GGMania: What are the biggest changes in Etherlords 2 over the original Etherlords?

Andrey Yemelyanenko: The biggest change has been taking the game from strategy to adventure. This was a great opportunity to rethink many central elements of the game like interface, story and maps. Etherlords was a very complicated game with a rather steep learning curve. We wanted to make Etherlords II much more accessible without giving up the depth that attracted many hardcore fans. This led to us moving a lot of the interface off to the map and letting the game handle repetitive tasks automatically so that you now spend a majority of the game either exploring or fighting. Speaking of fighting - we made a lot of changes to expand how you approach tactics in combat. With the addition of the colorless or Pale creatures and magic we've added to the different combinations that each player can use for any duel. We also upped the number of active spells to 16 and changed the entire spell purchase and use interface so that now you can change between your active and reserve spells either before or after a duel - this opens up all kinds of new options to try out different mixes of creatures and magic to find the most effective ways to destroy your adversaries. We really had one major goal in mind when making any change in the game from big to small - minimize management and maximize the fun.