More infos again!:
http://forums.elementalgame.com/329813/page/3"The world is heavy in types of magic creatures. But your civilization's ability to make use of those magical creatures depends on the skill of the player.
The world has dire wolves, dragons, drakes, trolls, etc. But the ability to get these things into your army requires a great deal of skill.
It's not like you get to conquer a city and start cranking out trolls or something.
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Let me explain this because it's worth discussing because I think a lot of you feel the same way as I do:
There are sentient and non-sentient creatures in the world. If it's sentient, you have to negotiate them fighting on your side. If they are non-sentient, then you ultimately have to have a sentient creature controlling it.
So let's say there were unicorns in the world. Are unicorns sentient? I'd say no. So maybe there's a herd of unicorns that exists on the map. You would see a Unicorn icon on the map. You would need to build a city near it and then build a Unicorn type building on it (insert cool name here). That city would then start producing unicorns trained for battle. You could then design a unit that makes use of a unicorn but the Unicorns don't just ride on their own any more than horses do.
On the other hand, let's say there is a village of trolls somewhere. If you conquer the city, the trolls will disperse (no, the trolls aren't going to be hanging out at the pub or working in the armory, they're trolls!). If you negotiate with the trolls, you might be able to get them to send you a few trolls on occasion to integrate into your army. Trolls are sentient.
The variety of magical creatures in Elemental is probably as much or more than what's been seen before. It's just that in terms of your wars, you're choosing men or fallen and they're going to be the vast majority of your forces.
That said, players will be able to create their own creatures (sentient or otherwise). So for instance, we will NOT have vampires in the game. The term "canon" Elemental will become significant as the beta matures because the integration of player created content will alter the world dramatically over time. Players might create a race of vampires. Maybe you'll be able to play as the vampires or maybe they'll set them up so that they're like the troll example I gave above.
My thought is that I just don't want to see magical creatures cheapened. Magic should be a pretty big deal and so if you see an army with a troll in it, it should be a big deal. If your army encountered another army with a dragon in it and you're not incredibly powerful at this point, the player should get the feeling like they did in Civilization when their musketmen suddenly encounter the mongols with tanks."