Guess what? Turns out that the commune ethereal discretionary power is about 50 times better than the city elemental/cosmic discretionary powers. Liveforest webs constantly, like every 10 seconds. That's FAR, FAR better than the measly 300-400 damage of ripples/flux.

That is kind of ridiculous. The communes need to stop being given advantages over the cities.

Hear hear.

And the cities need to stop being given advantages over teh communes!

:roll:

...

What advantages?

Why, the ability to make life-saving potions. Or, perhaps the huge passive power income that statues bring in. Or the Ripple that our Elemental planes have that gives anorexia and stupidity.

Silly Shamarah.

Erm..ditto from Shamarah.

Elemental Bashing.

Quick access to astral

Easier to defend chokepoints of entry.

Paintings for quick transport.

Enchantments.

Statues.

Being a cutoff point of the highway.

RP reasons for ownership of places not directly connected to the city (i.e. Merians, Shallach, inner sea, sea of despair)

Variable types of government styles.

I'm getting bored...

Honestly though, these calls for making everything the same is getting annoying.

Elemental Bashing.
You can gather fae. Since they spawn so often now, I think the experience is on par.

Quick access to astral
Point taken, though you can get there by aetherships.

Easier to defend chokepoints of entry.
Erm...no.

Paintings for quick transport.
You got rifts on Ethereal.

Enchantments.
You got potions. Before you say Jewelry decays so you could use your enchants: You can repair jewelry.

Statues.
Totems.

Being a cutoff point of the highway.
What kind of advantage is THAT?

RP reasons for ownership of places not directly connected to the city (i.e. Merians, Shallach, inner sea, sea of despair)
That's more of a drawback.

Variable types of government styles.
Not so sure about that. You can choose the political structure.

Elemental Bashing. X

- The communes can bash the elemental planes too

Quick access to astral

- Perhaps, but there are skills and artifacts that can eliminate this advantage

Easier to defend chokepoints of entry. X

- Umm, are you smoking something? The communes have the best defense bar none.

Paintings for quick transport.

- Perhaps, though spores are almost as good if not better in certain circumstances

Enchantments. X

- Alchemy is far more important

Statues. X

- Totems are indestructible, plus a excellent source of power generation

Being a cutoff point of the highway. X

- Irrelevant

RP reasons for ownership of places not directly connected to the city (i.e. Merians, Shallach, inner sea, sea of despair) X

- More points of vulnerability as well. More areas where a fight can be forced on us.

Variable types of government styles. X

- The communes have the same options.

Ethereal needs to be able to be flooded/tainted. End of story.

If not the whole ethereal plane, at -least- Etherseren/etherglom. They are sort of the cosmic plane equivalent (sort of) for the communes. We can't break demesnes. We can't do much of anything. Forestals can just flow in, and we can't do anything about it.

I'd agrue against those points, and there are arguments to give but its really not the point.

Its getting really tirring how everytime someone from a city comes up against something new and different they scream to make everything more Homogenous.

Elemental Bashing. X

- The communes can bash the elemental planes too
- True, but there's at least more incentive for the cities to defend their respective elemental planes, and thus easily put a crimp in the lone basher's plans.

Quick access to astral

- Perhaps, but there are skills and artifacts that can eliminate this advantage
-Artifacts, yes. Skills, not if you're enemied, or if you want to find your way back down.

Easier to defend chokepoints of entry. X
- Umm, are you smoking something? The communes have the best defense bar none.
- not really. With the slight exception of the docks district, Celest could be very, very well defended if they wanted to, not sure about Mags. Furthermore, they're smaller and thus easier to spot and track enemies, can have any number of statues bonded, where we only get as many totems as stag/crow users, and they have very few entrances compared to the communes. A raid on a commune usually fails due to boredom on the raider's part, rather than the strategical setup of the communes. Communes are just forests, cities are designed as fortifications and thus have the obvious inherent defensive bonuses.

Paintings for quick transport.
- Perhaps, though spores are almost as good if not better in certain circumstances
- spores can be used by cities too, and are harder to maintain a suitable supply of without also giving your enemies the opportunity to get in easily.

Enchantments. X
- Alchemy is far more important
-enchants are stil necessary.

Statues. X
- Totems are indestructible, plus a excellent source of power generation
- Regarding defense, Statues are better. Imagine if we could bond every single totem in the wilde.

Being a cutoff point of the highway. X
- Irrelevant
- Not, we have to go around the mountains to get around the cities. And every attempt to do something about the road through our own place has failed so far.

RP reasons for ownership of places not directly connected to the city (i.e. Merians, Shallach, inner sea, sea of despair)
- More points of vulnerability as well. More areas where a fight can be forced on us.
- You get the advantage in enemy territory and avenger protection in those areas.

Variable types of government styles. X
- The communes have the same options.
- I'll give you that one.

Furthermore, the whole ethereal thing stemmed from the days of endless raids on the ethereal realm by Mag, and dozens of deaths to Kaervas' demesne. And there's actually RP sense for it not to be taint/floodable, and for elemental not to be forestable, which is how it should be.

My jewelry doesn't decay that fast. My Jewelry can last 230 real life days.

I had forgotten that they changed the government thing.

It use to be that communes could only choose to be a commune.

Hey, that's not MY argument.

I never heard anyone use that argument.

I did.

We can get kicked off elemental because the cities have ownership and have valid reasons to enemy people(more of a problem for people who don't like being enemied), and keep in mind that getting the new ethereal creatures requires influencing fae bringing them to an avatar then waiting for said fae to leave. Unlike elemental where there are many creatures that spawn there without effort.

The cutoff thing seems to be because the forests aren't. I know it annoys quite a few people that there is a road that leads directly through Serenwilde creating more entrances than we can realistically guard with totems alone because of the apparent lack of people able to bond. And on top of that Serenwilde has water entrances creating even more. Removing the road takes 12 entrances down to 2... there are 30-34 entances if you count each point that you can leave the river and get on dry land which is about 18-22 entrances, (the aborteum is not totemable so you could walk straight through) these entrances would be easier for someone with a waterwalking enchantment to get to and from.
May not be the biggest problem in the world but every entrance to the cities can have a statue guarding it and, minus all the harbour entries, you have something like... four? entrances still not the biggest problem in the game but it seems to allow people to wander in more easily.



They are also the Elemental plane equivalent

If your going to equate mages to druids
The creatures we empower with sands are on ethereal/elemental
The creatures we can(now) slay for essese are on ethereal/elemental
The ability to actually use demesnes are drawn from ethereal/elemental
etc

For guardians and wiccans
The creatures they get their abilities from are on ethereal/cosmic
They can loose abilities through the death of specific creatures on ethereal/cosmic
The creatures they summon live on ethereal/cosmic
etc