The campaign is indeed based around those two forces (not the sandbox) but even in the campaign there are 6 (or 7??) humanoid and fallen factions. Diplomacy between those factions at least should be more then 'Hey, let's beat up the big guy...'. Outside the campaign (as Wintersong mentioned) anything goes, so decent diplomacy should be implemented anyway.

Espionage is something that might be a bit less usefull, I only used spies in GalCiv2 to counter and almost never used them aggressively. If a decent and fun espionage system like SavageBananaMan34 described could be implemented, I'm all for it, it surely sounds like a fun way to get something done in a backhanded sort of way...

Well, like I said, I think that diplomacy should be important but it shouldn't detract from the games inherent "epicness". This game, in my view is about outright power and ancient relics and stuff. Too much diplomacy will turn this into Civ4: Fantasy. Of course, to leave it out in its entirety would be a poor decision. I just don't like the way some people believe that diplomacy in this game should be so deep. Its mostly a single player game, and unless Stardock can do what no other game maker has with its AI, diplomacy will feel convoluted and useless. If stardock can create a human-esque AI, then they have accomplished far more than a good diplomacy system lol...

Cool story bro. KoH was also broken in about a dozen different ways, and is actually the perfect example, in my oppinion, of an overblown yet useless spy system. You could go through all that to conquer france, or you could utilize those knight spots for merchants, trade with the larger states, build a huge army, and just conquer france. Don't say its not possible, ive done it with several small nations in that game. My point is that yes, while that system is pretty intuitive and clever, its ultimately a waste of time 95% of the time. In most games like civ4, galciv, the TW series, etc the only use for spies is to keep other spys out of your hair. Thats just feature creep at its worst, im sorry.

Paradox Interactive does a GREAT job with espionage in crusader kings, but do you know why that is? That game is 70% family interaction and manipulation ie espionage... the reason its good is because its the center of the game, which you wont see in elemental. Plus can you imagine the annoyances spies will bring around? Those of us with no interest in espionage will find ourselves investing in it just to keep it out of our hair. Blech.

Actually, good point. What does everyone think decent diplomacy DOES entail? I want a decent alliance system, some options to entice war between nations, perhaps LIMITED tech trading (in some games tech trading gets exploited to the high heavens), maybe map trading, trade agreements not including special resources but just a method to boost income, and maybe some passage agreements.

I don't know if you'd include this in 'some passage agreements', but I want an option to tell the AI to get the hell out of my land... I always hated it when (Ex. in Civ, don't know about the latest version) the AI always complained about my units in its land, threatening to go to war, but I couldn't do the same thing if the AI had an army close to my cities...

For the rest, I think you summed it up pretty well... How detailed all this has to be is another question off course... For example, would a passage agreement just be allowed / not allowed, or more detailed like max. 10 units at once, for a region or your complete domain, temporary (10 turns, until the end of war with an opponent, ...) or until canceled. Same with the trade agreement or map trading...

In my opinion the more options you have, the better as long as the diplomacy screen doesn't get too cluttered...

Something else I just thought about which I don't think has been used in a game before, how about diplomacy between more than one opponent at once? For example, you have two neighbours which are both friendly with you. You ask both neighbours to improve relations with each other in exchange for a trade agreement with you. Or neighbour one has to accept a passage agreement with neighbour two and in exchange neighbour two declares war on an enemy he can only reach through the land of the first neighbour... Don't know how easy something like this would be to implement off course... I guess that would be a problem for Stardock...

endofdayz, while you are right in saying that merchants are broken in KoH the fact remains that the espionage system in the game is both fun and situationally useful. You could just build a big army, conquer France, and negiotate your way to peace with all the courts around it that are their kin, or you could creatively maneuver as I described. KoH also handled counter-espionage well, for all you had to do was keep X spies in your court (depending on the threat) to catch other spies and never have to look at them again. So, to summarize, I believe a good system gives a player options to role-play as he wishes, while not forcing other players to spend a lot of time having to meticulously defend. In galciv2 and civ 4 this was not done, as every spy had to be manually countered with another spy or each town needed to have a counter-intelligence building. Total War spies are just a mess and I almost feel like you're cheating by mentioning them  

As I said in another thread, the problem with those games is that the spies are mass-produceable and are not heroes like in KoH. Spies in Elemental should be specialized heroes (and perhaps further specialized within the umbrella of "spy") infused with essence, to give the player the option of employing spies at a significant cost to his empire. I'm sure Stardock can come up with a proper "counter-spy" mechanism.  

1. From the programming perspective, heores don't enter enemy cities, they don't move around within the cities, and they are combat units. In order to make them move around in enemy cities, gather info, and not be combat units, you would need to drastically alter the hero "object".
2. Heroes are tied into the essance, and I fear that making them require it would make spies too scarce, as the product (remember, just one counterable spy here) would not be worth the investment.

It's much simpler and more balanced to have spies be a seperate and non-combat-based, but still population-dependant entities that you train and control seperately from magic-users or soldiers.\

EDIT: I need to learn to count.

Scoutdog I freely admit I don't know the limitations of the engine right now. If the "hero" object is somehow unable to interact with buildings/leaders and whatever else I guess there could be a separate object called a "spy hero." It still seems easier than having a full-blown spy system and interface. Perhaps essence isn't needed, again I don't know how valuable it is. Whatever the case, you should not have "stacks" of spies or anything like that. Maybe four or five snooping around enemy territory if you're really into espionage. And each of them should be named. If you're just defending maybe one in your capital to oversee affairs and one near a valuable commander should be enough to mitigate most casual spy attacks. 

Actually... Id go for this. make them rouges and thieves, and make them valuable multipurpose units. Make thier spying use optional (they could be valuable scouts, or as part of an adventuring party) and id think thats actually a good play. I was under the impression people wanted some kind of convoluted slider system with an abstract spy-management screen. But as part of a heros options, good idea.

When did you become a Dev scout-dog? at this early point thats absurd. The changes to the engine would require a moderate overhaul at worst. The game is barely in alpha for crying out loud...

I dion't need to be a dev to know a little bit about general programming, and while it would be doable, seperate-unit spies are sipmler, and can be more easily modded.

They are also more convoluted. "Easy to mod"? If everythings in python, you could turn this game into an FPS with some clever coding. You don't appear to know that much about the entire topic of programming actually. It is likely that the hero class has different actions related to what it is "interacting" with. Perhaps rouge heros could just have a seperate line of code for when they interact with a city? Without seeing the code, all of our discussion is pointless, but I am confidant that SD can manage.

I dont know how we're doing espionage ATM, but just to clear the air...

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Actually, If I get my way, Heroes WILL be able to enter foreign cities, just like in any RPG. You can sleep to recover health, buy items, or offload loot. Stationing a unit in a foreign citiy is really no different than having him 'occupy' one of your cities.  You don't necessarilly 'move around' a stationed city, but the unit is definatly 'in' it.

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Again, not to pick on poor Scoutdog, but just wanted to clear the air to allow thoughts to flow freely...carry on

Thanks for the clarification Boogie. I challenged the claim that all enemy units used essence in the "esbionage" thread - which it looks like this has morphed into - but was blown off.

As someone with a dozen or so years of programming experience (very little object oriented, sadly) I'd also just like to clarify for Scoutdog that the changes to the hero object would not be large at all. The three changes you claim would need to be made;

1. The ability to move around in enemy cities -  most likely a boolean attribute and it would programmatically be the default that a unit could move in an enemy city (the coding would be required for units that were denied access to the city)

2. Ability to gather info - again, likely just a boolean attribute on the hero object that would allow access to the function "gather_info". Easy-peasy, if you are making a gather_info function, altering a unit to be able to do that function is going to be simple.

3. Make the unit a non-combat unit - first who says they won't be a combat unit? If making them a non-combat unit is important, you could just lower their combat related abilities to near zero and effectively you are done. But why would you, would you consider James Bond a non-combat unit? Give an example of any spy, other than Mata Hari (doesn't count, chick ) that did not have lethal capabillities. I mean the whole assasin thing kinda reeks combat - it's just often a sneaky sort that doesn't require defending yourself !

Ok, now we know how things won't work.... we could really use some info on how they will:

1. How many heroes will the average player get in an average game (I realize that this might change with map size, but it's possible to factor that in by comparing the numbers of regular units, beasts, etc.). In short, how hard is it to get a hero?
2. How will cities be layed out, and how do people move around inside them?
3. This "People-as-a-resource" system? How will it apply to factories and other buildings? For example, can I get my spy to apply of a job at a forge, and thus learn what sowrds the enemy is making?

These are the sorts of questions that I think need to be answered before we can even begin to develop an espionage system, possibly along with a poll (Denryu?) where people can rate various spy systems proposed here or seen in other games for micromanagement, RNG intrusiveness, and usefulness

OMG, I just had the most AMAZING idea for a scout feature. I need to think on it a while and will probably start a separate thread when I have some details worked out.

Trust me, as someone who has never been into the espionage part of most games (a couple have done it pretty well), this is unique, it is powerful, and in my mind it fits the EWOM world. The idea I have would not need to be the entire espionage system, but it could be a VERY cool, powerful feature in it. (Personally I think it could work fine standalone as well). Let me mull it for a bit and I'll see what you guys think.

to scoutdog:  

Otherwise: sounds awesome. I like where your going with this, and something ive noticed in screenshots is that heroes appear to have a "labeled" destination... do you give them a quest of sorts and then send them on thier merry way? If so, thats A: Awesome B: A great system that could make this game a sort of grand scale Majesty (the old game with heroes who act on thier own). That concept is amazing, and could be modded to the high heavens. Good news all around.

lol I like these posts. I imagine denryu hazy eyed and being like "Duuuuude!!! You won't believe this but my hand... my HAND has FINGERS!!!"

i totally agree, comparing the gameplay to for example, sins... i tend to play that game fully zoomed out for a large part of the game, only zooming in to micro some battles.  the rest, is all zoomed way back to icons floating between planets in the distance

*EDIT:: cause i forgot to add my suggestion*

i would very much like to see, the teleportation of you sorcerors tower ( or this games equivelent of a tower ) like the home town or capital.

this would cost alot of magic to cast but i would like to see it in game.

This post was fail, even before Boogie's comment.  You were assuming too much about the general structure and form of the underlying engine, without data.

For the BETA versions, we plan to only allow players to see the cloth map until the game is fun.

At first, the game won't be fun at all in beta. Then, over time, it'll get funner and funner and at that point we will let people see the full game engine.

Someone save the above quote as I'm sure it's going to come up over and over again. 

So - everyone feedback how fun it is so we get the full engine sooner!   Okay maybe start out the first week about how torurous it is and THEN start saying how much fun you are suddenly having when you aren't hitting BSOD every 5 minutes!