Fear us, for we are Legion!

Yes, and so long as the terrain supports the mounts, that should also be a viable option.  I'll have various small cavalries, and you'll have a large, unified element - you should win.  However, I'll be able to do something else with the time and resources other than converting habitats.  BUT my giant scorpions just aren't going to relocate to the tundras of the polar bears.  (Again, not my first choice of mount...)

They will if you force them dangnabbit!

I could go for giant scorpion mounts.

Why all the talk about converting one animal herd to another? Having access to a wild animal ressource should only matter when the animal cannot be bred in captivity.

I'm thinking of having two classes of buildings for the purpose of training wild animals : stable, who rely on an external wild animal resource; and breeding grounds, who don't. And to build the breeding grounds, you would need to already have access to the animals, either from trade or from a stable.

Taking for example horses (common, non-magical) versus zebras (rare, non-magical) versus unicorns (very rare, magical) :

There would be a lot of horses resources scattered around the world, while the number of zebras and unicorns would be very small (1 or 2 each). Also, since horses are easier to train, the technology to build horses stables would come very early in the game. Both zebras and unicorns stables would take a long time to research, and wouldn't produce as many trained mounts as for horses. Finally, after more research, horses breeding grounds could be researched and built around your empire, allowing you to get horses everywhere from your initial ressource (but not as much as if you could have only used stables). Late in the game, zebras breeding grounds could become available, but unicorns breeding grounds shouldn't be possible.

That way, if someone want to use bunch of zebras in his army, he can research the tech for it and do it. But it will be a lot more expensive than just using horses and a few zebras from the initial resource. However, for the strongest mounts (unicorns), supply would forever be constrained by the resource.

Such constructed breeding grounds should require food commensurate to the amount of horses or other animals in them though, as that is the usual cost of and limitation of animal breeding.

quite right!    you would certainly have to research the proper way to breed and train bears enough that you could have a stable of them.   The same goes for unicorns, spiders, or anything else that would be strange to ride.

Someone who doesn't tamper with his variety of mounts will have his chickunz for scouting, his horses for attrition and his bears to meet me head on.

While I've got a steamroll of strong bears, I won't be scouting fast, nor will I be able to properly meet the hit-and-run attacks.

There should always be a tradeoff for any tactical decision or choice, and that's what this should be - a choice. If they make the "replace everything with bears"-tactic an end-all solution, then they're doing it wrong.

Then there should be a sharp divide between rare and casual mounts. Rare mounts should really be rare, and their research comparatively deep in the research trees. This would be such as unicorns, pegasi, giant spiders (arguable), giant eagles, worgs and elephants.

-: Edit :-
Also, for your amusement;

Rawr!
   

I MUST have my army of giant scorpion riders and spider riders!

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/battleformiddleearth2/video/6130945

Best shots at 1:24 and 1:50

And I dont want to be goblins in order to have my giant arachinid army.

Considering that info abouot giant spiders all around the place (the game world), giant spiders as mounts shouldn't be SO difficult... It will only take like some hundreds of dead while trying to tame them. And maybe goblin not, but maybe you will have to be one of the Fallen to get "them" in your tech tree.

Unacceptable LOL real "men" should be able to get them.

And since spiders and scorpions are fairly mindless(but not completely) one could use a spell to control and tame them.

I want to be a good guy with my army of scorpions and spiders LOL

Good and evil are relative perceptions. Most "evil doers" don’t look at what they are doing as wrong/evil. Hell just look at human history, it is full of "do-gooders" killing, raping and maiming people and destroying everything around them. Additionally the victors write the history books and they are always skewed to the party line. So dont worry about being good or evil just be yourself.

I think adding crazy creatures like giant chickens would turn a lot of people off.  Stardock would be wise to stick to classic fantasy rather than Final Fantasy. 

It's all in the presentation. Clearly, actual chobos, stylized such, are out of the question.

I agree with Luckmann. If they were to implement Chocobos as we know them from Final Fantasy, it would be terrible. But if they were to implement them in a way that they look like bad-ass meat-eating ostriches - that would be cool. And you know that people would still call them chocobos.

Surely chocobos are copyrighted, so maybe we get "Giant cute chickens suspiciously similar to the ones from another game".

If you really want a "chicken" as a mount, try the cockatrice. Death gaze ftw!!

I still want my tigers, even if my amazons only have them as companions (a Beast Mistress like unit would be nice too... if you cannot ride them, fight by their side!!!).

The problem with Cockatrices is that, apart from being the single most retarded invention of pre-christian man, is that they're clearly magical. Magical equates rare or hard-to-research (well, at least it does to me), which defeats the purpose of having viable alternatives to the (filthy) horse (a common, non-magic, non-rare mount).

Ok, non-magical earthly "chocobo" alternative:

http://somoche.vtrbandaancha.net/Bernardita/Logo/avestruz.jpg

Appart from the earthly horses, we can only hope for giant versions of other animals if we want different mounts that have different roles. (why should i want an equivalent to the horse? I prefer to have other animal that can have a different role, be it a "tank", scout...)

-Horses: i cannot live without them. Well, i could if i wanted a truly alien world but they are still cool. Fast, easy to get.

-Giant spiders are mentioned in the lore i think and altough there is some magical "origin" to them, and being so common, they could be real mounts with added abilities like poison attack, web attack or good sprint/jump skill.

-Bears: Good speed, strength and resilience (not sure if it's a proper word).

-Tigers: Slow compared to the rest, pounce and some stealth.

-Giant Eagles/Hawks: FLY, very good scout, can break havoc behind the enemy lines (and not so behind).

-Lizards: I must say that i'm not so sure, they swim better?. For some are good choice so i mention them just in case.

Appart from those, i could only mention (considering that sea battles are nothing) scorpions (similar to spiders but without web attack and more melee oriented), wolves (i prefer tigers and/or panthers but wolves are just so wonderful... not sure about their role in battle though, somehow like tigers but faster and less pouncy), giant turtle (you know you want one tanking the enemy heroes while you fry them with magic from the wizards over it), giant mantis (like scorpions but without poison?).

And maybe not as a mount but as a weapon, but we should not forget about dogs:

Edit: i forgot to mention that i hope that Stardock adds some non magical animals of their own creation...

That made me think : will there be non-mount animals?

If I remember correctly, Frogboy has written than non-sentient creatures couldn't be part of your troops by themselves. But will it be possible to have animals with handlers? And if yes, will the handlers be able to release the animals during the battle?

I am pretty sure they mean mounts or something similar.  I mean really, what do you want non-sentient creatures to be doing in an army by themselves?    They have to be at least very well trained, and even then they are a variable I don't think many generals would risk without some sort of reliable rider our care taker close at hand.   Magical beasts are all sentient in my book (and most RPG books since they usually have intelect boosts) so they can exist on their own.

Has there been any mention yet of wild animals?  Will it be like typical RPGs where as you roam the landscape and bump into wolves, bears, and such?  If not, I can see why, since your armies are going to be huge, and not your standard party of 4-6 companions.  If so, won't battling tiny groups of wild creatures get redundant with such a huge army?

That would be the case with your usual animals. But in Elemental you could probably startle a Dragon in its nest if you're not carefull who then will eat your tousand man (bears?) as a snack.

I.e. fantastic beasts and hordes of barbarians could easily be an obstacle for even large armies, since in a fantasy setting you can make animals possible that are truly powerful.

I wouldn't be overly surprised if elephant riders were in there since they've actually been used in historical battles (and because of that Oliphant picture in the art thread), but I think mammoths could be quite fun.

Luckmann states my case best - include everything, but make sure it balances.

And yeah, we'll have to mod in the bears, and probably 2/3 of the mounts mentioned in this thread.

I'm not seeing a [bear riders] tech option, unless the entire tech tree is that specific.  What I *DO* see:

Naturalist stack: for not getting eaten by what you're taming.  Bears are both omnivore and tempermental, and so will be harder to tame than other omnivores, but possibly less so than carnivores.  Also includes things like animal husbandry and habitat improvement.

Animal Handling: For training the beasts not to eat others.  At this stage, they can join your armies - but they can 'go feral' if not enough naturalists are in the army.  I'd like to research 'tricks' we can teach them, but that goes into 'humans' having tactics, too.

Riding (originally Equestrian, but defeats the point): The ability to make a saddle specific to a movement type.  For example, bears are large.  The same saddle tech that grants bear riders grants rhino riders.

So, you need:

1) mount resource of animal

2) ability to train it as a mount

3) proper tech for the rider to stay on: easy for a horse, not so much for a skyshark.

And YES, I know I'm probably missing and/or over-generalizing the tech tree.