The faster spread of Fertile Land will obviously save ALOT of Essence. Depending on the actual spread rate, a SOV may not have to ever use his again for City creation. Remember, none is consumed on already fertile ground.

One fear I see with this is on the smaller sized maps. Would it be possible to rate the spread based on the size of map in use? One has to assume that on a Ginormous Map, spread will not be a problem as there plenty of space to spread into. That would not be the case on a Small/Tiny map if the spread rates are not pro-rated somehow.

As to the point of Essence gain. I was always partial to the idea that any City that held a Shard, as many will in order to have access to their Magical properties, the SOV, when in one of these Towns would draw some preset amount of essence per turn until his departure. Perhaps, the amount that can be drawn off will be directly related to how many Shards the player/Kingdom/Empire currently owns.

The draw amount could be based on a diminishing return policy given that as a Town grows, or a Dynasty grows, more and more Essence Users are about and that total amount drawn is finite, can never drop below X% and thus the shared amount is less and less the more user are in existence.

The only fear with this idea is that it promotes Turtling of SOV's, as they no longer need to be on-site to create new cities and so some other mechanism must be brought forward to keep the need to have SOV Out and About alive.

Agreed. I am "worried" about the AI controlled Sovereigns actually, because as we know Sov dies = game over. Right now the AI [and the player as well] is forced to "use" his Sovereign in battles in order to gain the "proper" amount of essence.

There must be other options to gain essence. Special buildings & sites or even creatures which are "generating" some essence/turn. Essence is a very important gameplay Element, so it must be perfectly implemented.

Some ideas for "special buildings":

- Arena. The Sovereign and/or Champions are allowed to enter to the arena [1 time / turn] to fight vs. various creatures. Essence gained / turn should be based on the number & type of the killed creatures. If the Sovereign or Champion is badly wounded, there should be an option to give up the fight.

- Slaughterhouse / Altar of Sacrifice - Specific number of captured creatures/beasts [or even peasants -> -pop] are getting sacrificed / turn in order to gain a specific amount of essence / turn. Essence gained should be based on the number & type of creatures sacrificed / turn.

Lol ... an arena in cities where you can control what you fight (anything non-unique that you have fought earlier) ... could be cool. Representing the people finding and capturing said creatures, and bringing back to city for you to fight ... could slowly recharge instead of constant use in order to avoid over-usage. Like ... arena captures one bear every 10 turns, one troll every 20 turns, ect.

Agreed.  You could even pit groups of hero's against one another in mock (or real) battles.

Maybe a "spreading rate" in each map ? Modders could access that data easily. You could even change it whiule playing ! "Return of the wild" would get a negative spreading of life.

Could we look perhaps to the Starcraft system they implemented for the Zerg?  Le Creep!  Have a max bound that the restored land will reach out to over time.  eg, from a city it will restore land out to 8-10 squares.  This would solve the map size problem i think.

I thought about this Very Same thing when we were talking about initial essence costs and land spread. I believe I even mentioned it to Scott. On large maps, with large armies, tons of spells, and everything else..etc etc, You'll either needs TONS of essence or the things that costs essence all need to cost less. I knew if the gaining essence to spending essence rate wasn't balanced "just so" that it could seriously end up gimping a games potential. I didn't bring it up again because I thought it would be one of those things we discussed during the "Balancing Game-Play" part of the beta, I.E. Beta 2 or 3 depending on how the schedule went.

It seems you already got a grasp on that pretty quick though .

Perhaps put "Essence Gain" or "Essence Levels" on a adjustable slider so you can tweak it per game. Play on a large map with slow essence gain, or a small map with massive essence gain. It could make for some Very Interesting game-play I think. Also this would limit people having enough essence to cast massively powerful spells Too Early in a game that's supposed to last a long time. Think of it like adjusting the technology level on Gal Civ 2 before match. You had slow starting tech, to fast or moderate. Apply the same theory to Elemental only concerning essence. In a way, Essence is the most valuable "Currency" in the game. Perhaps Sovereign's should be able to trade it diplomatically as a resource as well. Like a Wizards Pact? Just a thought.

Alternatively, all Sovereigns could gain 0.15 essence (per turn) all the time, with no other way to gain essence.

Otherwise, yea having places out in the open, in the middle of the map where Sovereigns could sit on to gain 0.25 essence per turn extra .... might as well have only one of these places ... WAIT is this Elemental or King of the Hill?

Game mode called king of the hill?

And a bonus of the consistent essence gain is that it is incredibly easy to scale with the size of the map.

Have the growth of the essence outward on take an exponentially increasing amount of time.

So on

turn 1: three tiles wide: big enough for your city

turn 2: four tiles wide

turn 5: five tiles wide

turn 9: six tiles wide

turn 14: seven tiles wide

turn 20: eight tiles wide

turn 28: nine tiles wide

and then taper off to a flat growth. "every X" turns. This gets you the essence far enough out there they can start expanding to new cities without more expenditure.

Froggie - You should check out this thread as well, since it's on topic basically -> https://forums.elementalgame.com/382345

It's an interesting discussion about the essence "system".

I've always viewed essence in this game as the breath of life. To me, it was like your Sovereign was taking part of his/herself, directing it into the world, and using this purest form of magic to revive the shattered lands. To totally take that away from building the first city seems weird to me. I think that the first city should claim essence, and all others claim materials - this first city is meant to be your shining beacon on the world. It should be a personal investment, I feel. The others are just the result of expansion.

I also really like the idea of your Sovereign spending essence for the sake of ultimate structures and city empowerment abilities. Going from Demiansky's examples...

Altar of Elements: Use 5 essence and commit your Sovereign for 10 turns. This structure offers +15% to essence creation, .05 essence/turn for each node you control, and units produced by the city where the Altar is build have a 30% chance of gaining a free, permanent and basic enchantment of one of the four elements.

The forces of the elements seem somewhat primal in comparison to the technology of cities and the paths of life and death. However, by commiting part of your very being to the elemental powers that surround your city and gently guiding some of those powers towards this focal point, you can slowly recharge your essence and every unit produced may have the fortune of elemental energies lingering around them.

Lore Spire: Use 5 essence and commit your Sovereign for 10 turns. This structure offers nothing initially, but for every battle your faction wins, it offers +1 to the happiness of this city and +.5 to the happiness of all other cities.

This stone just appeared one day by your command, initially just that - a stone. Yet each battle won earns this stone lines of runes that glow with faint magic. These runes glow faintly, detailing victories that seem far away yet are still infinitely important to the people. As the edifice grows in its glowing runes, so too does the faith your people hold on you, for how can they deny this structure, bound to your very being and speaking of each victory under your lordship?

I suggest you look to Dominions as an example of what can be done.  This could set up an interesting dynamic between good and evil forces.

Not being a BetaTester (yet) I apologize for the potentially elementary question:

With regard to essence:  Is essence an infinitely available resource or one that is finite?  That is, can the essence pool continue to grow throughout the course of the game or is it a fixed amount for the entire game (e.g. 1,000 essence points maximum shared among all throughout the game).

Either way, I could think of some neat game mechanic applications, particularly with regard to the latter options (finite pool) which I don't think I've seen too much of in other games.  This would make the essence resource something worth managing well/fighting for.

It's not a 'resource' as such as you can only gain more by levelling up.  So spending it is a proper sacrifice.

I dont care how cities are created so long as we dont forget how we used essence for city building in the first place. Since this is an RPG world...cities are meant to be scarce. We want to avoid city spamming ala Civ4.

I agree with this.  As it is, I'm worried about the need to build multiple cities to get a variety of your buildings made; I'd prefer to have city growth to be hard but continual so that you could have a city that can do anything.  Another thing I'm worried about is the tactical advantage that you can gain via a small combination of mountains (and the mountain creation spells) or other landform and a city so that you can create barricades so people can't cross into your safe land.

One idea I think I would like is a larger max size (or preferably no cap at all, just a limit on each building) for capital cities, but a smaller size for the rest of the cities; this would encourage people to build up one rare city, but provide bennefit for exapnding out into the country side

My suggestion:

Make it an option at game start. Include something like

Cost to build city :                       1) Essence (5)

(on dead land after the first)        2) Essence (2)

                                                 3) Essence (1)

                                                 4) Material (100)

                                                 5) Material (50)

Life / Dread spread:                     1) slow (1 tile / 10 turns) - max 10 tiles from center

                                                 2) medium (1 tile / 5 turns) - max 15 tiles from center

                                                 3) fast (1 tile / 3 turns) - max 20 tiles from center

Sovereign Essence recovery:         1) Level Up - spend points

                                                 2) Level Up - auto gain 5 Essence

                                                 3) Slow regeneration (0.01 per turn)

                                                 4) Medium regeneration (0.05 per turn)

                                                 5) Fast regenration (0.1 per turn)

                                                 6) It's Burning (1 per turn)

Good ideas.  Options are always better.  May want some sort of linear increasing cost for cities option.

I agree with OsirisDawn. Simply make it a choice at the start of the game.

Excellent Idea, OsirisDawn. That's pretty much what I meant in my reply above where I say "Perhaps put "Essence Gain" or "Essence Levels" on a adjustable slider". You actually laid out the numbers for it though which I like very much. Great Idea.

The optimistic in me saying.

@Wintersong: It is just an idea that covers nearly all sides of the argument, i think.

Also "Sovereign Death = Game Over" is more of a story reason i guess, then hard to implement. You are the sovereign, it is your story. If you die, it is game over, as i understand the design.

Another suggesstion:

Bind things like essence recovery to magic research and include spells like

Empower Life (City enchantment, Cost X Essence): Life spread from this city is increased by 50% and max radius from center is doubled. After this maximum is reached, the spell fades and the essence is recovered by the sovereign.

With this you are comitting essence for a set time, but it's not completly lost.

One research item could be:

Essence Harvesting: The sovereign discovers the technique to harvest very small amounts of essence from shards. You start recovering (#Shard*0.01) essence points per turn, up to your maximum essence. 

Just throwing around ideas

What GW Swicord said. Ever since you introduced the concept of Essence, it has had a weight of permanence to it. Therefore, actions that require essence should share that permanence. Restoring the land. Demiansky's idea of special city structures. Imbuing champions. Crazy spells that either have an infinite duration, or some permanent effect on the world - for example raising mountains could require essence. Casting a powerful buff spell that never fades could use up essence. I hope Essence isn't something we end up using frequently, that would diminish its significance.

This is ridiculously simple and yet I like it very much... This way, what would differentiate people is how they spend their essence, not how fast they accumulate it. Granted there are some issues with it, but nothing that couldn't be worked out. Also as someone pointed out, a fixed rate of essence accumulation for all sovereigns would scale very well across different map sizes.

I don't like the passive essence gain idea [I think it's a good thing, if you must do something in order to gain some essence.] but we've talked about this more times already.