Well, I think all magic users will have an "essence" stat which allows for the amount of mana it has. The Channeler/Sovereign will be the only one which can distill node essence into his own, and increase essence upon level up, but he can spend essence in order to attach it to certain heroes.

In your mentioning of a Mind-Flayer, it could use essence and turn it into an intelligence stat (for mods) or simply have the mind-flayer decrease the mana of a character, and once mana hits 0 (or for most units which have no mana) that creature will die. Sounds like a very scary creature, and another reason for Rare Magical creatures to have large banks of essence/mana.

as far as extra-planar temptations/demons, as usual most units would be completely vulnerable (although I would like for levelled and high-morale units to be quite resistant) ... you could display immunity, Resistance, and Bonus relations via Religion tags. Where Religion A is immune the abilities of Religion B, while B has bonuses vs Religion C, and Religion C has bonuses vs everyone. And Religion D is relatively weak against other religions but is good at breaking morale and insta-killing normal units most effectively. Meanwhile, Relgion C's main rival is Religion A, and Religion C wants to wipe out Religion A. Meanwhile Religion B is the only one in a position to take out Religion C, although would like to wait until C has completely wiped out B, although any increase in mundane power for religion C is bad for religion B, even though B still has the Divine advantage.

Meanwhile, Religion D would want all the other religions to wipe each other out in their own holy wars, as all divine units of religion D could be easily killed by the other religions, although Religion D excells against most other units, so its best used against Massive regular armies ... they want an absence of religion in order for their religion to shine.

There are all sorts of possibilities for the theme of each religion, but the anti-parallel game-mechanic is very dynamic and interesting.

If I was going to assign any "themes" to these religions, I would have Religion C being the all-powerful religion of the Fire-god, while Religion B was the Water-tribe, the only one capable of freezing the flames of the Pyromancers. Meanwhile, Air is practically immune to the effects of water, so could steamroll the water-tribe, but could obviously be burnt by Fire if they went through with their extermination of Water. So Fire would want Air to wipe out Water, and Water would want Fire to wipe out air, meanwhile Earth/Nature would want all these destructive forces to wipe each other out, being Camp D, weak to the other elements, and if the other religions largely wipe each other out, Earth religion will be in a good position to take over the world, or at least convert the rest of the civilized peoples in order to win a religious victory, as its the rationale decision to make in the face of other-wise destruction from the now superior religion.

Equally so, if Religion C went ahead and wiped out Air, Religion B would want to ask Religion D's aid (in the form of regular troops) vs Religion C, for even though Water will beat Fire, Fire now has too much land and troops to be opposed in locations where there are no priests fielded. However, if B and D were to then Wipe out C ... then B would most likely have the advantage. I mean ... whomever has the biggest armies will ultimately be the most powerful, but as far as magical/Divine abilities, its better to have the potential for an absolute advantage than to rather simply happen to have the largest army. AKA people will always want to have a natural advantage, therefore there is more conflict between religions rather than simply to gain the most land ... its also important which religion is going to benefit the most from this war, and an interesting decision of which side to be on ... and what will most likely be the next war once the current enemy is defeated.

The Religion mechanic, combined with the Call-to-Arms mechanic listed else-where, would provide a very interesting Diplomatic arena for the game ... not just as AI modifiers, but also providing a very real dynamic which can be used with Human players on a sophisticated level.

I would say add Morale and Endurance (especially Morale) but otherwise I refer to my original statement, that any intelligence based attributes/abilities could be goverened by level of essence imo, and this system could enable easier modding to switch from essence to intelligence in an RPG system ... especially since essence governs your amount of mana (from what I hear)

  Most units should not be completely vulnerable to corruption attacks because it should depend on the unit.  Instead of adding a unique religion tag for each of the seven sins the management of corruption attacks would be more easily handled by merging the defense of these attacks into a single attribute such as wisdom.  While it would be interesting for each corruption attack to have its own specific defense that would add too much detail into the unit.

In the game as we've seen it so far, they would be, since very little combat is done with magical creatures, and an even smaller sections of those might use "anti intelligence" types of attacks.  (The same goes for corruption.)

So you are saying that, because magical creatures will be rare, the combat mechanics regarding them should be secondary?

The reason Stardock decided to make magical creatures rare is in large part to make most/every encounter with magical creatures an "oh shit" moment (obviously to different degrees, a Djinn might only be able to defeat hundreds of your troops while a Dragon might be able to take on thousands). But if the combat mechanics are only sophisticated enough to make fantastical creatures to have high ATT, DEF and HP/Strength/whatever it's going to be called, plus perhaps a special ability or two... They'll be much less cool. If all they can do is hit things, maybe breathe fire once in a while, maybe a Djinn can teleport or whatever... They'll just get old. That works in games like HoMM because nearly every unit is fantastical, but in a game where the fantastical is as rare as they are meant to be in Elemental, they should be appropriately differentiated in many very significant ways.

Not to mention even if magical creatures are rare, if they are the match of hundreds or thousands of regular units, then their effective use will not be much less than in a game with magical creatures all over the place. Maybe by late-game 1/5 of my battles will involve one (or more) magical creatures; if each one of those creatures is pitted against hundreds of troops each time then their rarity will be made up by their effectiveness. Just because something is rare does not mean it is secondary.

Oops, sorry for the double post. I didn't realize this was the same thread...

Intelligence is also important for spells such as illusions... if a warrior believes a swarm of wasps are buzzing around his head trying to crawl into his nose and ears then the soldier will probably fall helplessly to the ground dropping his sword and shield so he can cover his ears and nose with his hands.  An illusion is a spell which does no harm and in fact powerless unless the enemy targets believe its real... thus using intelligence. 

The size attribute can be especially valuable in the editor.  Imagine being able to select any existing unit from the editor and then adjust it's current size and colors to create a new unit.  No  3D  software skills needed... anyone would be able to create a baby dragon, enormous spider, sprites/brownies, ankheg, etc., etc., .  By selecting a size_1 the image is instantly shrunk to the smallest image size and by selecting size_10 the image is instantly expanded to the largest image size.

Seconded!  Morale is crucial!

Am not agaist adding more attributes,but most of your wishes can be resolved with abilities...

magic resistance,for example, could be ability with few available levels(basic - 25%,advanced - 50%,master - 75%,ultimate - 100%),same with inteligence(problem would be all human units need at last basic level here),elemental (fire,air...) resistence and everything else you wish.

Size could be determined by HP,1-10 small,10-25 normal, 25-50 huge and so on

 Willpower or intelligence will work for mind spells and mind attacks.

Since there's no magic path primarily associated with mind research the best method would be having mind attacks linked with intangible weapons the same as a fang weapon where it cannot be picked up after battle.  This allows anyone the ability to create new mind weapons from the editor and specify the proper amount of damage.  Units can be given the mind weapons from the editor.  I estimate most mind attacks should have a very high precision/accuracy, but that's my opinion.  Any spells thus only need to be linked to the associated mind weapon.  Some of the very high level mind spells could be absorbing the map knowledge from a captured soldier revealing what he knows about the map.

  Thanks Climber, the more attributes also means the developers and modders have more unique spells, traps, andd even events.  For just spells alone there's the creation of spells which confuse enemy units on the battlefield via an attack on intelligence, or spells which lower the morale of all units, or a spell which increases precision/accuracy and fire resistance for rangers. 

  I think everyone including the developers would rather have attributes included now which can later be made useful as compared to having too few attributes and then adjusting lots of existing code and existing units for adding more attributes later via an expansion and/or sequel. 

  Each of these attributes can be used allowing nations to be more unique as well.   One nation could have moderate fire resistance, low precision/accuracy, and specialize in corruption attacks.  Another nation could have minor cold resistance, high wisdom/willpower, and specialize in mind attacks. 

   ** I especially like your suggestion of displaying non zero attributes...  if it's zero then don't show it.  

  During unit creation there's more flexibility in using percentages because sometimes negative percentages are needed or percentages above 100% are needed.  For example a water elemental will take more damage from fire attacks then an earth elemental.  The water elemental should have some negative resistance value so it takes more damage.  One example is where a fire elemental needs more than 100% fire resistance because if a friendly or enemy spell lowers fire resistance the fire elemental shouldn't be allowed to set himself on fire or take damage from fire.   

Yes, the size attribute is mainly to provide a recommended hitpoint range since 99% of beings the larger something is the higher the hitpoints/life.  Naturally anyone in the editor could adjust the recommended hitpoint range.  Training and experience should only provide a small amount of hitpoints/life because an untrained soldier will die just as easily as an elite soldier when both are paralyzed.

I would not add any new stats, but would instead add "traits," of which there could be a multitude.  Traits would be present below the main stats on the unit card and each one would have a unique icon to identify it.  Traits would work to modify main stats in specific ways under specific circumstances. 

The thing is that intelligence, willpower,... aren't going to be commonly used at all. I agree with 4 (having 2 attack attributes, one for range and one for melee), but 1 and 2 are going to be pretty strange (or even missing at all) and 3 is nice but it's more headaches than it's worth and it can be abstracted more or less ok with defense and hit points.

Wrong... take a look at Dominions_3 and you'll see having many attributes is what provides such great game depth.  Check the forums on Dominions_3 and you'll never see anyone complaining about the many attributes.  Dominions_3 is one of the greatest fantasy TBS games and it still has a very active community.

As I mentioned earlier... I think everyone including the developers would rather have attributes included now which can later be made useful as compared to having too few attributes and then adjusting lots of existing code and existing units for adding more attributes later via an expansion and/or sequel. 

Agreed...  I requested the dexterity attribute within another thread titled The Attributes.

Considering the developers have reported this game as being singleplayer focused a perfect balance for all nations isn't necessary and there's plenty of beta testing time so the game balance will be good enough.  There's no hardships with selecting proper units in Dominions_3 which has even more attributes.