Magic

Specialization and Diversification

There is one thing that I loved about the Age of Winders: Shadow Magic. When I created a sovereign, I had a choice of which schools of magic  I could wield. I could have my sovereign be able to control all schools of magic, but he'll have access to research only the lowest level spells. And if I choose only one school of magic, my sovereign is limited to only that school but has access to all levels of spells. The advantage of specializing in only one school of magic was that the highest level spell of a school was a powerful summon.

(There is actually more details, e.g. instead of following two schools of magic evenly, I could focus mostly on one and a little of the other.)

I brought this to your attention because I did not like the idea of a Channeler having access to all spells. In fact, I would think it more interesting to see Channelers from different sovereigns schools of magic duking it out. This idea would necessitate more diversified schools of magic, as well as many more spells so that each school of magic feels like a full spell book.

To give a broad idea of how schools of magic can be different, I suggest looking at Magic: The Gathering. Here is a brief description I pulled from Wikipedia about each color in the game:

• White is the color of order, equality, righteousness, healing, law, community, peace, absolutism/totalitarianism, and light, although not necessarily "good". White's strengths are a roster of small creatures that are strong collectively; protecting those creatures with enchantments; gaining life; preventing damage to creatures or players; imposing restrictions on players; destroying artifacts and enchantments; and the ability to "equalize" the playing field. White creatures are known for their "Protection" from various other colors or even types of card, rendering them nearly impervious to harm from those colors or cards. Numerous white creatures also have "First Strike", "Lifelink", and "Vigilance". White's weaknesses include a focus on creatures and the fact that many of its most powerful spells affect all players equally.

• Blue is the color of intellect, reason, illusion, logic, knowledge, manipulation, and trickery, as well as the classical elements of air and water. Blue's cards are best at letting a player draw additional cards; permanently taking control of an opponent's cards; returning cards to their owner's hand; and countering spells. Blue's creatures tend to be weaker than creatures of other colors, but commonly have abilities and traits which make them difficult to damage or block, particularly "Flying" and to a lesser extent "Shroud". Blue's weaknesses include having trouble permanently dealing with spells that have already been played, the reactive nature of most of its spells, and the fact that its creatures tend to be inefficient.

• Black is the color of power, ambition, greed, death, corruption, selfishness, and amorality. It is not necessarily evil, but many cards refer directly and indirectly to this concept. Black cards are best at destroying creatures, forcing players to discard cards from their hand, making players lose life, and returning creatures from the dead. Furthermore, because Black seeks to win at all costs, it has limited access to many abilities or effects that are normally available only to one of the other colors; but these abilities are disproportionately expensive, often requiring the sacrifice of life, creatures, or other resources. Black is known for having creatures with the ability "Fear", making them difficult to block. Lesser black abilities include "Deathtouch" and "Regeneration". Black's main weaknesses are an almost complete inability to deal with enchantments and artifacts, its tendency to hurt itself almost as badly as it hurts the opponent, and difficulties in removing other Black creatures.^[31]

• Red is the color of freedom, chaos, passion, creativity, impulse, fury, warfare, lightning, the classical element of fire, and the non-living geological aspects of the classical element earth.^[32] Red's strengths include destroying opposing lands and artifacts, sacrificing permanent resources for temporary but great power, and playing spells that deal damage to creatures or players. Red has a wide array of creatures, but with the exception of extremely powerful dragons, most are fast and weak, or with low toughness, rendering them easier to destroy. Some of Red's cards can turn against or hurt their owner in return for being more powerful for their cost. Red also shares the trickery theme with Blue and can temporarily steal opponents' creatures or divert spells, although generally not permanently. Many of Red's most famous creatures have the "Haste" trait, which lets them attack and use many abilities earlier. The ability to raise a creature's power temporarily is also common among Red's creatures. Red's weaknesses include its inability to destroy enchantments, the self-destructive nature of many of its spells, and the way in which it trades early-game speed at the cost of late-game staying power. Red also has the vast majority of cards that involve random chance.

• Green is the color of life, instinct, nature, reality, evolution, ecology and interdependence. Green has a large number of creatures, which tend to be the largest in the game for their cost. Many of its spells make them stronger temporarily. It can also destroy artifacts and enchantments, increase a player's life total, get extra mana sources into play, and produce the other four colors of mana. Green creatures often have "Trample", an ability which lets them deal attack damage to an opponent if blocked by a weaker creature. Green's weaknesses include its difficulty destroying creatures directly; a distinct shortage of flying creatures (though some of its creatures have "Reach", making them able to block flying creatures), and having few strategic options besides overwhelming the opponent with large and numerous creatures.

I also suggest to add a black / necromantic / undead school of magic which will tie in to my suggestion regarding dynasties you will find below.

Dynasties

Succession Wars

The feature I was looking most forward to while following this game through its beta phase was wars of succession. I don't want to repeat all the details here since there are other posts about that already and Frogboy talked about it before. I know the reason why was because it was too hard to program the AI to utilize that feature ...... 

BUT PLEASE   FROGBOY    MAKE IT WORK SOMEHOW PRETTY PLEASE!

If I understand, the way things are now, dynasties are just for making baby channelers and marriages have no effect on diplomacy. I want to change that.

Opposition to Kingdoms marrying Empires

First of all I don't see how marriages between Kingdoms and Empires work out. I find the Fallen are ugly, and I would assume that the Fallen think Angelina Jolie is ugly. Interracial marriages are fine in the real world, but interspecies?! YUCK!!! I would prefer that Kingdoms intermarry with Kingdoms and Empires intermarry with Empires as a way to form bonds between them and, hopefully, more Empires vs. Kingdoms wars. And of course marriages are for securing treaties / ceasefires with the woman seen as high value in the exchange since the woman does become part of her husband's nation. But why one particular woman over another? Genes!

Genes

I believe that already a baby receives traits from both parents with some degree of randomness, not in just looks but in traits and stats. Obviously, the more beautiful a woman she the more value she has in diplomacy since she would be more desirable by her husband-to-be. But beauty is important only in friendly trading. What has more importance in gameplay are a woman's abilities, i.e. her stats and traits. Certain combinations of stats and traits should reflect different ideal character classes, e.g. the ideal soldier, archer, ... and above all the perfect channeler.

Remember what I suggested about magic above? How it would be better if a Channeler specializes in one magic school? Imagine your descendants are commonly born with low affinity to any kind of magic (i.e. access to only low level spells). Then, suddenly a granddaughter, after careful breeding, is born who just so happens to specialize with great affinity to a different magic school then your Channeler. She would grow up to become a powerful sorceress with access to spells not available to your Channeler. She would be extremely valuable to you and all other nations. Even a Fallen Empire would condone her ugliness if it would mean she would have the best probability in the world to produce other strong sorceresses / sorcerers. Because she would be so valuable, you would be the recipient of great threats, or great rewards if you marry her off. Imagine turning your worst and most powerful enemy to your greatest ally by presenting such a fine woman!

At this time I must make a few notes:

1. Channelers must always be more powerful then their children, i.e. more mana and more intelligence, and possibly the only ones who can use shards to power up spells.
2. Kingdom-Empire Marriages are not disallowed: its just that Empires should only be interested interested in Kingdom women for breeding purposes alone and not for looks and friendship.
3. There would need to be a way to look over the stats of the dynasties of all nations to find the most suitable of wives (in both gameplay screen and in diplomacy screen).

Sacrifices and Black Magic

Remember my suggestion of a necromantic /black / undead school of magic? I'm bringing it up now. 

For a Channeler who dares to dwell in the dark arts, he would have great use for sacrifices to power his most potent spells and summons. In that case, he can demand neighbouring nations to offer one of their descendants for sacrifice.

Champions and Children: Identity Crisis

I find myself unable to become attached to any of my children (in-game!) and champions. They just don't have any distinguishing features. I would love to raise each with a future role in mind: a knight, ranger, mage, merchant, scholar, etc. Ideally there would be a major stat and combat overhaul as well as more class-specific traits to give children and champions a more RPG feel and do well on their own in battle. Other than that, there are three glaring issues I have with combat and our heroes:

(heroes = channeler, children, and champions)

1. The way stats and combat are implemented results in mostly one-shot killing which is not fun and dissuades me from sending my heroes to engage in melee combat. Also, heroes seem to have too little hp to survive combat.
2. Items bought at the shop are just too expensive to equip all heroes.
3. There is a lack of interesting hero-specific equipment. In Heroes of Might and Magic, I loved picking up good magical equipment. Remember in each scenario there is a treasure map with the treasure being an extremely powerful artifact? I wish Elemental had something like that.