Would you have some skills be better in some senses and worse in others, or would you like to see the skills all have reletively equal counterparts?

(By skills, I compare similar skills, such as druidry/aquamancy/geomancy ETC.)

I just want to see what people think.

Ah I don't know which of your options goes with which question, but I hate the idea of each skill having an equal opposite. I am a big fan of diversity, depth and challenges.

Checks... and...?

*Flashbacks to 6th grade history*

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Checks and balances always provides the most diversity but also provides the most headaches. Usualy the Best Way to win involves one path (i.e. high charisma in peaced Influencing) making the group with the advantage there too favored.

It CAN work though, but to make it work you need to give each side different goals. Let's say that Celest had more Charismatic races attuned to it and skills that improved their Influencing power, while Magnagora guilds had better attack skills and a stronger defense in Nil (not to say this is true, just imagine it). Then, to make sure the balances worked, you would have to make sure that both the Cosmic war and the village revolts were equally strong ways of becomming stronger/weakening the enemy.

Do that, and Celest would have a hard time killing the Demon Lords but would not HAVE to. Instead, they would only have to muster up enough defense to keep the Supernals alive while pressing the advantage in the village influencings. Magnagora, in contrast, could focus on just keeping enough villages to keep the comms/power required for Celestia raids, focusing on killing the Supernals for power and to sap down Celest's Pool.

If both do well on their fronts, it should be an overall stalemate, powerwise. If Celest can overcome their combat weakness in Cosmic or Mag musters their way to taking over Celest villages, THEN there should be a winning side.

Up until recently, such a thing would be impossible: you can't ignore either to have a chance. Now that villages are more peaceful and Culture is added, we have different, but more effective golas for the cities, allowing them to not HAVE to copy each other just to win.

As a side note, this is why I disliked how the Communes HAD to focus so much on Faethorn and nothing else during the whole Fae war. That conflict realy needs some alternatives, say, a way of growing/hurting the enemy by expanding their forests and shrinking their foe's. Then you can, say, have Serenwilde hold an advantage in Faethorn while Glomdoring attempts to choke Serenwilde off Prime.

Damn Quidgyboo, you replied before I could. I could not agree with you more.

Diversity of course, though it's a lot harder to balance.

I am a big fan of diversity, but things should have some way of balancing themselves out. Not that ow because the geomancers have skill x then aquamancers should have skill y, where the skills are nearly the same or are like exact counters of each other. but instead geomancers have skill x and aquamancers have skill y, where both skills are equally powerful but totally different from each other.

That's what we attempt to do.

And for that, we love you long time.