[WIP] Make the Elemental units available in the core directory

[Elvish-Hunter]

This PR has the purpose of mainlining the Elemental set of units.

Why?

The Elementals are one of the most used additional factions, both in multiplayer (several eras feature them, like Era of Myths) and campaigns). Given that they're quite widely used, it makes sense to have them available in the core directory, as I proposed a while ago here: https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=657485#p657485.

What has been done

What I did was pulling the Elementals from Era of Myths (which, IIRC, was the first era to feature them, excluding Path of Summoners from 1.0 - more on that later), then updating them to run correctly on the 1.15 series. I also reverted the L1 unit names to their old names (I like "Animated Rock" more than a rather generic "Earth Elemental"), added back the L4 advancement (but guarding it with an ENABLE_LIVING_VOLCANO macro) for the Lava Beast unit, which was removed from the Era of Myths at a certain point, and updated the QUICK_4MP_LEADER to handle the Emerald trait (which is roughly equivalent to the Quick trait).
I didn't add them as a MP faction because I expect them to be kind of unbalanced, so I'd have needed to add them in an experimental era; given that we already have an experimental era with the Dunefolk, I'd also have needed to add a Default + Dunefolk + Elementals era. As you can easily see, that would've just caused confusion; the MP faction, if desired, can be added later anyway.

What can be done after merging

• Obviously, we need to update the race's and units' descriptions (for example, the Vine Monster has just an ellipsis).
• We can also improve the regeneration (resurgence) abilities: currently they're fixed to 5 HPs. For example, if WFL allows it, these abilities can be reworked to heal 2 HPs + 1 HP per level, so a level 1 unit can regenerate by 3 HPs and a level 4 unit can regenerate by 6 HP.
• There might be some overlap between the already mainlined Jinn and the elemental Djinn. Maybe the last one should be renamed "Air Djinn"? Or there's a better name for the Jinn?
• The units don't have portraits. However, they don't usually talk (I can't remember any add-on where an Elemental actually talked) and their dialogue can mostly be replaced with roar sounds, so making portraits for them can even be pushed to the 1.17/1.18 series without problems.

Licensing

I tried tracking who drew the sprites (I didn't check the attack icons yet). It turns out that most of them were made by fmunoz for his Path of Summoners MP Era (for Wesnoth 1.0, so they're quite ancient); these are the other artists:

• Neoskel: titan.png
• Melon: air-djinn.png, living-volcano.png, water-tempest.png
• The_Gnat: life-vine-monster.png
• unknown: air-windherder-2.png, air-windherder-3.png, air-windherder-attack.png, air-windherder-ranged-1.png, air-windherder-ranged-2.png, brazier-creation-attack.png, brazier-creation-death1.png, brazier-creation-death2.png, brazier-creation-death3.png, brazier-creation-death4.png, brazier-creation-death5.png, brazier-creation-death6.png, brazier-creation-defend.png, firewisp-ranged-n-1.png, firewisp-ranged-n-2.png, life-vine-beast-recruit-1.png, life-vine-beast-recruit-2.png, life-vine-beast-recruit-3.png, life-vine-tiger-recruit-1.png, life-vine-tiger-recruit-2.png, life-vine-tiger-recruit-3.png, water-undine-attack-1.png, water-undine-attack-2.png.

Given that I was unable to find who made a fair amount of those sprites and that they're already on the add-ons server without any specific licensing (at least, I didn't see any), I think they should be added under the GPL license, instead of the usual CC-BY-SA.

TODO

• Make the Fire Wisp a level 0 unit
• Remove the level 3 Vine Monster
• Move the Unicorn line into the monsters race
• Rename the Djinn as Mistral

[knyghtmare]

This would be amazing! Will we be getting them as an MP faction as well, or will it just be for campaigns/SP? In any case, this would be epic!

Additionally, does this mean that the Fire Guardian unit belongs to the race=elemental now or does it stay in the monsters race? More important question is will it cause any confusion as I recall, there was a level 3 Fire Ghost unit in the Era of Myths?

[Pentarctagon]

Adding art to the officially distributed game when we don't know the author or the license of the art is rather dubious - the add-ons server requires people agree that everything they're uploading adheres to the licensing terms of the GPL (or more recently a CC license), but that doesn't mean it actually does.

I'm not a fan of adding another "Default+<faction>" to mainline. I already don't really like having Default+Dunefolk to be honest.

Assuming portraits will happen in any particular timeframe is not a good assumption, unless you're also proposing there be a commission for them.

---

Another question I'd have is what's the benefit of mainlining them vs having them as a standalone resource add-on? I get the point that they'd be available by default to everyone, but adding a whole faction and then not using said faction anywhere in mainline is kind of strange. Or, if this is leading into having an After The Fall era, then I think there needs to be a larger plan around that first.

Adding @doofus-01 (art) and @Hejnewar (balancing, given the idea of being another faction) as reviewers.

[Pentarctagon]

And I suppose my last post probably came off as rather harsh, so I'll add that I'm not saying no outright (else I would've closed the PR instead of adding reviewers), but there does definitely need to be a reason to add this faction beyond it being popular. The Plan Unit Advance modification for example is being added because it helps address a long standing complaint about how a particular aspect of online play is handled. Players who may not have even known it existed or haven't ventured onto the add-ons server will benefit from having it directly available to them within the game without needing to go out of their way to find it.

A potential After The Fall era would be one use case (as I saw mentioned by doofus-01 in the linked thread), or if there were somewhere in the mainline campaigns they could be used that'd be another, or if there's some other use within mainline, then that'd be fine. But otherwise it feels like it's mainly adding code to be maintained, balanced(?), have sprites improved and-or animations made to be brought up to mainline's standards, and have portraits made, which is a lot.

[Hejnewar]

Well I have some problems with this as a faction in mainline, I don't see what is holding it together, it's like creating a faction that is composed out of only animals. What is leading? What is their goal? What are they doing here? It's fine in WCII but only there. How would you create campaign for faction like this? 

As a standalone units, in general I'm fine with adding more, while some are ok, some are not at all appealing to me, this might be my personal bias but I don't really think that they fit mainline in their current state, how many mainline campaigns would actually use them? Sure I can find a use for stone elemental for example but other units are really quite specific, in some cases I would say "mythical" units (unicorn for example - here we have horse that heals) are threated like very common ones. If the purpose is to just lessen burden on UMC authors then is it good reason to add them? 

If it will be decided that they will be added in this or other form then I will review their balance just to avoid something that I really dont like in SP and eras - giving players units strong enough to overshadow everything else and thus rendering other units inferior and in my eyes useless (and this faction has few units that could easly do that).

[ElderoZ]

Your premise is wrong.

"Why?

The Elementals are one of the most used additional factions, both in multiplayer (several eras feature them, like Era of Myths) and campaigns). Given that they're quite widely used, it makes sense to have them available in the core directory, as I proposed a while ago here: https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?p=657485#p657485."

This is not really true, as a player who has played hundreds, maybe even thousands of Ageless Era games on the server over like 6 years, I can say that they are maybe below average popular, though this sounds a bit misleading, as there are the most popular factions, and the elementals would be picked like 1/20 as often as some of the most popular factions, maybe even less. Even in the past when they were more popular this was still more or less true, they were like maybe about 1/10 times as often picked as the most popular factions.

And this might even be a generous estimation, as I have seen them picked maybe like once in the last year or two, they just aren't a very popular faction, if it was like a competitive pvp game, for example an ageless isar (which is very rare itself), then they would have been a bit more popular, but generally almost nobody picks them as a faction, they are considered just decent, they don't really have any fancy abilities except the heal on terrain abilities (they also have some cool resistances, for example the rock elemental has high physical resistances, I remember I once tried to cheese by spamming it on an ageless isar, it went pretty well, I can totally see how that unit would be op vs certain factions), even factions like slavers are generally more popular because of the abilities. Fact of the matter is that almost nobody really wants to pick them in an average ageless game, be it orocia, afterlife variants, or some other gamemode where players fight against AI. And that is not really because they are weak, they are maybe a bit above average strength, its just that they don't really have any cool abilities, their units are more focused on having specific resistances and good movement on certain terrains, the healing can help a little but its not that crazy. I think even like Warg are more popular. In real world they just arent a very popular faction, and they never were that popular. Also they just have 6 units.

knyghtmare:

"This would be amazing! Will we be getting them as an MP faction as well, or will it just be for campaigns/SP? In any case, this would be epic!"

They have actually been in the Era of Myths and in Ageless Era since like forever, since like at least 8 years. The idea is about mainlining an Era of Myths faction. Era of Myths factions have been played in multiplayer for a very long time.

This is a very old faction and it is rarely picked, I think that is mostly because of lack of interesting abilities.

[Pentarctagon]

The faction used in a game is stored in the database:

wesnoth/utils/mp-server/table_definitions.sql

Line 94 in 09be367

FACTION VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,

so if needed I could simply check rather than anyone needing to guess or estimate.

[Hejnewar]

That might be interesting, I would actually like to see what are the most used factions. (This might be a bit of topic for this conversation thought.)

[doofus-01]

I'll give this a more thorough study this weekend, but my initial take is "Yikes! This is a really heavy lift for 1.16".

I'm skeptical for reasons already stated by Pentarctagon and Hejnewar. I have no idea if they are most popular MP faction or if that is even a good reason.

The idea of having them as a resource add-on could be an option, if there is some way to promote certain add-ons without pissing off all other UMC creators. But that would be another project on its own.

The other option that quickly comes to mind is to just adopt a couple units into mainline, like the standalone fauna. That wouldn't prevent them being added to some faction in BfW 1.17+.

[knyghtmare]

The other option that quickly comes to mind is to just adopt a couple units into mainline, like the standalone fauna. That wouldn't prevent them being added to some faction in BfW 1.17+.

I think this is the true intention of the PR and the conversation just went wild when someone decided to mention the phrase "MP faction". Having standalone units in the core directory utilizable by UMC/mainline (if some of them are reworked) would be very beneficial as they are used by so many SP add-ons already. Plus, one of them (Fire Guardian) has been in mainline for quite some time.

The idea of having them as a resource add-on could be an option, if there is some way to promote certain add-ons without pissing off all other UMC creators. But that would be another project on its own.

I think a common add-on for the Elementals was mentioned before and is certainly an alternative worth exploring if the first standalone inclusion is disfavored.

This is a very old faction and it is rarely picked, I think that is mostly because of lack of interesting abilities.

I agree that they lack unique abilities apart from their terrain-specific regeneration however, they can be reworked to be more unique if given the effort.

[ElderoZ]

Honestly I don't really like that whenever there is some issue with a faction then the suggestion is to rework it, it is like somebody suggests a bad idea, and instead of looking for better ideas to implement the response is to just try harder to rework and change the idea to make it better. I don't think elementals were designed to be mainlined, I think there are probably more interesting factions in era of myths than the elementals, still it doesn't mean they should be mainlined, were designed to be mainlined, or there aren't much cooler and more interesting factions in other eras that would deserve the recognition. Also I don't think the faction's author's original vision for the faction should be changed just to try to mainline it, if it was never designed to be a standalone faction for the mainline anyway, and was designed to be part of an era, an era with factions having some similiar elements that aren't found in the mainline factions.

[CelticMinstrel]

I really don't like this, for a few reasons.

1. Some of these units look kind of lacklustre and not interesting. This mostly applies to the L1 units, mind you, but still.
2. Some of these units already have counterparts in mainline - specifically the djinn and the fire ghost.
3. I'm not sure about some of the advancement lines, they seem a bit contrived. The fire elemental becoming a wisp seems backwards, air elemental to razorbird comes out of nowhere, as does water elemental to ice crab, and what the heck even is the vine beast? Thought admittedly it's a cool concept.
4. Paracelsus would be sad. There's an undine, but no gnome, sylph, or salamander.
5. There's mention of making this a new faction, but I don't think it can be a faction. It doesn't make sense as a faction.

On the other hand, I've mentioned a couple of times that it would be nice to have more elementals. Currently we have the fire guardian (fire, obviously), the mudcrawler (earth, maybe earth/water), and the jinn (air/fire), but it would be nice to see a representative for each of the main four elements. So, the idea of adding some elementals to mainline isn't a bad one in and of itself.

The other option that quickly comes to mind is to just adopt a couple units into mainline, like the standalone fauna. That wouldn't prevent them being added to some faction in BfW 1.17+.

I think I would be okay with this. Some of these units are cool, and having representatives of every element would be nice, as I already mentioned. Some comments on specific units that seem okay:

• The air elemental tree is the most lacklustre of all, but I like the thunderbird. We could adopt just the thunderbird alone and ignore the rest of that tree. The unit name "Zephyr" is good too, but I don't like that the sprite is basically a djinn.
• The earth elemental line is not bad, but I'd prefer it if the L1 was called "Gnome".
• The fire elemental line isn't bad either, but I'd drop the wisp/ghost line. I suppose the wisp could be kept as a L0 that advances to Fire Guardian, though.
• The unicorn isn't even an elemental so I don't know why it's here, but it's cool to have it. I'd probably just pick one of the two - either keep the L1 and drop the L2, or keep only the L2 and rename it to just "Unicorn".
• The vine line is cool but the names are awful. Also, does it need to be a whole line? It might be enough to just take the L2 and add a slows attack.
• The water elemental line is pretty lacklustre, but I think the ice crab and undine are good to have. Just drop the rest of the tree and keep those two.

So in summary, I'd suggest keeping at most the following units:

• Thunderbird
• Zephyr (with brand-new sprite; or you could use the Magic Servant sprite for now)
• Animated Rock (rename to Gnome)
• Rock Golem
• Stone Titan
• Brazier Creation (I don't like the name though, maybe rename to Salamander or some variation thereof? Or just drop "Creation" from the name.)
• Living Furnace
• Lava Beast
• Living Volcano
• Fire Wisp (demote to L0 and advance to Fire Guardian, probably drop resurgence too)
• Silver Unicorn (rename to Unicorn) or Unicorn
• Vine Tiger (but think of a new name and add a slows attack) or maybe Vine Monster (with a new name)
• Ice Crab
• Undine

To be honest, I'm not sure even earth and fire need a whole advancement line, but those two are the only ones that have interesting evolution as they advance (though only in the sprites).

I didn't add them as a MP faction because I expect them to be kind of unbalanced, so I'd have needed to add them in an experimental era

As I mentioned already, these don't make sense as a faction. You probably wouldn't ever see fire and water elementals working together, right? So it makes more sense to forget about the idea of making them a faction and just add them as units that people can use. Perhaps they can be added to some other faction in the future, though - for example, if an Era of Two Suns is eventually added, maybe one of the factions would have the earth elemental line and another would have the living furnace line.

Adding art to the officially distributed game when we don't know the author or the license of the art is rather dubious - the add-ons server requires people agree that everything they're uploading adheres to the licensing terms of the GPL (or more recently a CC license), but that doesn't mean it actually does.

I'm not an expert, but this seems like a reasonable argument to me:

Given that I was unable to find who made a fair amount of those sprites and that they're already on the add-ons server without any specific licensing (at least, I didn't see any), I think they should be added under the GPL license, instead of the usual CC-BY-SA.

[doofus-01]

Some of the attack icons are nice and could be added to mainline. Some others are recolors and should not be added. I think icicle.png, thorns-woody.png, vine.png, and possibly northern-wind.png would be good additions.

As far as the unit art, this would add a lot of units without portraits (bad for help pages) or animations (though some have basic animations). Many of the sprites would also need an update, even if they were animated.

I can't approve adding this faction, but I still think it could make sense to add a couple of the units. Fire wisp would go with the existing fireghost, seems like the easiest call. Which other units don't step too close to existing mainline units, and could be lifted from the UMC faction and modified without ruining it?

[CelticMinstrel]

Speaking of portraits, most of the ones that do exist seem to be very low quality. The stone titan, undine, and tempest spirit aren't bad, and the unicorn is okay, but the rest probably should be removed pending new art if they're going to be added to mainline.

[revansurik]

I can't speak much on faction's popularity/usefulness in MP, but lore-wise I really like the addition of elementals. If they're explained as a sort of naturally occurring magical phenomena, they don't necessarily conflict with any existing mainline lore, plus they add a new facet to the nature of magic in the world - one that could be used in diverse ways and in a variety of campaigns, both mainline and UMC. Maybe they could be a common element to the lore of the southern Great Continent, since we're now exploring the Dunefolk environment.

[Elvish-Hunter]

OK, I see that there are a lot of comments... I'll try to answer every question (even if I didn't quote you directly), but feel free to remind me if I miss something.

Will we be getting them as an MP faction as well, or will it just be for campaigns/SP?

The idea (and this answers to some further comments too) was just to add them in core. I didn't make them available in MP, although I'm not opposed to the idea; it just isn't the purpose of this PR.

Adding art to the officially distributed game when we don't know the author or the license of the art is rather dubious - the add-ons server requires people agree that everything they're uploading adheres to the licensing terms of the GPL (or more recently a CC license), but that doesn't mean it actually does.

That's exactly why we need to find who are the authors of the unknown sprites. I think that for those made by fmunoz we're pretty safe, given that he was our founding artist.

Assuming portraits will happen in any particular timeframe is not a good assumption, unless you're also proposing there be a commission for them.

I'm in no hurry to mainline them. If we manage to manline them in the 1.15 series (with or without portraits) that's fine; otherwise, we can aim for the 1.17 series. The most important thing is making a decent work here, not making it now.

Another question I'd have is what's the benefit of mainlining them vs having them as a standalone resource add-on?

It's exactly that: making a set of units available without having to download anything else; plus we'd be able to use them in some SP scenarios. For example, I suppose that the Fire Wisp can be used in those UtBS scenarios where the Fire Ghost appears too.

And I suppose my last post probably came off as rather harsh

Don't worry about that 🙂

As a standalone units, in general I'm fine with adding more, while some are ok, some are not at all appealing to me

That's fine. The most important thing was starting the PR and work from there; I wasn't aiming for perfection from the very beginning.

I think this is the true intention of the PR and the conversation just went wild when someone decided to mention the phrase "MP faction". Having standalone units in the core directory utilizable by UMC/mainline (if some of them are reworked) would be very beneficial as they are used by so many SP add-ons already. Plus, one of them (Fire Guardian) has been in mainline for quite some time.

You got it 🙂

On the other hand, I've mentioned a couple of times that it would be nice to have more elementals.

That was my objective.

The air elemental tree is the most lacklustre of all, but I like the thunderbird. We could adopt just the thunderbird alone and ignore the rest of that tree. The unit name "Zephyr" is good too, but I don't like that the sprite is basically a djinn.

I'm not really sure about discarding the air elemental tree, but I can certainly separate the two parts of the advancement tree. Also, regarding the already mainlined Jinn, that's a stand-alone level 2 unit which I suppose might be used as an alternate advancement.

So, a possible solution might be:

* Thunderbird -> Razorbird
* Wind Herder (L1) -> Zephyr (L2)  -> Air Djinn (L3) (waiting for a better name)
                   -> Jinn (L2)

The earth elemental line is not bad, but I'd prefer it if the L1 was called "Gnome".

Again, I'm not sure about changing its name, especially considering that "gnome" might also be used for a smaller dwarf-like creature, or something to that effect.

I suppose the wisp could be kept as a L0 that advances to Fire Guardian, though.
Guess what, that's exactly how I'm using the Fire Wisp in TSoG. I'll remove the L3 Fire Ghost and make the Fire Wisp a L0 unit, then.

The unicorn isn't even an elemental so I don't know why it's here, but it's cool to have it. I'd probably just pick one of the two - either keep the L1 and drop the L2, or keep only the L2 and rename it to just "Unicorn".

It's there just because it was part of the faction; I agree that it isn't an elemental and it might be better suited for the monsters race. All we need to do is decide whether it's still in the scope of this PR, or it's better to remove it and use another PR.

The vine line is cool but the names are awful. Also, does it need to be a whole line? It might be enough to just take the L2 and add a slows attack.

The L3 addition was a recent one. I'll remove it and leave only the L1 and L2 (which were the original units).

The water elemental line is pretty lacklustre, but I think the ice crab and undine are good to have. Just drop the rest of the tree and keep those two.

Are they lacklustre just because of their look? At least for now, I'd like to keep the entire tree, because we might find a use for it later on (maybe in Dead Water?).

Some of the attack icons are nice and could be added to mainline. Some others are recolors and should not be added. I think icicle.png, thorns-woody.png, vine.png, and possibly northern-wind.png would be good additions.

OK, then we need to find out who made those.

As far as the unit art, this would add a lot of units without portraits (bad for help pages) or animations (though some have basic animations). Many of the sprites would also need an update, even if they were animated.

Yeah, that's one of the main problems. OTOH, nobody ever tried to rework those sprites in seventeen years, so I'm suspecting that said rework will never happen before mainlining.

If they're explained as a sort of naturally occurring magical phenomena, they don't necessarily conflict with any existing mainline lore

Exactly. Not being, or looking, inherently good or evil, my idea is that they can be summoned by powerful mages (including liches) and also generate spontaneously in places where there's some strong flow of magic. Basically, we can do whatever we want with them.

I'm editing my first post to add a to-do list and a [WIP] label. I'm also putting 1.17.0 as milestone, so everyone is aware that there's no rush on my part.

[CelticMinstrel]

I'm not really sure about discarding the air elemental tree, but I can certainly separate the two parts of the advancement tree. Also, regarding the already mainlined Jinn, that's a stand-alone level 2 unit which I suppose might be used as an alternate advancement.

I think I'd prefer not to shoehorn the djinn into an air elemental line. Although it's sort of an elemental creature, it doesn't clearly fit into a specific element; it could be fire, or air, or a mixture thereof, and its sand association might give it some earth affinity too.

I can't think of any really good names for the L3 air elemental. One possibility would be Mistral, another possibility would be using Sylph with some sort of adjective (or even as an adjective - Sylphic Something).

Are you proposing dropping the L0 air elemental, then? It's certainly the most lacklustre of the lot…

The only other problem I have with the air elemental line is that I don't like their sprites at all. They look more like djinn (all three of them) than air elementals.

It does make sense that if you're taking only one unit from the air line then you should treat all the lines similarly, and on the other hand if you're taking the whole rock elemental line then you should treat all the lines similarly. I'm still not convinced having a whole line for each elemental is desirable though.

Again, I'm not sure about changing its name, especially considering that "gnome" might also be used for a smaller dwarf-like creature, or something to that effect.

If you want to alleviate that sort of confusion a bit, how about "Rock Gnome"?

It's there just because it was part of the faction; I agree that it isn't an elemental and it might be better suited for the monsters race. All we need to do is decide whether it's still in the scope of this PR, or it's better to remove it and use another PR.

I agree that it makes more sense as a monster. What element was it even supposed to be? I suppose maybe if there was a light element that might fit…

I don't see any need to move it to a separate PR.

Are they lacklustre just because of their look? At least for now, I'd like to keep the entire tree, because we might find a use for it later on (maybe in Dead Water?).

I think that was it (same as the air elementals). There's also the fact that every member of each line is basically the same in terms of mechanics (all the elementals except vine suffer from this). And finally, the L3's name makes no sense.

[Elvish-Hunter]

I think I'd prefer not to shoehorn the djinn into an air elemental line.

Noted.

I can't think of any really good names for the L3 air elemental. One possibility would be Mistral

I like Mistral. It's certainly an interesting option.

Are you proposing dropping the L0 air elemental, then? It's certainly the most lacklustre of the lot…

Either that, or modify it to allow advancement to any L1 elemental, not just to air elementals. The Razorbird can then stay a L1 unit or become a L2 unit, which advances from the Wind Herder.

The only other problem I have with the air elemental line is that I don't like their sprites at all. They look more like djinn (all three of them) than air elementals.

I know. I'd personally take care of this, but you know... Not an artist... But if someone were to draw them, how would you like their sprites to look?

If you want to alleviate that sort of confusion a bit, how about "Rock Gnome"?

That's better. I'll have a look into the add-ons server to see if there are some gnome units around, just to be sure that this is a good solution.

I agree that it makes more sense as a monster. What element was it even supposed to be?

I'll move the unicorn line into the "monsters" race/directory, then.

And finally, the L3's name makes no sense.

Again, I'm open to suggestions.

[Zireael07]

Mistral is a really neat name, indeed.

[knyghtmare]

Either that, or modify it to allow advancement to any L1 elemental, not just to air elementals. The Razorbird can then stay a L1 unit or become a L2 unit, which advances from the Wind Herder.

I speculate that the lvl 0 "Wisp" was intended to be an elemental which has not yet become attuned to any element. At least that's how it appears in EoM, WoL, EoC and AE.

I like Mistral. It's certainly an interesting option.

I like this name for the level 3 or level 2. Whatever is taken.

I know. I'd personally take care of this, but you know... Not an artist... But if someone were to draw them, how would you like their sprites to look?

My suggestion would be something which implies that this elemental is attuned to the wind/air. Maybe a moving cloud of a storm as seen in EoMa? In some games (GW2), the air elemental is associated with Lightning and Lightning-based skills. Maybe adopt the Razorbird->Thunderbird as the main air elemental?

That's better. I'll have a look into the add-ons server to see if there are some gnome units around, just to be sure that this is a good solution.

For something related to the Earth/Rock tree, I suggest looking into the https://units.wesnoth.org/1.14/Ageless_Era/en_US/AE_bem_wood_warriors_Little_Golem.html unit-tree. These are very much like the Kobold/Stone Golem/Stone Titan line but are decently animated and have a portrait too. I do like how they "transform" into a rockball and move around.

[CelticMinstrel]

modify it to allow advancement to any L1 elemental, not just to air elementals.

The idea of all elementals coming from a single source like that strikes me as weird. Each one is a different element, after all, so why would they have a common source?

But if someone were to draw them, how would you like their sprites to look?

I guess, something less solid looking, more wispy, like it's made out of air. You could kinda interpret the current Zephyr sprite as being made of air, but it's quite solid-looking, like a thick cloud.

[AI0867]

Mistral is a really neat name, indeed.

So the westerly wind (zephyr) upgrades into a northwesterly wind (mistral)?

They're names from different languages and traditions, but I still think it's kind of funny.

[Zireael07]

So the westerly wind (zephyr) upgrades into a northwesterly wind (mistral)?

Makes more sense than upgrading into, dunno, southeasterly xDD

BTW in my language zephyr changed meanings to become something closer to "breeze; a gust of wind"

[Elvish-Hunter]

So a git pull upstream master --rebase shows this series of commits from master (which I didn't want to show in the PR). I'll have to look how to solve this issue as well.

[Elvish-Hunter]

Now that the commit history has been cleaned, I was thinking about another issue.
Most Elementals have a common regeneration ability which heals them by 5 HPs if they're standing on their favorite terrains. It kind of looks overpowered for lower levels and underpowered for higher levels, so my idea was to change the healing value to 2 HPs + 2 for each level (which means L0: 2 HPs, L1: 4, L2: 6, L3: 8, L4: 10). Any opinions?

[Pentarctagon]

It seems reasonable for the lower levels, though I'm not so sure about the higher levels since (I assume) all of these aren't poisonable.

[knyghtmare]

Most Elementals have a common regeneration ability which heals them by 5 HPs if they're standing on their favorite terrains. It kind of looks overpowered for lower levels and underpowered for higher levels, so my idea was to change the healing value to 2 HPs + 2 for each level (which means L0: 2 HPs, L1: 4, L2: 6, L3: 8, L4: 10). Any opinions?

That scaling seems okay to me. They dont take poison status either.

[doofus-01]

Merging this now will create a huge amount of work to get done before 1.18. Is there some way this can be broken into smaller projects? There are a number of other units being moved to core as well, maybe there is a common solution, if this cannot be broken up.

[Elvish-Hunter]

Is there some way this can be broken into smaller projects? There are a number of other units being moved to core as well, maybe there is a common solution, if this cannot be broken up.

There are probably a few ways to do so. One thing I was thinking to do was using a direct push to commit the Fire Wisp as a monster, not as an Elemental, to complete the Fire Wisp/Guardian/Wraith line and get it out of this PR (we've got fmunoz's green light about his sprites).

The Unicorn line should probably be moved into another PR too (and maybe add a L3 Alicorn, or Winged Unicorn, as advancement, if art could be made?).

I've also sent a few forum PMs to check if the users who made the higher level sprites (Neoskel, Melon, The_Gnat) agree to re-license them; if not, since they weren't part of the original set of units, these levels will be removed and added back once new art is available (fmunoz's original Elementals went up to L2 anyway).

Other than that, I'd like to keep this PR as a whole to keep track of what still needs to be done, but this doesn't mean that single unit lines cannot be added to core and removed from here. To prevent accidental merging, I've converted it to a draft.

[doofus-01]

Other than that, I'd like to keep this PR as a whole to keep track of what still needs to be done, but this doesn't mean that single unit lines cannot be added to core and removed from here. To prevent accidental merging, I've converted it to a draft.

That makes sense. I'll try to have something more constructive to say soon.

[CelticMinstrel]

I just happened to be looking at the existing "White Horse" unit and noticed that its description makes it seem like something that could reasonably advance to a unicorn.

[Elvish-Hunter]

Updates on the license question:

• fmunoz agreed to re-license his sprites, but we already knew this;
• mystic_x agreed to re-license his sprites;
• Neoriceisgood gave me permission to use his sprites on Discord;
• Eleazar agreed to re-license his attack icons;
• Neoskel, Melon and The_Gnat haven't replied to my forum PMs, so I'll have to remove their sprites from this PR, which will bring us back to the original set of units by fmunoz.

In the next days I'll update this PR accordingly to these permissions, or lack thereof.

I just happened to be looking at the existing "White Horse" unit and noticed that its description makes it seem like something that could reasonably advance to a unicorn.

So White Horse -> Unicorn -> Silver Unicorn -> Winged Unicorn would be good?

[CelticMinstrel]

So White Horse -> Unicorn -> Silver Unicorn -> Winged Unicorn would be good?

Maybe! Could also branch to Silver Unicorn / Winged Unicorn if you prefer.

so I'll have to remove their sprites from this PR

It sounds like this is several level 3 units?

[Elvish-Hunter]

Maybe! Could also branch to Silver Unicorn / Winged Unicorn if you prefer.

Once we get some sprites for the Winged Unicorn (even a frankensteining, as a proof of concept), that's another option to consider.

It sounds like this is several level 3 units?

Unfortunately, yes. However the original Elementals went up to level 2 anyway and nothing forbids other artists from making some updated sprites, in which case I'll add them back, but it'll probably be stuff for another PR. After all, some units got their level 3 only in a second moment (for example, that's what happened for the Orcish Slayer -> Nightblade advancement).

[spixi]

Fire Wisp is also used in The Altaz Mariners as a Lvl 0 unit. It would be great to have it in core.

[knyghtmare]

This is still a draft and not up for review yet

[cooljeanius]

This is still a draft and not up for review yet

IMO you can still review drafts

[Gothyoba]

EoM on 1.18 has some portraits for these units which don’t seem to be used here, made by SkyOne. I’m not sure if they’re mainline quaility, but they could act as a temporary placeholder at least. One of these is for the Fire Wisp, in a very different style to the other portraits in that line, but it could help distinguish it.

[CelticMinstrel]

Those are wildly different in quality/style. Possibly the only acceptable ones are the stone and the blue circle thing (wind?). The unicorn is good, but when compared with existing horse portraits, it's too small.

[doofus-01]

The first rock thing popping out of the ground and the blue lady are the only ones we might be able to work with. The unicorn isn't bad, but it's just a head.