I'm not with the OP on this...I actually think there ought to be a non-territory teleport too... I surely think the mana cost is appropriate...I mean you have to wait 5 turns to get that mana back presently... maybe cost more mana to move your army with you or something of the like.

Actually, if I had my druthers, I would have a teleport scheme where your range was determined by sovereign/hero stats in some fashion. Limited early on, but expanded late game.

I would like teleport to scale with the number of troops transported, or perhaps the distance travelled.  Seems to make the most sense, and this way it would scale late game.  As it stands it is a huge crutch that you can use to defend your territory.

I believe the kingdom teleport spell is currently not working as intended. Reason being, there is another teleport spell, called 'teleport friends', which is a level 5 or so spell and casting it is three times as expensive, yet does exact same thing as the teleport spell kingdom starts with.

Thus i think the first teleport was meant to only teleport the caster of the spell, and not the whole army that is with him.

Do you realise how powerful Imbue Spellcaster is for the Empire factions?  Having 5-6 casters leveled to 10 essence early on is brutal, especially when you research demon spy and can summon one creature each, with the ability to do 10 dmg to all enemies.  Thats an easy 60 dmg to all opponents on the field waay before the kingdom can get magic that good (the kingdom dont get demon spy at all).

Teleport is good, i like that the 2 factions are different.  Moping about overpowered abilities leads all too often to all races/factions becoming equal, as in the same.  Having different levels of power in different areas is what makes the game strategic, ie empire have early game spell power, kingdom have early game logistics power.  Deal with it.

Another note, when playing the kingdom there is (was when i last checked) a second teleport spell you learn that says it teleports your caster and army (if one) to your territory.  Oddly, this is also what the basic teleport spell does, makes me wonder if basic kingdom teleport is only supposed to port your sov, without his army. [stax77 beat me to this]

kadrasar

PS: I like Dagwood's ideas on non-territory teleporting and teleport range (but only as it applies to non-territory porting).

If you could only teleport your sovereign, I'd be okay with that. It's that the optimal strategy is now to create a stack of death with all your strongest units and teleport them around - that kills the strategy.  If you want a fast moving sov, you can use points to level up his movement, buy him a horse/ring/cloak/boots, and give him adventurer and organized traits. Build roads with caravans across your territory to speed movement. If you play on a large world, aren't you looking for "epic" scale? How does the ability to zip back and forth across the world in an instant add to the epic scale? Want to send you soverign off to explore the other side of the world? Shouldn't there be a compromise in taking that action - namely that he can't be at home to defend? For me, the teleport spell as is turns a large world into the same strategy as a small world, but with more micromanagement of resources. There aren't enough forced trade-offs in this game for my tastes. There are never any unavoidable set-backs and not enough consequences for poor strategic planning.

Imbue champion is like a level 2 spell for Kingdom. I always have 5-6 early stage casters on Kingdom, because this spell is so easy to get. I usually get the spell before I get get enough gold to recruit the champions to cast it on! Doesn't make much of a difference in making Kingdom and Empire different. I have my stack of death with my Sov casting teleport and the other casters doing the combat spells. I could try not to use this strategy, but somehow deliberately holding back when I know I could do it is equally off-putting to me.

Good point.

I still say teleport should be avail to kingdom from start, but some restrictions could be fun.  Costs in crystal?  Channeling time of N turns to cast? (time for a surprise attack to do damage before porting reinforcements).  Only able to teleport to a dedicated channeler garrisoned in a city with the correct building? (amount of units able to port is dependant on dedicated channeler's intel or essence).

Theres plenty can be done, heres an idea for the modders out there.  Give some of these ideas the community is generating a go, and post feedback here.  I'm sure stardock will love that.

kadrasar

I have already been working on a random event that erases all of these types of spells from the game. It would really be a kick in the face if they were deleted from the game or pushed back to a higher mana cost. I think teleport is a good example of a seriously good spell. Maybe the range needs to be limited or even based on inteligence. I would settle for us starting with a less usefulful spell like endurance and then teching up to teleport. Faster movement is a valid source of strategic variety and should be expanded, not erased.

That is unless it is part of this:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395697

i wouldn't mind a more expensive version to teleport to uncontrolled or allied territory. 

I can see that teleport can speed up exploration and movement in huge maps, I think those are valid comments as it does take a while to move around. I would argue though that if speed is important, there are other options to move more than 3 spaces a turn. Cloaks, rings, boots, horses, roads, using level-up points to boost movement. If speed is important to you, you have to commit resources to developing mount technology and other speed items at the expense of other priorities. It is perfectly possible to have a 6+ movement a turn sovereign by mid game without using level-up points.

What really bothered me in my recent game however was that I had this rich gold city (3 mines) that I had neglected to defend for 100+ turns and was on the border with an AI Empire. In a rare and precious moment of lucidity, the AI decides to bring a powerful stack to take the city. So what do I do? Teleport my stack of death from the other side of the world where I'd been crushing things left and right to build experience and level-up. I had clearly made a stupid strategic decision, but teleport allowed me to effectively defend the city instead of forcing me to plan ahead to defend valuable cities, take distance and response time into consideration, and decide whether gold is better spent on cool champion armor or more troops for the front line. There may be other ways to address this without getting rid of teleport all together, but I really think it kills a lot of the strategy in a large/huge map.

With the upcoming changes allowing essense(wisdom) to contribute to mana regeneration, the 5 mana cost for teleport is going to get worse. It's ridiculous still to require a high mana cost because this is a spell that's too powerful to be available only to people who invest HEAVILY in wisdom.

Instead I simply propose making it cost 75% of your maximum mana to cast at any given time. Keeps the double casts away without using an item, and keeps the costs fair for all sovereigns.

I would also point out that it is my mainstay strategy to train three or four very weak and cheap NPCs to be my Teleportation Specialists. After three or four temples of essences are up and running they have like 100+ essence to spend on unlimited teleports. Upping the cost would not stop me from doing this.