That wasn't my point... My point was that a water elemental should be immune to ignite. Nothing you do is going to cause my water elemental to burst into flames, unless you pour oil on it and then light it on fire... Therefore you need more than just a debuff, you also need a 'resistance' to that particular debuff. And so on. I really do not see how that's any less complicated than resistances (considering it basically includes resistances just in the form of tags/abilities/traits/whatever, rather than as stats, and then expands on them)...

Oh, yeah. Well I've been in agreement that I want some method of doing that for the entire thread. Just differ a bit on the "how".

Yes there is no logic, I have even posted examples showing that I'm not the only one thinking this.

But let's follow your logic: fire elementals are inmune to fireballs. I suppose then they are inmune also to greek (alchemist) fire or to fire-arrows, right?

And then let's take this a little further and use a less "clear" example: I have summoned an earch elemental, now I throw something earth-like to it like let's say, a catapult rock. Is it inmune or resistant? And if I summon on top of him several tons of rocks? Is it inmune too? And following the fire logic even more: all weapons are made of things that come from the earth, is it inmune to any existing weapon too?

And let's not get started on air elementals and what logic says air should be inmune or not... (I also have a pretty hard time imagining a sword or a rock damaging fire, but well, who cares at this point).

So you defend this system is not complex, but after adding several new resistances, you are telling that we need even more abilities and resistances for all the non-damaging spells? Amazing.

I have already admitted that elementals are a particularly messy exception to the general rule. You made no comment on my example of a lava-dwelling salamander, for example, and I suspect it's because refuting that such a creature should be resistant to fire effects would be an exercise in futility...

And regarding earth spells and such - quite frankly I'm of the opinion that anything that involves, say, hurling a rock at somebody should do physical damage. Earth resistance might be mostly relevant versus non-damage aspects of earth magic; although if there are earth spells that directly affect a person's body (like the implosion spell from HoMM, for example) could be considered earth damage. 

Ok, so now you're of the opinion that something with no mind should be hypnotizable, or affected by mind spells in general, and something with no eyes should be able to be blinded? If you do, then you and I don't want even remotely the same game from Elemental. If you don't, then you do in fact want such traits in order to prevent ridiculous and non-sensical things like those from occurring. If the latter, then these don't add complexity to magic resistances because you'd want them there anyway.

Seriously, coming at this from the angle of "nooo magic resistance is too complex! it hurts my head! it kills strategy" is just getting old. Elemental is not being designed for 5 year olds, at least that isn't my impression (and besides, games like HoMM have magic resistances, other things like immunity to blind, immunity to mind spells, and I had no problem with that system even as a 9 year old).

I dont know anything about coding a game, so you are quite possible right.

How about:  Turn Water to Sambuca* -> Ignite! -> Party time!  All adjecent troops get the Drunken debuff

*highly flameable alcoholic drink, served ignited and with coffee beans in the glass

I am not confused at all - problem with resistances and multiple attack types is the balancing one as i mentioned earlier. Because by its very own design you would have to resourcewise advantage magic research or resistance research. real balance is impossible (considering custom units design) because it will be either too easy to develop resistance or develop magic (when compared to each other)

Do not forget, that other games which has all these sophisticated stats dont have custom unit creation. Therefore they can create balanced units by design and avoid min-maxing. I personally will play mostly singleplayer as well, but do not forget that AI is supposed to be big (at least as good as GalCiv) so I assume, that AI will minmax as well, at least to a degree.

Since most of us agree that magic resistances should be rather big thing, reserved rather for lategame and NPC units, I prefer tag system much more. Going from continuous stats to discrete allows gamecreators design of special items for a well defined costs (eg mithrill necklace will give you immunity for mindcontrol) and such a system will allow creation of special monsters as well. And compared to continuous resistance system, you will prevent min-maxing or "sweet spot" abuse. (although it is obviously goal to use sweet spots, they shouldnt be too sweet.)

Also I apologise if sometimes it is difficult to udnerstand what I write, this topic stretches my English a lot

Your English is quite good.

A small note on Balance (not to get off topic), but, in these types of games there ARE going to be things that will be greatly unbalancing. Like Dragons. Not just Dragons either. What if you get lucky enough to have any kind of flying monster join your army early in the game? Your opponents won't even have the means to hit a flying creature unless you already have Bows or the creature goes up against a enemy Sovereign who shoots it with magic.

I'm sure there are other, better, examples. Some things will be unbalanced on purpose I think. That's inevitable in a game that uses "Magic".

We have 2 fire creatures and already 1 exception. Even if the fire salamander is inmune or resistant to fire (for the record, in AD&D 2e it is inmune), doesn't change the fact: there's no logic behind it because magic is not logical. Why a Fire Salamander is inmune and a Fire Elemental is not?

But let's say there's logic behind it as you defend.

Why Fire was a question of logic and now Earth is a question of opinion? We just got another exception: if I create fire a creature of fire is inmune (because of logic), but if I create a rock a creature of rock is not inmune (because of opinion).

And yet another weird rule: some posts ago, Fire Resistance wasn't protecting against non-damage aspects of fire magic (Flare).

So there are damaging earth spells that get resisted and others that don't get resisted... Obvious.

The problem with your system is that for non-damaging spells you need to add a different mechanic, or just make that non-damaging spells always take effect. What if for some reason I cast levitate on your units? Is it possible for them to resist it? Do we add the ability "unlevitable?"

One single magic resistance and damage has short-comings (I have never negated them) but it's far more elegant than the mess you are proposing where you don't even have a clear idea on how to handle anything except Fire.

Again, Elemental is going to be a big game and pretty complex in all levels: the last thing we need is added complexity for the shake of it or just to cover some corner cases. And don't get me wrong, I can like complex magic damage and resistances systems (I do play DnD 4e a lot), but I don't think they should be here.

I don't think anyone wants a Super Complex system or wants to add a system just for the sake of adding it. Hell I started the topic and I don't even want some super complex, hard to understand system. I just want "Basic" Magical Damage Types that make sense and follow logical progression. (Logical for a fantasy game anyway) Like having Fire hurt water creatures more then other types of magic (except maybe Ice). Holy damage against the undead, Ice and Water damage against fire creatures, things that would count in grand fantasy battles. It doesn't need to be complex to be practical and useful and it's all pretty easy to do logically without bogging down the devs in needless coding on systems that won't be used. The way I see it, any magical damage types would be used in practically every battle in the game except where mundane units face off with no creatures involved or with no magical equipment.

You gotta be kidding. Without magical dmg types and resistances + immunities, the combat system will suck. Period. It will be way too primitive. This is a fantasy strategy game, with strong emphasis on tactical gameplay. This is why I've preordered the game. This is why I've purchased Dominions 3. I don't want to play with FfH v3.0 in regard to the complexity of the combat system. Besides, take a look at the poll. The vast majority of the voters said YES to magical dmg types. I respect your opinion, but I simply fail to understand you.

In that case, shouldnt be physical damage types be more important to you? I assume that they will be much more common than magical attacks. Whats the point of having super-complex (ehm, yet of disputable usefullness) magic attack system (in case it is going to be your way) which will be used in 1% of cases and yet there will be no difference between bow, crossbow, catapult or sword, flail, pike?

I don't think so. While having physical dmg types would be cool, but it's not so important like the magical dmg types. Also, you are talking about the vanilla game, but what about [Total Converson] mods? Personally I will only play with a decent TC mod, once it's done...a magic heavy mod, with lot of different races [lizardmen, orcs, elves etc.]. Needless to say that the real fantasy races should have natural magical resistances and/or immunities also. -> Magical damage types will be very important in mods like that.

(nvm, quote tags are acting funny.)

These things do need to be balanced, or everyone is going ot go for dragons and such, or the AI that goes for dragons is going ot roll over a lot of people.  (Which is why, from descriptions from designers), getting powerful magical creatures is going to be quite hard. 

These are conventions, not fixed logic  (You and someone else, for example, have argued opposite points for water elementals and fire damage, fire elementals might sinmple shrug off water and ice spells rather that be more sensitive.  For a game with a "light" side opposed ot a "dark" side, giving units associated with one side a specific weakness to another side is not a good idea from a balance perspective, and I can certainly mention many sets of cirsumstances, logic, etc., for why undead would not be extra sensitive to holy damage.)

Why magical damage types are more important if they are going to be used far less in the game than normal physical damage types?

Also, mods can go as crazy as they want, we are talking about normal Elemental here.

If there's no system for magical damage types, modders are going to have a much harder time using it. Also, the difference between the damage inflicted between a sword and a pike is a good deal smaller then the difference between a fire, a tornado, and a mind control spell.

At the end of the day it's all arbitrary anyway, you seem to be looking for some explanation that will never exist when magic is involved.

I'm not kidding and the combat system won't suck. Period. I have also bought Elemental, and Dominions btw.

Btw, people keep referring to Civ4 and its combat engine: Elemental is going to have tactical combat, that alone makes combat a whole world different from the one in FfH. Even if we had the same units as in FfH, combat wouldn't be similar at all.

We have no clue about modding at this state appart from "highly modable", so there's no way to believe who is right on this point.

I'm not the one defending that one thing should be vulnerable to another thing because it makes sense... If you like more the complexities of several damage types, resistances and whatever, great for you. Trying to make it sound logical, sorry, no.

I already explained the reasoning behind that. Also, I never said Fire Elementals shouldn't be immune to fire... I gave an example of a spell that would fall under the 'fire element' of spells, but with a more interesting effect than "Does X damage in ____ manner with Y secondary effect," which despite being in the fire element could still be effective against them. Without interesting spells like that, the magic system will be boring whether or not we get resistances. Elementals in general are a trickier case than pretty much any other unit because they're actually made of the element. They are also very prominent fantasy creatures that are especially relevant in the discussion about magic resistances, and so it is not surprised that one of the few specific examples came up is somewhat of an exception. And the exceptions are usually what come up, anyway, because exceptions are more interesting (at least in my field of work; physics would be stagnant if there weren't exceptions). Anyways, /end tangent... 

You are taking my post about magic being arbitrary and running way too far with it. Yes it is arbitrary and as such no one can say "Yes, that's the way it works!" or "No, that's wrong." But that doesn't mean it is entirely immune to intuition, especially in the case when magic is divided into elements (which with we can indeed relate to, unlike, say, 'cosmos' or whatever it was in AoW). Like I said before, if someone invented a game in which Fire Salamanders were weak to fire and resistant to water I couldn't say that it's wrong, it's just insanely unintuitive - and one of the utmost goals of any game should be to be intuitive. Now of course everyone's intuition is a little different, but overall I think most people's are close enough that that isn't a problem. And of course there are multiple intuitive interpretations/implementations of anything.

Poor word choice on my part. A magic system should be built on intuition, but tied together with logic. The foundations of the magic system should be intuitive so that it is believable and accessible, but it should be self-consistent (and thus logical) once you get there. Throwing a rock at somebody with Earth magic - what would the difference be between being hit by that rock and being hit by a mace? Pretty much none. It is both intuitive and logical that being hit by a rock would do physical damage, just like if a magician launched an arrow using magic. If all he did was launch an object, the impact itself isn't magical. An Earth elemental could be immune to spells like Slow, maybe implosion, they wouldn't be affected by a spell that buries them under ground, etc. It isn't a matter of whether an Earth elemental is immune to an entire school of spell (not particularly interesting IMO), but to certain effects (and they might be immune to some spells from other schools and vulnerable to some spells in their own element).

As an example: take elementals in HoMM 3. Fire elementals are immune to fire damage (I don't remember whether or not they're immune to all fire in general - I believe you could still cast non-damaging fire spells on them, but could be mistaken), and they were weak to water damage spells. Water elementals were the reverse. Air elementals were weak to lightning bolt (an air spell!) and not immune to any kind of magical damage. And I believe that earth elementals were particularly vulnerable to the meteor shower spell, but I'm fuzzy on that. So as you can see, things weren't so straightforward there and it really was not hard to understand or figure out. Sure, we'll have customizable units in Elemental but resistances will mostly, or only, be really significant for fantastical creatures which we won't be customizing.

So I don't see your point.

Quantity/frequency of use is not necessarily a good indicator of emphasis; rarer events that are individually very significant (like casting a spell, for example) should be deeper than little things that happen thousands of times a turn (guys hitting each other with swords and maces), because we're gonna notice the big individual, but less frequent things much more. Additionally, the difference between dropping a rock on somebody's head, blasting them with fire or freezing them in place are much more different than the effects of stabbing vs. bashing will ever be.

Well, if elemental/magical dmg types + resistances & immunities [it's a system actually] won't get implemented in the vanilla game, I really doubt that we will be able to mod those in.

Fined 100 Karma for using "At the end of the day" without Boogiebacks express permission. That's his catch phrase don't ya know . Don't believe me? Just watch the Elemental reveal trailer. He says it at least 3 times. You may how-ever redeem this Karma if Boogie makes a post and you call him "ScottyDON'T".

Unless the developers have something extraordinarily creative and ingenious up their sleeves, I don't see why we shouldn't have the tried-and-true approach of differentiating damage types.

The only things that should give magical resistances to regular troops should be either rare items, mithril, or star-metal.

In Fall-from-heaven 2, magic resistance was only available to high level units, and only several units in the game were magic immune (including dragons).

Damage types were discussed in FFH2 development, and while it was agreed there would be no variation in physical damage (but different promotions would make you better against a certain weapon-class of unit), there should be several magical damage types.

Magical damage in FFH2 is divided into holy, unholy, death, poison, Cold, Fire, and Lightning.

some undead had death damage (and non-living were immune), only angels had holy damage (with a few exceptions), certain demons and others had unholy damage .... while most Spells either dealt Cold, Fire, Lighting, or Physical damage.

Assasins had poison damage, and if someone with poison damaged attacked you, you recieved the "poisoned" promotion until you were fully healed (which decreased strength by -10%, and decreased healing rate by 10 or 20% as well).

non-living were immune to death and poison, daemons were additionally immune to unholy damage.

There was no way to gain resistances to holy or unholy damage ... holy damage was good against unholy damage, to everyone else it was pure damage. You could only gain resistance to Fire, Cold, Lighting, or Poison after gaining the magical resistance promotion.

Most spells that caused large area of affect's were either Fire or Cold ... Fire was the most common effect in spells, so fire resistance was also the most common to gain. The theory was that by investing in Lighting magic, there was less of a chance people would resist you because it was far easier to get Fire.

Holy magic was the most rare, and there was no resistance to it (except I think angels were resistant to it) ... the holy priest "bless" spell would add 1 point of holy damage to living units for one battle, but the main source was from the Angelic Host (which was a late-game civilization)

In our case ... I can see Cold, Fire, Lighting, and Poison being fine fore Water, Fire, Air, and Earth ... nature-based poison attacks are one side of Earth, while the parts that include Rocks and Ground are pure physical.

I can see this being fine because to me Earth is nature ... including trees, vines, grasses, herbs, rocks, dirt, earthworms ... and so using plant-based spells, some with poison, as well as dirt based spells (physical attacks and terraforming), you are able to cover a wide variety of nature. Meanwhile Water Fire and Air are more of the destructive elements that run counter to nature ... and therefore they would be more magical in nature (or un-natural). In valuing creative vs destructive, Fire would be the most destructive and therefore potentially being the most magical. A being of pure destructive energy is very hard to destroy. Most likely an immunity to their own destructive power, and requiring banishment by something a little better than mundane ... like cold-iron, silver, mithri, or starmetal ... although due to the high defense of a Fire elemental, even these would only be successful in the hands of high-level warriors, other-wise you will lose many men fighting the beast.

I think the best counter to fire should be Water.

I came up with an idea earlier that Fire-based creatures/abilities should be good against Air and Earth, while Water can vanquish fire rather easily, but Water attacks have zero effectiveness vs Air. Meanwhile Earth is weak against Fire, Air, and Water ... but not affected by a person's magical resistances since its primarily physical damage.

As far as Life and Death, I think these should be rare forms of magic with very interesting consequences, perhaps more to do with army-creation and buffs. Or rather, I think Life magic should defeat Death magic, but Death magic creates large armies for the armies of life to try and defeat.

Therefore Death magic (necromancy) is the best for gathering large, scary armies of undead minions, while life is the best tool to defeat the minions of the undead.

I would of course wish for various elemental beings and angels/demons consisting of primarily one element.

A divine spell like "ring of fire" would be pure fire damage, while a Fireball would be half magical and half physical damage.

We have no idea what resources are going to be in the game, so saying something like that is just silly... That said I'm not opposed to resistances conferred to regular troops only being given by rare items or equipment made of rare resources. But I also wouldn't be opposed to different types of equipment conferring small amounts of certain types of resistances (for example wooden army could cause vulnerability to fire).

Not the most important aspect of the game for me, so I don't really care which way they go with that. So long as we have magic resistances in the game in some form.