Found it!  I found it like right after i posted the first time but the forums messed up on me  

So I'd assumed that the sovereign will have the same system used.. right?

And it wasn't from a post, it was from a preview at Kotaku a long time ago, which i thought i'd include for new users who might not have seen it before.

And wow, i could see it as an easter egg or something totally  

Almost all the D&D I've played (too much) was 1st Edition AD&D. The critters did not have the same stats as PCs and NPCs.

It seems to me that at least one unit in a questing group will need something like traditional RPG stats to make interaction with 'dungeon' objects fun and interesting. But I've semi-consciously been thinking that any non-channeler or non-champion units in a questing group would be more like a befriended direwolf than an NPC follower. Things that can come in hordes generally need to be less complex to keep the code running smoothly and maybe to keep the UI less tedious.

I agree but would like to see a system with more customization.  The magic system isn't in yet so I'm not sure how much we will be able to customize our spell lists but MOM's system of letting you choose spell books was really nice.  A system like Dominions might work also.  Not sure if these fit into this game but I'd like to see lots of magic customization.

yea, fertility makes more sense. At least in the realm of makin babies.

The previous fertility stat, mentioning farming, could be chanced to Farmer trait ... or something

1. Attributes:

1.1. "Attributes" is an indpendent system to history, talents & weaknesses.

1.2. Every stat starts with 10, but can be lowered to 1 point; apart from that there are 10 free points that the player can distribute to any skill. When the player lowers some skills (below 10), he gets bonus points, but the total number of points that can be spent can't get higher than 30. In other words attributes can look like this: 10 10 10 8 1 1, free points: 30.

1.3. As already said, depending on stats some events could be triggered, and maybe some development paths could be blocked if the related attributes would be set too low.

1.4. Charisma should determine the 'quality' of his offspring, not the diplomacy, as diplomacy is basically useless in the multiplayer.

2. History:

2.1. Every effect of the history should nation-wide. Talents might be used in various situations, but the your sovereign's history is something that shapes his whole life and thus the country.

2.2. There are basically two types of histories: good ones and awesome ones. Awesome ones bring much better bonuses, but in contrast to good histories, they also introduce some penalties.

2.3. History examples:

• War veteran: Your prowess in battle serves you well, but your countless battles help your troops too. You constantly teach your soldiers how to become better fighters. (+40% to gained battle experience for all your units)
• Necromancer: Death has no secrets to you. You learned to animate corpses of your fallen units, so that they might serve you once more. However, there are drawbacks as your living soldiers are afraid of you and your power. (10% of any allied soldiers, who fall in any battle is converted to undead army (basing on the tier of your unit, it will either become a regular skeleton, powerful wraith or fearful lich); every turn there is 5% chance that 1% of your whole army will desert).

3. Talents:

3.1. Talent are ... talents which are centered around the sovereign and their impact is of "smaller scale" (i.e., it doesn't affect the whole nation), but powerful, nonetheless.

3.2. Player can choose only 1 talent (that's why it's a radio button).

3.3. There are only good talents.

3.4. Examples:

• Troll's vitality: You regain full HP after each fight.
• Beast tamer: Every time you defeat a beast you have a chance to tame it, instead of killing it. The higher level you have, the better beasts you can tame. You can't tame very high level beasts - i.e., no taming dragons.

4. Weaknesses:

4.1. Weaknesses are the bad side of your character. They are the opposite of talents.

4.2. Examples:

• Not so able learner: You gain 30% less experience.
• Almost a sharp shooter: Every time you attack an enemy (in battle), you have a 10% chance of missing.

A few thoughts from here:

http://www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ArM5VFIndex.pdf

Weakness, Lycanthrope: every x turns your channeler spends 1 turn as a werewolf (an exceedingly powerful unit that attacks the nearest other unit).  The character can build a prison for himself to use on these turns and thereby protect his own units.  this means tha thte characer will not be the player's to control on that turn.

Advantage, Cyclic Magic:  Channeler gets a bonus or penalty in a regular cycle, thsi is an advantage in that the player can time their events to coincide with the bonous.

Advantage, Adept  student:  bonus to reverse engineering spells that the character has seen others cast

Weakness, Deleterious circumstances:  The character suffers penalties under certain conditions that should be possible for their opponants to bring about. (for instance wheater phenomina that could be created by an opponant).

Advantage Fertility Magic:  Channeler is able to craft spells to give bonuses to their offspring (spell is specific to a specific child, the player would need to research "make my daughter grace's child tough as a rock" seperately from "make my grandaughter lena's child tough as a rock"

I'd say that, since diplomacy is in single player, there should be traits that do effect how it works in single player, and in multiplayer, those traits might be specially adjusted to benefit however multiplayer diplomacy works.  (Though I'm not sure how simple this would be, or what those multiplayer effects would be.)

I know this.  (what I was suggesting is that, charisma in single player diplomacy has an effect appropriate to single player diplomacy, and in multiplayer would have an effect appropriate for however multiplayer diplomacy works.  That way, it would be useful in the same game area in both single player and multiplayer, even with the two mechanics being different.)

We'd probably have ot know what the actual diplomacy systems are to have a good guess at this.  (Since the multiplayer human system may or may not work well with A.I. factions.)

I searched and was surprised to not find anyone mention the new play by E-mail game Solium Infernum. Like Dominions or MoM you design your leader (an Archfiend competing for rulership of a very hexogonal Hell), but SI takes it a step further as you also choose a "Public Objective", which gives you bonus victory points for completing a condition by the end of the game.

Some of the interesting conditions are:

Sloth: Make no Demand or Insult the entire game (Solium Infernum is very diplomacy based, you have to have cassus belli to attack another Archfiend's land)

Envy: Steal at least 10 resources from other players and bribe at least one of their heroes or armies to your side.

Wrath: Destroy at least one other player through capturing his capital.

Pride: Complete the game never having sent or recieved an Emissary (which means if anyone sends you one you must refuse the gifts he brings).

Gluttony: Consume at least 35 souls (one of the games main resources).

Greed: Hold at least 50 resources in reserve at the end of the game.

One cool part of these is that you can at a glance gauge a player's (Or computer AI) strategy based off their Objective. A Wrath player might be nice to you, but you know that at some point they are going to want to crush someone. An Envy player is going to be sending thieves and bribes your way, so you either need to get off his target list or beat him at his own game. A Pride player is going to refuse all your emissaries, a good excuse to attack him! And a Gluttonous or Greedy player near the end of the game will have a lot of resources to use, or be stolen

Some of these concepts do not work with Elemental's gameplay, as Solium Infernum is based around a power struggle that ends relatively quickly after a semi-random number of turns. Elemental from what I've played/read seems more traditional 4X style, with Conquest, Research, or Magical Mcguffin as your typical win conditions.

Another cool aspect of Solium Infernum is that Archfiends have a Rank, from Prince of Hell descending to Duke, Marquis, Baron and Lord. These ranks cost a lot of points to start with, but give you greater starting armies and resources, as well as making your diplomatic overtures more forceful.

Finally, there are a couple special perks that Solium Infernum has available that I have not seen in computer gaming. Kingmaker allows you at the beginning of the game to choose another player, and if that player ends up with the most victory points at the end of the game you win instead. Other players do not by default know who is or isn't a Kingmaker, but once players figure it out, it puts everyone in an interesting position as the target has to annihilate you before he can win. Power Behind the Throne is the other perk, it allows you to switch places with the winning player if you get second place and convince him to make you his vassal before the end of the game.

Both of these perks seem extremely powerful, but cost enough points that they make the archfiend who chooses them take a big risk, because if you choose the wrong player to "King-Make" you can go down a rough path, or if you overtly help him too much early on, leading him and his allies to destroy you.

It seems to me that Elemental Channelers could use some of these "goal-oriented" traits, as these allow you to implement sweeping changes without upsetting a games opening balance.

eh, not everyone has to have these stats. Only the sovereign, giant magical creatures, and adventures/heroes.

As for war-heroes though, that happen to be field-promoted to commander or something ... I see them as more-so Suped up regular dudes, that have the added ability of large morale bonuses for any nearby soldiers. Also perhaps with a command stat as well.

Wintersong: That is precisely what I mean. To illustrate: I cannot imagine a magic system which would have spells that would not rely on these statistics. For example: Quickness might increase movement rate and dexterity; if there is a powerful, battlefield-wide version of that spell, why shouldn't it have the same impact on your troops with the same mechanic? Casting a spell which increases Wisdom would, in most circumstances, have little affect on most standard ground troops under the current circumstances, but you never know -- personally, I'd like to see things like Wisdom and Charisma also be used in some contexts that are either explicitly battlefield-relevant (e.g.: spotting hidden traps or hidden units on the field might be related to Wisdom as the D&D 3E rules interpret it) or at least relevant to standard troops in other related contexts, for example:

BATTLEFIELD:

- The spell Weakness causes all enemies who fail a save (vs. Constitution?), including troops, to suffer a Strength penalty for X turns; their damage is thus sufficiently reduced; if their strength is reduced enough, they may suffer extreme fatigue penalties if they wear heavy armor

- Troops are facing a fearsome (undead) unit or units; insofar as there is no "routing" mechanic, the base chance to calculate a squad's result to this fearsome unit would be that fearsome units Fear power (itself based on its Charisma) vs. that squad's net Charisma value.

OFF THE BATTLEFIELD BUT STILL PERTINANT:

- Troops are used to patrol the tile, searching for stealthy enemies: their net average Wisdom and Intelligence/2 is used as a factor in finding stealthy enemies

- Troops are used to patrol the tile, looking for upstarts, troublemakers, and other unrest causes to quell the trouble: their net average Charisma is used as a BONUS to quelling unrest

- Troops are approached by enemy insurgents or spies looking to bribe them into doing a favor or even bribe them to lay down their arms for X turns -- those troops net average Wisdom is used for the basis of the resistance roll vs. the bribary

Just some examples of things besides the obvious dexterity and strength which even troop units could have

Actually, most of this would work somewhat better if there were an explicit "Willpower" stat (like there was in Arcanum), one which controlled "mental" endurance and could be used to determine resistances to fear-like spells. Still, I believe that the stats provided in the current build would be sufficient, given enough freedom for interpretation, to allow us to base rolls such as the ones I suggested above upon -- for ALL ENTITIES IN THE GAME. Each swordsman or swordsman squad will need to have its resistance to fire, to fear, to charm, etc. based on some statistic, and I see no reason why those used by the sovereign need to have other rules governing it. I think it would in fact be simpler to give each unit the same statistical range. Obviously, common troops will not have those "perks" that the sovereign will need, but for each other stat I can see a use, including Wisdom and Charisma and Intelligence, which I would interpret to be representations of the quantifications of the basic troops' ability to use their wits, their mental strength or robustness, their ability to interact with their environment, and their ability to interact with their fellows and other sentient beings. Simple troops, scouts, spies, and other recruitable units will NEED to be able to do this, so why not use the same tools for them as those available to the sovereign?