Right now the "features" we got in E:WoM are Dynasties, City Building, Units/Heroes/Sovereig, Researching techs and Magic (acquiring knowledge). Not sure if I should add adventuring since that falls under the research tree, but for the examples I'm providing I wont use adventuring.

When I say "features" I'm referring to the "systems" that move the gameplay, if that makes sense to you. Right now these systems are very good in their own right, but its been bothering me lately that most of them don't interact with each other a lot. So I spent a while trying to come up with ideas to make these "systems or features" interact with each other naturally while we play the game.

As they are right now they are good, and I can say I have fun when I'm trying the beta for bugs, even when Im not supposed to be enjoying it  But the lack of interaction between these features really bothers me at the end of the day. I don't know where I read this, I believe it was in a journal and it said something along like this "games don't need to be really complex to have depth, they can have depth with simple systems that intertwine". I probably butchered that quote but it made sense to me. Take Lego blocks for example, it is possible to do good stuff with just using 1 color block, but when you use them all together then you can really do awesome things!

Sorry for that um, weird analogy, but my points is E:WoM could be so much more awesome if you made the current systems be joined in a way.

So lets start with my examples and ideas:

Arcane knowledge (Learning Spells/Magic):   

At the moment this to me feels like it could use something else. You learn a spell and thats, then you learn another and another. You also most probably gotta wait to use them till combat, but thats not my point. My gripe lies with the Learning system itself and hopefull you will understand what I'm saying with my examples.

Idea 1:

To improve upon the Arcane knowledge system I propose having a hidden counter that adds up all the Arcane Knowledge you've earned up to your current turn. Eg, you are gaining 5 knowledge per turn and you;re in turn 10. This hidden counter would be at 50. What is the purpose of this counter? With this you could add another layer to knowledge system and you could use this counter to do multiple cool things.

Example 1:

When this counter reaches 50 points, and you gain the chance to cast a free enchantment in a city that lasts X turns. Your nation is increasing its knowledge and they found a way to cast a free spell yay!

In this example I connected the Arcane Knowledge to our cities and it's not affecting the magic research, its just a hidden counter that adds a possible cool bonus.

Example 2:

The counter reachs 50 points just like above but instead of a free city enchant, you could get a free unit enchant and effectively add a relation between arcane knowledge and units!

One suggestion I thought of was making the actual number required to obtain this bonus dependant on your total cities. For example, if you have 1 city then you would get your first bonus at say 35 points, but if you have 5 cities then the first bonus would be at say 160 (made up these numbers out of thin air). This would help alleviate a bit the problem small kingdoms suffer against bigger kingdoms.

Dynasty:

Dynasty is a very cool sounding concept but at the moment its rather simplistic. You get married and have children and they are worth diplo points. I thought of a few things to add relations between cities and other systems and heres what I came up with.

Example3:

You could choose which city to raise your kid (making them interactive since they're an useless baby lol) and say that the city they grew up in has an Ice Crystal, then they could develop an affinity towards Ice. This could increase their defense against Ice based or increase their potency with ice spells, or both!

Example4:

With an Arcane Knowledge bonus you could imbue your babies and by the time they join you they become more powerful by appearing with Extra Essence.

These bonuses could be random, could be a choice like when cities level up, or could be both! I'll add more ideas as I fix them up a bit and this post is too long as it stands .

These are just 4 examples of meshing all these features together which I think could add more depth to E:WoM, I already posted detailed examples of how champions and cities could work together in a previous thread. I got more ideas between the other systems but if people have any ideas or improvements over these ones please feel free to comment. I'm doing another Power Point file with these ideas and will post em when they are a bit more organized. Thanks for reading~!