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!

I had a poppy once.  but it certainly did not have a cock...

But seriously, a few generations of selective breeding and training could turn a black bear from a very fierce creature to a very cuddly creature.  I'd have to agree that if you have access to bears, you can get whatever you want really.  So it should just be "bears" as a resource.  (well, I guess you could argue that if you have a training pen somewhere, bear resource would have to be moved to the place of training, where it could be turned into another type of bear resource)

Addenum:

Quoting landisaurus, reply 6

Heretic! Where's your bear?!

Edit: Double-post. Sorry.

right here!

but seriously, I'm riding on him or something.   He doesn't fit in the tiny 100x100 avatar shot for this one

He'll be back in my avatar by the time the beta comes out (especially if the alpha comes out with no sign of bears and I have to just back on the band wagon.... or should I say, "bear wagon"     but seriously... a wagon pulled by bears would totally rock. )

also, if you look at the other Elemental: War of Magic forum of which I am aware (Elementalgame.info) then you'll notice that I am there still proudly displaying a bear avatar.  I just felt like hanging out on the Master of Magic fan boat for a bit, since that is why I originally showed up in the forum.   I've been creating so many awesome avatars over the last 4 hours, that I couldn't help but change mine.  (it was a tough fight too.   because I really want that flaming yeti too.  I'll someday have to make a " 'saurus' type character avatar, riding a bear with a pet flaming yeti"-avatar

Goodmoring all

If you include non bacis mounts, thought should be given to semi-sentient mounts, and sentient mounts... archers mounted on centaurs carrying pikes... pegasi. . . unicorns. . .  lesser dragons, and griffens, 

unlike horses many of thses make good additionally interesting contibutions to game play.  Pegasi could carry a wounded hero out of combat, lesser dragons and griffens would add additional attacks and continue to fight without their mounts. Unicorns provide magic defence. . . each would have it's own behavour in the event of lose of rider, or wounding of rider.

Thoughts?

best wishes everybody

Sentient mounts saunds alarmingly close to the "raging" debate, but I definately want to see some wierd things in there. Maybe a "mind link" between mount and rider: they are able to act as a single, co-ordinated entity, but if one dies, so does the other....

Welcome to the forums, BTW! (Stay clear of Luckmann: he's a bearist sympathiser. )

@robbie.price:   stardock confirmed there would be no sentient mounts.   so without modding centaur mounts are out of the question.   the others might be fine though (I'm not sure how many mounts they plan to put in the game)

My guess (note that this is just a guess) is that there will be very few: Magical creatures will be treated differently than reources, according to Brad, and there are not terribly many real-world creatures that can be functionally ridden w/o looking silly to a lot of people.

Beg pardon, but isn't 'mount' a really mistaken word for a sentient creature that might go into battle with you on its back?

It seems to me that the relationships start 'down' on the centaur end where the paired units are a warlike analog to a figure skating duo, and towards the other end you find things like Anne McCaffrey's take on 'dragon riding' and the symbs in John Varley's Ophiuchi Hotline stories. (And I mean no disrespect to figure skaters. That's a damned butch sport, costumes and scores aside.)

p. s. Please forgive if you're a SciFi-vs-Fantasy person. I'm a fan of the idea that SF=speculative fiction (and I wish I were a good enough lit guy to try tackling the current wiki page's non-coverage of Delany's essays on the subject).

ya ok i'm streaching it, but nice quotable quote, figure skating