This is giving me analogy whiplash.

The basic mechanic  in MTG is that you control land, which produces mana, which you spend to cast spells.  Mana comes in six different types, and you have to match the spell's cost with the mana you have available ... but since the first sentence here excludes different types of mana, you're clearly not talking about this.  In fact, from the comment about shards, it sounds like all shards are now equivalent to one another (at least for the purpose of casting spells) -- M of any shard will do (or do you mean that spells will require particular shard types).  Is the point here mainly that spells are cast instantly instead of over a period of turns?  I guess you could also be referring to the fact that MTG doesn't let you "carry forward" mana into the next turn (like MoM, AOW, etc do), so the spells you can cast are sharply limited by the lands you control; is that mechanic going to show up in Elemental?

Love the magic change, seems much more logical to me, though the shard things should only be for epic level 8-10 spells imo.

It's Galciv2 with swords.

I'm not sure we know that for sure..they may well still produce mana, however it won't be fire mana or water mana.. it'll just be mana. If they don't produce anything and ONLY act as prerequisites for certain spells then that makes them a lot less tactically interesting in my opinion

I'm glad to hear the map will get more interesting, that's been my one real worry about the game so far. I mean usually in 4x games every tiles is something specific (grassland, tundra, hills, mountains, forest, swamps, volcanoes, etc ..etc) all with differing effects (for instance with regard to movement/defensive bonuses/resources available to cities etc). However as it stands with Elmental there's basically only blank/forest/mountain... and it feels like that's it. I know there are more resources dotted about but they feel to me more like stuff that should be an addition to a tile rather than denoting the terrain itself. Incidentally this was the biggest problem I had with Gal Civ 2 as well.. it just all felt so bleak and empty.. but at least that made sense given it was in space

It's conceivable that the standard "blank" tiles that make up the majority of the map as it stands will have some differentiation between them, for instance if the height of the tile is made strategically signficant (as we've seen lots of hills in the full engine for the game). However given that the game is meant to have all the mechanics available merely on the cloth map I'm not sure how apparent something like that would be without some way being found to indicate it clearly... but anyway I'm just speculating now, more interesting is good

Agreed, But, they haven't said whether or not they'll be adding Any kind of "Effects". I seriously hope they do something with different kinds of magic spells, if they don't then spells won't mean much in the game at all.

My Opinion:

With only one damage type for All Magic Spells in the game then having different spells doesn't mean anything at all. It's just a case of how hard you're getting hit with the same old boring stick. A Fireball that does 3 Arcane Damage will be Exactly the same as a Ice-Blast that does 3 Arcane Damage. The only difference will be the animation used.

If that's what things are going to boil down to then the game just got a lot more boring in my eyes. Especially for a game called "Elemental". They NEED to have some kind of system set up so that different spells actually do different things aside form look different and have different damage modifiers. I don't think that's a "Opinion" either, not in a game called "Elemental". Without some kind of differention..., Tags, Effects, something, then half the strategic use of spells is simply taken away. If they don't use some kind of additional system then once the player learns the most damaging spell they can they will just spam that spell over and over again in combat so long as they have the mana to do so.

Speaking of Mana, I like what they decided to do with that. To me it brings a little "RTS" feel to how the maps will play out I think. By needing to capture and hold so many "Nodes" to be able to cast certain spells then these nodes will be a necessity that kingdoms will need to fight over and control. My only worry is that this may lead to city spam. If they implement a way to capture resources without the need to build a whole new city though that would be alleviated.

That would be nice, But, you're assuming they'll use "Categories" or "Tags" of some kind. I hope they do, but we won't know for sure until they give us some more details

I'm confident that "tags" or "effects" will be available.

I also hope that the area of effect from spells/durability/power/etc.. will be available to customize spells.

Maybe from the fireball spell my casters will go from a "area of effect spell" for instance. That would be available if the hero has the right perk (like in DnD)

Personally i HATE the no element damage. the more damagetypes the better, damage types like Poison, wind, earth, fire, water, ice, shadow, evil, ligth, holy, coruption. the moore the merrier.

not entierly sure about the one manatype either. seems strange to cast water magic whit the same mana as firespells, i tought it looked nice whit the different mana types.

I really like the idea of moving away from different kinds of mana. The idea of having to monitor my mana supply for each type didn't seem like alot of fun. The shift towards using shards as a kind of hybrid between nodes and (in a way) spellbooks in MoM seems like a heck of a lot more fun. (Yes I know the spellbooks you selected or found in MoM determined what spells you could research not what spells you could cast.) That said I do have the same worry that I believe tesb has. Namely, if I want to focus on fire magic and through luck of the draw don't have any fire shards near me when starting the game I'm going to be pretty frustrated. So I suggest maybe having starting shards that are or aren't visible on the screen similar to MoM's starting spellbooks. During character creation you could pick a set number or do a point buy system like how it was done in MoM.

I also like the idea of moving away from different damage types to just arcane(mystic or whatever else you want to call it) and physical.  It still allows for significant variations in spells and damage through different effects but eliminates having to have multiple resistances on units to get any sort of useful advantage. Basically having physical and arcane damage worked just fine for MoM and I think it should work just fine here as well. (Although MoM had some niche abilities that made it feel like their were different damages... Illusion comes to mind.)

All in all I'm extremely excited about the changes and proposed changes I've seen lately!

Raven, they never said anything about different effects that I know of.

I was just pointing out that MoM had only arcane and physical but had different effects that could cause secondary effects (I believe Age of Wonders worked similarly) and it worked wonderfully. I don't know if Elemental will do something like this and I haven't read anything saying they would (or wouldn't for that matter) but I don't see any reason why different effects couldn't be added in or possibly be in game already. I haven't seen the combat played out or read anything showing the combat in detail so various effects may already be in. 

Raven Basically I'm agreeing with you in a round about manner. I'm worried something like effects won't be in as well.

I'm just saying having more then two completely different defense/attack stacks makes it a bit cumbersome. And I think the idea of effects, based on past experience with games I have enjoyed, is the way to go.

<edit>Also I just wanted to note  that several posts prior to my last one dealing with largely the same subject didn't display until after I posted... C'est la vie. 

The reason I like having elemental damage types is that it's intuitive.

If I'm fighting a Fire Elemental, I'm going to know that my flaming swords aren't doing a whole lot.  But hey, if I'm fighting a giant tree creature I sure bet it'll be effective!

That makes sense.

I think the idea that shards influence the amount of mana required, rather than being a hard go/no go for casting is interesting.  You could even combine it.  For most spells, having more shards makes them easier to cast.  For the big, earth-shattering types, you just need the raw power of x number of shards.  Complex spells may require x shards of various types.

It's possible that attack spells won't just cause damage.  Fire could reduce morale, Frost could reduce speed, etc.

That's not enough. Fire spells should do fire damage, ice spells should do cold based/ice damage, etc. not to mention the resistances & immunities. This new system looks like dumbed down & simple. Why was it needed to get rid off the elemental dmg types? Like I've said, if we can mod in stuff like dmg types + resistances/immunities, it's not a big problem, but if we can't....