or better.

I think the current UI for the "SPELL" in the main screen is... really bad in terms of finding and selecting what I need to cast over the map. It is so tiny and only showing few spells.

In my opinion, it should not take more than 30 seconds to find what spell I need and cast it where I want over the map.

First, current Spell book (or improved one) with at least 9 spells per page should pop up on the main screen with sorting functions by type (enchantment, strategic, summon, etc) and classes (Air, Life, Fire, Earth, etc).

Secondly, please make changes to UI for the "Equipment" as well.  As many people pointed out, Diablo II or III equipment screen is the best, or at least like World of Warcraft.. (portrait with limited equipment slots and there should be maximum item space each character can carry).

I truly believe that this changes will make the Elemental easy to use, effective, looks very cool & neat, and add a sense of reality.

I bought Civ4 out of curiosity(had a real jizz fest going on an IRC server for a browser strategy game I was testing), liked it enough to play for a week or so.  I bought BTS for the new version of FFH2.

I expect most of Bethesda's sales are due to modding functionality, after buying Oblivion(I didn't learn the first time, same sadistic bastards conned me into them both:)), you couldn't have given me a copy.

High system reqs, a main quest devoid of interest, boring and repetitive dungeon crawler with underdone combat mechanics and horribly limited spell mechanics.  I don't like RPG's much to begin with, but that game is one hell of a monumental bore, and so fugly it hurts to look at the NPC's.  Even the kids, which are exceedingly rare for obvious reasons, look old and filthy.  My only explanation for such an irrational investment into high quality graphics and horribly ugly populations is that the art guys over there are self hating environmentalists and wanted to entice the player base into mass genocide in order to remove the vile elements from their viewing experience.

A year plus after release, I went digging through the mods and ended up with a game relatively interesting.  I then justified the purchase of a goty edition to get the expansions for 20 bucks so I'd have fewer compatibility issues with those interesting mods.

The first would have been a "Meh, whatever" and the second an "I'd like to firebomb Bethesda's studio" if not for the modding accessibility that makes them good purchases.  Can't speak to numbers, but every time I see someone talk about how awesome TES4 is without mentioning mods, I wonder how they managed to type the post out with such limited brain functionality.

While I wont crap on TES as hard as Psycock, I will agree with him. The extra art assets will help produce mods faster. The XML and Python will make more advanced mod development easier. Elemental may not be a ZOMG HUGE blockbuster title at release but I suspect it will have a very very verrrry long tail.

You should see that General Carrodus - he starts with a Broadsword, a 38 Combat Rating (by himself), extra HP and two Sentinels (combined Combat Rating of all three units is 50) - on Turn 1. He's so much more powerful than a caster Sovereign, it's not funny.  Btw: why does an already powerful and capable melee Sovereign get two other capable melee units, when on the other hand, the magic Sovereign doesn't start with a solitary spell?  Sounds unbalanced to me.  Even without the Sentinels, a 38 Turn 1 Combat Rating and a powerful weapon means you are so far ahead of the curve that by the time the Caster Sovereign has any decent spells, you have practically won the game.

How does the Caster Sovereign ever catch up after being left for dead right at the start?

Which would you rather start with, General Carrodus and 2 Sentinels (Combat Rating 50), ready to take over the countryside, or Lady Procipinee with 3 Combat Rating, all those fancy spellbooks and not one solitary spell?

I could basically just start conquering from the start of the game.  What Caster Sovereign can do that?

Best regards,
Steven.