During a recent game, I had a lack of fresh water to build farmland in my territory. I came up with an idea. What if building a water mana node added fresh water to adjesent tiles? Does anyone else think this is a good idea?

It sounds decent.


I'm also hoping that the spring spell gets a miscast effect of sometimes creating a new river or turning its tile into water (killing all the land units there, unless they have water walking)

...hoping that the spring spell gets a miscast effect of sometimes creating a new river...

drill to aquifier from Alpha Centauri :) always nice to see

There are many spells which are purely beneficial in FfH and I always aim for them, spring is a lovely one. But what if the mage cracks under the pressure, or the summon doesnt quite produce what was expected? I'd like to see more of the % 'chance of wearing off per turn' , or % chance of success trait on spells that have been implemented, simply because that element of chance keeps everything that bit more interesting.

For me the Spring spell could have a 50 % chance of turning a desert into a plains, it would still be one of the more useful tier I spells and would keep me playing with my mage upgrading territory for twice as long.

Maybe even add a 1% chance to create an Oasis ?

I just think the 'cast once - leave for rest of game' type spells put a bit of a dampener on the fun of casting spells

Excellent idea for the mana node.

Excellent idea for introducing some risk or probability. I'd prefer the latter though.

50% success for the spring spell wouldn' t be fun. It would simply increase micromanagement, which is always a bad thing in my opinion.
A chance for a critical failure / unintended effect on the other hand would be entertaining and create the need for a decision - which is a good thing in a strategy game.

I was suggesting using the miscast mechanic, which is already implemented but not used. Spells have a chance of being miscast, in which case the game calls an alternate python code (for instance, you could set it so that spring occasionally has the effect of Tsunami or that scorch sometime had the effect of blaze or that a spell sacrifices the caster for nothing, but I'd rather they write new and more interesting outcomes for failure).

I think this base chance should also be modified by certain promotions, e.g., Arcane, channeling 2+3, and the possible future metamagic spell spheres make miscasting less likely, while Choas sphere promotions, crazed, enraged, hasted, etc, make miscasting more likely. (I thought this was also already implemented and that arcane and the channeling promotions lowered the miscast chance, but I checked the xml and didn't see a tag for that)

Miscasting chances should also take into account the level/xp of the caster; newly made adepts would be far more likely to miscast than experianced archmages.

It has also been suggested that Metamagic Mana should have the effect of making your units less likely to miscast, and making your enemies more likely to miscast while in your territory. Thus, the Amurites (the only civ that will start with matamagic) will be more reliable casters, while an enemy mage trying to fireball an Amurite city might instead accidentally cast Pillar of Fire on his own stack!

It is a nice idea, though I think that for a level 1 spell, Spring is already a must have that is unlikely to need any other boost...

Well, it isn't necessarily a boost. It could accidentally turn the tile the adept is on into water, destroying all the improvements and killing all your units on it. It could also have a small chance of causing tiles elsewhere in your empire to become dryer (the water has to come from somewhere, making a spring in one place lowers the amount of water available in the aquifer which wells elsewhere draw from.)

To me that would be more annoying than fun, having to run back and forth casting Spring, or losing an important resource tile when casting Spring to repair some blight-caused deserts.

I do like the idea of random effects, but I'd prefer them to be interesting and/or beneficial, not punitive in nature.

Well, it isn't necessarily a boost. It could accidentally turn the tile the adept is on into water, destroying all the improvements and killing all your units on it.

This is definitely not what I was thinking/commenting about. And it's definitely not appropriate for a level 1 spell :eek:

make spring take 2-3 turns (scaled by gamespeed) but have a % chance to convert nearby desert based on how much water mana the player controls

similar for the druid spell, nearby tiles have a chance to be vitalized based on nature mana

>tile improving spells should be scaled by gamespeed

in fact, most spells should scale based on the mana you control

nice ideas eerr. And I would add Bloom taking into account the presence of nearby grown forests.