E:FE, Have Derek specifically maps out 5 different paths of play?

  The 5 general "paths to victory" are:

1. Military- Players should focus on military techs, designed units and large trained armies and will be the most effective in fighting other players.  Gold goes to unit wages and upgrades.

2. Magic- Players should focus on the magic tree and capturing mana shards to increase the rate they gain mana and to make their spells more powerful.  Players are the most effective at short term powerful effects.  Mana should be spent on expensive power spells like Summons, Blizzard, Touch of Entropy and Grip of Winter and not on spells that boost other focuses like Inspiration and Crusade.

3. Civilization- Players should focus on Civilization techs and investing in their cities.  This is the path for turtle players and is where I am focusing at the moment.  Players should be the most effective at getting at the late game buildings, building population, building gold, and fueling other aspects of the game (many players will focus on Civlization to some degree, most of the cross tree tech requirements are out of the Civlization branch).

4. Adventure- Players should focus on the Adventure techs, recruiting champions and completing quests.  Mana should go to unit enchantments and imbuing champions.  This can be the least predictable of the paths, with random magic items providing rewards from minor boosts to powerful effects.  Quetss grant experience to champions that complete them giving players an avenue to level their champions before going to war with other players and champions are the best able to deal with the powerful monsters of the world that have traits like Overkill.  Gold goes to recruiting champions and buying items from shops.

5. Diplomacy- Players should focus on the Diplomacy techs, claim areas and build improvements that give diplomatic capital.  Players should be looking to build camps in captured monster lairs and convince AI players to help them.  Players who invest in it can get access to some unusual creatures for their armies, including dragons and are better able to maintain peace with other players while they focus on other pursuits (such as completing quests or exploring for uncaptured mana shards).

  The above are the paths at a concept level.  It's our job to take the above and enforce it with mechanics that give appropriate costs and rewards for all of the above.  It isn't intended to be a direct implementation of the above, and we don't expect players to only follow one of the above.

  Players may pursue Magic and Adventure to recruit and imbue as many champions as possible, allowing them to tromp across the map and complete quests with summoned henchmen and largely ignore the military side of the tech tree.  Or players may rush to get the appropriate military and magic techs that allow them to start crafting magical armor for their trained units, fielding armies of very expensive, and very powerful soldiers.  Or players may decide to turtle inside their super cities, managing a few groups exploring the world while they concentrate on building the cities that will provide all the people, wealth and resources they need when the time comes.

  The above determines where a game mechanic belongs.  Cities don't generate mana, they come from mana shards.  The reason is to make civilization focused players and magic focused players different goals.  If mana came from cities then the civilization focused player would be the best magic player.  Champions and armies have to have distinctly different advantages and disadvantages because we don't want players to simply be able to trade one for the other without a significant difference.

  Spells shouldn't simply be another way to get at building effects.  If we do have a spell that does something a building does it's for a specific reason (it goes against the general rule, which we do all the time if it makes sense in the details).  For example, Inspiration provides bonus research to a city much like a Study.  But Inspiration costs mana.  In this case it isn't that we are giving Magic a civilization type bonus, its actually a spell for non-magic focused players.  If you are focusing on Magic you probably shouldn't cast Inspiration, save that mana for the bigger spells you will want to cast.  The spell is for players that won't invest in mana and want to trade that game aspect for help in other areas.

Very cool Derek. You are definitely the man with the plan.

The idea of being able to choose between; massing huge imperial armies, building a loyal fellowship of adventurers, gathering powerful channelers and hoarding magical power, or constructing a peaceful utopian society sends shivers down my spine.

Sweet. Although I want a 6th option: the iWin button.

Derek, your detailed reply is exactly what I needed. In general, I am very happy with what you've lay out. Since this is an idea thread, let me try to flash out some of the gameplay that I am definitely holding my breathe to get for FE. Below I am just stating the differences, everything else is agree/like.

3. Civilization Tech (focused for most player)
We have played many games that building up a colony of cities provide us with resources to acheive game objectives. This is all fine and dandy, yet can this just be one of the ways? Need to break away from the model of more land = more gildar economic model; this is so overly done. 
I don't want this tree to be focused at all.

We can probably acheive this by designing 5 different mechanisms to get resources/$. Hopefully each way is balanced, and designed to mix with other at will. Namely:

1. Big military: more profitable robbing others than having internal economy, efficient in mining metal(?)
2. Big magic: more efficient to extract magical resource, sell magic items to market, provide magical service
3. Big civilization: traditional builder that retrieve mandune resources from the land and commoners (no change here)
4. Diplomat & Trader: the middle man that get everything from everyone else.
5. Adventurer: nature and retrieve resources/$ from the wild, and untamed creatures

Below lists some of the example related to gaining $ from different tech tree

Tech tree "Cross category prereqs"

Referring to Technology in Fallen Enchantress, Derek said 
"6. Cross category prereqs- Techs that require techs in othercategories. You can’t rush to big weapons in Fallen Enchantress like
you can in War of Magic. You need some civilization techs (blacksmithing) before you will be able to produce metal weapons and
armor. You need Literacy in the civilization category before you can learn the adventure tech Ereog’s Journals."

I do have a different take on this one. It is ok yet not preferred to put blacksmith only into the Civil tree. Putting in to both the Civil and Military tree is more reasonable, especially if there are various pre-requiste to get 'blacksmith'. This disadvantage may not be apparent for a beginning tech, but if blacksmith' were a
late game tech, then a Military player need to research all the pre-req of blacksmith in Civil tree, plainly annoying and adds nothing to the game.

And taking a holistic view, this will cause very player 'research all tech in all trees, so player's researched tech will eventually looked all the same'. Game should be designed to let us avoid huge parts of other tech trees, yet allowing us to be competitive. This leads me to my next point..

Varied Reseach progress/methodology

Referring to Technology in Fallen Enchantress, Derek said
"2. Tech based research costs- Now we can have the best armor tech in the game cost much more than the first weapon tech (previously if they were both the 6th military tech you picked they would cost the same amount)."

I am well aware that player should not get the best ever tech in turn10, but if player under the right condition and/or right sacrifaces should be able to get it quick. Maybe it is a short-turn gain vs long term pain decision. During early discussion with Frogboy, the reason allow getting the best armor tech early is that it allows varied gameplay but having an different & advanced tech early gives the game more variety. This intention is a good one.

Secondary, I believe I'll enjoy having different 'research style'. The game should allow player will several ways to research. Not just striaghtfowardly 'getting more land -> get powerful tech asap'. Large factions have a large advantage at producing tech, leaving small factions lagging far behind, this kind of gameplay gets very old.

I propose a variety of research models suggestion below:

There is more, but that's for later..

I'm getting "excitment bumps" from reading all of this..........  

dowdyhoody,  when you say 'all of this'... does it include my suggestion?  I hope so.  

From what I see so far in developer updates,  I am still most excited with my update above!   Fair enough,  Derek's update is

much more reasonable compared to the darker days of this forum.   However, what is the exciting feature FE is offering?

The most exciting feature may still be under cover,  yet I sincerely put what I've suggested above will be added to

their 'excitement undercover' too.

Civilization Strategy

I wonder if you will be able to build city improvements that impact tactical battles when the city is attacked?

1. Example: Moat through the center of the battlefield crossed by a bridge
2. Example: Seige Tower firing catapult
3. Example: City Walls that give units inside the walls a bonus vs missle attacks

Although there won't be sieges, Derek posted this screen in an earlier dev journal with a city surrounded by some kind of flame shield.

https://www.elementalgame.com/img/UI4.jpg 

So there appears to be some interaction between spells and city defence and walls, at any rate.

Edit: It's in the spell pdf as wall of fire. All enemies that attack the city suffer 2+2 per fire shard fire damage.

Has Derek taken a look at my planned Ivory Tower mod? It will fit in very well with the recent info on the game mechanics. I wonder if he is pandering to me specifically or if I have accidentally taken over his mind.

GO, Climber!!
Your original thread was one to excite our gamers' imaginations (while relying on what Stardock  said, it must be said). We really need some people to focalise on some sapects of this game and hold the developers 'accountable' for making it happen; keep kicking that '5-ways-horse', we need those 5 ways to play.

So the dream is still alive? It may be the first time, after one year full of gut-wrestling disgust, that I become excited anew about the game. I'll follow the forum a little more now.

For myself, I'd like to push ideas and mechanisms for the Diplomacy way when comes the time (just post a dev thread about it when you start!). The concept of Diplomatic Capital, how it works, shall also be discussed (I hope).

I am a little curious about how the starting techs are balanced with midgame and endgame techs for the 5 branches. How exactly does one make sure that civilization and warfare don't make magic and adventuring look sad and weak halfway through the game? This was the biggest balance issue in EWoM techs.

Is this something we can expect to be able to influence change come beta?

In my point of view, it doesn't need to be very strictly balanced since the game is not contaminated with 'balance-everything-multiplayer-fever'.
I would like to see that the research time wouldn't grow incrementally but, after some time, the techs you choose have research time proportional to their power and value, allowing you to adapt to your foes. Either you are in a dirty fight and need those 5 little advances the next 100 years or you are at peace and gamble that you can stay safe during the next 100 years while you research *insert super-good tech here* and expect a quantum leap from it.

For me, fun precedes balance. First, they implement the 5 ways and all their goodies. Second, they'll take time to balance a little the game.

I am not talking about strictly balanced 5 trees.  What is needed is just a reasonable balance for each tree, during early, mid and game.   I especially hope that we can start differently (i.e. I do not need to invest single research point in to Civilization tree), yet with my skillful play I can fight head to head to other players that invested in all 5 trees.  

From the various update we've so far from the Journal, it does not seems to be happening.    Currently, my impression is that we still need to invest first on the Civilization tech (mostly) early game and then branch out to other techs later.   I believe this is not forward thinking, and want FE to be better than that.  I hope Derek and the devs are listening to this particular request and make this change.

From Derek's cross-tree preference (with the Civil tree), I am not optimistic that we have any style other than the traditional building up then attach model.  I hope my impression is wrong, but not very optimistic.    It is easiler to design AI, game mechanism to make player research all 5 tech area for sure, but this is getting too old, not fun.  Is FE pushing in on this front?    

For example, with only 4 cities and every single point invested in one of the trees only (e.g. Diplomacy),  can a well-played player still achieve 'victory condition' faster than another well played Jack-of-all trade player that owned 20 huge Civil tech focused cities?   We need FE to be designed in a way that this is allowed, feasible.

The key here is victory conditions. Those are what define a path, not technology trees. If I am going for conquest, I will probably want to draw on a variety of advances from each tree. If I am going for the magic victory, then I will probably be very focused on the magic techs, with maybe a little of the others.

Climber, there is nothing wrong with needing to invest a bit in each. How can you build a powerful magic realm if you can't even build a decent town? I think it makes sense for players to need a smattering of techs, as long as there are different ways to approach the game. If there is one only viable option due to the way things are balanced or the way the AI acts, then we have a problem. However, if I can have fun and enjoy success pursuing all of the  victory paths, then we are where we need to be. The game just needs to incorporate all of the victory conditions and make sure that there are interesting choices and strategies for players to pick from to get to each one, and they all need to be viable. A diplomacy victory isn't viable if the diplomacy AI is broken, and players can never maintain good relations because the AI always attacks if they don't have a gigantic army.

I'd like to point out that

1) We know techs from different trees will be dependant on techs from other trees. What we don't know is to what degree.

2) Derek specifically refers to techs, not tech trees. Either this can mean that a path will be dependant on multiple tech treees, or it can mean that they are still considering having 5 separate tech trees at all.

I would make sense to combine the techs a little more than what we had in WoM. Life is full of unexpected connections.