My design isn''t mature enough to be shown on a website yet. It is started however, about 7-8 pages long.

My template is almost done; it is inspired by Chris Taylor''s design document template, but heavily modified and make more use of words style, so the look can be customized with a mouse click. I might release it if I feel it would be useful to others.

Yeah thats and issue with extraplanar creatures... I''ll drop those as a stand-alone race. I might include them as mercenaries too. Good assassins and negotiators (read kidnappers can come in handy

The avian race won''t be that hard to balance... Still the mermaid will feel kind of alone I think... Maybe a second underwater race would do the trick. But then an alliance of those can bring destruction to every single fishermen of the land heh.

The balancing, however, should not intefere too much with my designing ideas since most of it will be handled by the scenarios creators.

I would like some input on the battlefield action (BTW, I start with the battle aspect not because it is important, but because I feel it is the easiest part to design. I try to encapsulate it so that I can modify most out-o-battle stuff without interfering with the battles.)

First, the player will basically combine "squadrons" of the same unit. All the squadrons are independantly moved on the world map, and can be stacked together. The world map will be tile-based, and the battles will occur when another army squadron walks in the square. (The defender might try to hide, but this only works for small forces)

However, the player might switch to battle mode even if there is no ennemies. He will to this to assign positions to his (individuals, groups of ten, hundred... we''ll see.) This position might have advantages and disadvantages. elvesarcher might want to climb in a tree as an example. The defender could then set up his troops the way he wants them to be.

He could also impose different levels of awareness to his troups. From "get ready to ambush" to "stop trying to screw the field nurses" This level of awareness would dictate the percentage of chances that the unit is actually in position when the battle begins. However, high levels of awareness that are enforced too long bring the morale down quickly.

On the battlefield, I would like nice stuff, like the ability to launch boulders from mountains and set fire to the forest or fields.

Any input on any subject appreciated

Itdoesn''t have to be mermaids, that was merely a tought. You are right about the avians. Along with making thm clumsy on land and mostly unarmed. They won''t be able to stay inthe air perpetually.