I agree with this, and there is actually a mod that makes forests into a resource.

Right now, terrain really only impacts movement speed and combat. Random, you may not have noticed, but terrain does provide a defensive bonus. Take a look at your unit stats next time they are standing in a forest. It will tell you that they are getting X% bonus from terrain. I don't really like that system, since it is something on the strategic level impacting the tactical level. The unit should get a bonus based on where it is on the tactical level, not because of something on the strategic level.

The lack of real importance to most terrain helps make the gameworld feel empty and meaningless.  In CIV, if I put a city in a hilly area, it will be a good production center. If I put it on the flood plains by the river, it will produce lots of food. In Elemental, these things don't matter. I would rather have the chance to make more meaningful decisions about city placement, terrain, expansion, etc. Right now, it is all resource dependent with very few other factors. I think this will change a little based on what they are doing with 1.1, but I would still rather have more terrain impact. It would give each city more character.

Great points. I am all for the Cataclysm themed-world...but lets face it, it isn't all that devastated. There is plenty of life out there beyond what the Channelers allow. Just think of all the bandits, wolves, monsters, etc. They are eating something. There are trees and other plants, so growth is possible outside of fertile lands.

I think 1.1 is going to help with this quite a bit, based on what SD is saying, since it will make population matter more.

Random_target>>> You want your cities to produce something? Location, location, location.

 I do agree that terrains should have differences between them.

But the differences should be in other directions and not economic benefits.

Some suggestions include:

- Swamps and forests spawn different types of creatures.

- Defensive bonuses to the units in certain tiles.

- Different combat zones with different view and tactical value.

I agree with Randon_target.  post holocaust world, scarce resources, but terrain still has affects.  One thing that I would add is height advantage.  forces on the high ground do have advantages, easier command and control (interior lines - see enemy better), melee advantage (fighting up vs down slope), archers, etc., (have longer range, less attack factor attenuation).  And just plain line of sight: being on a hill should let you see further through the 'fog of war.'  A watch tower on an elevated tile should have sight advantages of both tower and hill elevation.

BTW, what is AoW?   Maybe I should think about buying it?

Oddly, this game feels a lot like GalCiv2 to me. Unlike most space-genre games I have liked (such as Sins of Solar E or Star Chamber, amongst others), in which the vast reaches of empty space are imagined by the player but not part of the playing field, GC2 does not have space lanes or jump nodes, choke points, or other strategic trimmings of the map. In other games of space genre, action takes place around objects of interest, and you are not burdened with transversing huge sections of empty map. Not so in GC2. While I think that this is a disadvantage for GC2, because the map does lack important choke points and other methods of strategic choice-generation through "board control" common to map-based games (unlike, for example, games such as poker), I felt that GC2 had other strengths that made up for it.

But this is Elemental, and it feels much too much like GC2. There is no need to pay attention to key strategic map features, because there are almost none. In Elemental, one need mostly look at the "glowing bits", and treat the rest as a relatively uniform, if cosmetically varied, surface.  

In games like Civilization or Dominions (or, in fact, many types of map-based games), it matters a lot which terrain tiles (e.g. jungle or swamp, grasslands or hills, etc.) are in your zone of control; in Elemental, it doesn't seem to matter at all. In fact, the only real use for zone of control that I can see is that it lets you own shards. Thus Elemental's map is very much like GC2's: a wide open, uniform field, whose sole characteristics were "resources" (shards). As I tried to describe in my post from August 2006 (https://forums.galciv2.com/127960) this detracts from the game's strategic elements and makes it less fun.

 That's why I want terrain to matter more.  Make terrain (and not merely terrain enhancements, such as fertile land) matter to economy, city building, questing, neutral spawning, and the chance of yielding special events, e.g. hills will have a greater chance of harboring metals but will rarely yield food. This might require reworking the resources system (e.g. making resource requirements and units of measurement larger and more dispersed). By that I mean it might make it easier to count if "food" increments were increased by 10, so that for example a hut required 10 food, and so on; I would suggest making farms provide 20 food (or 2 food in the current system) and letting grassland tiles provide 0.25 food (or less in the old system), forest tiles provide 0.25 materials, hills provide 0.25 metal, and swamps provide a slight chance of something interesting to spawn. One could also imagine that with the correct technological advancements (e.g. in civilization or adventuring), one could glean additional boni, e.g. with hills, there might be a chance of finding "caves" if Adventure Level X is unlocked, etc., while plain grassland should yield an additional slight food bonus... Terrain should also matter more to movement; give movement bonuses (for certain units) on certain terrain types and penalties on others. This should apply predominately to the strategic map, but also to the tactical map. On the tactical map, terrain should also affect LOS for ranged attacks and fog of war. Age of Wonders did ok with this many years ago.

Totally agree with the OP, should I also mention "hyperspace"...? You guys know what I mean

No, really, Stardock cannot create a fantasy game and think that units move like in a space simulation! Descovering and moving through a fantastic fantasy land should be a priority! Units should have bonuses when moved across specific terrains, they should be able to hide in forests or modify the terrain in order to gain specific bonuses. There should be spells that speed units up and change the world. Magic should be a huge help in conquering the world, but when spells are so powerful that you can use them to instantly destroy entire armies or move anywhere in a second, you have spoiled movement and fight, the two main elements of any strategy simulation.

A good concept for a spell, imo, is something that adds a strategic advantage to your army, without being a game breaker: example: "camuflage" a stack becomes invisible when moving through woods, or "freeze" a lake or part of a sea gets magically frozen for units to cross it...

Everything should be done to prevent the DEATH STAR syndrome: a huge invincible  stack jumping around the map! that is SCI-FI, I agree!

Holy thread resurrection batman....OCT 2010, to August 2011!

Dude...seriously...did you really resurrect this thead just to mention your issue with teleporting AGAIN?

Please, please stop. Any valid points you make are just becoming noise to me.

I don't mean to be harsh, but it really gets old. Just keep the discussion on that issue in the thread on that issue, please. I for one am interested in your ideas, but that is made difficult by your beating of the issue into the ground. No offense, seriously...just my opinion.