Flying Citadels

Non-canon modded material.

It "could" be cannon if the devs wanted it to be. We really haven't seen much of the back-story yet. I think Flying Citadels would come in very handy. It's the ultimate Fantasy mobile troop center. A Flying Base. It would be like the Ultimate planet destroying ships you get in Gal Civ 2, Doom Stars I think they're called. End Game units of course. Not cheap and not easy to build with an insanely high cost and upkeep. 

Not to mention the (potential) limitations of no longer producing an area of "control" for you, and longer able to be expanded.

I wholly approve!

That would transform the city into a unit ? It reminds me of the fatboy or Czar in Supreme Commander.

That would depend on the Devs I think. It could either transform the city into a unit, or, it would keep it as a city and have a mobile sphere of influence. There's no way to really tell which one would work better until it was implemented in game and tested.

Of course ripping a city out of the ground would have consequences as well and would make you weigh heavily the cons and benefits of using one. If you rip a city out of the ground chances are it wouldn't produce anything except maybe troops. It wouldn't be able to get fresh supplies of materials like Iron or Gold or Magic Shards because trade caravans wouldn't be able to reach it unless things were transported to it by magic (hence upping the upkeep cost).

It would definitely have it's advantages. It would be a super weapon. Other Sovereigns would be in awe of your might and power for sure. If it's kept as a "city" and not made into a unit the minute you rip it out of the ground then it would have a mobile sphere of influence that could be used to a strategic advantage. Also weaker enemies without Flying units would have virtually no way to attack it. You'd have to attack it with either Dragons or some Flying unit, or you'd have to shoot spells at it.

I think it's definitely something the Devs should think about and implement if possible providing it fits the theme of what they're doing with the game.

The easiest way to implement this would be to make the 'flying' upgrade simply a super version of a moat.  Prestige goes up, defense goes up, but other than that nothing changes.  The city can't move, even though visually it looks like it's floating.

Hum .. and why not a way to achieve victory ? Giving consciousness to a city(it's aliiiiive!), then all of your other city turn neutral, every human gets your enemy, then you would have to stay alive for 40 turns (for instance). then you become .. a God !! Well .. sort of

Or becoming one with the earth ... Instead of a flying city, your cities becomes part of earth : you don't control them, but every city becomes a spawning point for nature-related creatures you can control

Hum .. well .. I should stop dreaming

This got me thinking. Will we be able to have cities underground, inside mountains, *coughMoriacough* etc? Underground cities would give a big bonus to defense and mining, but increases upkeep because food has to come from somewhere.

Don't know. But at the moment there doesn't seem to be other "planes" (like undergroung)

*coughThorbardincough*

Everyone always goes for the LotR reference first.

Don't get me wrong, I like LotR as much as the next guy. Tolkien was a god among writers but he's not all there is in Fantasy. There are many other great books out there that don't get the credit they deserve IMO. If they would have made Dragonlance into a live action movie before LotR people would be saying "Lord of the what?". Honestly with all the war and dragons I think Dragonlance would have made a much better movie if done with the same high standards and quality LotR was.

That's a AWESOME idea . Wow I hope they do something like that.

  for the super cool idea.

I went with the LotR reference because a) Pretty much everyone has seen and/or read LotR, so they will get the reference, and b) I'm going to be making the LotR mod for Elemental, and having underground cities already in the game would make it easier than actually modding them in

Why wouldn't you just keep it stationary, and it would be a defense like city walls, like making your city impervious to all attacks by those that are not flying. moving it would kinda be a pain in the butt. because you would have a moving area of influence, and it wouldn't really provide anything for you, if it was moving slow, you would not be able to outrun air unit's anyway.

Indeed it is. I'll be looking for the same thing for my Dragonlance Mod

Those are some very good points. That would all depend on what the Devs would want to do with it. If it becomes a unit and stops being a city then it won't have a area of influence. I also don't see the need for it to go too slow but I figure if they would put anything that powerful in the game it would have to have some down sides as well. Balance could be an issue with what-ever other things they already have planned. In my mind a Citadel should move. I can see a variant of the spell being used to add a bonus and keep it stationary as Strand suggested. Like a floating version of Wall of Fire or Cold etc etc. A city protection buff.

You know what might be cool as well though, since the game has a cloth map with an ocean perhaps alternate maps for a underworld, or an over world (like floating continents) rather then oceans you would see rock or sky, then there would be other dimensions to explore in the same map. you could find a cave that took you into the underworld, or some type of ancient translocator device that would take you from the ground and into the clouds, and you could make a map that shows clouds rather then ocean, and have airships that you could use to come down from the sky level and enter the ocean, over a turn or 2. that would be kinda cool, because I love the exploration of the cloth map because its really cool the way its setup. be cool to have another cloth map of an under world or over world, which you can then explore as well, and increase the games dimensions, explorible areas, and length.

course at this point its prob more realistic to see that in an expansion or something since the game is in beta but I think that would be cool

I've wanted the same thing. One of the best draws to the original MoM is that every time you play a game you get two whole worlds to conquer. I don't know if Elemental is going to have other environments but I've heard them talk about dungeons so I'm guessing we'll actually be able to go inside them. I'm hoping at least..lol.

In MoM the two worlds were relatively ... bland. I would prefer only one plane but with a lot of things to do/see, than two half-finished planes. It doesn't add to the gameplay in my opinion. What an underground could add to the game ? A way to get past mountains ? But magic will be there for that : just destroy that mountain, or cast fly, or make one with stone.

In AoW2:SM the other world had some gameplay changes, but they weren't so interesting.

Different planes would be a very good idea. But as everything, only if well done. One mod I have in mind would need 5 different planes to be considered complete (can survive with just 1 tough). But Frogboy already said something about land based TBS so doubtfull unless very good arguments against that are given (and money and time allow, of course).

And aerial plane could be a nice addition for flying things but I'm not sure it's really needed. In the 3d engine you would see them lying normally in the map and in the cloth map, it would be just a figurine lying of the surface of the map.

Undersea map it's more interesting and problematic. In the cloth map the figurine would behave like any other (over the cloth map) but in 3d game it would depend. A sunken city would be underwater and you should be able to notice it without the need of cloth map. A giant turtle could be in the surface but could interact with the sunken city if in range.

Different worlds (underworlds included) would be nice if you already have an interesting world and if you can make the new ones interesting too.

But the topic was about flying cities (I prefer sunken ones) so let the flying citadel detroy the area where it was before (at least forsaken or something). The cost could be mantained but it would be cool if the cost could be paid once and the effects sustained by itself (once magic skill is good enough). I can see people using "It's raining flying citadels" tactics if the game allows them. Maybe to make it fly it's a one time payment but o make it move requires extra effort (be it essence and/or mana, preferably the later).

I think you're right Wintersong, maybe they were called Terror Stars. I only used the analogy to show how far along in the game you would have to be before you could get a Flying Citadel.

In one game of Gal Civ 2 I used them to destroy EVERY star system that I didn't own. It was awesome

I would say that an underground would add the dimension of knowing the lay of the underworld, your could put stronger monsters down there, of course it would not be as large as the map above, just tunnel's and such that lead to different area's of the map, or deeper into the world where even more devious creatures live. better treasures etc. I have not seen dungeon's yet this may be what they have in mind, it would be a completely different enviroment from the way the main map looks, and as for a floating area of the world, it wouldn't be as big as the regular make, maybe a few interconnected sky island's that flying creatures settled on, just something to add a little more exploring to the game, I like those moments where you find something secret, and are excited that you have, just like in Heroes of might and magic when you found the underground area you always thought it was something cool. but it turned out not to be because of their lack of imagination in underground enviroments, of course at this point anything is possible.

 Already suggested from postings in a previous topic:   https://forums.elementalgame.com/345231  

 It's definitely an idea which has not been done within previous fantasy games... at least not to where the structure is actually moving in the game itself.   With enough earth spellcasters and/or air spellcasters it should be possible for an enemy to bring the flying structure back down.

The community came up with several good ideas regarding 'traveling structures' from the above link.

If its a flying citadel, it should most likely either have

A) a magical, gigantic beam cannon

or

constant magical storm overhead, flooding or burning most all it passes over. (massive rain and lightning, perhaps fireballs/meteors)