A time and Weather idea
Elemental Forums
I'll apologize in advance for a long post and for possibly having missed some of the ideas in this post being discussed already.
I'd really like to see the map influenced by time and weather. I know time has been discussed in another thread and the current idea is that 1 turn = 1 day. I dislike that idea and would like to propose the following:
1 turn = 1 week.
This would then allow the game to actually keep track of semi-realistic time and allow such things as weather based on time of year to come into play. Lets assume that the calendar year would then be 52 weeks so each season would roughly last 13 weeks (the current week/month could be displayed someplace so players always know what time of year it is).
The game could then keep track of weather and alter the map accordingly. One of the things I remember fondly from my C64 days was playing 7 Cities of Gold which had trees change in the fall/winter (Why is it no games since then actually do anything like that instead opting to fix squares as a certain terrain).
Elemental could do the same, changing trees in the fall and adding snow in the winter and removing in in the spring. When snow is on the ground it would slow down movement and give bonus's to units designed for winter (imagine unleashing your horde of Winter Wolves) and possibly penalizing summer/warm units (like a fire elemental). Also in the winter time, rivers could free over allowing units to cross rivers. If the water in the game was designated as shallow/deep then the shallow waters could freeze while the deep would not so large bodies of water or fast rivers would not freeze and would still be boat navigable while shallow ones would be frozen over.
The game map could further be broken into Tundra, Temperate, Tropical regions (or smaller maps could entirely take place in 1 climate region). So in Tundra environments there would be snow in 3 of 4 seasons while in temperate you'd only see snow in the winter and in tropical there would never be snow (maybe floods or reduced movement during a rainy
season).
This would add a lot strategically as you'd have to decide to attack before the snow set in (reducing movement/freezing rivers/possibly penalizing skills). The game could even reduce the rate of resouce accumulation from mines/food etc in the winter.
To vary the seasons a bit the game would calculate the weather 12 months out. So instead of exactly 13 week seasons, you could extend a season by a month on either side. So it would be possible to have some years have longer winters or longer springs etc. Spells could be available to forcast the turn of the seasons (reason weather calculated 12 months out)
so you'd know when the seasons might change. Late game spells might be able to altar the seasons entirely in a region on the map.
The other thing I'd like to see in this would be that the attacker would be allowed to select time of day (day/night) to attack. Thus if you have units (those winter wolves) designed for night you'd select to attack at night when you'd get a morale bonus and perhaps your opponent wouldn't depending on their units. This would also affect some skills like archery which would be greatly reduced in range at night when you can't see at a distance. Similarly flight would be affected since units can't see effectively to fly (unless they were bats). Once again, spells could be available to add light or darkness to the battle field. Attacking at night should also give a better chance for an ambush assuming the enemy units are designed for day.
One last thing about the 1 turn = 1 week idea. This would allow realistic time tracking of a channelers life. I don't recall whether channelers can be taken from game to game (ie persistent and leveling up over the course of multiple games). But if they are, the game could start a new channeler at age 20 and have a built in death-from-natural-causes at age 70 or 80. Thus you'd have a set amount of time to *live* and achieve fame/deeds before you'd need to create another one. It also puts a upper time limit on finishing the main quest. If there is to be a meta-verse like board similar to GalCiv this end of life idea means players wouldn't waste time ending turns to increase scores. It would instead mean you'd rank based on the score you achieved over your life (which may be from 1 uber map or many smaller ones).
All these things would make me feel a lot more engaged with the world itself and my character as the passage of seasons went by. That engagement was something I never got from GalCiv or GalCiv 2 because it all felt so abstract. Best of all is that it is all taken care of by the game so there isn't a lot of micromanagement needed by players.
So much for immersion...