Sounds good. I have never been a fan of designing units. All it did was make every unit and race kinda the same. It was also very hard to balance as players could abuse so many different things and create super units with no weaknesses. I'm wondering if this new game will have multi...

Will the new game be based on the old, ie share art and some code?

Not sure how I feel about the loss of designed units. I don't kinda like it that much, but it's really good to have, especially when you are tight on resources. This would really depend on how unique and balanced the new predesigned units are going to be.

Also, yay for FE: LH updates and DLC!

I've been thinking, will new game have system somewhat similar to... Warhammer: Dark Omen? Fixed units, minimal development, but raw, fine, tactics.

that's both good and bad

 when War of Magic was announced, there were practically no 4X-fantasy games around. now there's this arms race  

anyway, I'm Team Elemental and will always be...

A lot of good improvements here! I wont miss either the tech tree or customizing units.

This game will be a strong contender with AoW3.

i dont understand your comment ? what is "zerg rush" about having large battles ? i m not saying you should be able to control every single soldier - all i want is (turn based) battles where a unit is represented not by 4-6 soldiers but lets say 40-60. the difference is mostly a cosmetic one giving those games a much better atmosphere.

i personally think Braveheart or Lord of the Rings would be pretty boring movies if the main battles involved 12 dudes on each side. as much as i love fantasy strategy games its always an immersion breaker seeing supposedly large battles being fought by just a few guys, no matter how good those games otherwise are.

hopefully that oxide tech brad is talking about will allow large scale fantasy strategy games. like said, the closest thing we ever got to that (to my knowledge) are Total War Fantasy Mods (LOTR) but those are unfortunately real time.

but the way i read brad this new elemental game will be on the same engine as the last elemental games (or ?) so my hopes for bigger battles probably wont be fullfilled by that game the more i think about it

For what it's worth I agree with this.  I like the unit design, something new for fantasy strategy... it's not perfect by any means but it's a great concept.. lots of fun.

I'd be more excited about a new game that is more like LH and less like AoW/MoM.  

I really dig the unique blend that LH has.... 4x fantasy strategy with a good emphasis on strategy rather than tactical, and a bit of rpg and a hint of MoM thrown in the mix.  Less interested in MoM... there's already plenty of MoM wannabes around.  

LH all the way.  Just my opinion, each to their own.

Only that zerg (or Tyranids) usually associated with hordes, nothing more. A lot of units, regardless of game sometimes, ironically, called "zerg-rush", even if we playing Red Alert and there are like 50 mammoth tanks.

I have no problems with that, since it's cosmetic feature, and battle won't turn into long, jaw-spraining periods of exchanging moves. Unless, of course, we actually would be able to unite several smaller units into one, and operate that increased unit as one, just to reduce micro.

From your reply I got impression you want to increase number of actual fighting units, and, if I'm not mistaken, FE tactical fields aren't that big to accomodate all of those units, that's why I remember Fantasy wars reinforcement - you initial cells allow you to place 12 units, while you have, say, 30. So you placed and moved your first 12, freed "entry" area, and then placed more units. With certain units, or even characters features, you could place them not in just your entry area, but at flanks, or even behind enemy lines.

Yet I'm not sure increasing number of actual units active during combat won't brake game's pace - since larger armies will result in longer combats, and having "trickster" units, ones you can't see during estimation, or ones you can deploy outside of your entry area, that could change gameplay.

Depends on specific game, I suppose, or even specific mission. I admit, seeing Gamebryo "war" with like two dozen of men figthing each other, and that's called full scale invasion, it's just hilarious, ArmA's several hundreds of units strong battles are much more believable, as well as old Cossacks are way better than Age of Empires. But there is always technology problem - will that particular engine be able to handle those hundres of troops, even when united into bigger entities (companies, battalions, etc)?

- I don't mind losing crafted units at all. That seemed a cumbersome aspect to begin with. However, I would be disappointed if pre-built units didn't have some kind of upgrade tree. I'd still like the option to upgrade weaker units into stronger ones based on newly acquired technology.

- Now that said, I see that the tech trees are going away. I'm really on the fence about this decision (not that it's mine to make ) as I've thought the lack of tech tree to be one of MoM's biggest weaknesses. If I would be so bold as to suggest taking the existing tech trees found in FE:LH and streamlining them into a single merged, dynamic, involved tech tree. Cut out the techs that provide superficial bonus like 'this building can grant you +1 extra' and instead have 'this tech unlocks all buildings that grant you +1 extra'. Keep the techs that unlock different resources or increase the troop size. Keep the techs that unlock 'generic' type spells. I don't think there would be anything against having a game with 'spell research' points and you being able to spend them on either new spells from your spell book (like in MoM) or new techs on a tech tree. OR simply have two types of research.....spell research and tech research.   

- LOVE the thought of having radically different races. That was one aspect about MoM that I really liked. If you wanted flying dracos units....you had to cross over into Myrror and conquer a dracos city....and then upgrade that city till it could build the units you wanted to build.

- I don't mind the aspect of crafting. Even in MoM though, I felt there were aspects about crafting that made it....awkward. There always seems to be a 'best' recipe to build, and then all other recipes are never built. The AI doesn't know this....and so gets their butt kicked. Either the recipes need to be VERY competitive to one another, without any clear path to take.....or don't do crafting. I've been quite satisfied with finding loot the way LH has been set up.

- Love multi-tile cities and hope that snaking is reintroduced into the game as default. Add in some extra rule so that all tile corners need to be filled before expanding the city out further to limit movement abuse.

- Love the production/food/essence system and hope that it remains.

Will 'towers' and planar travel be introduced? aka Arcana/Myrror ??

Very good news all around.

Oooh, yum!

Please, also:

• Essence could be spent on: (a) Reviving land to build cities on OR ( Turning people you found on the map into Champions (you would not have enough essence to do both well).
• You could marry and have children which would, if you were willing to hold off on using up your essence, result in more powerful children.
• You could use children to create alliances by betrothing them and this was the primary mechanism for winning via alliances.
• The graphics were supposed to be cell shaded looking (I had just finished Zelda Windwaker and loved that style)
• Dungeons (player enters a dungeon and goes to a different sub-map)
• A first-person mode was, at one point, implemented (just give us a pre-set camera perspective at ground level)
• Players mined resources which in turned had to be converted into other resources before they became available for your cities, troops (i.e. you mined iron but you needed steel so you needed a smelter to turn the iron ore into steel and then a armoror to turn it into a sword which made that piece of equipment available to your soldier).

And - Seasons!

Agreed. Different season graphics and effects I think would be very interesting and give the play (and hopefully the AI aswell) a really new feel from turn to turn.

Other aspects that I'd love to see:

- AI able to upgrade outposts.

- Expanding Wildlands

Take my money!

Unit constructor and auto built roads are great features. Don't lose them!

Master of Magic 2 confirmed