Concerns with life & death magic

"Empires" and "Kingdoms" are only relevant for the premade factions, as is the Fallen/Human present dichotomy. Presumably, you'll also be able to define wheter your Sovereign and/or Channelers will be using Life or Death independant from your choice of race.

In my own interpretation, of course.

Um, maybe their choice to follow life or death magic is THE defining feature that determines if they are Human or Fallen?

Now what I would like to see is a choice of a "non-evil" Fallen that uses death magic such as ancestor spirits and other benign uses of death magic as well as a Human faction that uses warped Life Magiv to create monsters, constructs etc.

In an earlier post it was statd that Humans are a mix of good and evil, but the Fallen are universally evil. Not sure I am that concerned about any of it until I have seen it.

I agree with Denryu, but I think that although the humans will be LARGELY good and the fallen will be LARGELY evil, we might get one or two "shifters" in the mix.

I think they've changed it up. No paticular faction is stuck being "good" or "evil" or using life or death magic. In the beginning of the game you pick your faction and pick which magic you want to imbue the land with.

Thats the way I read it.

As did I, i think race will be an entirely different thing from what kind of magic your channeler uses. What i fail to understand is, in an earlier journal entry brad said we are starting out as just a channeler and we are to pick up people as we go along right? Maybe if we choose to use life over death, "kingdoms" will be more likely to join us and vice versa?

That would make a lot of sense.... especially if channelers can be of a different species than their subjects.

I don't understand the confusion it seems that this was clearly answered under "good and evil" in the July FAQ.

Or maybe *I* am the confused one, it seems evident to me that Humans = Kingdoms = Life Magic and Fallen = Empires = Death Magic.

Why have Fallen that can use Life and Human that can use Death when the choice of which magic they use is the primary differentiating characteristic from what I have read!

Again, other than "hunches", "gut feelings" etc can anyone point me to anything any dev has posted that would lead you to believe otherwise? Without torturing words to mean what you want them to mean?

The Kingdoms=life/empires=death is confirmed. It's the Humans=Kingdoms/Fallen=Empires that I never heard any dev confirmation of.

Hmmm the most definitive post I can find on it was posted by Aeon....I could very well have been led astray, my brains may have made a connection that wasn't there...

In my defense here is what Aeon posted a LONG time ago..

Is Aeon even a dev? I've never heard of him/her before...... in any event, if not a dev, (s)he most likely got the names from an old dev journal I have been unable to dig up in which Brad drew a map of the cameighn world, with the empires Aeon attributes to Men were on one side (left or right, forget which), and the "Fallen" ones were on the other. I for one don't see why some couldn't have jumped over: Yorin, Tarth, and Ithul sound more like Fallen names to me, and Izen and Dol-Sirion sound "Manny".

Aeon is not a dev; I was just stating the post that I drew my possibly incorrect conclusions from.

Kingdoms (men) use life magic and empires (fallen) use death magic. I have never noticed any change in that information. Except that until now we didn't know exactly the life/death as element.

Yep, this seems pretty standard. Though if you make a custom game, presumably you could use a custom race like in Galciv and then just mix it up however you like.

The confirmation was made in this dev post:

So by combining these two pieces of information, we have Kingdom=Humans=Life magic and Empire=Fallen=Death magic. Now it's possible that this is only rigid in the campaign mode and that we'll be able to mix and match as we want in sandbox mode... I hope that's the case, anyways.

But what will really make it for me is if the types of things you can do with life vs. death magic are not largely divided by good vs. evil boundaries. Like Denryu said, being able to call on ancestor spirits and the like with death magic and other such things that wouldn't really fall under 'evil.' Likewise there could be ways to use life that would normally be considered evil... If they really make it so that you can't say "oh, life magic is good and death magic is evil" I'll be really happy!

The last thing regarding this topic is that I really hope they don't lock death magic sovereigns into having barren lava wastelands. Because if that's the case, I will hardly ever use death magic.

Thanks pigeon, karma to you for tracking down that dev post. I was sure I had read it somewhere but I could not find it (and I used search and everything!

Well, that journal is rather old, and the game has changed a lot since then, but....... in any event, one of the first things I will mod is human empires and fallen kingdoms.

I want ice and snow. "Seasons: War of Faeries" presents Faery Queen Spring versus Faery Empress Winter!

I want ice and snow. "Seasons: War of Faeries" presents Faery Queen Spring versus Faery Empress Winter! 

Yeah, I'd love for there to be a whole list of terrain types that you could choose. I'd also like for your terrain choice to only be one factor in what the land becomes as you revive it. Having all your terrain be just grasslands, or just lava lands, or just snow would be a bit boring. As you revive the land, you should get some mix of everything. Obviously it shouldn't be random and spotted everywhere, and you should probably even be able to tell what the land will become even before you revive it.

Well, my concept of this is that there are three terrein "pallettes" (life, death, and unrevived), that contain many different terrein "types" like forest, plain, mountain, river, and so on. Investing essence in a land area turns its "pallette" from unrevived to either life ordeath depending on your alignment, but a mountain stays a mountain, and just gets a different "look".

One of the screenshots shows snow so there might be some of what pigeonpigeon says.

That's how I picture it.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say, albeit not so eloquently... Sometimes I have trouble translating my thoughts into words

I get that all the time. Don't worry....... I hope that the GFX palettes are non-code-moddable.... still learning, thanks to you all's help.

I don't like the idea of tying things together.  The great thing about MoM was that you could play a life wizard and rule the dark elves or play a death wizard and lead the halflings.

There was amazing variety and strategy in the many different combinations of races, spellbook colours and wizard skills (retorts).

When you start taking away choices from the players, you make the game less interesting.