Oh, and add my vote in the pool for Bear Cavalry.

I dimly recall reading somewhere that hippos kill more people each year than lions, elephants, tigers etc combined.

Hippo cavalry, imagine that....

That's true. A hippo can run 40 km/h on land. Hippos are very agressive, attack humans, boats and crocodiles. A male weights 1500-1800 kg on average, but can be as much as 4000 kg (4t).

hippo you say? hmm ......

Hippo cav isn't hard to imagine.  I think its been done actually (having people ride a hippo, not particularly for war)

Wapol from the show One Piece rode a wolly snow hippo.  (it was like a normal hippo, except it was wolly and had long legs to walk through high snow.  It could also climb mountains, which i didn't understand))

This has been a concern of mine, too. I mean, sure, being able to customize your units with weapons and armor is nice, but eventually won't it just become everyone-has-the-highest-upgraded-items. The various sides should be different, because it doesn't matter how many factions there are, if it's me facing a dozen me's, it's just me. No variety.

Seeing new cavalry - nay, other units - based on location would be a great way to not only make you want to try and achieve new locations (or play from new regions) but it will allow some new strategies and spells to be created. Living in a forest, your channeler may charm a few dozen wolves, then place enchantments to increase their size and strength. Congratulations, you now have wolf riders. Add in worgs/wargs, bears, hippos (near watery areas) and each kingdom can gain its own special units based solely on its location.

Granted, having one unit isn't going to be much fun (Yup, they've got 10k soldiers, all of whom are identical to my own. But those two hundred wolf riders? This'll be interesting...) so perhaps tossing in various other units (living in a forest, your troops may gain a bonus to axe-fighting. On a mountain? Increased health. On the sea? Defense, from fighting off pirates or something.)

As to what GW Swicord said, I agree wholeheartedly. It could add a massive degree of planning and strategy. If you live in a moist marsh with unsure footing, your troops may learn to navigate it just by living there. But enemy troops? Who can say if they'll get lost. Perhaps a spell that would normally call a rainstorm over a location and give increased crop production could be cast on an enemy army and slow their movement, maybe even break supply trains and whatnot. Even the simplest spells wielded properly could be devastating, but there's the whole 'wielded properly' bit.

I like the idea for spells to modify "normal" animals a lot.  Perhaps magically alter humans into "giants", etc.  Keeping such spells at higher levels of research, and limiting the ability to make obscenely powerful creatures could keep the game balance while still being a lot of fun.

This idea totally makes me crave "Chaos Channel" like spells.  (that spell added some strange effect on whatever spell it was cast, such as giving wings, fire breath, or scaly skin)

I can imagine a few of the elements having their own mount (or just unit in general) effecting spells that might give bonuses to mounts as described.

It seems from this we may not get a large variety of basic mounts

Let them make a solid system for release and then increase it through expansions and mods made by users.

How many "types" of natural resource are there? I can think of metal, wood, food, crystal, mount. Now look at the mid range values for early, mid and late game - 5, 10, and 16.5. Possibly they are thinking of haveing an early, mid-game, and late version of each "type" of resource with possibly a smattering of other misc resources? I could picture something like:

Early game:

Metal: Iron (to make stuff) Gold (medium of exchange)

Wood: Pine (Is that one of the easier woods to work with?) or maybe just have resource "wood" for all levels?

Food: Corn, my people call it maize.

Crystal: Aeonic Crystal

Mount: Horse             Total: 6 + any misc resources I am not thinking of

Mid game:

Metal: ? whatever is better than iron but still not godly sounding.

Wood: Do we need an upgrade of wood?

Food: See Wood

Crystal: Myrran (!) Crystal

Mount: Bears? Or save them for late game?       Total: 9-11 depending if food and wood need upgrades, + misc

Late game:

Metal something Godly sounding like adamantium!

Wood, food upgradea: ?

Crystal: something godly sounding! like I cant think of anything right now! Kryptonite? Arnorium?

Mount: either bears or if that was the mid game mount then these mounts would have to be mythical.

Grand total 12-16, + any misc natural resources that I haven't thought of.

I realize I wandered a bit off the reservation, I guess the point is, even with "only" 20 natural resources types, that could still easily have room for a few mounts. I am betting they dont want to stray too far away from the basic horse shape for modeling reasons (although having my bear cavalryman's legs "disappear" into the shoulder fur of his mount would be a price worth paying!

It's not a secret that I, Luckmann, master of the towers of azurite, quartz and onyx, defender of the central territories, hero of the hierarchy and cuddler of bears, have a slight preference to the idea of bear mounts.

But I'm not sure, mechanics-wise, if we'd want many different races of a single mount species. How'd you keep track of them all? Sure, at first, it wouldn't be much of a problem. But then, suddently, you have four different kinds of bears, four different stacks of a resource where all are used basicly the same, four different tabs or entries to keep track of, four different units clogging up your build queue. Four different kinds of bears that perform slightly different, all in maybe the same army. They'd all be subject to the effect of the lowers common denominator.

This isn't really a problem, right? Because, "it's just four kinds". Four extra units? Four extra units that you've constructed in the unit-builder.

But let's say we have 6 or 8 different mounts. Let's say 8.

That's not 4 anymore. It's suddently 4 races of all 8 available species. That's 24 extra kinds of units that won't really make that much of a difference, for all the extra work in maintaining them.

Now, if there was a choice somewhere, instead. "What kind of bears do you want to raise in all our bear pens?".

1) Grizzlies.
2) Brownies.
3) Cuddlies.
4) Cavies.

After that choice, any and all bears you'd raise would be Cuddlies. I'm not sure I'd like that system either (Bears should simply be 'bears', resource-wise, if you ask me).

As for the idea of having mounts that also confer an active combat bonus, fighting after the rider have died, I'd have to say no. It doesn't -really- make that much of a difference, and it'd raise all kinds of facepalming from me when I'd see it, wheter or not the channeler have control over it, if it's raging, or whatnot.

rawr?

Poppycock... Im giving you karma!