The alpha is going, this thread is damned interesting and annoying, and still we've had no Integrated Metaphyics journal from the devs.

From a 'social science' perspective, magic is a world view first and foremost. Whether or not a competing world view such as science can lead to better predictions and more effective tools is a matter of how the world, in this case a game engine, works.

I'm a science groupie from way back. My low-income parents bought our first television so we could see the moon landing. I still pine for the days when Nova episodes were reliably focused on science and not so cluttered with personality crap. And I'll be sorely disappointed if the canon version of Elemental ends up littered with immersion wreckers like the word 'tech' or a metaphysical system that boils down to real physics plus some vague effort to make personal will into some form of energy and/or fundamental force.

Of course Elemental's magic needs to work consistently as part of a coherent world. That matters both for raw playability and, more importantly for players like me, for the ever-changing stories that a good TBS game generates. But trying to 'retcon' a scientific world view into a medieval fantasy setting is silly. 'Realistic' physics in the background can be handy, I'm sure, but I'm much more interested in seeing something like Fire not working in a given valley because someone before the Catclysm cast a spell that cut the entire area off permananently from the Plane of Fire.

Law # 2.) With time and neglect even the most powerful of spells degrades into nothingness.

this is a classic plot element in fantasy worlds. Say an all powerful entity (an evil one at that) was locked away in another dimension with a magical seal powerful enough to keep villian there. Now fastforward to, say, a thousand years later everyone's forgotten about the villian and, more importantly, the seal incasing him. And since no one was around to properly maintain the seal (by reinforcing/replenishing it with magical energy) it has grown so weak that the entity can either break free himself or can influence some fool (even more classic if it's hero him/herself) to remove the seal.

Law # 3.) If your outgoing exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.

this UPKEEP can be best described as...well, mana. how much you have. how much you use and how quickly it regenerates. classicaly in games, if you're amount of mana has dropped to zero, from casting a lot of spells, then you can't cast anymore. in novels if you try to cast a spell that exceeds your mana reserves, it not only can exhaust you but could kill you. so basically, this law just describes a risk factor in using magic.

Science as with anything created by humans has constraints and limitations in both explanation and understanding.

I think he's referring to the oft-mentioned idea that Elemental and GC2 share the same timeline, with EWOM taking place in Altaria's version of the Middle Ages. Personally, I think there are too many inconsistencies and Brad's just re-using names and concepts (which he does a lot- there was some ancient game of his that had all the major GalCiv races, but wasn't connected in any way).

Chuckles...yeah they do kinda sound like fortune cookies. especially #3

Law #4.) Energy and matter can be transfered, never destroyed.

For those who have readDavid Eddings "Belgariad" (not sure about spelling) Saga think in that light. In theory, you cannot truly destroy a person, place or thing (in other words magic it out of existence). you can alter it (putting someone on fire through magic and turning them to ash for example), you transfer it to another place either of this world or of another plane of existance. But you can't "be not" it away.

5.) No two objects can be in the same exact place at the exact time.

this one deals more with teleportation in that say you cast a said spell and wind up in a wall...hence the dangers of teleportation (of course, magic wouldn't be worthwhile if there wasn't a little risk involve).

Quite simply, you are missing that science is a means of viewing the world, not a definition of what you find there. If some "magical" force was found to be behind quantum physics (and really, can you tell me there isn't?) scientific knowledge would expand to fit the new information into existing frameworks.

Likewise, technology is the application of scientific knowledge to practical purposes. Really, ANYTHING can be viewed as technology, whether you're talking about a screwdriver, a computer, a method of crop rotation, weather prediction, a system of law & justice, launguage, mathematics, or anything else you can conceive of. You see any use of the words "science" or "technology" as a game-breaking failure of emmersion, I would see the lack of them for some sort of strictly supernatural theme to be equally annoying.

By that definition, the following things were at one time or another considered "unscientific":  orbital mechanics, quantum mechanics, organic chemistry, gamma ray bursts, plate techtonics... I could go on, but I think the point is obvious. "Unscientific" should be a term reserved for something that does not follow ANY sort of physical rules, such as (fill in 7 day creation rant here).

Note that true scientific leaps like quantum mechanics don't generally scrap all previous scientific knowledge. They address areas where the previous theories dind't work (Neutonian physics don't work at the subatomic level), come up with something that does work in that area, and are then faced with the challenge of explaining how the new rules ALSO apply to the realm of the previous theory. Right now quantum theory is stuck with the problem that it doesn't explain the macroscale world as well as Neutonian physics do.

I guess my real beef is that I want to see some sort of technical explanation of the "how" of the magic in the game. Using technology, I can use a machine to boil a cup of water without using a pot on an open fire. I put it in a magic box and push some buttons. Now if my summoner can just point at that cup of water and it starts boiling, there needs to be some information given about what's going on behind it, rather than just "focusing essence" at it. That energy better be coming from somewhere, going to somewhere, and the second law of thermodynamics better apply, or have a damn good reason why it doesn't.

Lol That reminds of another book i read years ago, it had this very powerful wizard whose explaination of magic was the process of manipulating ultra tiny things he called "stuff" (or atoms as we call them). mostly this involved pulling an orange out of sack on a regular basis (he made portal through sack to a large barrel of oranges as a regular food source).

Isn't that just a general rule of science thanks to Einstien? e = mc2 and the law of conservation of mass (second one not thanks to Einstien   )

That said you have to follow the laws of thermodynamics. No free lunch. If you don't then magic would take over the world.

We're just going to have to disagree then, because I think Stardock going out of their way to avoid mention of science is going to break immersion and be a grating irritation to far more players than would be happier for it.

This is exactly why I'm agitating FOR rational explanations. Sticking to strictly magical bullshit will continue annoying people long after you've reached this limit. Chances are when you reach this limit, you will become one of those annoyed by it. Focus on replay value, not first-time-though "wow" factor.

No one is arguing that magic shouldn't be incredibly powerful. But expending huge amounts of energy should have consequences: summoning firestorms would take energy from somewhere (whether that is expending essence or stealing energy from an elemental fire plane, or whatever) and add it to the area you are attacking. Adding that energy should have all sorts of consequences: igniting trees, grass, buildings, etc that are in the area attacked (not just selectively hitting enemy troops); weather disruption, maybe baking soil into infertility or causing land to shift towand desert; and most importantly, when you stop adding energy into the spell, the direct energy expenditure stops and the effects fade away slowly, not just a flipped switch and it's gone.