Citizens

AFAIK Citizens are a resource. You use them to create soldiers. So they're already more then eye candy.

I estimate if the game will include "undead" the population can be used for generating zombies or other undead types.

I rather like the idea of peasants taking up arms to defend their city even if no professional military soldiers are around. The evacuation you describe could also be an interesting twist considering in most games cities have absolutely no defense or escape options even if they are captured by a single unit. The exception being GalCiv where the entire population of a planet would act as a defense force.

My demon army should be able to eat them to replenish HP and movement points.

Or just for kicks.

I don't like the idea of my citizen's being nothing more than a resource.

Too much like Real Life.

Companies used to have Personel Departments, now corporations have Human Resources.

Think about it.

Of course, at least in a game I get to use the resource rather than being it! So maybe

They also used to have janitors, and now they have sanitation techncians. That's just part of a general trend to spend a lot of words saying nothing.

For citizen militias, the training system could allow this. The way it's been explained, to make soldiers you take some citizens, give them weapons, and some training. The more training, the better they are. Well if you wanted to make a militia in a hurry and you have a stockpile of swords, what if you hand out the swords and give no training at all?

Boom, a sudden defense force of really bad soldiers.

Much fun.

The mention of militia and helms deep makes me want to return to multiple day seiges.   Naturally, not everybody can fight, but those that can might take up arms and hole themselves up in a castle.  Certainly having a system for that would be bettar than the random "3000 inhabitants were killed" result on the end of battle screen as seen in Master of Magic.  (I used to get so angry when I wouldn't set foot in the enemy town as it appeared on the tactical map, but then it would claim I killed 1000s of people and destroyed several buildings.

Good point. That's probably how it will end up working. Now the question is...how many "really bad soliders" could I make in 1 turn?

Well, the anwer to that is  either "as many as you have sowrds for", or "0", depending on whether or not there is a one-turn porduction lag as in GC2.

I would love for it to be "as many as you have swords for", that would be incredible. The minimum of 1 turn, such as for drafted units in Civ, is getting old in TBSs

We don't know how it works in practice yet, of course. Based on what they've said though, theoretically if you can actually make troops with 0 days training, it should be simply a matter of handing out equipment. You should be able to do that for however much gear you have available.

If they impose a minimum one day training in order to make the unit? Then you can't do that. But I really hope we have a millitia style option to simply deploy the weapons to anybody we can find in an emergency. I've always hated the "one archer conquers an entire city of 5000 people" thing, and this would be a fun way to counteract it.

(Hopefully SD is reading this thread. )

Not a one-day minimum training: a one-day lag in the production, as in GC2, civ, and probably a lot of other games with "get it now" features.

I know, I was talking about the other mechanic.

Oh, in that case: definately no training limit. Hopefully no one-turn lag, either.

The units having a lag was therefore old in Civ.

True, but it doesn't make much difference in the long run: the point is, lag is old. Brad, did you hear that?

Then again planning ahead is what makes these turn based games so interesting to me. If I can garrison troops at the very last moment then I can safely build buildins unles I am force to do otherwise. I think this takes away from the needed planning required to make these games succesful.

If this means there will be a lag in building units then so be it. The way it worked in Civ IV was excellent to me. You could get units instantly for a price, or you could wait... Whatever suited you.

Ah but there is a cost! If you muster a civilian militia at the last second to defend your city, you will suffer huge losses. Civilian militia would be pretty much the worst units you could muster. Completely untrained rabble, essentially. And because population will function as a resource, if you stave off an enemy attack but lose 40% of your population, that's a huge setback. And a last-minute call-to-arms wouldn't except maybe in extreme circumstances be able to effectively defend against an actual full-blown assault. It would serve to augment whatever permanent garrison you have, and to prevent the "Damn! I can't get troops there in time and that one archer is going to take over my metropolis!" moments.

Extreme circumstances being me imbuing those untrained rabble with some of my essence and unleashing them upon the army. What's your training doing for ya now, bub?

I'm not keen on the idea of conscripting an army, but I like the idea of pulling leader figures from citizenry. Hinterland had a neat tradeoff between having a guy at home in his house doing something useful (alchemist, blacksmith, whatever) versus bringing him out into the field with you to adventure.

I think Age of Wonders might have had something along those lines as well where someone sitting in a city could cast spells that affected the overall board, but I can't recall.

King of Dragon's Pass didn't quite have that concept, but the council you had was abstractly pulled from the citizenry and the fact that each had their own skills and bias was quite interesting.

Sounds like one of those quickie-game vs. long-game things to me. I'm a large-map junkie, so I can't say anything 'authoritative' about small maps in any TBS game I've liked. But, I'm pretty sure that, on larger maps, the essence 'investment' you describe should lead to winning a battle at the cost of reducing your chances to win the larger war.

Indeed. You would probably have to do it as, say, a last desperate attempt to save your final city a few turns before casting the Spell of Making...... under normal circumstances, you would probably just give everybody a stick and tell them to protect their families, friends, and country(wo)men.

I'm a bit interested in militia conscription mechanics, but the bulk of ckessel's post here just reminds me about how much I want to see Elemental champions have potential both as combat units on the map and as administrative units at some duty station or another.

I confess that the context forces me to remember shreds of some awful D&D-related movie or another that had a minor plot moment (a sharply-cut feather on a decorative helmet?) about the difference between being able to reliably kick ass in battle and being able to make 'hot zone' decisions well even if you might not win an octagon cage fight as easily as you once could.

I want Elemental to support both that classic old-soldier/field-vs-HQ dynamic and the idea that a middle-aged spell researcher might be able to leave his or her home college and earn a game-historical reputation by fighting out in the field.

Well, most of your army is conscripted at some point. If you're making troops, they come from your population and get trained up. A millitia in this case is effectively just a rush build of troops: give them gear and don't train them. Normal soldiers would have training, so you'd use a lot fewer people to get the same effectiveness.

I really like the idea personally. I've always hated how a single archer can conquer a city of 5000 people somehow, and this way if you have the weapons to try and stop that, you can (at a heavy cost considering that people are valuable).

AoW 2 did have that, but it was your wizard (ie you, the sovereign). There was no other unit capable of casting overland. If your wizard was in a wizard tower, your heroes would create a little pocket of your range around them, letting you cast anywhere they went.