I would rather the continents float in the air, but lore tells us there is water out there. There will be no boats according to the devs. They said we might get them in the expansion to FE. I kind of like that such an obvious thing is missing from the game. It is good fodder for inside jokes. 

Best defensive strategy in Elemental?

Learn to swim...

They have never confirmed that boats will never be in FE to my knowledge, merely that they won't be in for release.

They could simply be focusing on finishing off the land before worrying about the water. Depending on how they do seafaring it could be mostly just a large content patch to a huge new game-play mechanic requiring an expansion. Once you add boats you need: sea tactical maps, sea monsters, sea quests, sea resources, different sea terrains, sea magic, sea traits, etc. I would not begrudge them the chance to finish off the terrestrial part of elemental before even deciding whether to add boats or not.

I hope boats is something that will make the last Elemental game.  (we got one more after this)

When this game approaches release, we should get together and make a list of the content we'd want in the next game or post-release.  There are things that can be expanded on right now.

Well at a minimum you need: transport ships, AI, harbors, beaches/beach spell, and tactical maps. That's for a system like HoMM where you just load troops in transports and when 2 meet you just fight on a ship tactical map. Hardest part would be tactical maps I think, they would be nothing like existing ones and I wonder if the engine would support it. A tacked on boat system without any real content or point other then to move troops over water, and without dedicated tactical maps, would be pretty bad....

Why would you want to have boats so badly if there was no point to them besides maybe some dubious flanking maneuvers that could be done by raise land?

I just want boats to move people over water to islands and other continents.  I don't need Pirates! with it.  WoM already had boats, shores, and harbors.  What it didn't have was a way for the AI to use boats too.  Right now, that's all I want.  I don't need every feature of the game to be fantastic and multi-leveled.  I just need it to exist to provide basic function of moving units over water so better and more interesting maps can be used.  

I really doubt if they can't figure out how to board a boat, that they can figure out how to orcastrate the massive magical engineering feat to raise land from one continnent  to another.  But maybe...

If real humans could raise land, and do other magical shit, I imagine we would have fucked the planet to smithereens by now.  Think Global warming is bad?  Magical earth rapes would have destroyed us, I'm thinking.  But either way, we would still have figured out boats.  Shit, people made it to Easter Island and to other far off places many years ago. 

This is one of my biggest issues with WoM. The boats were taken out, and unless you specifically picked a sov with terraphorming you could get stuck on the main land, or end up with stranded champions.

Looks like right now, it's the same here, if you don't pick up earth magic from the get go, you are stuck with no way of crossing water. I really hope this gets addressed while still in beta. My posts about this in WoM forums never got any response, other that from other people complaining about the same issue. Never got any response from Stardock.

I'm liking the way this game is going so far, but if this doesn't get addressed, it's going to continue to be a showstopper for me.

Right now, if you want to cross water, you are forced to spend a point on Earth Magic. Really, even in the original Civilization, they could get the AI to use boats, how hard can it really be to do something that has already been in use for decades?!

/end frustration

I agree, at the very least a basic movement functionality to allow better world maps, taking a tip from Civ V might be a good last resort, I think.

Adding some sort of warships would be awesome too, but that should be meat for an expansion.

AOW:SM boats/navies were non-functional.  The AI would never use them.

Civ4 took fan patches to make boats useable.  This is not something trivial to add, but it is something I'd want as a focus for the 2nd expansion

Since I'm about to sound maybe a little too critic, let me state first and foremost that I've found my first game fun and engrossing (the MUCH improved flavour and "cuteness" holding the biggest part of merit). 

That said, I feel that the developers have been too stubborn over some concepts, almost to the point of defying reason. That killed EWoM for me even before the blandness had time to become an issue. Most of those concepts are fortunately gone with FE, but alas there are leftovers. I mean, for instance, what's to stop me from entering a "high level" lair? Fear? Ok, I can buy it. An unlocking technology? Not so much. Just give me the warning that the lair appears dangerous, and let me be the judge! I'll face the risk and consequences if I want. What's any "technology" got to do with it? And while they've wasted time (imho) implementing concepts that utterly make NO sense like this one, they decided to give up on an essential, absolutely necessary feature like the presence of boats (a feature all games of this kind have). I mean what did people do when they had water near them, since the dawn of time? They built boats to cross them.

In FE the Peoples of the land won't be able to deal with water at all, but they'll be able to research "technologies" to learn how to "address" high level heroes (who wouldn't even answer "no!" otherwise), as well as learn how to make a step into a challenging lair. This disconnection from logic is still the main issue for me, even though the game seems finally headed to become fun, generally well crafted and "loved".

And having multiple continents, with water that can't be crossed isn't half arsed?

Same issue as WoM. Had an opponent on another continent, and no way to reach them. Had a huge great game going, but then had champions with pieces of the forge, that were stuck on an Island, with no way off. If there is water, and seperate land masses, there has to be a way cross them, that can be used every game, with every sov. If not boats, then at least the raise land spell MUST be standard for everyone, and not require earth magic.

Idea on that idea listed above.

Maybe if you want to enter a higher level lair then your tech allows, you can try, but there's a chance, depending on how short in levels you are, that you reach a "bad end"- and die without getting to battle.

Maybe 30% chance if one level short, +20% for each additional level.  Maybe per unit.

Maybe with some nice funny messages, like

"A giant pigeon hatofully rips your champion's gizzard out, killing them instantly."

"You found a new interesting species.  Unfortunately, it was a grue."

"Dwarves can't swim.  Neither can you after falling down into a massive river."

"The species that would eventually become Drengins- well, you're now the reason they enjoy the taste of human skin."

Ok, I suck at these.  But if exploration tech represented the ability to traverse hazards/traps, then it makes sense.

Once we get a solid and good land based TBS, we can worry about adding seas. Frogboy explained about the complexities of it during WoM so it makes sense to have it as expansion material... if FE does well.

Somehow, it may be easier than to teach the AI how to use Raise Land to create land bridges to cross to another continent. Something as streamlined as Civ V, as mentioned before, could be good enough (MoM had something like that, right?).