Vyks wrote:

-Spells

Are you serious? It's a historical game.

Maybe it's a literature club, where nations compete in spelling proficiency.

the three poins seem obvious for me. I especially hope there will be a moral system. It is sorely lacking in many 4x, but as far as History and Warfare are involved, it is probably the most important variable governing battle outcome. For example the few, undemoralisable spartans, fighting to the death thousands of persians in the Thermopilae Battle, Alexanders the vastly inferior in number macedonian phalanx/army routing Darius hordes at Issos. Two great moral Armies going at each others throat at Isandlwana, the british wouldn't flee despite no ammunitions, and being totaly outnumbered, the Impis wouldn't flinch despite gruesome losses. Then At Rorke's Drift, the Impis moral fail, and the Brits "survived" the onslaught, and won the battle. 

Moral is and extremly important variabler, and the beauty of it is that it can be modified by many factors: numbers, position, weapon superiority, fanatism, leadership, training, experience, previous battles outcome...

So a must have for an historical 4x game, even more so it is not frequently depicted.

Vyks wrote:

-The ability for melee units to make moving away from them difficult ; once 2 units are at melee distance, if the player want to move away from the other melee unit there is going to be a stat based probability that determine the chances that the unit will effectively escape the other unit.

This could actually be very easy to implimement with certain modifiers to movement. For instance if a unit enters another melee unit's zone of control, their movement is now reduced, or has a chance to be reduced, thus potentially allowing the person they're fleeing to strike again. Of course this would work much better if formations and where a unit is facing has a larger affect on combat that what we've previously seen from hex-based combat.

Very intersting topic !
I'll try to add some few things and sum up after that.
Moral is relative to several battle factor (said earlier in this topic), several military factor (as said, training, experience) and we could also add social factors like :
- the happiness/faith of the society for its nation (happier is the society more confident will be its army). At some point I was thinking of the type of government, but after thinkings, I do not consider the type of government was the main factor but how the society likes its nation (culture). I relate this with the book 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'  written by Yuval Noah Harari. Even if I don't agree at 100% with this book, he has some good point about how people make its nation alive by believing in it.

-  the type of war (to reconquest a lost city for example could add bonus vs helping an ally at the opposite of the world may not add moral)

- sickness (a big problem in the armies for a long time, most of the losses were due to diseases)

The military and social factors have a slow evolution as they depend on many factors. However the 'battle' factor can change quickly.

So here a try of summarize (feel free to modify, here I tried to sum up all what was said earlier) : 

 Battle / war factor  :

-  results of the previous battles
- presence of an officer in the army (necessary to inspire and catalize the morale, malus if it's killed)

-  last generation unit vs olded unit 

- scary units like elephants (Vyks)

- the unit is not adapted to the environment of the battle

- the number of units in the armies

- the position (on a hill, in a fortress, defending its city)

- ...

Military factor :
- Training
- Well paid

- experienced unit

- ...

Social factor : 

- sickness

- confidence of the society in its nation

- religion

- Cause of war

- ...

Consequences  (as said Vyks) : 

- influencing the statistics for the result of the fights, etc...

- fleeing 

Obviously, it's not necessary to take all this factor to build a moral value.

According to A. Upham Pope in 'The importance of morale', Napoleon has said 'in war morale forces are to physical as three to one'

There's one way we might be able to combine the one use abilities (spells) with the morale system: stamina. Basically, every unit has to spend a certain amount of stamina every time it moves in a battle, when it attacks or is attacked, or when using special abilities (which are usually large enough costs you can only do one or two). You also have a fear meter that goes up when attacked, when surrounded, when hit with certain effects, etc. When the stamina is less than a unit's fear it breaks and flees, possibly getting destroyed entirely.

This could even play into the overworld. The longer a unit is outside it's territory the lower it's starting stamina gets, with certain abilities decreasing this loss.

As the map seems pretty large (and I like it), distance for armies can be a problem. 

We could has add an option of 'forced walk' which obviously add 1 or 2 tiles bonus deplacement for 2,3 (or more turn)  but in the same it reduces the stamina. So that way you could move faster the units but they will lose stamina in the same time. Stamina will come back when the unit will rest 1 or 2 turns for example...

With all these kinds of modifiers like stamina en moral I feel like the units really interact with the world. 

It would be amazing if they would add these kinds of modifiers to the game.

Hard no on any special abilities/spells/powers, and here's why:


1. Too specific

Each unit type should already be unique without offering an additional layer of abilities. "Barrage" for archers? "Charge" for cavalry? These should already be things that define a unit, not special choices by the player. At the very least, any abilities should be handled as they were in Endless Legend; permanent buffs/debuffs. The player should at least be able to go from Antiquity to the Industrial Revolution without having to learn new special actions every era and then build an army to take advantage of it.

2. Player impressions

Any feature added for the player must be usable by the AI opponents. Given the poor intelligence of AI in 4X games as a whole, this additional layer of battle complexity will lead to balance problems. There is also the factor of player agency. Simply put, playing with "special actions" isn't fun. They will fail the player in times of need, or stack against the player and lead to an "unfair" result.

There are better, more consistent ways of modeling military technology and tactics over millenia without relying on "spells." I agree that the "HP" and "Attack" used by CIV are not enough. Use existing, proven stats such as Zone of Control, armor, and suppression/retreat, rather than inventing features that will be difficult to understand, difficult to implement, and difficult to please.

Aye_Avast wrote:

Any feature added for the player must be usable by the AI opponents. Given the poor intelligence of AI in 4X games as a whole, this additional layer of battle complexity will lead to balance problems.

^ this - glad someone said it.

The #1 complaint I've heard against Civ 5+6 is that the AI is not smart enough to coordinate the one-unit-per-tile system, and it's definitely a frustration in 4X games as a whole.

Vyks wrote:

- A full-manual mode in which the player will not give the orders at the start of the turn but will give the order of each unit only when each unit will be allowed to move through the initiative system.

It should also be an option at the start of the battle so that people that want to play fast games in multiplayer don't see it as an annoyance.

I strongly disagree with this, for the reason listed above. EL's fighting system puts the player on a similar playing field as the AI. A player has to strategize, but just in a different way, knowing that their units are following the same AI rules as their enemy. When I play Civ 5/6, if might defend my city with a much smaller military force than should be necessary, because I know that I'm smarter than the AI and can manipulate the terrain better. Humankind is going to have that problem amplified because they have more varied landscapes with cliffs and elevation changes that Civ doesn't have.

Vyks wrote:

-The ability for melee units to make moving away from them difficult ; once 2 units are at melee distance, if the player want to move away from the other melee unit there is going to be a stat based probability that determine the chances that the unit will effectively escape the other unit.

I like this. Replaying EL, I'm surprised that they don't have zone of control (or at least none of the units I played with had it).