I'm very glad you bring in professional writers. That will hopefully make the game world very memorable and incite fan content and stories.

I hope you won't mind if I make some suggestions while you're still in the development phase?

I'd like to see some research that is unique to each faction. That would really help each of them stand out.

Instead of having simply one quasi-RPG unit, allow the players to recruit characters which can join your armies as sergeants, (attach to units and from there grant bonuses to it), Generals (attach to a unit and give bonuses to the whole army) or heroes (attach to a unit and simply kick ass). Then Hero units could have the secondary function that you would be able to send them on quests where they bring back artifacts for you to use. Then you have the extra dimension of gameplay where heroes are questing around the map to discover artifacts and even get to encounter and fight opposing heroes. Then you get one extra play style of quest hunting, to add to the classics of research and military etc.

Professional authors and editors, that's awesome! 

Does that mean that the different factions will be largely identical in the late game other than magic? That would be disappointing. 

So if they have completely unique spellbooks does that mean that each race only has roughly 10 different spells in each school? That doesn't really allow for very much diversity; and if technology isn't going to be very distinctive beyond the early game, how are you going to make 12 significantly different factions?

Oooo. I'm with db0 though - will it be possible for heroes to go out and deal with quests? That would be really nice.

I still offer myself for (some?*) translations to spanish (castillian spanish, mind you) for free**.

* depending of workload, health, if the world explodes,... those kind of things.

** unless i get fired from my actual job and need a new income source...

*dances*

HUGE amount of information today, but at the same time so little.   

What a great update!  Is there anything we can do to help with the quests?  perhaps early mod-work in the beta in terms of scripting or something like that?  I know some of the people out here could help out to ensure we get as complete as you'd want to see for it.  It sounds like a really great thing.

How does the research thing play out as a tech -tree-?  It sounds like just a list of 'techs' that can be advanced.  Where is the tree action?  (where one thing has to be researched to reach another) or is it just that a certain tech will open once another tech reaches 'level 3' or something like that?

Good to see things are coming together. I'm sure there'll be plenty of diversity in the factions. "Distinctive early game features" can make a big difference to how a game plays out after all.

Regarding spells, I think I'd rather have a smaller number of well thought out, really interesting spells with a range of strategic possibilities, than a huge list of spells some of which are next to useless.

On quests, it would be great if quests arose in a more organic way along the lines of some of the ideas here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/337957

If think that scripted quests that just pop up at random points in the game would be a bit dull and unengaging. The world that is described in the writing needs to be modelled in the game for it to be truly involving.

About being a professional writter: Do you need to have previous work experience, or would you be willing to consider someone who might have some talent? Do you need to complete a large workload, or could you work part time through university (as time permits)?

----

About Quests:

Are quests going to be a type of game victory, or are they going to be something that can give rewards in the game? I'm asking because in GalCiv 2, there were these random ethical events that gave bonuses (or penalties as good) with no more effort than a couple clicks of a mouse. In addition, these events only existed for the duration you could make a decision on them, and then poof, they were gone. They had no lasting effect in the game (save maybe a few bonuses and penalties). For these reasons, I found them annoying.

What I'm hoping for is that these quests would allow us to do something extra while we tried to win the game. These quests would provide a means to aquire wealth, artifacts, and bonuses (for both good and evil), but only if you bothered to put in the effort to needed to complete these quests. With the exception of maybe a handful of quests, there would be no penalty for not doing them, save for the loss of an opportunity.

Or maybe that means each race has 20 different spells in each school? Which would be 200 spells in the game in all, which ummm seems more like it Does anyone know how many spells there were in total in MoM? (Edit: I had a root around and found the box there were 210 spells in MoM which makes 200 seem like a perfectly reasonable number if that is the number for Elemental). I guess spells will be one of the many things that users can create themselves and add to the game? If so I guess the total number will swell massively anyway

Also does this mean that there's no choices to be made regarding what magic you use? i.e. if you're a Fallen faction you will have access to ALL the Fallen spells and if you're Human faction you get access to ALL the Human spells? Hmmm, personally I really liked the MoM system where you only really used a subset of the total spells in the game dependent on your choice at the beginning, really added to replayability trying out different combinations of magic choices with the different races.

Heh, I was thinking the same thing, Divine Wrath (though I do have some experiance.  I was the Creative Lead/writer on a small 3D action-adventure Game called Rosestone.  It was never, and will never, be released due to copy-right laws and lack of budget to try to meet the scope.  The producer really didn't know what he was doing, and the project got canned when we couldn't get the support we needed to finish.  But it IS some experiance that is directly related, and I DO have work to show for it.)

Yeah, if you need help SD.  I'm sure you can find plenty of quality people here that are loyal

I guessed there would be some sort of faction named after the Altarians and there it is, faction numero uno. I wonder what its strengths and weaknesses are.

Wow.  You have really seemed to address all of the issues that I thought this game might have.  I like this more and more each time I read your journals.  Keep up the good work!

I like the idea of quests that you are updating as you release new versions.  That is a pretty cool reason to come back and play the game after you update the game again.  It might make it fresh again if you have taken quite a bit of time off, and you have had a bunch of updates.

I am really happy to hear about the professional authors. That was one thing that GC2 seemed to lack; professional quality writing.  Seeing little mistakes while playing just seem to take away from the immersion in the game, so I am happy to see that.

You probably saw this earlier, but I hope that the Campaign will bring you along with the basics first, then bring you along with the more advanced stuff as the game goes on.  GC2 didn't do this well in the first campaign, but the expansions handled this much better (especially Twilight of the Arnor).  The campaign often doubles as a tutorial of the gameplay mechanics, without it feeling like work (It kind of doubles as a fun way of learning the game without dying dozens of times trying to figure it out.)

Sweet! Really can't wait to start playing....

Yes this is one of the meatiest tidbits yet. Thanks for the update, it sounds great!

./snicker; that sounds a lot like something I'd be saying if I weren't hoping to get in on the programming ends of things based on my chosen major of Computer Science...

Just for interest, Master of Magic had 210 spells in total. So 200 spells is that ball park, but I feel 100 spells would be too few. (Hey ... make it 21 spells per side ... )

The number of technologies per race is similar to MoM and probably slightly more than Age of Wonders II: Shadow Magic.

A key issue with races is that unit types will be designable. Therefore, variety of components and secondary powers will be an issue (e.g. healing, teleportation, flight).

I have posted two detailed questions based on recent development journals in the main forums. Chance of a developer response?

I love these journals.

The info sounds great. Can't wait to see it in action.

Hail the frog