I support the "sovereign escapes if within own border" idea.

The main problem with the Sovereign being able to escape at will is that it would eliminate the ability to execute a last desperate offensive in the hopes of catching a stronger enemy off guard and killing their Sovereign before they can wipe you off the planet with their superior forces. The idea is interesting, but I'm not sure that there is a good way to handle it. Maybe make use the strike system, but also give the ability to cast a spell to disable the retreat ability for the specific battle? That would allow for assassinations like above, but prevent a rampaging spider from killing a Sovereign.

You could also only make Sovereigns only killable with certain (probably expensive) weapons/methods but unkillable otherwise, which would add more strategy when deciding on an attack group, deciding whether or not you want to try to kill the Sovereign, and where to send the units with that ability. If these are such powerful beings, it would make sense that they couldn't be killed the same way as simple mortals.

I am more in favor of the incrimental economy system (Do you have access to iron and how much of it do you have in stock) because it lends itself to this type of game and makes trading with the other players much more important. In Civ there was no need to worry about how many tanks you could field in the information age because if you had access to 1 iron resource on the board you could build as many as you like. This way you are limited in your unit creation, but so are your enemies placing more of the focus in battle on strategy than on having hoards of your best unit.

Maybe they could tie in resource node depletion and exploration as well.(so that you have to survey your land for hidden resource caches or go and take known areas from your enemies)

While I'm on my game brainstorm, i think it may be a good idea to allow the creation of "Resource outposts" so you don't have to create a city to exploit a particular resource in your lands. They could even have an upgrade path to allow faster collection/depletion of the resource in question. And on the military side you could create forts/trading outposts (kind of like galciv's starbases) that would be able to stock resources, build units, trade with other empires, or defend your borders.

Dead Sovereign = Game over - Love it and hope it never changes.

When Defending Sovereign doesn't die - I don't dislike it.  I hated the 'evade' idea.  Any chance this could be changed to 'When Defending a City the Sovereign doesn't die'?

Sammual

There has to be some significant penalty for losing your sovereign. Be it essence, mana, a delay, etc.

What if, regardless of attack or defense or territory, your Sovereign flees to the capital city.  The catch is that they move one square per turn (being in hiding).  You would not be able to cast global spells, or regain mana for such spells, during this period.  Once he gets to the city, he begins to heal, starting at 1 HP.

This penalizes for being on offense more than on defense, but doesn't take away the risk of saying "I'll just stick him at that city I just stole from him, and if he dies in battle, no harm no foul."

Generally speaking, I like the idea of being able to assassinate Sovereigns, but I think it should be separate from battles.  This could get further into the debate about good civilizations and bad ones.  "You killed King Leonard after the battle, we're not trading with you!" to "You killed King Leonard in battle, you're our best friend!  Mount & Blade deals with this rather nicely - you defeat your foes in battle, but never kill Lords.  More often then not they escape, but occasionally you get an option after the fight to set them free for karma, take them prisoner for spite, or ransoming them for profit.

Yes this made playing against the AI so super fun and games lasted so long! 

The only version of Age of Wonders that worked vs the AI was the original. That is because in the original version the soveriegn dying game over thing was an OPTION. I really dont understand why Stardock is being so stubborn about the most controversial issue with the game. Why risk it all sales wise on forcing something on players that half disagree with  and why not just give all players the option they want. 

Sovereign dies game ends. (Option 1)

Sovereign dies brand new weak heir takes over (or some other way game continues) (Option 2)

This game should be about building empires and long term global strategy not JUST about whack a mole sovereign or chase the sovereign or capture the flag sovereign!

On Sovereign Handling -

When a Sovereign establishes a city you should give them the option of spending an extra point of Essence to place a Relique there. This will act as a sort of home for their soul should their body be destroyed.

So if they are killed in battle they are transported to the nearest Relique instead of dying. They should then have to spend 5 essence to reincarnate themselves before they can move around or cast other spells again When capturing a city you would have the option to destroy any relique present, if you do this while it's occupied then the enemies soul will move on to the next one if they have another if not they're dead.

This makes establishing Relique's and destroying your opponents part of the stratergy.

MAgic is everywhere. So why not choosing a magical solution to the "esacape free" ?

For instance you could cast a spell that has an upkeep of 10(or more/or less) mana/turn.. It's costly, but it will teleport you back to the nearest city each time you "die".

About caravans : why do they cost money ? And if such, why shoul dthey be automatic ? Will I be obliged to NOT construct roads in order to earn some money each turn ?

About performance : can't you release a "bug-fix only" build ? That would let a lot of us to test further. I can't test the game for many hours because it crashes so often T___T I can't discover late game problems.

About mopping up : there's one problem, the more terrain you control, the easier it is to you to achieve victories other than conquest. So you'll usually have to get the most map, then try other means of victories than a conquest one. Crushing an enemy empire shouldn't always be the best solution to achieve victory.

Similiraties with MoM. Even if I really loved that game a lot, what you are preparing for us is more interesting. Don't try to stay too close to it. In fact some ideas from civ 4 or HoMM or Dominions 3 should be used. Like the sovereign customization of dom3 (probably the best evere seen, with terrain changing effects and like), the easy UI of civ4, the way civ4 handles resources, the battles possibilities of HoMM.

Try to make a "spirit" successor, not just a game "inspired by".

MoM was special due to few things in fact : the way magic could influence the whole world, the fact you could win with the spell of mastery, the way heroes were handled (but I would prefer an even more customizable one) and the mage customization.

But that's not because of bad mechanics but because of bad AI. And knowing Stardock's trackrecord with the GalCiv series we won't have to put up with sucky AI like AoW's AI was. But besides playing against the AI there's gonna be a multiplayer mode too and in AoW the mechanic worked great for MP games IMHO.

Same here. If sovereign gets out of his home, he is at risk and should die, not flee, otherwise he'll just trick people into attacking him (if pillaging is available for instance, he won't need to actually attack).

I have to support the rearranging of UI.    I personally don't think Elemental is a game where "minimal UI' is in any way a positive feature.   The ability to hide UI to look at the sexy shader engine you're pooring time into... yes.   But the UI right now seems minimalistic in a way I'd expect an action game to be.  Less is better, sure, but when you try to compact info into a bunch of tabs at the bottom is when you know you have a problem because that isn't less info, just less space.

In terms of the combat screen.  I have mixed feelings.   The "irrelevant" information is very important, or else how would you judge your chance of winning.    In theory, you could put up a percentage that does all the calculations for you, but some players still like to see all the numbers that are factored into it.   (see "Fire Emblem" as they actually have 2 options for a screen very much like the one you're presenting here.  1 has 4 factors... HP, chance to hit, amount of damage, and chance of critical.     The other has like 8, which are the stats used to calculate the 1st 4 include speed, weapon weight, skill, luck, and other things like that.     Also, having all the stats presented when the battle is going to be on a tactical map, rather than auto-resolve, is about the only way I can imagine you'd do it.    (I agree "level" doesn't really matter)

In terms of Caravan tech, I'd say that the moment roads exist, people will begin to travel them with goods.   So once you have roads, I'd think they would have a economic function.   The main thing that sticks out to me is "would they travel it with a cart or wagon?  and would it be a sack carried on somebodies back, or a very large wagon hauled by several beasts of burden"    I vote they are not unlocked apart from roads, though perhaps they have a tech of their own to advance specifically the ability to move goods, vs. the ability to build more efficient roads. 

There was talk somewhere (I believe in a dev journal) that got me hooked on the idea of the developers not telling the player how to play their game.   So I was inadvertently sold on the idea of super easy to customize UI with the ability to drag windows to where you want them to appear.   So you don't always have the pop-up dialogue on the right side if you don't want it.   Maybe you want it along the top, or in the upper left?   Maybe you want the text formatted to fit in a square next to a picture, or maybe you want it to run from left to right across the entire top of the screen.   maybe you just want it on a second screen ...)   

For better or for worse... you, Frogboy, persuaded me long ago that this game UI should be focused on ease of customization.   I'd say thats best done with plenty of "advanced interface options" and game windows or screens that can be resized and dragged around the screen, to reappear in the last place I decided to put it, and to be possibly parts of different tabbed info screens that I pieced together.     It would be a lot of work, but that is where I as an eager fan of the game based almost entirely on dev journals, would expect/want the UI to be.    (I remember there being discussion on "strategic zoom" in the discussion where I was convinced the UI should be as user option oriented as possible)

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I feel I made my views on the sovereign death pretty clear in the thread relating to that so there isn't much more for me to say on the matter at this point.    However, I would like to jump up and down like a raving fan-boy that the sovereign should totally have his own creation screen.   I don't know how this could not be a feature, considering how "core" he apparently is to the game.   I'm not about to suggest Sims style customization (well...  actually I am.   That would be awesome!   Shaping different facial features!   with many many outfits to pick, and color schemes.    It would be grand!)     but at least better than MoM's wizard creation screen.   You had 14 faces and a custom, which required you to pick one of the 14 faces.   I'm not sure if anybody ever didn't pick custom except to say they have picked something other than custom.   I'd want a little more customization than 14, mostly generic (or in contrast too over the top) faces.   They were fantastic for being ethnically diverse I think, but that isn't enough for me to really value more than like 4-5 of them.