Making your own unique races is fine but you really have to give it a lot of thought. Most efforts tend to fall short or fit too well with one stereotype. Just google "our elves are better" for some examples of what people do.

Our Elves are Better

To that, I'd like to add how much I loathe the rule of cool. I'd also like to raise the issue of Viewers are Morons.

There is nothing wrong with the rule of cool unless you apologize to people about it yet use it anyway. At that point it becomes an easy cop out rather than the acceptable refuge in audacity.

Well to be fair I personal enjoy originality whether that is taking a classic and revamping it or coming up with something completely unique. Fantasy races can add a lot to a fantasy game but are far from mandatory in my opinion. Besides the most vicious and tragic wars are fought between brothers (aka civil wars) and since the two factions are kin if the historical, diplomatic, and story have the proper depth and scope I would guess no one will be disappointed. On a side note however we don’t know what role if any the powers that previously ruled the world will play. All we really know about them was they weren’t human and they were really powerful. I would be interested to know if they were all the same race or if it was a war fought between numerous races. Of course they could remain nameless faceless ghosts of the past but that’s up to Stardock.  

I like the basic idea, Brad. Obviously there's room for more complexity and i assume that you're keeping much of this from us but the idea of creating your own troops via that kind of interface is exiting. I liked Gal Civ and how you could build your own ships but tbh, I've always been a 'fantasy-firster' and that's why i'm looking forward to this so much. And you have improved on the GC version too by including the availability of resources, that rocks.

I'm not overly concerned about originality, as long as the game mechanics are smooth and the game itself is a good ride but obviously you are going for originality with the 12 tribes of man. and i like that idea, reminds me of the 12 tribes of Galway (where i studied for my Uni degree)!!

So, basically, looks intriguing, with a small dose of exciting thrown in. show me more!!!!!

You'll only be able to customize your units to a certain extent - limited by what magic and technology you've researched. They've already stated that they're planning for each faction to have its own spellbooks, so it's not too wild of a stretch that each faction will have a different tech tree (they could be mostly the same with minor distinctions, or there could be fundamental differences). Likewise, I'm sure the different factions will have other distinguishing factors, like special abilities and traits.

Basically you'll only be able to customize your units as far as your knowledge and resource availability allows you to; that goes for both the ability to create a certain unit at all, and the quality of said unit. A classic example would be longbowmen. The technology to make longbows wasn't really a secret - but only the British (and welsh, I think) really made them a staple; similar things could easily be done in the game by providing faction traits, or (semi-)unique technologies. 

See this quote from one of the other dev journals:

So yeah that's happening Hopefully these will be extensively different as for me variation of units is the only way of getting a nice clear distinction between factions. Civ's model of having just one special unit per faction does nothing for me at all but MoM was incredible with each unit (even the standard swordsmen/spearmen etc) being different from race to race.. for me that variety is a big part of what drives replayability and thus my love for the game as a whole

Each faction will definitely get its own spell book.

The unique tech trees will ceom from their keep. I'll be talking about how tech works in Elemental in an upcoming journal entry because it's radically different than what you've seen in other games other than, to a point, MOO 1.

You've got my attention! When you say the unique tech trees will come from their keep... That makes it sound like the city keeps are where you do your tech research. Or maybe there's a generic tech tree for all factions, and a second unique tree for each faction that is available through the city keeps... If that's at all what you mean, I can see how that would add a lot of possibilities!

*Impatiently waits for the tech tree dev journal*  

Oooow that sounds exciting! Are you excited? I'm excited!!!

I need to look up MOO1! STAT!

Anyone who hasn't played MOO yet should go dig it up off the interwebs and run it on DosBOX. There are so many oldies that no one has played or even heard about. They don't know what they are missing.

WoW,  thanks for pigeon and frogboy!   I think that've effectively eliminated my worry.

The diversities and unique spell books is something I feel HoMM4 better than HoMM3, though many of the fans don't think so. 

interesting!    certainly that will spice things up.

So does this mean that we won't be picking out tomes the way we did in Master of Magic I wonder?   My brain floods with questions.   Just how expansive are these spell books going to be?  Will there be duplicate spells?  there must be, right?

That's called "Hit Points with Extra Bookeeping."

Read any definition of hit points, and you'll see that they cover exactly that.

That is essentially what hitpoints are in DnD terms. It has nothing to do with physical damage on the character and everything to do with your ability to "avoid damage" whatever that means.

I haven't read all the posts , but anyway, I really like the idea.

I have encountered another game where this concept is developped ( successfully , the game is very interesting to play , even with a very limited tree tech). It is called cavewars.

here is a screenshot of the unit construction screen

You could see that each unit can have a weapon, an armor ( each in 3 different materials) and a mount. ( specials represent units that are not human ( or other race) being.

My main fear about this idea is how design an interface that allow extension ( of weapon, material ... ) and is intuitive and esay to use. ( I'd personnally like to be able to make sword with steel guard and adamantium blade, with one enchantment on each part or having armors on mounts ( or even weapon: anybody wants a centaur cavalery? ) , but it might be a little too complex)

Hopefully some units will do more than just  X  damage in  Y time during a battle.   What about battle skills or traits of units... such as:

1) a swamp insect biting an enemy unit causing him to be diseased ?

2) or a vampire who drains life from an enemy unit ?

3) or a demon who takes bodily possession of an enemy unit?

That doesn't answer the question and my question is for STARDOCK :

   Will units will do more than just  X  damage in  Y time when exchanging attacks during a battle? 

I've been playing with these ideas for a while. I've considered making a post on it, but I'll post what I currently got here.

________________

For designing units, each designed unit would have a certain kind of build that it would consider default, but it could equip weapons and other items different than what it was designed to use. For instance, a common knight might prefer an "iron longsword" as its weapon of choice, but nothing would prevent it from equiping a "moon silver katana" instead. Likewise, it could equip something very different such as "bows & arrows" or a "musket".

The advantage of this system is, you could produce and reequip units using different equipment, superior equipment, inferior equipment, or even make them completely bare. For instance, if you manage to invade and capture a town using common knights, and you manage to loot moon silver katanas, you could refit a number of your knights with better weapons in preperation to fend off your opponents from trying to take back their town.

Such a system would make the only real difference between units (of the same species) would be their training, and possibly their magical augmentations.

________________

The second idea I have is, I want to be able create very powerful units, with or without magic. I want a to make "Soul Knights" (units who have ghostly limbs from dead comrades), "Necromancer, multi-limbed abominations" (necromancers who added undead limbs to their bodies), and Fire-blitz golems (golems who can shoot jets of fire that makes flame-throwers look like matches). I want to be able to make units powerful enough to be a threat to a channeler if they are not careful.

To that end, I would not only need magic spells that I can cast on per need baisis, but I would need persistant magical effects. Lets call these persistant magics rituals. These rituals could animate undead, animate golems, provide ghosts with ectoplasm bodies, and so forth.

HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS POST BEFORE!?  (especially when it has a big cave wars screenshot in it)   I love cavewars!   (not as much as master of magic, but still.  You'll find I quote the game quite often when refering to the

This game does have that cutlass/super cutlass/hyper cutlass feature that frogboy said he wanted to avoid however.  I guess you make the weapons out of different metals, so that makes sense, but it still happens.    The units in that game wer very bizzar with combat that was perhaps a bit too random for my liking, but in general the game was very good.

Again, I plee for multi-map system.

Maybe theres multiple tiers to each unit.  For example:

Tier One - Appearance

• Race - MAybe choose what race you want the unit to be.  IF nothing else, just a way to catagorize your unit.  It could be used quite well in relation to your other units if you wanted to have a "different" type of unit.  The race would give it a series of base characteristics (nothing unfair!) to make it more unique.
• Gender - Male/Female/None - Most creatures will have genders, their models changing accordingly.  If wanted, maybe one can give each gender different advantages.  None would fit for creatures that do not have a gender.
• Cosmetic - Maybe some slider options for Hair style, color.  Skin color.  Clothing type, color, style.  Nothing crazy, but just enough to tell the differnce between "naked" units and their portrait picture.

Tier Two - Equipment

• Weapon(s) - Items that modify Damage and/or To-Hit.  Could be exceptional items if you have enough (Magical).  Additional effects would be related to doing different KINDs of damage, and its element.  (IE A sword would be Steel/Slashing while a flaming mace could be Flame/Blunt).
• Head Armor - Items that modify your defense value, of course, but also could potentially reduce range (the full helm opposed to the skull cap).  More armor, less range/vision.  Additional effects could be related to vision (Darkvision, clairvoyance, etc).
• Torso Armor - Items that modify defensive values greatly (or poorly).  Different armors could provide different levels of protection to various elements and attack times.  Steel againt steel wouldnt incur a penalty, but Steel weapons against mithril armor would get an automatic 10% reduction, etc.  Additional effects would be to change the material of the armor, as well as enchantments and such to make it better against the damage types.
• Misc. Armor - Potential to have MORE protection in the form of boots, gauntlets, and pauldrons.
• Additional Items - Rings, amulets, belts and such which give units a wide array of abilities and are transferrable.  Dwarven sappers with a ring of flight, walls beware!

Tier Three - Training

• Experience - How much training a unit recieves before going to the field.  Gives them more health, maybe some damage.  Basicaly levelling them up without fighting.  Takes longer to produce, however.
• Abilities - Giving units new things to be able to do beyong their racial abilities through training.  Maybe allow a melee units will the ability to climb walls (maybe giving them a Misc. Item that explains their power) or to be able to swin in deep water, etc.  Increases cost and training time as well.

Tier Four - Associations

• Creatures - Already explained, like horses and such.  Each creature has different abilities.
• Other Units - Complementing some units with outers to make fighting teams.  AN example would be a melee unit with a large shield paired with a ranged unit.  The melee unit will have addiotnal "shield bearer" skill (from the abilities training) and will fortify whatever ground unit their associated with.  Alternatively, you can assign units to other units via a menu and give them different jobs.  Flank Protection, Shield Bearer, Supressive Fire.  With magical units, they can add spells instead of casting them directly.  A Mage assigned with a Heavy Footman Army only casting flight to give the unit flight instead of directly casting a temporary spell.

I dunno, just a few thoughts.  I may be way off topic, but thats what I would like to see.  Any thoughts?  Also, I didnt read a page of posts so I may be copying somone.  If I did seem to copy, then I'm just supporting what they said.  ^^

Hmmm... Isn't the point of a fantasy game that it has fantastic creatures in it?

The term run-of-the-mill probably says it all: If it is mainly just guys with a sword, guys with an axe on a horse or guys with a bigger sword and a shield, units will seem generic and not very interesting.

Having creatures that can bury under the battlefield or cast their own spells has a lot more appeal.

Also, I doubt your channeler is going to be able to imbue the average field soldier with his essence, as it wouldn't make much sense to essentially waste it on chaff. You never know, though.

Plus, I get the impression that magical creatures will be common enough so that you'll most likely have a bunch of them in your army; it's just that the core of your military will be run-of-the-mill troops, and they will be supported by a handful of powerful magical beings.

I'm actually looking forward to it. Pretty much all fantasy games make very heavy use of fantastical creatures. AoW, HoMM, etc - most armies end up consisting predominantly of exotic units, which actually makes those exotic units seem less special. If you look at most epic fantasy, armies are almost always predominantly consisted of 'grunts' with sometimes a few specials mixed in. Take Middle Earth - armies are mostly made up of the regular men, elves, dwarves, orcs and goblins; some of those units are made special either because of superior skill/ability (like Elrond, Elendil, Fingolfin, etc). Then in addition to those there is a smattering of more exotic beings - ents, wizards, dragons, trolls, wargs, oliphaunts, balrogs.