Re; Agartha, I think I've posted this somewhere before, but even if I have, I might as well throw it out there again: I think that the plane could be made vastly more interesting by adding darkness and Darkvision as mechanics.

Like, going by the lore of the game, Agartha seems to be a vast network of caves and tunnels all across Elysium, which intersect with the tunnels of the Dwarves.

So my thinking is, if you made Agartha really large and really easy to access, and a lot wealthier than it currently is, but also really hard to safely explore without the proper units, that'd help a lot to give Agartha a distinct role and feel.

If Agartha was dark, units without Darkvision wouldn't be able to see clearly in it. On the strategic layer, you wouldn't have any vision over the neighbouring squares, unless they were walls, (or terrain tiles in the vein of glowing crystals or mushrooms) - instead you'd just have darkness. If you blundered into an enemy while walking around, you'd be ambushed. And in the tactical layer, units without darkvision fighting in darkness could have some really steep penalties like missing 50% of the time, or all ranged attacks gaining the "scatter" property. Darkvision would eliminate this penalty entirely, of course.

Agartha would then be a great source of wealth and of particular use to the Pale One and Dwarf classes and perhaps some others (seems like Earth Elementals and Undead would operate just fine down there), and to others it could still serve as a risky way of moving between surface mines.

It'd also be nice if it was possible to explore the deep seas of Agartha more reliably in some way. I think you mostly get there using random whirlpools right now? And aside from that, I was always a bit disappointed there weren't some Aboleths or assorted monstrosities hanging around in the abyssal depths.

The southern portions of the map - the ones that on the surface are full of desert - could contain solid sand tiles. Perhaps if you burrow through these, they'll collapse again after a few turns. And, of course, this part of Agartha could be infested with giant burrowing worms, as is tradition. Maybe sometimes they'd dig up to the surface, too.

That sounds really good I kinda wish there was a game which straddles the complexity of Dominions and the ease of access of COE kinda like Xelos's Populum mod also being able to edit the other planes when map making would be pretty cool

Agartha - more objects (dwarven villages and towns, mines, settlements of pale ones, maybe deposits inside the solid rock), definitely more enemies, fill up the water with independents (deep ones, various marine life and horrors) which would make the floods dangerous for amphibians and some gem deposits in water. Probably too much to ask, but dynamic system for cave-ins.
Elemental Planes - make them larger with less space taken by the void maybe? They seem awfully tiny to me even on the largest map size. One idea is to make Elemental Princes into their own faction and so princes from one element sometimes launch invasion on Elysium too.
Hades - I think it's fine. Maybe Hades invasion in the later stages should create two-way portal similar to Inferno event? It's already hard to survive there for non-undead, no need to make reaching it limited to two limited rituals and an item.

I like the way the planes function at the moment. It's hard for most classes to get access to them, and I have to disagree that all classes should get easy access. Having said this, in 98% of multiplayer games they are almost completely ignored. I understand that because they are risky places to go. Therefore the commitment to explore them should be better rewarded. Still, it could be hard to implement them correctly, keeping balance between the sides. Perhaps weak sides like the druid could get access to another plane of their own? Or easy access to a plane that other forest classes find harder to get to?

If we go even further, each class should get features that only work in other realms. Some should be able to access these realms quite reliably, and get better summons or spells or improvements in some way, others should find it very difficult to get to the realms, but if they do, get really good benefits.

Still further, you could have units that have their stats improved if they go to other realms, or mutations or changes. For example, fire elementals gain extra fire shields if they interact with a fire crystal that only spawns in the inferno/elemental realms. Perhaps the bonus will wear off slowly if they go to Elysium or quickly in Agartha (though why/how a fire elemental goes to Agartha is a different question)

And one more idea would be to have items that only spawn in other planes, although this is already true to a degree.

That's a lot of things to consider, and admittedly a lot of features to get working in a balanced way, so I can appreciate it could take a long time to implement them.

There was a discussions somewhere around about making non-conquest victory conditions, like specific quests for each faction. These could make visiting planes more relevant.
Like maybe warlock wants to capture at least one elemental citadel for his quest, demonologist might get score for holding locations in Inferno.

In fact major locations like capitals in Inferno and Hades and the Nexus can be made into giving ticking score to any faction who manages to capture it. Though that would also require making it harder to hold onto them, with inhabitants swarming to recapture the location and maybe even lead to the plane being weakened and being swarmed by factions from other planes.

Originally posted by Arsonius:

There was a discussions somewhere around about making non-conquest victory conditions, like specific quests for each faction. These could make visiting planes more relevant.

Ah:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/403950/discussions/0/1697167355221142422/

I'd completely forgotten about this thread until just now.

I quite like the suggestions of this thread, specially the ones of darkvision and Agartha by Althaea, I don't think every class must have a way of getting to the planes if it doesnt make sense. but more present portals options for the other planes would be nice.

Maybe a option to guarantee a portal to a specific elemental plane on game creation. or simply letting at least the warlock have rituals to reach it, and make the classes have more things to do on the other planes too, options of rituals, etc.

maybe random events like a hole opening up in a mine connected to agartha and a army of pale ones coming out? Or one where a cave opens in a mountain somewhere connected to Hades guarded by Cerberus using the model from dominions the dead keep trying to escape and invade the world of the living maybe make it a gold mine event that way there is an incentive for you to try and capture and hold it?

The problem with the planes right now is that the rest of the game isn't really built around them. The AI never uses them and it's almost always impractical for the player to use them. When it is practical to go to another plane, it's usually to do something game breaking like capturing a citadel in a plane you know your opponents have no way of entering or opening a path to Inferno right behind your enemy's territory.

Void is especially bad as only the High Cultist has a way of safely navigating it, and the most useful feature of it is a backdoor way into the elemental planes, which are in themselves impractical to ever go to.

The elemental planes on paper have use for Warlocks, but you rarely are able to get access to the plane you need to (or any of them sometimes), and even when you can access it, it's almost never worth going and fighting the elemental armies just to get a cheaper ritual.

Hades at least has uses for breaking the game. Barbarians and Necromancers can go, nab a citadel, and become impossible to beat. It's game over at that point. Also helps that the indies there are only slightly harder than in Elysium so you can sometimes use plane shift to nab unusually poorly defended territories that will almost certainly never get taken over from you. I don't think it's intentional for one of the planes to basically make it impossible for you to lose the game though.

I also would like some more content for the void; the idea of it is delightful, but the implementation severely lacks reason to go there. The only thing of value there I know of is a level 3 library.

Originally posted by crawlers:

I also would like some more content for the void; the idea of it is delightful, but the implementation severely lacks reason to go there. The only thing of value there I know of is a level 3 library.

A level 3 library that only a starspawn can reasonably expect to get to in order to make use of. There is also a gateway to the Nexus which is heavily guarded. From there you can get to heavily guarded gateways to the other planes. This is almost completely and utterly useless except as a way for the High Cultist to get an army that has to be led by a specific commander type to the planes after another player has captured a citadel there and destroyed the gateway to it.

Since the void is mainly just a method to backdoor into the planes, the main thing I think it needs is only indirectly related. A way for every class to recover sanity or ward off insanity, as well as a way to get amphibious units for every class so they can potentially still pull off a win after another player hides themselves in an elemental plane. The only other way to backdoor into the planes is if you have a tunneling unit that can find the gateway in Agartha.

Maybe a magic item that allows a unit to regain sanity?

I don't see why units cant just recover 1 point of insanity per turn. It's so slow that any significant amount of insanity is still fairly crippling for a good long time, while the only class that would be substantially affected is necromancers, who let's be honest, it was always kindve bull not being able to use your main guy for reanimation.

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

I don't see why units cant just recover 1 point of insanity per turn. It's so slow that any significant amount of insanity is still fairly crippling for a good long time, while the only class that would be substantially affected is necromancers, who let's be honest, it was always kindve bull not being able to use your main guy for reanimation.

While I like the idea in theory, I'd be worried about giving the Necromancer any kind of buff right now. You can already turn your apprentice into a wight mage almost right at the start and essentially cure the consequences of reanimation every 15 or so turns. I'd hate to see how they would power spike if we reduce that to 7 and give all their living mages that same 15 turn recovery on top of that.

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

I don't see why units cant just recover 1 point of insanity per turn. It's so slow that any significant amount of insanity is still fairly crippling for a good long time, while the only class that would be substantially affected is necromancers, who let's be honest, it was always kindve bull not being able to use your main guy for reanimation.

While I like the idea in theory, I'd be worried about giving the Necromancer any kind of buff right now. You can already turn your apprentice into a wight mage almost right at the start and essentially cure the consequences of reanimation every 15 or so turns. I'd hate to see how they would power spike if we reduce that to 7 and give all their living mages that same 15 turn recovery on top of that.

Maybe it could be coupled with a reduction in the power of reanimation? Like you get the insanity regen, but you reanimate 30% less bodies per reanimation. Another option is to increase the amount of insanity you get per reanimation. That way, large scale/repeated reanimation is still crippling, but it's not permanently crippling. Much better than "I just got a mage spawn, now lets go make him permanently useless in exchange for weak non-healing chaff."