^ Actually, dynasties were completely removed from FE.  Also many of the points you mentioned are purely based on assumptions, and/or a matter of taste.

I'd still choose MoM at this point myself, however I truly hope Stardock proves me wrong with FE.

You asked for what's in FE more than the graphics ? I answered ! LOL   I'm talking about FE, not WoM, don't get me wrong ! I'm not a real fan of WoM and I'm still disapointed by WoM even if it has good stuffs, the magic system is just not good enough for me to give it any time.

I'm not trying to sell the game but I'm defending it for what it is and for the great job the devs already made even if I still have an enourmous complain about the magic system.

I didn't buy the game yet (I bought WoM only a couple month ago) but what's going to decide me to buy the game or not is definitely the magic system because it's my favorite feature in MoM and I never saw any magic system equaling it.

I'm talking about the Feeling of FE, not WoM, don't get me wrong, the feeling in WoM was rather generic but in FE they seemed to have worked a lot on this point and from the screenshots and videos, it really looks great, that was my point

Because in Mom you could chose the weapons for your armies ? Not talking about the create artefact for heroes.

The AI yes, it will be better for sure !  don't have a doubt about it. 

World, quest, etc... Well, MoM did not have that and from the first stuff I can see, and what was said about FE, I know it will be fun.

Army customization, I have to disagree with you and stop you ! Did you read completely the new features of FE for army customization? it goes further and I think it will be good.

I played MoM since it came out in 1994 and so I was 11 at the time, I spend days and nights on it, I love MoM and it's one of the greatest  game ever made, I never found any game which could rivalize with it and so I still play it, MoM is even the reason why I jailbroke my Iphone, to play on it anywhere because MoM is still under license and copying or remaking it is illegal even if it's free right now.

For the boss I mean those presented by the devs during all those news, they look pretty good and strong and defend territories, MoM did not have that.

For the terrains, yes, MoM had different terrains but it wasn't has good as what FE will be, but again, there's the time too, you're right.

I have a lot of hope in FE since Derek came and showed us stuff that proves we're not blind to trust it, we have good info about the game and how hard they work on it but for the magic system I feel like they worked so hard on other parts of the game that they forgot the most important aspect of the game, Magic of course. I feel like they were a bit too proud of what they accomplished (and I'm with them) and relaxed on the magic system.

I feel exactly the same as you, MoM is really the top 1 ! And I want FE to be better than MoM, I truly want it ! I want to be able to look back and say wow, MoM has been thrown away finally by a greater game ! But to succeed this, it's not easy and everybody will be really criticizing FE very hardly (I feel really sorry for the devs to have to subish so harsh comments).

I'd still like to see air / sea units and city battles though ! I was so disapointed with City battle in WoM, I was like WHAT ? A background of city vaguely and that's all ? Not even a wall like in heroes ? What's the purpose of putting your army in the city ???  The spells did not affect the battlefield really or only one case of the battlefield... Which a bit dumb because that case could be easily avoided and you just lost one turn to cast the spell while the ennemy was even closer

Right now, all my hopes for FE went a  bit down the drain when I saw Magic ! The most important Area for me ! Even AOW2 did it way better [e digicons]:'([/e]

But yes, I agree with all of you, the game is not done yet and I know the devs are active on the forums and look at our post to make the game as good as possible !

Nice list. There are no "shit" spells, which is nice.

Death seems to be overpowered compared to life magic, due to the number of spells. While Life seems to have better spells book vs book, death has the advantage of one extra book and a lot more attainable spells from quests and research. While the numbers don't have to be even, they should be similar.

You did not list a Counterspell of any sort- is it impossible to defend my cities from magical quakes? Is it impossible for me to disenchant a unit? I believe an Astral book should be added, containing the various spells such as dispel magic, Spell of Mastery, and all the other none-elemental spells (mana blast as well, maybe).

A spell that has been missing in Elemental is Create artifact. Using your 1337 archmage skills to create a weapon that instills awe in all of your enemies when equipped by your demigod champion was pretty neat in Master of Magic, and should be repeated in Elemental.

No casting time on spells, and no limitations seems as if to make it a bit unbalanced. As people has said before, saving your mana to the endgame and then using your mana in a burst can result in questionable results. For example, using Call to arms to instantly raise an army of high end units which otherwise would take tens or hundreds of turns to make can be a bit much. It also makes you unable to stop a player from casting spell of mastery, as long as he control the shards, without wiping his whole kingdom. If you are late, (and we assume you know he is able to cast it soon) your only option according to your list of spells is to march to his capital in hope that you got the bigger army and magical resources (since he has to save some for the spell of mastery).\

This makes spells more of an endgame thing than early and midgame feature.

Quoting marionesi,

reply 206

Let's remember that the game as 5 paths to victory (Armies, Infrastructure, Magic, Diplomacy, Champions), and one fundamental task for developers it to keep them balanced enough. This means that magic cannot be too powerful otherwise nobody will ever focus on armies. I am sure that developers, when coming up with spells, want to keep magic with the right amount of power. As someone wrote, in MoM magic was the only direction to specialize, and therefore magic was very powerful, the option being which magic direction to take (which school, wether to focus on summoning, direct damage, or enchantments, and so on). In FE, magic is one of several important pieces to be balanced one against the other.

That said,  I would still like to see more spells .  Having a +3 defence armor on all units is better than having to cast a +3 armor spell on each of them during every tactical combat. There are many ways to keep magic balanced with the other 4 paths to victory without having to create a restricted chioce of spells. I know that having too many spells could make balancing the game harder (in fact MoM was no balanced), but the beta will also help a lot in this direction.

One curiosity: will there be an Infrastructure Victory (something reminescent of the cultural victory in civ)?

You are expected to invest in all 5 of the trees in order to win in either. For example, if you focus spells only, it will be easy to conquer you. Without infrastructure, you won't have the resources to build and support an army. Champions gives a boost to your power, and I hope a force multiplier, which makes you want to have 1 in each army, if not an army of heroes. Master of Magic was very magic oriented, but you couldn't forget everything else, and so should FE. The way I see it now, high chances players will ignore spells entirely for the first half of the game, and then rush specific spells in order to boost their armies.

If you are looking for A&B in the beta you are going to be sorely disappointed.   Brad just started on the AI (or maybe hasn't started yet), and for the initial release of the beta, there is unlikely to be any kind of intelligent use of magic.  I just hope they set expectations correctly, or I am just going to avoid the forums for several days.  

The diplomacy system needs to include manipulative actions to make it powerful (and eventually spells to help this) and then it will be truly interesting.

A massive army, if not enchanted by any spells or magic weapons / armor, should still be able to be annihilated easily with powerful spells... In master of magic, chaos was really my favorite school and the spell, I believe mass incinaration (I might be wrong with the name), was definitely my favorite spell !

Only with that spell, you could annihilate a huge army unprepared to magic (so an army without dragons, etc. but even then it was still possible) and that's the kind of stuff I want to see in FE with Magic !

I want to be able to entrave the path of an army, slow them, curse them, weaken them, freeze them in time, create areas where using magic is impossible, area of darkness (tactical and strategical), wall of fire, wall (dirt, rock, whatever... a wall the oposing army has to attack to destroy it and goes through it), large area of fire, ice, whatever (strategic and tactical) which will act like traps...

If Someone well prepared with magic is attacked by a huge army, he should be able to wipe it out ! And I hope the AI will do that kind of stuff too, to force us to be more careful, more prepared and act more strategically before succeeding an attack. Force us to invest in dispell / counter magic if we can to go through an area !

In MoM the big flaw, was that you were against an AI with the same power as you but of course magic seemed way overpowered on our side because the AI was not using it very well and you could wipe their ass easily by using spells they would not use against you.

Though a well prepared army should be able to wipe anything with the help of magic.

Those are my true hope for FE as I already said ! But honnestly, I'm starting to wonder if we will ever see that

I disagree. #1 should be movement, which is the most important thing in any strategy and WoM got it all wrong. It is a proven fact that when movement is well done it is quite fun (see chess).

As it is a terrestrial game that means terrain must be done right. As it is a fantasy game then it need magic that affects movement in interesting ways. Basically movement done well will interact with many other parts of the game in a way that will make that aspect of the game more interesting.

To do anything meaningful with movement the base movement distance needs to be increased (say to 8 tiles as an average).

Quoting Souls-Stream,

reply 160

Cool ideas

For dispell, I never said it was automatically successful, every enchantments, terrain effects, etc. should have a spell resist against dispell (based on shards, attribute, power of the spell, etc.) I just said it should exist !

It's an art to be a dispell style of player and you need to be just as strong as any other players to avoid Uberness ! + It's not fun to dispell everything and annoying when you're the target

I remember how people use to make dispell blue deck in Magic: The gathering, I hated that !

-I cast a spell

-I counter !

-I enchant ...

-I dispell !

-I cast ...

-I counter !

-Well, okay, I don't have any mana left, and I don't have anything on the table... I hate you ! Your turn !

-Okay I do that and that and that... You do anything ?

-No...

-Well, I attack / cast a spell, you have nothing to defend or counter, you're dead !

Same with the destroy lands deck or the emptying deck tactic! (you cannot draw a card anymore? you lose !) Those kind of strategies are so easy and so lame that it's not even fair play ! I certainly don't want to see that in FE.

In AOW 2, they created other spells... I think it was a good idea, basically you could cast an enchantment and cast another enchantement on the top of it to avoid any dispell... It's really powerful okay but the cost of maintaining both was high and it was a proof that you were truly powerful at the same time.

I don't know if anybody like the idea but in AOW 2 I found it pretty neat + every spell had a chance to resist any dispell. And those global enchantments were really costy.

I think that FE could use a couple global enchantment too, which would be hard to maintain but really powerful.

Well personally I liked the Land Destruct and Spell resist decks in MTG. I liked plsying them but more importantantly I liked playing against them. They tended to be more challanging to fight than most other decks. Burn Decks as well were fun to both play and fight against.

Still play MTG with my group of friends but we mostly play with a group not one on one so the games are a lot more dangerous. Start countering too early in the game or Destroying lands and you might find yourself fighting an alliance of players aginst you.

Yes I agree with you on AOW2 and AOW:SM magic system pretty good. Infact they are my favorite magic system for a TB Fantasy comuter game sor far

Oh I agree they should be higher level. Level 3 would be just right I think

Unit design is a must. Loved it in Galactic Civ 2 as well as MOO. However there needs to be an easy way to create predesigned units (mod them) for the game. In fact the mod editor should make it easy to create them as well as other aspect of the game like spells and such without having to go into the files and adjusting lines on a HTLM document or what ever like we had to do in E:wom.

AOW:SM had a unti editor that while not the most user friendly allowed a rather easy way to create new units. It also had an easy way to create Heros and Magic items for the game, going so far as to let you equit them to heros outside the game so when you start a new map and that hero shows up he will have that item. 

Needless to say I still play AOW:SM with friends and we have created over 400 units on top of the basic units the game came with. And we have hundreds of heros and items in the database that could show up in any given game if we so choose. Makes for awsome games.

Well, EWoM keeps crashing at an alarming frequency.  I truly want to enjoy this game too, but it or something won't let me.  For the mean time, I'm going to consider Age of Wonders (?) since many here have mentioned great things about that game.  Impulse has the trilogy pack w/ soundtracks of all 3 titles for 20 USD so I might just get that *tonight* and put EWoM to rest until they get it ironed out.

-.-

Hey, turnbased robot from the 50'ies 

I don't play Civ or GalCiv at all but I still like Master of Magic and Age of Wonders series.

Just want to make sure that he doesn't believe that just because someone likes MoM & AoW means you like Civ & GalCiv as well.

There is a basic arcane missile spell.