While I would love to see terrain in the tactical battle play a large part (i.e. bonuses for holding the high ground) there is such a thing as biting off more than you can chew.

Now for a water mage to require a nearby source of water for some of his spells - both doable and fitting. And like I said if they could actually make high ground vs low ground, attacking from the protection of trees, etc matter in the tactical map, that would be very cool but it might be a lot ot expect.

Empire: Total Wars with dragons and magic would be incredibly cool though.

bah double postage

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly: an actual terrein-based tactical map would be great. It would also be a LOT of work on the dves part to get it running.

That water mage needin water to cast spells would be awesome. But would that same rule apply to the other elements?

Well, when are earth and air not going to be available? Fire....hmm not sure how that would work to find fire in nature either. I was thinking more that each element should have it's own strengths and weaknesses. And water should be able to cast some spells without access to water, but it seems like if you are going to cast "Tidal Wave" on your opponents, it makes sense that there be some good amount of water available in the tactical map. (I am assuming not all tactical maps will be identical, but will be a blown up version of the tile the battle occurs on).

Something like this would add a strategic element to battle. If you are going to use a lot of water mages (for instance) be sure to join battle in a terrain square that they will do the most good...

Also, earth mages maybe can only summon stone elementals if they are in rocky terrain, otherwise they are limited to weaker earth elementals. I am sure ideas for how to implement the same types of idea for air and fire mages could be thought up.

The problem with the tactical map being a zoomed-in square is that each square on the overworld map only has one terrein "identity": plains, hills, etc. A blow up would just be a homogenous square.

Glad to see magic, and our comparatively major ignorance of it in game terms, come up in a 'battle system' thread. Early on, I thought in terms of things like 'earth mages,' but since Scott's recent post with a few short spell sketches in it, I've begun to wonder if the variable is not what spell books you have on your shelf (MoM wizard setup reference), but what shards (MoM mana nodes) you control.

However the larger story/mechanics work out, I really would like to see something in the way of map-based variables for element-based magic. Raising a wall of stone should definitely be easier in a mountain range than it is in a lowland swamp.

I dont agree with scoutdog (no offense) but in Civ 4 a tile can have hills and rivers in it. So thats means all squares will not  necessarlly be homogenous...if the devs program it in such a manner.

Rivers (especially in civ 4) and water in general are often exceptions. But have you ever seen a tile divided, say down the middle into jumgle and deasert

Nah but I guess in Elemenal anything is possible,

Since we are on the topic of th terrain, I think on the overland and battle map should rough terrain affect movement?<cough>bear calavary<cough>

True. It would be really nice for each tactical battle to use its own mapgen algorythm to create a ballefield based  off of the tile and the ones surrounding it.

But the battlemap would kinda have to match the overland tile

Therein lies the problem.

Man I did not know that terrain could be such a problem