[Suggestion] Travel takes too long, add Gate spells

Are you aware that there is is a teleport spell?

The problem with spells like this is that the AI does not use them, hence they provide a *huge* benefit to the human player and as a result the human easily whips the AI. Players can easily dream up more spells to add to their hearts desire, problem is the AI never uses them & the spells just end up making the human player outrageosly overpowered (even more) over the computer AI. I'd rather see the AI reprogrmmed to use existing spells efficiently against the human player to provide a more challenging game. That's just my opinion.

Teach AI to use them?  I don't think it is all that difficult to make AI understand strategic nodes in its graph and try to shorten the length of travel between them.

Alternatively, create the equivalent of "Strategic Redeployment of HOI" within the magic lore.  I very much miss this feature whenever I need to move many units at once across my empire

Yeah, gates would be far better than teleport as you can abuse telleport much more easily (though gates would still be pretty abusable).  Honestly though i would prefer to see high move speeds and no gate/teleport or at least the option to turn them on or off. 

AAAHGGHHH!!!  I agree that units are too slow in this game, but adding even MORE teleporting stuff, no thanks, this is no Star Trek! It' a FANTASY game!!

Instead I suggest that units should go a couple of tiles faster, which would also helpin having interesting turns when a "Play By E Mail" option gets implemented.

Teleport is abusive, it spoils the strategy and the epic sense of games like this one! The only teleport spell I find acceptable would be one that would allow to teleport back to the main city, assuming that ONLY the sovreign could use it without his troops!

Teleporting armies no no no never never never !!! Remove all teleport spells or make them optional please!!

Teleport mana has been ramped way up to 15mp, making it basically useless early game. Combine it with only *one* essence increase and you have "Elemental, War of Armies" heh heh. Only much later, after you have Tower of watchamacallit which increases your regen to 3 mp can you use Teleport and other magic spells somewhat freely. If archers fired using action points like my soverign uses mana, then after every fight, the archers would have to be stationed in friendly influence so that they would "regen" action points enough to be able to let fly another arrow. I wonder how deep the upcoming "Mana Pool" is going to be :-p

I completely agree!! I would definitely buy at full price an expansion that just addresses the AI without anything else!

(If it included a Play By EMail Option I'd be happier though, so I could play with my friend who aren't free at the same time as me, Multplayer is so much better without having to wait for everyone else's turn)

Personally, I would prefer to have a tech that allows players to find Moon Gates or something like that.  But that would be some thing in the future.

Fine with me as long as I don't have to play "Elemental War of Jumping Around Teleporting Wherever the hell I Want"

Magic is NOT teleporting - Teleporting is a SCI-FI device not a fantasy one!

I am not really sure what feel they are going for with the movement.  There are ways to speed up your troops though boots, cloaks... still very limited.  Would be nice to have a forced march ability that could be used occasionally.. 

I am also not a big fan of the teleport ... I think it should scale with the number of units transfered.  1 guy cheap, many guys maybe too expensive to cast.

Hopefully that one will send to te moon those players who like teleporting spells!

I hate to discuss options for teleport... Because maybe I didn't mention it... "IT SPOILS THE GAME!!!" :p

But some games had the mana price increase with the distance ... BUT DON'T DO THAT!! Just Remove it or make it optional!

That's a great Idea actually, maybe after a forced march the unit would have its statistic halved for une full turn to simulate that they are tired.

I'd rather see gates be something anyone can use and become strategically valuable. 

I, too, would like to see a "Strategic Redeployment" action, but would prefer it to become availible through Warfare techs ( Logistics comes to mind ). In my mind, redeployment would have a similar function to teleport except it would still cost turns - 1 turn per every five tiles or some such. With a more advanced tech the modifier can be improved to 1 turn per 10 tiles. Basically every unit would get a more effecient way to travel to cities, just not instantaneous like a teleport.

Just my thoughts on the matter...

Actually, that's a really good point.  They would definitely be really important to control and anything that adds more strategic complexity is good for me :)  But, to keep that valid they can't be something we can build or cast they have to be ancient artifacts built by the titans or whatever placed randomly and limited in number.  Two gates per placement send/recieve points ...

that could be kinda cool.

The problems I have with teleports of all sort are that  "it spoils the Epic sense", as I mentioned, since that great map you guys have managed to pull out has a great potential for strategic bonuses and it is so huge: beautiful!

I'd like instead to see its possibilities exploited better with different kinds of terrains: snow, desert etc... rather than having armies bein able to jump around like in a Mario Bros arcade and make all that worthless! I would like to be able to build forts in bottleneck passages between mountains, or watchtowers to anticipate the enemy moves ... That is the evolution I'd see for this game. In multiplayer that is particularly great, because once you finally are at a point where you produce armies the real game begins... With teleport instead at that point everything ends, since you have huge armies but the terrain also becomes useless.

Of course I see this game mainly from a wargamer point of view, so that's my take.

Most of all the fact that a huge army that you don't even know exists could pop up at any time and change the balance of the game, for me is a BIG turn off.

Gates between cities are still a problem, because you should not be able to send the same superstack everywhere, I believe that should be a strategic priority from a game designer point of view.

One of the greatest innovations of this game IMO is the fact that all those monsters around my cities force me to realistically keep units in them and have a real sense of what defending an empire means: it is not only about enemies but also about keeping your kingdom safe from internal dangers. I LOVE THAT!

Teleport would spoil that too, since ROBOCOP could just teleport everywhere, One sci-fi uberpolice unit would be enough to defend all.

I really find teleport unacceptable and ugly in all of its forms

...and so did the Age of Wonders community that protested so violently against that when they announced the instroduction of tower gates (much like your moon gates) in Shadow Magic!

We can take inspiration from "Harry Potter", the definitive magick books, and have similar spells/constructs in Elemental. Apparition is already present as Teleportation, we can have Moon Gates as Floo Network, and for spying, there could be an equivalent of the spell that sends only your face to the other fire place. For Version 1.2, Some quest locations could be Portkeys, and vanishing cabinets would be Moon Gates V2.

I'd rather overland movement rates not suck.

You need piss poor movement in games that lack tactical combat.  Your tactics are all played out overland.  As we're devoid of any real point to positioning and such, base movement being 6-8 wouldn't change anything but how obscenely long it takes to get shit done.

Whatever conceit you want to use, just make long distance travel faster. It is rather tedious now, especially since the food resources are more scarce than ever in 1.09.

But the game shouldn't be about having that same stack going back and forth, real warfare is about positioning armies and defend those positions, it is about fortyfying a strategic area or tricking an enemy into following you while another army of yours is preparing to disembark frol behind. Ships for example are already useless enough (because the AI cannot use them, which also prevents us from having islands). With theleport ships would be even more useless.

Ships, then, not a sci-fi device. Of course teaching to teh Ai to use shps would be harder than just make units jump around... But then again this is not an  arcade!

The human player would just station two huge stacks on both sides of the teleporter gate, making it usable only to himself. The AI would never get any use out of it even if was programmed to use it. This is one of those I-can-"predict"-what-will-happen-before-it's-even-designed ideas.

A single dominant strategy with teleport:

Send a few pioneers around, get as close as possible to enemy cities, build a gate teleport the one and only superstack! Not to mention the defense of territory: no need to keep units in cities anymore: superstack would take care of that too: realism DEAD!

The "Gates problem" could be solved, along with the cities influence problem, possibly by making the maps *really* huge, so that even 10 level 5 cities per faction wouldnt interfere with each other, if they are placed far enough apart. When I play I like to research the toughest units and gather together a massive army before starting to fight, no early rushes. Like the massive maps in Total Annihilation.

Ideas to speed up movement (brainstorming):

1.  Raise default movement from 2.

2.  Automatically increase movment with levels/experience, (makes sense because you level and expand your kingdom so it would be useful later in game).

3.  Create a second "Caravan" tech to decreae movement on roads from .5 to .25

4.  Create a Redeployment tech like Kaijen suggeted.

5.  Create a military structure in a city that allows deployment of units only.

6.  Gates (I would suggest a unit limit or cooldown timer, though)

I like gates the least, honestly.  I can have a superstack army teleport anywhere in my zone of control.  How game-changing is that?  If I leave a city unprotected, I should suffer for it. 

We need to change movement so that it is less tedious across the board, but not facilitate superstack teleportation.