Explorable dungeons in the canon game interest me enough.  Particularly to play out the steps in the Quest Victory*.  But my main interest in explorable dungeons is that it opens another door to modding.  It may be that a mod uses the main game as a way to display and organize a parties inventory.  Then the explorable dungeon part becomes the core of that mod (most of the game is played there).  I once participated in a forum RPG.  I thought it would be cool if we had something to graphically supplement our role-play... we had three competing factions with differing philosophies.  We were all in a sort of cold war as we quested for personal and communal riches.  We built homes, grew our villages, built our defenses, and prepared for the enivitable war.  I see some possibilities for how Elemental could supplement a forum RP game like that.  But I see even more possibility if we could create playable maps off the main map.  And who knows what else people will come up with.  Stardock, if you build it, they (modders) will come. 

* I think the Quest Victory is in need of something to make it great.  A series of 'off the main map' quests might do it.  This would justify time spent on explorable dungeons (if your of the mind that the Quest Victory is kind-of weak).  And it would be an optional thing since only the players choosing that victory route will be playing the mini-game.  Then the ability to play off of multiple maps is introduced... the modders can do their thing... and the players get all sorts of optional goodies like dungeon crawling, extra-planar activities, navigable villages with multiple locations, etc etc

Cake? but I wanted pie..... What I am really looking forward to are more tools for modders. Basic things like an item maker or a monster/npc maker. Just something that would allow us to change things like stats size and color would be great.

Well, I for one would like a game that has a solid 4x identity with some RPG elements (MoM).

EWOM has features which do not fit a Strategy game at all and are more appropriate for an RPG (do you really need to mix-and-match multiple pieces of armor?).

Second large issue is this.

Yes EWOM is a "new game", but it is a Spiritual Successor of a genre.  As such, we expect certain features.  Certain breadth of features.  Certain depth of features...Which wasn't met, at all, by a long shot.

That's not to mention the work that was done on civ4+mods to refine and improve Tile-based TBS experience.

With Mr. Paxton (Kael) at the helm, we have hope.

How do you make a great game?  Take everyone's great ideas, put them together and it will be great!

That is something I experienced when we tried consolidating ideas to make the MOM mod. Everybody want to play their own version of the game, so everybody think their ideas are important.

Another thing I realized is that it is not everybody that has the same game design experience. So when somebody with little experience want the game in a certain way, he does not understand why you understand that it is not a good idea and it should not go into the game.

So yes, gathering new ideas is important, but in the end one person must design the game and select what he wants. Even 2 designer with the same experience will have completely different visions.

So for our, mod, we decided that the best compromise we could do is to stick to the original game the best way we can unless 100% of the team agree with the changes.

By the way, for the MOM mod, I decided to put the project on the ice and wait for "fallen enchanteress" because right now, there is little things we can change to the basic game.

THIS is an extremely important quote.

Without actual scripts to hook to functions in the game, mods are pretty much limited to "extra content". There are a few things you can do to change the game mechanics, but they are VERY limited (and often on/off toggles).

Content = Hell yes, lots of potential.

Change? Not so much.

I think it's fine there won't be explorable dungeons, in fact I think it's a really good sign there's a post explaining this one simple exclusion. Makes me optimistic about everything else that will be added! If it's easy to add for modding though, then the ability to switch to different maps could be useful... imagine a fire/earth/air/water plane that is explorable. I guess that's not really a dungeon though, that's just a regular overland map. I suppose dungeon maps would have to be like tactical maps except much larger and with FoW. if that's the case I hope there's a limiter to the time spent each turn cause that could be a pain for multiplayer!

Explorable dungeons are not really something I would really care about one way or the other. AoW had them, though they always felt a bit tacked on. I think Derek has a good point in his OP that this would take time and effort away from them making other systems more interesting and generally more fun. Personally I would rather have them add a worker capable of building improvements outside of cities or introduce city happiness. I think these would do more to promote a more robust experience in the 4x game than the addition of some mini-game dungeon crawler.

HeavenFall and I agree on this point very much, though I think that the creation of meaningful scripting system would out of the scope of the initial release of FE. However, I would like to see at least some very simple spell scripting ( linked effects, random effects, etc. ) as well as some methods to override core mechanics. For instance, it would be very cool if a normal attack was defined in a similar manner as a ranged attack so one could simply override the default attack with a special attack. It would be cool to make a monster that also did a knockback with their normal attack.

I can respect what you say about dungeons here derek. I do think you should give modders a way of linking tactical battle maps together so they can make their own "dungeons" however, even if you yourselves are not going to use the feature.

Seeing as how you have been kind enough to share an insight into how you view looking at the design process, can I be so bold as to display how my thought process would track with the above example of dungeons? Ok here i go (btw i am starting with your reasoning for perhaps not including them, for the record totally want dungeons).

"hmmm I have decided on balance that elemental shouldn't have dungeons because as I feel lengthy periods away from the stategic map would perhaps alienate certain players and also I have great plans for making the strategic map its self more alive and interesting."

"So with that decided what can I still add at a tactical level that would allow for some creative story telling and get the most out of the single screen tactical battles we currently have?"

"Well I could add the ability for units to join battles after the start. This would allows for "bosses" to be introduced to the combat once lesser mobs have been defeated or based on other conditions"

"I could allow speach bubbles during tactical combat along side tags which allow modders and us as developers to decide under what conditions these speach bubbles would cue. This would allow us to continue telling storys within tactical battles and also help bring them alive abit"

"hmm what else, well if we only are giving one screen for tactical battles we could create a larger variety of battle maps and not only that we could create alot more interesting terrain features on those maps which can be used to liven up battles by offering various bonuses etc"

"well there are three ideas that both are easier to impliment than dungeons and also support and strengthen my choice to keep tactical battles to one screen and add more content to the world map" 

I am not sure what i was trying to convey with the above example of dungeons in relation to design. I think the gist of it is as follows. Not putting dungeons in because you have a much cooler idea for how you want elemental to work is great and will be respected by the community as long as you clearly show us the thought process behind it and it makes sense. Not giving us dungeons and then not giving us something that makes up for in some logical and related way I feel would be a huge mistake and may not be taken well by the community. 

Now I get the sense that you want to take alot of the cool ideas and themes you would have placed in "dungeons" and redesign the game so these things appear straight on the strategic maps. This, if done well is cool by me as although I won't get dungeons I can see you are still giving me all that content that wouldn't be inside them just on my world map so to speak. This allows for alot more interest at the macro strategy level as we arn't getting taken away from the strategic maps as much as if we were dungeon delveing.

I just hope you are always considering the other side of the coin. If you decide most of your interesting things will occur on the world map this may have the effect of making the world of elemental feel small. The nice thing about extensive tactical battle maps or dungeons are that by going from the macro strategic map to a micro tactical one the player is reminded that actually every square of the strategy map is a large interesting expanse filled with adventure that your hero is travelling accross. 

Well, Kael, you don't have to take and use EVERYONES ideas, just mine

I on the other hand did buy Elemental because it was being marketed as the spiritual successor to MoM. And while I agree that it needs to be its own game, I also expect/hope/want all of the things that made MoM great.

Derek, this journal entry needs more sugar.  RAWR

We could easily add a Fallen Enchantress to the game already using the custom sovereign creator.