I think most will agree that there are currently issues with the Tower of Mastery victory (although not nearly as pressing as the recent Altar of the Luonnotar issues).

AI
Has anyone witnessed an AI Tower of Mastery victory? Does the AI even know how to accomplish it? They often seem to improve Mana nodes to provide additional mana that they already have.

Human Player
Unless you're playing on an enormous map, a Terra map, or at a sufficiently-low difficulty that you can reliably get many of the wonders that provide mana, you will be approaching a Domination or Conquest victory before you complete the tower, and the game is probably effectively over anyway.

My Proposed Solution
Why not make the assorted Towers buildable with at least one of the prerequisite mana, but at massive penalties without additional mana. Currently the build speed of Bane Divine and Glory Everlasting are doubled with one mana type and tripled with two mana types. Why not balance the towers in a similar fashion to make the Tower of Mastery victory more reasonable for players and potentially achievable to the AI?

I understand that there are several mana types which have not been implemented yet, and that their implementation will affect the Tower of Mastery victory condition. Given that increasing the number of mana necessary to achieve this victory will exacerbate the existing problem, I think it is prudent to work toward a solution now.

My Proposed Solution
Why not make the assorted Towers buildable with at least one of the prerequisite mana, but at massive penalties without additional mana. Currently the build speed of Bane Divine and Glory Everlasting are doubled with one mana type and tripled with two mana types. Why not balance the towers in a similar fashion to make the Tower of Mastery victory more reasonable for players and potentially achievable to the AI?

I wholeheartedly support this notion.

metamagic shoudl be wiht arcane lore and not be used ina ny of teh lesser toweres but be the only requirement for the tower of mastery

Just some brainstorming here

Mana nodes on water tiles. It would make allow for more nodes without bunching them up, and add more importance to naval dominance.

An arcane ship that could create improved water nodes as Civ-3 style colonies

Mana node colonies on land.

I like your idea, roger. Just trying to preserve the pan-mana requirement if possible.

metamagic shoudl be wiht arcane lore and not be used ina ny of teh lesser toweres but be the only requirement for the tower of mastery

Perhaps metamagic mana shouldn't be found on the map at all, but derived entirely from the 4 towers (and the Amurite palace, of course), and that 4 are needed for the Tower of Mastery. Of course, metamagic spells should be made ridiculously strong (almost game-breaking, even - Annihilate City, anyone?) to make players want that mana even if they have to work to get it. This would also give the Amurites an inherent advantage in building the Tower of Mastery, as they would only need 3 towers; not all 4.

There is a really simple way to get the tower of mastery victory on just about any size and style map. Rights of Oghma, without it you you probably will get conquest first.

There is a really simple way to get the tower of mastery victory on just about any size and style map. Rights of Oghma, without it you you probably will get conquest first.

I probably should have addressed that in the initial post, but my experience (which is largely consistent with what I've read on the boards) has been that Rites of Oghma helps, but is too little too late. It will depend upon luck and the size of your empire, but you will typically receive 0-3 new mana nodes, with 2 being a common number. A Tower victory will still likely require a significant amount of conquest.

Also, has anyone ever witnessed the AI building or completing the Rites of Oghma?

I haven't seen em do any ritual tbh.

Using normal map scripts you'll get a density of about 15ish on a huge map. It's not dependent on number of players or anything, just on size of map.

I've switched to modified map scripts and settled on 2.5mana per player, giving 37 on my 15 player huge maps. However, I also play with tower victory turned off simply because I've never had an AI come anywhere near winning with it. I still build a couple of the sub towers sometimes though.

I probably should have addressed that in the initial post, but my experience (which is largely consistent with what I've read on the boards) has been that Rites of Oghma helps, but is too little too late. It will depend upon luck and the size of your empire, but you will typically receive 0-3 new mana nodes, with 2 being a common number. A Tower victory will still likely require a significant amount of conquest.

Also, has anyone ever witnessed the AI building or completing the Rites of Oghma?

I've never seen the AI do this, but in my last game (Varn Gosam, Large, Chieftain) the Rites of Oghma popped just enough nodes on my territory that all I had to do was build the Soul Forge to get Death and I could finish Tower of Alteration & Tower of Necromancy (between the Malakim palace, Code of Junil, and my starting nodes, I was able to build Divination & Elements early), and then start building the Tower of Mastery in my capital city.

It was looking like about 88 turns to complete, with 291 left to play, when I used a Great Engineer I'd been saving for ~150 turns to rush the Mastery Tower to 52 turns. Three turns after that, everybody declared war on me. So the dogpile function definitely works . . .

ETA: Oh, and when I did build the Rites of Oghma, IIRC I had three nodes pop on my territory, don't remember about nodes in other people's lands.

the problem is that the tower of mastery isn't a builder victory, but rather a collectors victory(gotta catch em-all, but catching em all really isn't that fun)

if you add a way to complete the tower of victory without obtaining "all" the rescources(mana), or a way to compensate for not having "all" the rescources(mana)-then it will become much more interesting/viable

It was looking like about 88 turns to complete, with 291 left to play, when I used a Great Engineer I'd been saving for ~150 turns to rush the Mastery Tower to 52 turns. Three turns after that, everybody declared war on me. So the dogpile function definitely works . . .

Yea, I just tried a ToM victory aswell.. Everyone save for Morgoth/Basium and Einion Logos declared war on me. Even my dear Cassiel who I was friendly with. I was dominating in land and power, but they were rather difficult to fend off. So once you (finally) get the nodes, build the towers (at 1200 hammers each, without giving real big benefits), you have to KEEP the nodes during the whole building process (hard when 8 civs are pillaging your every improvement!) and then you also have to fend the enemy's off your building city and the city's which got the nodes within their borders.

Quite a lot of work. I should've gone for the altar. (Had that one at the before-last stage aswell btw)

Quite a lot of work. I should've gone for the altar.

It's hard to imagine circumstances where an Altar victory is not easier to achieve than a Tower victory.

Aye, but one can leave his/her specialists fulfill the other jobs if you don't go for a altar victory, and ToM can "incidentally" be thrown on your path if you try a conquest/domination victory. But all in all I agree, altar is way easier than ToM. In fact, way easier than any other victory tbh. Just save up Great Prophets until you reach stage 6 and then save up some engineers to greatly speed up your final altar stage.

How about utilizing the Palace Mana of the other civs? Make the nodes into objects, similar to the Dragon's Horde, that could be pillaged and moved to another city. It would cut down on the amount of conquest needed for a ToM victory, without littering the map with extra mana nodes.

perhaps- all of the towers require 2-3 of thier mana type, and have each mana for the tower gives +100% production, while increasing the cost to build by maybe- 8x?

the tower of mastery will uhm, have +100% for each mana but not specifically require mana (don't want it to be messy) and have about 20x the original cost

So, It looks like I'm going to get a ToM victory! All it took was a continent packed with barbarians...

...on a similar note, should the Towers give a point or two of XP to wizardly types built (in that city), that would be quite nice to train in the Tower of Divination...

...or maybe a free promo from one of the spheres required to build that specific tower?

How about a chance of getting a third level promo for the appropriate spheres for free, if and only if the adept would already start with the first 2.

How about a chance of getting a third level promo for the appropriate spheres for free, if and only if the adept would already start with the first 2.

how about it just gives them outright with the appropriate mana?

Seriously... these aren't things which will be appearing everywhere in the game. The Altar gives more benefits and every civ can have it!

I would suggest that each tower generates one of each kind of mana needed to build it. It would still mean an initial effort to -get- all the mana, but once you have a Tower then you don't need to worry about the AI pillaging your mana-nodes an so stopping to Tower of Mastery...

Of course, you'd still have to worry about them sacking the cities you built the lesser Towers in.

That seems reasonable, but I still think it should be possible (although not very practical) to build adepts with third level sphere promotions somehow. How does needing 7 of the same mana type sound? or maybe 12.

I would also prefer if units being upgraded to adepts or mages (i.e., Adventurers and savants) could get the free promotions too, perhaps with more mana requirements.

i think rites of oghama shoudl be avalable at arcane lore and provide more mana nodes

I would rather it just be cheaper, and/or to let you build it many times, like the Elohim/Sheaim rituals.

How about a chance of getting a third level promo for the appropriate spheres for free, if and only if the adept would already start with the first 2.

If the Adept was already starting with the first two promotions, that means you have 3(!) of the same type of mana.

If you're building the lesser towers for a ToM victory, you are going to want to avoid building redundant mana nodes.

I would rather it just be cheaper, and/or to let you build it many times, like the Elohim/Sheaim rituals.

This is another reasonable fix. However, one thing I dislike about the Rites of Oghma is that it benefits everyone equally rather than the builder solely. (Incidentally, I dislike the Vanilla Manhattan Project as well, both for being a poor mechanic and unrealistic.)

How about a repeatable Ritual which creates a building which provides a free mana?

How long was it before Roy Hall gave the Soviets the plans needed for "The Bomb"? The nuclear club grew pretty rapidly, and I don't think DeGaulle (sp?) put in the same level of foundation R&D in order to build theirs as did FDR's labs.

I also don't believe that it was a French bomb that made a certain Giant Monster, but that's another thread altogether. :)

Yeah, I like the idea of Mana nodes under water.

I think the oceans are a lot less flavourful, with nothing but food resources (lol, oxymoron) than the land, and could use a bunch of new stuff, like sunken cities, diving workers, and such.

Sunken Cities could give tech bonuses or provide a resource. Advanced Civ Sunken Cities would be rare, as most Age of Magic things are lost, and things would be built on what is now ocean mostky during the Age of Ice (lower sea level) not during the age of magic. But you could keep searching for that Atlantis that Just might give you the Ether, or heck, maybe even wonders, like the Nexus.

Perhaps you could build mine like improvements, that have a chance to reveal something, but not just resources. Hey...ANCIENT TEMPLES IDEA!

Not bad ideas, but not really relevant to this thread. I personally would find it interesting if some nodes could be limited by terrain. Perhaps you couldn't get earth mana from the middle of the sea, and water mana nodes could only be built in or next to rivers or water terrain. Some mana types, wind for instance, could be obtained anywhere. Of course, this might make mana hardest to find where it is most needed.

If you are talking about diving workers, that should require significant technology. Sea mana nodes could be built by mages with water-walking.

AND Arcane barge... And fishing boats can build a sorta mana platform...

A couple of thoughts on mana:
1. Mana nodes could be improved; additional time (or resources) would yield either extra mana or additional types. Perhaps a scaling system would apply, or say that Fire nodes can also generate Sun or Chaos, but only after you upgrade it to two fire mana. Sun nodes could make Fire and Law; Law nodes could make Sun and Life, and so on.

2. I feel nodes should be more expensive. My first thought would be to make them require a unit to be sacrificed to build and to upgrade.

3. Add an additional resource; call them 'potential nodes' for now. Scatter them much more liberally then "blank" mana is now. These spots can be "worked" into nodes by adepts, but doing so removes some or all of the potential nodes in nearby plots. This would allow for far more mana if you choose to farm for it, but at the expense of a large part of your civilization’s acreage that could be populated with cities and improvements.

4. Make placement matter, Nature nodes can only come from forests, Fire from deserts, Water from irrigated plots. This will have a significant affect on Arc & Litch heavy strategies and makes mana type from each palace more important. Then mages from the frozen north can't throw fireballs; mages from the desert can't call forth springs. Trading mana would become more useful and important as well.

5. Make nodes harder to pillage, some barbarian with a wooden spear shouldn't be able to destroy five years worth of mages weaving enchants to make a node. Requiring an adept or mage to cast a spell makes more sense to me, and several might be appropriate, scorch would trash a Water node, loyalty would destroy Chaos, that sort of thing. Alternately adding an action button, (similar to the build icons for nodes and worker improvements) that allows arcane units to pillage enemy nodes would do.

A couple of thoughts on the towers:
1. I can't recall if the towers are national wonders, if not it seems they should be. Doing so would require a minimum of three cities to complete the ToM victory, and having to hold all three cities could be hard enough, rather than trying to defend every node.

2. Allow the towers to be built with at least two of the required mana types with more making it easier, or even increasing the tower’s specific bonus similar to the way affinity builds up.

3.a. Allow for a production rushing mechanism other than GE's on the ToM itself. I feel that a way to rush rituals would be handy too, similar to sending prophets to another city to boost a foundling culture, or Warriors of Kilmorph to build anything quickly in a tiny town (much cheaper than rushing with gold sometimes). If you keep a fresh stream of mages ready to sacrifice them selves to the cause, things get done quicker. So then you make building the ToM act like “building” a ritual.

3.b. Alternately make building the towers more like building the spaceship. Make one tower (SS Part) for each mana type and completing the ToM (like launching a space craft) can be done with, lets say half of the towers, but it might fail destroying towers. All of the towers guarantees victory, but it is announced that you've begun and a victory count down timer starts while you wait to see if you succeed. Presumably in this time everyone is likely warring with you before you can declare victory.

Any of that seem workable?