Ok, so what I'm wondering is if the whole "good vs evil" theme that most fanasy settings have has been replaced with "life magic vs death magic". If so, I think it will be quite interesting, as the good vs evil has been pretty played out over the years. If this is indeed the case I'm quite interested to see how the campain plays out. This will presumably be a refreshing change from "-insert name here- is an evil d**k trying to conquer the world" story that SOOO many fantasies have.

There seems to still be a lot about the world of Elemental that requires explanation. Such as this post Frogboy just made in the new FAQ. As for the life and death magic debate I'm assuming that it isn't replacing the tired but true good / evil alignment choice. I would think you could pick death magic and still have lush green land and be considered a "good guy" by your people and other nations.

I agree with this and will be disappointed if there are not lots of choices on races and magics to play as well as those wonderful extra choices like alchemy and summoning etc. etc. Though alchemy was pretty overpowering I hope it's there but tweaked to be balanced. Perhaps 2 gp to 1 extra mana and the more it is abused the more it costs to transfer gold to mana?

In MoM you were considered "good" or "bad" by the AI based on your spell books. If you had at least 1 death book, you were considered "bad" and hated by all.  With 1 life book you were "good" and loved by all.  Since you could not take both life and death books, there was no problem.

Other than that though, you were totally free to choose any colour combination you wish, totaling up to 11:

• 2 nature, 3 sorcery, 5 chaos and 1 death barbarians
• 4 life, 2 sorcery, 1 chaos, 1 nature, alchemist, warlord(2 picks) high men

There were literally hundreds of combinations of spell books, wizard abilities and races to choose from before you even began the game. Half the fun was in coming up with wacky new combinations and working out a strategy with them.

People should stop forgeting about the fact that the game has a campaign. That supposes that it must work so the game will be developed to make sure that happens. Maybe they will have the time to add extra things but the minimum are those needed by the campaign, which are the "essence" of the core unmodded game.

From that basis we will have to tweak it to our needs. And we will be happy that modding this game will be made easier than others.

Campaigns don't interest me very much, sorry. I play through em once and that's it. The lack of replayability really hurts the concept.

One of the best parts of 4X games that has been the major feature since Civilization 1 (and earlier) is random procedural map generation.  Infinite replayability, as they say.

Hand-made maps and campaigns for them seem like such a wasted effort by comparison.

And yet, I have to repeat that there will be a campaign. Even Brad is writing a book about it. People can agree or disagree but it doesn't change that fact. Just that. I don't see myself playing the campaign more than once or twice depending of how "good" it is (and replayable). Then I'll be too busy with sandbox mode and mods.

Altough if there a vote/poll about if the game should have campaign or not, I 'd be of those voting yes. At least if an interesting one can be made. I'm a story guy and I simply cannot refuse any chance of getting extra lore in any shape.

I wonder if there will ever be a thread here that goes an entire page without saying "but MoM did this!"

Because some people are more interested in a new MoM than anything else. I was one of those who would have signed for a MoM clone with just updated graphics.

Well, that's not what this is. Someone is making a mod to do that, IIRC.

Well, I have no doubt that they will be making a mod, but remember: the game is completely locked inside the Stardock studio for now.

The Empires = Fallen = Death Magic and Kingdoms = Human = Life Magic is only relevant in the context of the lore and campaign. I'd be very suprised if Fallen/Death Magic and Human/Life Magic was tied in the context of when you make your own nation.

And obviously, the Empire/Kingdoms dichotomy is only relevant as an apparent distinction between the Human nations and the Fallen nations. You'll be able to name your nations whatever you want - or at least it's obvious to me. I'd be baffled and confuddled if it was any other way.

Maybe all Human factions using life magic, and all Fallen using death magic is way they can avoid hard coding in a rivalry between the two races. If factions who use life magic inately work against those that use death magic, then you don't have to worry about programing a spesific "hatred of the races", if you will. This would also work better when using custom races and the like, so that the user wouldn't have to worry about moding in rivalries and the like...I also wonder if, on random maps with custom races/factions, if you have to have an equal number of life magic users vs. death magic users.

I'd prefer if your alignment was largely based on your actions with the starting magic choice being secondary. If death always equals evil and life always equals good in Elemental I'd considered that an uninspired solution.

The game however is still a long way off so beta testers could manage to persuade the devs to change course on a number of issues. I'd personally like to have the option to pick any starting element for my Channeler opposed to life and death always being innate.

Life/Death element doesn't use shards per se so if you were to be able to start with a different element, then you wouldn't have access to that type of mana/magic unless that part is added too. Altogh we know now why there hasn't been any life/death medallion, I wonder which is the (current) lore reason for it.

My reference to medallions is based in that you can find shards of the other elements in the land but there are actually no shards for Life/Death by the simple fact that the Sovereign/Channeler is "the shard" for it. Yep, there is a reason (The Fifth Element movie apart) but we won't know it unless Stardock spoils us a bit or we get to try the campaign.

I'd have enjoyed more a Legend of the Five Rings approach with Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Void. Nothing more fun than Void's visions/prophecies as well as those fun unmaking spells.

When people create their own custom factions, they'll be able to pick and choose how they choose.

The moddability of the game will likely expand with updates after release even further as we want to make more and more of the game moddable via python. Not just because we love you guys (and we do) but because it will allow for a lot of interesting expansions and such to be made later if we make the core engine easy to modify in interesting ways.

My primary interest is how the game lore will affect un-modded sandbox play. I'm a little disappointed to see what strikes me as conflict or confusion about 'the' elements and how the Black Rune that appears atop all these forum pages translates into both plain English and game mechanics. If it is one thing ('the fifth element'), then both Kingdom and Empire sovereigns should be able to use that 'flavor' of magic, with value-based differences in how they can use it. If there is no way for a Kingdom sovereign to use death magic and vice versa, then we need a sixth rune and supporting text that is clear about the differences.

Put somewhat differently, after gratitude for a way above-average FAQ, my only real complaint about what Brad shared in that dev journal is that the current 'Kingdom = Life and Empire = Death' thing seems, at least at the plain language level, to be an attempt to duck the classic epic fantasy good vs. evil thing. I'd really appreciate an innovative way to escape the trope, but I fear that the current plan is closer to being a 'copout' than it is to being a new approach.

p.s. I should probably note that my take on all that is probably skewed by my interest in seeing Elemental include game space for 'neutral' approaches along the lines of classic D&D druids and for players who are interested in modern nature-isn't-all-sweetness-and-light thinking, with nature being a rough synonym for whatever the Black Rune means in English.

Men and Fallen seem different. Fallen ruled by might and magic. Men more about working together and technology. The result of the canon civilizations using life or death magic could depend on many things. Being violent by nature, the Fallen might find the death magic more natural to use to them with all that violence, deaths... While humans would find a magic based on things dying not very usefull in societies based on living peacefully.

The focus shouldn't be on good vs evil or life vs death (altough as I understand, the campaign is based in a life sovereign vs a death sovereign) but on the differences in those two kind of societies. Yet, the whole revive the world by two opposing forces (life vs death) is more "loud".

In MoM it was simply the smart thing for the AI to do.  Death magic had almost no friendly, helpful spells at all.  It was all about death, often on a mass scale (Death Wish being the most extreme example).

There really was no concept of "good or evil" since in the end all wizards were vying to wipe everyone else out and be the last man/woman standing.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing a big improvement over MoM's very simplistic (and exploitable) diplomacy. Coupled with the poor strategic and tactical AIs, diplomacy was the weakest aspect of MoM.

Well, that's not what this is.   Someone is making a mod to do that, IIRC.

I would be that someone. I have an interest in making sure it is possible for the mod to match the original MoM as closely as possible. Ensuring that the mechanics of the game are similar to MoM goes a long way to achieve that goal.

But then there are those of us who don't want to have a stright-up MoM clone..... the game will be largely python-moddable, so I feel we should concentrate more on making a new, innovative game than trying to resurrect MoM. If I want to play MoM2, I'll just download the mod.

most likely an MOM mod would be more like MOM and less like a sequel, wouldn't it?

That's fine, just so long as it's not innovation for innovation's sake. Half the new ideas I see being tossed around here worry me. They will end up bloating the game and increasing the amount of micromanagement required without adding any strategic value.

The most important part of game design is to give the player interesting choices to make. An excess of obvious choices that nevertheless must be made lead to sheer tedium and frustration.

One area where I will definitely not be cloning MoM (in my mod) is all of the waste that occurs when things such as spell research, buildings, units and population growth complete. This nonsense does not add any interesting choices or strategic value, it merely punishes those who are not OCD when it comes to micromanagement.

Well, yeah. When everyone is throwing out all their ideas, you're going to get some pretty out there stuff. Nothing wrong with that.

What bugs me is the "MoM did it, so Elemental should too" line of thinking. "MoM did it" is not by itself a reason to do anything in Elemental, because they're not the same game.