Tomorrow will be April 1 and Aow3 will arrive! All its features are described here. BTW Unique talent trees for each hero is a good feature. And there will be sieges. That's what LH misses - sieges! It would be also nice to reduce cost of movement on roads from 4x to 2x. Radically different races is not good, I don't like to rule monsters. Your races are great, because they are all humanoid. But where are sieges???

- Agreed in that sieges could make for a very unique side to city warefare....something to balance out the city defenders.

- Also agree that it would be nice to have the road system revamped. I'm not overly opposed to having 4x movement....but that's should be through an achievement...whether it be a spell or road upgrades or something.....regular roads should not allow to to traverse maps in a single bound.

- I consider many races of LH to be radically different already...and they are all humanoid. If they were extended a little further.....Ironeers become even more dwarven in nature....Ceresa become more arachnid in nature....stuff like that. Still keep the humanoid though. I like that.

It won't be as much like MOM as one might think. The nature of the lpayer's enemies is very different than the traditional 4x formula.

all these teasers....

If it hasn't been suggested already (I read most, but not all posts in this thread), for those of you worried about the removal of the tech tree and the removal of customization of units (I love these features too and am sorry to see them go)...As has been suggested that's a Master of Magic thing, and a good example of recent games (if you don't want to go to GoG and get a copy of MoM) that have done this are the Age of Wonder series (though the latest one in that series is pretty old) which most people know, and the newer game Warlock. AoW 3 will be out soon, and Warlock 2 as well. They're going to be the big competitors that I am aware of at the moment, for Elemental 2014.

My point is, if you're worried about how those feature removals affect gameplay, try Warlock, or AoW Shadow Magic. If you're patient, in a month or two try Warlock 2 and AoW 3. I suggest this to make a good point here about Elemental 2014, in that those games were actually pretty fun. I was never a fan of the AoW series, but 3 looks great (if a bit Civ-5ish), and Warlock was awesome (also Civ-5ish), especially if you're a fan of the Majesty games, since it's set in that universe. Warlock was a total surprise to me, as I didn't realize it existed until like 3 months ago. It will give you a great idea what it's like to not have tech trees, but only spell research, and no unit customization. Again, I suggest this not to promote Stardock's competition, but to show that Elemental 2014 will be awesome, set as it is in the Elemental universe, and with the suggested set of features. As mentioned, I can't wait to hear more!

I don't want to see customization fully go- but I think it should be limited.  No one ever needed units to have chain helms but leather everything else- one set of armor is fine for troops.

Weapons should be upgradable, and accessories should be purchasable (with crystal+gold), and unit size should be buffable,

Then again, this might be made irrelevant by other changes.

I'm also super-interested in individual heroes having individual trees, that should be awesome.

One thing is for sure, I'd definitely miss the custom designed units.

I never knew how fun it could be until  I gained that ability to do so.

I never abused it to create units of doom though

Well mainly is that your enemies have a different objective than the player.  It's not going to be like MOM or AOW3 or Civ (or FE) in that respect.  I think when we get far enough along to show it off, it'll be obvious that this opens the door to having a very different kind of strategy game than we've traditionally done that lets players have a lot more fun.

I guess the opening questions on the problems with a lot of these fantasy games would be:

1. Why do we always have to wimp out the power of magic in these games?

2. Why do we always have to be "careful" in what we let players craft in these games?

3. Why do we always have to nerf the power of heroes in these kinds of games?

The answer is that we're always having to worry about "exploits".  But what if we designed a game predicated on the player being OP'd? 

I mentioned this earlier but Elemental fans can probably appreciate this: YOU start with the Forge of the Overlord. And there's only one of those.  That led to getting rid of the tech tree. The player starts with the assumption they have all that capability already.

Then ask yourself, what are the funnest parts of FE? If you had to list the 3 key things from the game that you enjoy the most, what would they be? The things you personally enjoy and how might those 3 things be made to be even more fun?

Does this mean no sandbox?

I could see an asymmetric sandbox working, but might be a real design challenge.

I'm not too attached to unit design. The tech tree is cool, but I would much rather have a more interesting system of obtaining spells... but I'm a magic system nut so I'm extremely biased.

You hit the nail on the head with the next part. In a game that is so focused on magic, there need to be spells that pervade every other system in the game. Whether that be geographic or diplomatic in nature, with this type of game you are justified in making spells of any scale (subtle to spectacular) as long as they touch on different systems in meaningful ways. Having more interaction also affords you with the opportunity of creating more interesting combinations of effects. Also, there is nothing wrong with more subtle spells. As long as the balance of the game allows for it, it makes the theme more interesting and also makes more impressive spells... more impressive. There also need to be more high risk/high payoff options as well.

I've never been crazy about crafting systems. To me they always feel too formulaic. It also feels like just a layer of busywork (instead of getting cool stuff, get a ton of boring stuff, then plug that into this device, then get cool stuff). Usually by the time you get everything you need for said cool item, it's obsolete unless you're farming for the stuff you need. But farming stuff is just a huge fun-killer for me (some people do love it).

The only thing that I feel strongly against is that the sovereign doesn't leave his stronghold. I usually play the entire game with my sovereign, and relegate city defense to the many heroes that I find. Personally the sovereign I created is more interesting to me than the random heroes I come across, simply because I created them. It makes it more fun to develop the character as opposed to other characters. I feel like it would be better to have the choice whether or not to keep the sovereign holed up, but it would be cool to have more severe gameplay differences (consequences, pros/cons) between having them out adventuring or citing in the stronghold. You could add some interesting play style differences that way.

Anyways, this is all just my 2 cents worth... You guys already have my attention, and I can't wait to hear more about it!

For me, my top 3 aspects are:

- Heroes - Uniquely designing them as they level, adventuring with them (and their supporting units) and the tactical battles that result along with the cool loot that they find along the way.

- City Development - Finding the good locations (prod/food/essence/resources/shards), creative construction (though I don't like building near hills and mountains because they flatten) and multi-tile expansion (with snaking enabled)

- Spell Casting - Awesome spells with awesome effects. Strategic decision making into your spell path choices and working with your choices to impact the overall game state.

Honorable mention goes to Cutscenes. I really go love reaching milestones throughout the game....small ones as well as big ones...and being rewarded with those single screen cutscenes. Really wish there were more of those.

Sounds like the game I had hoped the current Elemental games would be.  The current units and factions never felt really much different than one another to me, that was my favorite part of MoM and what made it fun to replay for so long, using different races and different magics.

hope there's more asymmetry than the current elemental games have.

the 4X model of starting with similar stuff and then racing towards victory just doesn't work when the AI needs massive cheats just to stay in the race

more emphasis on magic / rpg-things / monsters would be better than some empire-building which the AI can't do

1. strategic spells - more weather control plz

2. i wish there was a real reason to manually layout my cities - some fun meta-game

3. changing the geography of the map over time - "terraforming" / outposts, roads..

Yarlen noted over on the Steam forums that the next Elemental game isn't going to use Nitrous: http://steamcommunity.com/app/267130/discussions/0/558746745692944849/