I'd imagine Sauron's Eye would allow you to completely illuminate any area of the map you choose, exposing everything that's there, even if it's hidden. Maybe it'd also provide a bonus to morale for your troops in the area, and a penalty for enemy troops. Even though it's a total ripoff it would still make for a cool wonder

I'd say more enemy penalty, since that seemed to happen more (I don't recall anyplace implying in any way that the orcs and other creatures were in any way encouraged or supported by the eye, just the fear and fatigue the eye caused the hobbits). 

Total ripoffs aren't all bad, since its presented in a different medium.  Taking from books or movies to inspire things for a game is the way to go.   I play burning wheel all the time (or D&D and other RP systems) and my PCs constantly tell me how awesome my stories are, but I always tell them.  I'm not really being original, I'm just ripping off a bunch of games and movies, stringing the events together with some half baked plot logic, and disguising the events by changing names and such so you don't instantly see exactly where I got the ideas.

***added: I forgot the reason I came back to thes thread ;

I wanted to mention a wonder idea that was brought up in the weather thread, though I think unrelated to weather.    It was the idea of turning old battlefields into places of power where you could build a great wonder.   Like the wonder could only be built in a place that has seen many many deaths, like a wonderous tomb or grave site that perhaps could perhaps help channel undead powers or something.  I could see it acting as a crastyl/node but for life magic rather than the other elements.

Also talking about weather, another wonder idea:

Weather control machine > lets the channeler influence the weather effects.   
Fire:  Increased chance of ash falling form the skies or forest fires
Earth:  Increased chance of sandstorms
Wind: Increased sail and flying movement for the user and increased chance of tornadoes
Water: Increased chance of rain (perhaps better water movement as well)
Life (death):  Increases chance for snow?
Life (not-death): stable atmosphere, almost no way for other negitive weather effects to occur.

It's all about the books, not the movies (though I did thoroughly enjoy the movies, too). I admit it's been years since I last read LoTR, but I seem to recall Sauron's troops being much more determined when they know that their master's all-seeing eye is fixed upon them.

Yeah I agree. Being original is good (and without some measure of originality a product is doomed to failure), but why try to come up with all original ideas if you can draw from the massive source of brilliant ideas that are already out there as well?

I can see how that would be problematic, though. Being able to create life magic nodes and not the others would overpower life magic later in the game when lots of big battles have been fought. And trying to balance it out by putting in some way to build nodes of the other elements I think would result in making everything non-magic unimportant later in the game. I'd rather there be a finite, predetermined number of nodes on the map, I think.

But still, the core of your idea is cool: being able to build wonders outside of cities, and have the site of construction have some importance.

Could also be the place where a hero or a channeler is dead, like in The Empire Strikes Back: "This place is inhabited by the darside of the Force."

well, I was thinking there would be a limit just like there is for wonders in other games, so ultimately it wouldn't be that much of a bonus, and not being able to get you own kind of node is a little bit of a handicap anyway.   In MoM life and death magic could still take over nodes, but I thought (I honestly don't remember) there there was some sort of bonus for the nodes being your type of magic, and life/death magic just didn't have that feature.    So whatever bonus it is, I can't imagine it be too broken if a player gets to place 1 extra somewhere, it would be the same as capturing the odd-numbered node on the map.   And to build it he would have to have been fighting, so its not like he hasn't taken some losses similar to what might be lost trying to fight of the node's guardians.

The Wonders Feature would be appreciated, but it should be a game option where players could enable/disable the feature.

Just curious--why would you want to disable 'wonders?' The only frustrations they've ever caused me in other TBS games is when another civ builds one that I want badly (good frustration) or when they don't quite work as advertised (bad frustration).

Having them as an option purely allows them to exist for those who want them.  This allows gamers "the option" of playing the game without wonders whether they want to try a different type of game or view a few wonders as unbalanced or if a wonder is somehow bugged/broken.  Having a critical feature such as Wonders as an option is a good thing instead of forcing everyone to play with them all the time.

Hrm, Why don't we combine both? Have there be artifacts you can find/gain somehow and those allow you to build a Wonder.   One of a kind, Gives a kingdom bonus of sometype depending on the type.

Also if spells are researched seperatly somehow (loved this in MOM) from research techs some of these might instead of being magic, be instructions on how to build the artifact needed for a Wonder.

Also alow Superprojects, Have it so first one built can give an added bonus on top of the bonus the superproject gives.  Like the War academy gives starting exp to all troops built at that town while if you were the first to build it  you get a bit more exp.  Balance it so getting it done first is an advantage but not gamebreaking vs the #2 runnerup.

As a totaly off the head example, the War Academy gives the players enough exp to turn the Knight level 3, But if your the first to build it then it gives enough exp to make the knight Level 4?  or mabye only 3.5 depending on how much power 1 level gives.  This will also affect the strategy of WHERE you build it.  Building the knights won't be so great if your war fronts are all across the map!

Deffinatly a lot of great ideas you are all having!

You know how wonders that confer a bonus to just the city/planet they're built in tend to be washed out in larger maps? Like in GalCiv, having one planet that can produce slightly faster ships really stops being helpful in huge maps, where you have maybe 30 ship-producing planets. I thought of a way that that problem could be somewhat solved.

Let's say you build the War Academy. It provides +100 XP to all military units trained in that city. But in addition, it could be possible to train 'Expert Quatermaster' units or something there, which can be used like Great People in Civ IV: you bring them to another city, have them use their ability and the result is a permanent bonus for that city. In this case, Installing an Expert Quartermaster in a city could provide a +50 XP bonus or something (one time bonus, can't install multiple in one city). The total number of these units that you can train could be a function of the number of cities you own, and they could be proportionately expensive.

Any takers?

One here. No single aspect of the idea seems unfamiliar to me, but the arrangment is darned fresh and tasty.

Seems neat. So building wonders allows you to attract the expertise to build mini-wonders elsewhere? Makes sense, but balancing it might be difficult.

Maybe. The point is to make one-city wonders still useful even in large maps (because they never really are). In small maps they can make a huge difference, and in large maps... They just kind of get drowned out.

If you're playing on a small map, it could be balanced so that you don't typically own enough cities to train even one of the 'special wonder units' until/unless you've conquered most of the world. Not to mention the production costs of training these units would be proportionally high (or maybe training the units isn't so expensive but having them build their special building is - either way). If the War Academy costs X and prodives 100 XP to all military units trained there, then the 'mini war academy' or whatever could cost X/2 and provide 50 XP to the units trained there.

But in larger maps you might reach that number of cities very early on in the game. And by the middle of the game you might have enough cities so that the effect of that wonder is negligible. I always play on large/huge maps, and in my experience those one-city wonders tend to fade out of importance real fast, with some exceptions. And you would need a significant number of cities per 'special wonder unit' so you would still have to choose where to send them very carefully.

AFAIK, Brad's current position about core Elemental design is that the single-player experience is the most important thing and any multiplayer work should be avoided or dropped if it detracts from the game being solidly satisfying when played with no active network connection.

As long as that's a roughly correct statement about the dev plan, IMO, 'balance' talk should be strictly relegated to the multiplayer context. For the core game, anything you might call 'balance' is irrelevant because it is not a competition. Instead of considering how 'balanced' every given idea might be, for non-multiplayer ideas, let's focus on how interesting, fun, frustrating, confusing, and/or amazing the idea might be.

(Do I need to say "But" or "However?") This is something with which I completely agree, except I'd use the adjective 'scalable' instead of 'balanced.' If I tried to make a small set of baskets to sort my gripes and frustrations about GalCiv2, the fullest one might be labeled I Want More In-house Testing on Really Big Maps.

Thats a good point pidgeon. Back in SMAC the very best developed city tended to be near the center of my empire. These core cities are the only ones who have the industrial power to effectively build units. It was extremely annoying that all of my units pretty much started thier careers as far from the enemy as they could get.

With wonders it makes sense to be able to create sub-wonders. All you have to do to balance the system is set a ratio that limits the amount of wonders based on how many developed cities you have. That or limit them based on how much territory you control in total.

For example, if you have the great library in your capital and 8 other developed cities with libraries of thier own, you could pick two of those cities to host upgraded libraries.

I don't completely agree with you there. Single-player also does suffer when there are major balancing issues. It forces you into playing a certain way (unless you don't care about intentionally handicapping yourself). Unit X is crazily overpowered (not really strong but really hard to get - that's balanced. I mean really strong for its cost/difficulty to obtain)? Then most viable strategies involve building as many of them as you can as fast as you can. If a feature like this were to make certain wonders so powerful that any strategy worth its salt involves building them first (or at all), that is a balance problem that needs to be fixed.

Balance is still important, even for single player. But, given that, it's also much less important in turn-based 4X games than in RTS's. 4X games are a little more forgiving due to the scope. Not to mention I don't think you'll find as many people crying 'nerf!' about features in a 4X game, both because of the different audience and the type of games. So long as there aren't any major balance issues, encountering unbalance-induced adversity is just another challenge to out-strategize.

This is one example why Wonders should be an optional feature.

Maybe it's just something I carry with me from Civ/SMAC, but I really, really feel that exclusive one-per-civilization buildings (Super Projects, Wonders, etc) should affect the entire nation and whatever local effect it gives should be "a side order of fries", not the meal itself.

In this case, for example, I'd very much prefer for it to just give a flat 30-50 experience boost to to all cities. Because you know that you're GOING to have that Expert Quartermaster in every major military-producing city anyway, and in those cities you weren't going to have one anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Probably. But I'd have to beat myself with a stick every night before bed, because infantile stupidity needs to be punished.

I’d agree with making super projects effect the whole nation opposed to just one city similar to capturing ancient wonders in Rome Total War where if you capture the light house of Alexandria it gave you some empire wide bonus which escapes me at the moment. I’d also be in favor of giving each faction very unique super projects instead of  just change the project’s name and appearance but it providing basically the same benefit as another factions super project. 

I guess I agree with you, actually. I'd rather avoid the problem all together rather than have something like my idea implemented.

Also, on a separate note: the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of discoverable items/instructions (not researchable) that allow for the construction of certain wonders. They could be found in ruins, could be quest rewards, and maybe there could be a magic spell that attempts to locate one (at random). Wonders that require a special item/artifact could be completely unique, while ones that require just a set of instructions could be built by multiple people so long as they all find the instructions.

Not really. It's one example why wonders should be balanced. If they can't or aren't balanced, then they should be optional. And I wouldn't mind there being an option anyway for the crazy people out there who don't like wonders

Regarding the Sauron's Eye idea (which would be renamed for obvious legal reasons), I think there is a lot of material in the book to draw up a really interesting power. The eye moves from place to place, and cannot see everything at once. It also has has an effect on the people being observed: it intimidates them, weakens them, to some extent tempts them (they feel compelled to surrender).

So, the eye might focus on a particular individual, army, or area. It would drain willpower (or some other magic resistance stat) over time. The observed individuals would also have to make a resistance check each turn, and their result would determine if they could stay hidden (maybe reduced movement?), be revealed, cower in terror (no movement points, possibly reduced combat statistics?), or even become completely dominated and switch sides.

The owner(s) of the unit(s) observed would be aware of the effect, and could compete with it somehow (counter-spells most likely), as Gandalf did.

Units attempting to scry whilst under the gaze of the eye would take additional penalties to their check (like the Plantir).

This talk about the Eye reminds me of my wacky idea about choosing 'Shard Size' during game setup, with shards being jewelry/tool-sized, cow- or elephant-sized, and landscape element-sized. The early map art leaves me thinking that the devs are planning for shards to be special tiles on the map and not mobile items of any sort, but they asked for ideas...

Anywho, in a game where we can equip champions with magic items, shouldn't we also be able to build wonders that are as small as the One Ring and almost as awesome? In AD&D terms, I'm thinking of the difference between 'ordinary' magic items and Artifacts.

Of course Wonders should be balanced, but what developers may consider balanced might be considered unbalanced to a large portion of the gaming community.  This might take weeks or even months before the developers agree with the community and find time to adjust game balance.  

There's no reasons why Wonders should not be an optional feature.

By that logic, the whole game should be one big option. That exact same argument can be applied to every single part of the game. Swords might be unbalanced compared to other weapons, so swords should be an optional feature! Oh, magic too. Also, fire magic might be unbalanced compared to the other aspects, it should also be a game option.

I am not opposed to wonders being optional unless Stardock implements them such that they are an integral part of the game; but the reason has nothing to do with balance, it has to do with user preference. And an option to disable wonders seems like an easy task to implement, so you're right - there probably aren't any reasons why wonders shouldn't be optional. There are exceptions though; for example, if some factions utilize wonders more heavily than others, then removing them from the game would disproportionately weaken those factions. If Stardock implements wonders in such a fashion, then wonders should not be optional.

Wrong... the basic core aspects of the game should not be optional and this section should be the most heavily beta tested to secure stability and game balance.  Critical features such as wonders should be optional because all critical features can't be fully beta tested before the games release.  Take a look at how AOW:SM originally introduced a critical feature such as "Surrendering"... it took many months of complaints on the forums before the developers changed their minds and made this optional while in the mean time all gamers had to suffer the results of this within their game.

Optional settings for critical features should exist due to bugs, game balance and user prefererence because at anytime any of these can be so severe that removing the option is the best choice.  As stated earlier the basic core game functionality such as swords(weapons) and champions and cities will be more heavily tested.