It's also semantics that we have units with weapons and armor, we could just have numbered entities of generic composition.  Semantics are the foundation of language.  If you do not have fire, then you cannot have fire resistance.  You are arguing against diversity, not for it.

Why do you think an entire sphere can be filled up with damage spells, but damage spells can't be unique between spheres?  Nature ball as a serious spell, is it a giant granola bar or what?  We could put Monk in the game and he'd be paralyzed by getting "nature" on his hands.

Control of the elements, storm generation, air movement, atmospheric effects galore.  Air has no need for a generic damage spell to match fireball, they're the typical generic spell lists.  Effects can work against the same resistance score that counts against damage.  You don't need a snowball, you need a thunderstorm randomly frying units in the area, gale force winds that neutralize ranged attacks and slow movement,  Air and Fire don't have to be the least bit similar in any way.  It's no less stupid to assign a damage sphere than it is to make attack spells generic between them.  It's self limiting idiocy.

You can do lots of things simply, or make a mess.  You can have a stun effect, but it can't be a thunderbolt that doesn't work on rock golems.  You can set something alight, but it works on a water elemental just as well as a scarecrow.  To do it anyway, you make the previously described mess.  It's a horrible thing to behold.  A damage type is a simple, clean method of categorizing and modifying the effect of that damage in a logical manner.  It's no different than having a trigger for units being living versus something else.  An animated skeleton obviously can't be killed by paralytics or poisonous gases.

The point he was arguing against (I think) was the idea that different magic damage types are the only thing separating spells.  Yes, you could, for instance , have one spell category have more AoE damage and one have more single target damage, or lots of individual targets, or other differences, but these differences have nothing ot do with separate damage types.  (This is the argument that commonly comes up, that "fireballs and ice bolts will be no different", that everyone has probably seem way to often.

This assumes that rock golems must be immune to lightning in game, water elementals must respond differently to fireballs, etc.  Really, though, it is just a convention that many games simplify things ot that point but not further.  Most games do not, for instance, calculate the difference between qualities of production materials for different objects, the various complications that go into diplomacy, do not include political maneuvering, do not consider  difficulties in communicating (how do you instantly know what a far away city is doing when your units, in game, take 20 turns to reach it?) or supplies (Where exactly do your archers get replacement arrows from, anyway, and how are they unlimited in combat?), even though all these things are "realistic", or likely would be in an actually existing world.  The fact that a game will include some things, but not others, is somewhat arbitrary, and somewhat a matter of what is fun to play.  In this case, having lots of different damage types is likely ot be less fun to play.

I still hope and expect to see damage spells in every sphere. Of course some elements will be very strong in a high variety of dmage spells but maybe less utililty spells, another sphere May only have a few direct damage spells but may have lots of buffs, damage over time, etc. I should not say "of course", because really nothing is a given at this point but I think it would be terrible to have all damage spells concentrated in one school.

I also hope and it sounds like different schools may have various effects outside of damage. Again, it SEEMED like this would have to be a given, as being stuck with a bunch of spells that only did damage would be pretty dumb.

psychoak thanks for the tag, I really needed a break and was beoming a real douche there. Let me know when you get tired of explaining the obvious, I'm good to get tagged back in - I REALLY don't think we have anything to worry about, I don't think they are going to take the "reverse polish notation" approach to damage. We'll see.

Of course I am just an old IBM Assembly language programmer, I know these object oriented guys sometimes do like to go a bit overboard on complexity of code... Maybe in OOP it does make more sense to have an element flag on the spell and then alter the units magic resistance based on what school the spell that is "hitting" them comes from.....

No, I can;t see how that isn't extra programming AND more confusing to the poor user. I was getting a little bit with people that were arguing for LESS complexity and then in the same breath were proposing this  crazy scheme of how they were going to do different damage types without doing different damage types. I have this little WTF sign in my brain and i think I had to replace the light bulbs a few times...

This is the crutch your brain is tripping over.

Damage is only one consideration for resistance.  Resistance is the primary feature.

A fireball.  Simple, easy to grasp.  What does a fireball do when it impacts a person?  It burns, it hurts a lot.  It needs to have some sort of accelerant with it to light you on fire though.  If you just get torched, you're left a little charred.  You don't continue combusting without help.  The reason?  People suck at burning.  Wood doesn't, wood combusts without an accelerant.  Water is incapable of combustion, it's a result.  Rock only combusts at extremely high temperatures, and even then not much.  Then we get into magic, and we have crazy things like plasma based magical beings.  Fire wouldn't do any harm to something that was a fountain of plasma generation, extra heat would increase the rate at which it turned the surrounding matter into plasma if anything.

A tree doesn't have to be fire vulnerable and take more damage, instead it can easily alight even to weak fire attacks.  There is so much more you can do with a resistance value than just modify damage, and you're simply making things messy if you don't set this up by types.  It's necessity to have complexity.  After you already have a resistance system, it would be even more silly to then modify damage based on individual spell triggers, you set them up as types.

One problem the devs may be struggliong with (I know I am) is how to implement different resistances. I mean fire and codl resists I think we all get - but how do you implement earth resists? What kind of damage would  earth spells do? How about air ( you could have an electrical damage type I guess) and I think this may be where some people were getting hung up, because  at the end of the day, whatever damage is just done to the hit point pool, rather the hit points go away due to being burned, frozen, electrocuted, poisoned, hit by a rock or stuck thru with a spear.

My opinion is that earth spells should mostly just do plain physical damage and use your physical armor as the "resistance". But then say you have a mud spell for slowing people down - it doesn't make sense to use the armor as a resistance, in fact the more armor you are wearing, the MORE likely you would be to get bogged down. Some people would say again I am reaching for something overly complex, but the nice thing is these computers handle most of the complexity, and it would jsut be one of those things you learn as you play. I think it is pretty easy to conceive that your armor would protect you from a stalagmite suddenly shooting up out of the ground and trying to skewer you, and yet makes you more susceptible to being slowed down in a literal quagmire.

And yes, it could get ugly and complicated if done wrong, but I still thing it could be easy and straightforward if done right. I could totally see steel plate armor protecting against mundane weapons and earth but actually lowering your resistance to lightning. Maybe it would be nice to have a spell called "insulation" or "non-conductive". This does kind of bring the resistances into the unit stats at unit creation, I know that isn't going to be there and I understand and partially agree with the why. I agree with psychoak though, I think just having damage types and resistances is the straightforward and simple way to deal with it, the other options are not to have it at all, and the worst option is trying to do it in a non-straightforward, complicated and messy way.

I'm sorry I like more the simplicity of X damage + Y ongoing damage during Z turns (everything modified by magic resistance) than, X damage modified by your specific resistance + Y damage during Z turns modified by your combustion index for magic fire (another useless attribute).
 

Your "we can do more than modify damage" with a resistance sounds great for a tree and the ongoing damage, but it looks much worse for an ice elemental... If you are trying to model two effects, you nearly for sure need two values.

But really, I think everything that can be said has been said in this debate.

A damage type doesn't necessarily need to be elemental.  If you can deprive a room of oxygen with air magic, you wouldn't be doing air damage, you'd be asphyxiating them.  That kind of attack, something that only harms living, breathing creatures, would be it's own type, something negated by things that aren't living, breathing creatures.

Earth spells that did damage would likely be physical attacks, thus have physical damage.  I envision a flying monster being resistant or even immune to earth effects based on being able to bypass irritating things like the ground turning to quicksand, but not to having a boulder hurled at it.  The damage type would be whatever was applicable, not what sphere it was.

I rather like the above post for the most part, but I don't know about having two resistance sets for all the spells.  It seems more like arcane resistance would be something exceedingly rare in a game where your channeler is the only guy with magic till he spreads his power around.

Negative.  If you're trying to figure out how you damage a cold immune ice elemental with a flying popcicle, it's easy.  A snowball doesn't do cold damage, it does physical damage.  You don't freeze when getting struck by one, the cold effect is minimal.  It stings from impact.  A freezing effect would be what is countered by the cold resistance, not physical impact.