Given that it's unlikely (ok -- impossible) they'll release Elemental unless the balance is 'good enough' (I say 'good enough' as balance is relative not absolute and it'll never be 'perfect'), that they're talking about a late August release tells me their internal playtesting is showing decent balance currently, and that they're fairly content with the current content (features/systems/etc.).

Beta 2 will show us much (but not all) of what they currently have, so we'll soon see.

That said, I'm kinda surprised about a release that soon.  I guess I hoped for a bit more discussion on features/etc., like the 'Richness vs Realism' and Winner-Take-All, and the points raised in the various research threads and the 'avoid must build starts' thread and the discussions on the role of essence, etc.  Maybe I'm just enjoying the discussions so much I don't want them to end.

Then  I remember Elemental's modability and that release isn't the end, it's just the start.

Perhaps there could be another reason, but barring something completely unexpected I see no reason to not let flying units form armies.  The potential for flying units in tactical battles is great, though:  Picking up units and dropping them on others,  immunity to close range combat while you're in the air,  dragons going on fire-breath strafing runs...

Balancing is something that will go on for years. There is no perfect balance and I make no promises that the game will be perfectly balanced. The only promise I can make is that we will do our best to make the game FUN to play (particularly in single player).

There are people who say Starcraft 2 is not balanced and that Sins of a Solar Empire is so imbalanced as to be  "broken".  My main concern on "balance" is in the area of pacing and making things feel right as you play (i.e. making sure what things cost makes sense and that sort of thing).

Very good questions indeed. For the Modding part, I can already say "Yes, that will be possible". The Modding of Elemental is one of their primary concerns. I'm not sure about the second question. There will be lots of "options" though.

I'd kinda like an answer to the "stupid question" I asked a page back as well. See below.

I would think what I describe above would just be "common sense" but you can never be %100 sure about these things unless you go straight to the source for answers

Very true. I'm curious for a couple reasons actually. Working on the Dragonlance Mod, as DL fans know, DL has TONS of Dragons and players playing the Mod will be controlling whole armies of them. For that, it would be nice to know how much I'm going to have to change, be it simply editing armies in XML or having to dig deep into the Python, for which I'd most likely need help.

Sorry for back to back posts. My brain works in a sad jumble of punctuated equilibrium.

If you want to make a Dragonlance world, which by necessity will rely fairly heavily on flying, you could do a simple kludge - we know there are islands, therefore there is water. Islands pose no challenge to an AI if the water is trivial to cross, and Frogboy already said that islands are mercilessly slap-boxing his AI at the moment. Do a quick tile convert whereby the water becomes your sky, and design your map and the backstory so that your players build toward the great battle in the skies over <wherever>. It's not perfect, I know, but for as long as I've been playing games a well-crafted story does wonders to mitigate technological limitations. Though as a coder maybe you'd rather hack the engine. More power to you

Given the sophistication of the editing tools we're being promised, making your legions of dragons and whatever should be fairly easy. Until someone hacks up a multi-level function for the engine, or native flying, that's all I've got. Sorry.

I will be making the world of Krynn as approximate as I can. I've got a pretty good idea of what I'll need to do in most cases. You're definitely on to a good idea though. To do it even simpler I'd just edit the tile properties of the mountain ranges and make them passable by only units with a certain "Tag" like "Mountain Climbing" or "Flying". Then assign how many movement points it costs these types of units to cross the mountains. There's a lot of ways it can be done. Good thinking though.

Definitely. in Dragonlance there are "Dragon Riders" aplenty. those will most likely definitely have to be modded in though. I don't have any idea if there will be any art assets of anyone riding a Dragon in Elemental. If not, then it becomes a question of my ability to code and possibly have to make a new art asset. I have some skills, yes, but not all the skills I would need to do it on my own if need be.

Skins and Textures I can do. Some coding in Basic, XML, HTML, C#, C+, I'm ok with those. Python? No experience what-so-ever. With all the medical crap I'm going through and meds I'm on, it's not really possible for me to concentrate enough to learn another new programming language atm.

I'll have to cross those bridges when I come to them, as it were.

We just put in like 300+ pages of input into those very features. I am assuming that will be taken into account.

Oh yeah it was for sure but my point was it wasnt anywhere near the score a SoaSE gamer would give it myself included. The other part of that i forgot to mention was that it got reviewed maybe 6 months after release by everyone because it was more an afterthought for reviewers to play the game not being a highly publicized sequel like most games seem to be these days. Most however once they played it were amazed by the game and gave good reviews, however this was a long time after i had been suggested by my mate to play it myself and quite a bit after i had already been hooked. 

But can that Dragon Fly Over a Mountain? (Strategic Map)

I hate to hate but why not wait until all the effects are in before you make your critique.