How's the spell system supposed to work? (MoM)

I've trouble understanding the spell system:

1.) The spell research screen
I don't get the colors there. I seem to be able to research green spell items.
At least if I click on one it says researching. So what's the difference to the blue and red spell items.
But as Svartalvar shadow knowledge 1 - 5 is green. I then researched basic dark magic which was also green. The rearch bar was also on basic dark magic.
But when it was finished I suddenly got body knowledge 1.
However, I can still click on it and it says "Researching".
For some reason Fire knowledge 4 in the elemental branch is also green which I don't get at all.
And how's spell research defined? Is gold used for it or it a fixed research count?

2.) Themagic screen
I also don't know how to use the spells in the magic screen. Although I have enough mana I can't use them and their's no comment about what's missing.

1)
-the spellschool (i.e. dark, light or elemental magic) is determined by your mana nodes and alignment
-some spells are blocked to be researched in the game, this is random. you can access those techs through other means, for example defeating mana guardians. however if a spell can not be researched it will not block later spells of the same sphere, for example if fire III is blocked you can still research fire IV
-you can choose the next item on your research list, but they must be from the same tier, for example if you just have elemental augmentation you can choose fire I or air I and so on, but not beeline to fire II.
-spell research is given by certain buildings, witch huts and mana nodes (not sure on the nodes). the buildings that grant spell research display this. in a future patch there will also be a new specialist granting spell research.
-green techs are already researched, afaik svartalfar start with full shadow knowledge.

2)
-go to the spell category you want to cast, i.e. summoning, global enchantments or terraforming and you will have a list in each of those. green means it can be cast, red means that you don't have enough mana or some other secondary prerequisite is not yet met.
-choose any green spell and just click on it, the game should as you in a little popup if you really want to cast the spell, click yes and you are done.
-combat spells are used as always, cklick on a arcane unit choose the spell and the target and you are set. remeber that arcane units can only specialise one of the three schools and can only cast spells that you did research.

Okay, so I guess the "researching" comment if I click on a green research item is a bug.
Though, although it's confusing at least it works.

However, I don't understand why I start with the whole shadow path already researched.
Where's the fun of researching if I already have the big spells.
I don't need 20 different super summons, just one is enough.
Sure, there are different spells in the various spell spheres, but if I already have super powerful tier 5 shadow spells available, why should I bother with tier 1 death spells.
It's a bit like Sheaim already starting with beasts of agares.
If I play Sheaim it would be my goal to get them. But if I already have them there's no point of researching other inferior units. And it's the same with spells.
With Svartarlvar it would be my goal to get shadow 5 spells, but since I already start with them, using them doesn't feel as an achievment anymore.

I think it would be okay if they start with shadow 1 or 2 as a bonus, all races have bonus tech at start too, but the complete spell tree feels odd.
Takes a lot of fun and exitement away from the spell research.

there is an other mechanic in place to prevent high end spells and especially summons and global enchantments from being cast too early:
mana decay

if you hover with you mouse over the mana icon on top left in your mainscreen it will tell you everything.
basically 5% of your mana is lost, so if you have 100 mana and only 5 mana income yo will never get more then 100 mana since the income is the same as the decay.

i partly agree that it may be better if civilization would only start out with half a tree,this will be addressed in the first patches, if neccecary.

also shadow has no good offensive spells, but death has those, so it is still worthwhile to research death magic

Yes, I would definitely prefer a just a slight spell tech bonus.
Getting an tier 4 or 5 spell should be kind of an epic event you should have to work for.
It would be also good that if you can't cast a spell, you get some info about the necessary requirement that's missing.

However, I understand that it was already a huge amount of work to implement all the new features. (Not to mention reworking the whole AI...)
The new spell research and magic screens are great, I guess they just need some fine tuning.

ArkhanTheBlack said:

Getting an tier 4 or 5 spell should be kind of an epic event you should have to work for.

Click to expand...

Believe me, they are

You can't beeline Spirit 5 from Spirit 1, 2, 3 then 4. You have to research level 1 first, then level 2, then 3 etc. It will take a very long time to research one level 5, moreso if that spell is blocked for your current game

@tesb :
Since players can't beeline higher level spells, I think starting with one complete tree for each civs is okay. It add flavors for your civs. If civs do not start with one complete tree, what would differ Elohim and Malakim, since both will take a (almost) same time to research Spirit 4 and 5?

If you take the higher level spells from start up, please give players the opportunity to beeline. That, of course, is my imho

If civs do not start with one complete tree, what would differ Elohim and Malakim, since both will take a (almost) same time to research Spirit 4 and 5?

Click to expand...

Saying that Sheaim would have to start with Beast of Agares and Calabim with Vampire Lords would be the same argument since they would otherwise need almost the same to research it.

It's already a big achievment that good races can't access dark magic spells as easily as evil races and vice verca.
Having one race start with a T2 spell and the other just a T1 spell of the same tree should be already enough difference.
It should be the decision of the player which spell sphere he wants to research as long as he sticks to a spell sphere that fits to the race.

Since there are buildings that increase spell research, it should be able to research lower tier spells much faster in the later stages of the game.

I remember that in master of magic it was a very powerfull strategy to start with 11 death books since you could start with the tier 3 ghosts spell.
Although it's true that you don't have the required mana for a top spell immediately, there should be a difference between using a lot of mana for a bunch of T1 skeletons or use the same amount for a wraith.

OTOneH: In a couple of Scion games I didn't find starting with Death 4 too great an advantage.

OTOtherH: I am soooo afloat with regard to the new system. It could easily be the case that I'm not taking anywhere near full advantage of the free research.

ArkhanTheBlack said:

Saying that Sheaim would have to start with Beast of Agares and Calabim with Vampire Lords would be the same argument since they would otherwise need almost the same to research it.

Click to expand...

Eh, no, since the civs need a very long time to be able to use higher tier spells. You'll need 300-500 mana, and with builder playing style (my playing style), I have difficulty to hoard 300 mana, moreso 500 mana.

ArkhanTheBlack said:

It should be the decision of the player which spell sphere he wants to research as long as he sticks to a spell sphere that fits to the race.

Since there are buildings that increase spell research, it should be able to research lower tier spells much faster in the later stages of the game.

Click to expand...

My understanding of the mechanic of the current system is :

1. You have to research all of level 1 spells before able to research level 3 ones.
2. You will have some level 3-5 blocked randomly per game.
3. If you are starting with mixed mana (Light+Elementalism, for example) and you got unlucky turn, you'll waste a full research on skill you don't actually want (Oh, I need Spirit 3 but unfortunately, the roll gave me Elementalism, so I have to satisfy myself with Earth 2, which I don't need).

With current system, starting with full knowledge of a spell tree is beneficial to lore. It add a certainty, that my Elohim sometime in far future* will be able to summon the Eternal Crusader.

*see about not enough mana.

Without full knowledge in the start and the constraint in spell research I described above, there is no guarantee that my Elohim will be able to research that deep in Spirit.

If the team will remove this "start with full knowledge in a tree", please also remove the obligation to research all level 1 before progressing and randomness. I'm okay with locking some spell tree, though.

mana decay and mana income will be balanced with the next patch. Currently you will never horde enough mana to cast the extreme powerful spells if you play with f. e. the one-city-challenge enabled - if you are not extremly lucky and have four mana pools and a few mana nodes in your borders.

P. S. to powerful spells: death wish is soooo cool - kill x units worldwide... I once got strucked by it from AI global enchantment and at first didn't know what happend when from one turn to the other about half of my units vanished and stacks of pyrezombies were invading my territory!!! AI knows how to use the enchantments!

Hi there! I've recently started fiddling with Wildmana and the latest release, Master of Mana. First of all I must say I'm really impressed, this mod deserves the MoM acronym more than everythng else I've ever played (except well, you know, MoM )

I'm starting to get a grip of the spell system and I really enjoy it, the only gripe I have is how terraforming is enabled. It was a big part of FFH, Imho, and having those spell target random tiles in your Empire just kills usefulness. Rise land for Example, if I cast it in my actual Elohim game I just turn a rich coastal city in a so-so landlocked one, while I would gladly get some more land tiles around the place, current implementation is

Also, I've been hit by an hostile Terraform I think, because desert tiles started to appear around my recently conquered cities, I immediately cast a minor mana seal (wich appears to work fine, no more Hostile Terraform) but when I cast genesis to get some food back all I obtained where some forests. On top of the above mentioned desert tiles

Is there any chance we'll see a more refined system? Like, for example, casting benign terraform could give all your (sufficently promoted) casters the ability to use some special spells for a turn or two. This way I could cast genesis and give to my mages (add priests of leaves/druids) the ability to improve tiles or plant forests for a turn. Better yet a single cast spell, wich is removed after casting.

Just an Idea, but I'd really love to see the terraform system expanded!

Thx again for the mod Sephi, I think it is just amazing. The best thing that happened to FFH in the last years! Keep up the good work, please!

next patch there will be a Sorcerer as a type of Great Person. And you can settle the great sorcerer in a city to increase your mana income permanently.

I also plan some changes to the Terraforming Rituals that aren't much useful at the moment. Gonna see what's possible to mod.

Divvu said:

Hi there! I've recently started fiddling with Wildmana and the latest release, Master of Mana. First of all I must say I'm really impressed, this mod deserves the MoM acronym more than everythng else I've ever played (except well, you know, MoM )

I'm starting to get a grip of the spell system and I really enjoy it, the only gripe I have is how terraforming is enabled. It was a big part of FFH, Imho, and having those spell target random tiles in your Empire just kills usefulness. Rise land for Example, if I cast it in my actual Elohim game I just turn a rich coastal city in a so-so landlocked one, while I would gladly get some more land tiles around the place, current implementation is

Also, I've been hit by an hostile Terraform I think, because desert tiles started to appear around my recently conquered cities, I immediately cast a minor mana seal (wich appears to work fine, no more Hostile Terraform) but when I cast genesis to get some food back all I obtained where some forests. On top of the above mentioned desert tiles

Is there any chance we'll see a more refined system? Like, for example, casting benign terraform could give all your (sufficently promoted) casters the ability to use some special spells for a turn or two. This way I could cast genesis and give to my mages (add priests of leaves/druids) the ability to improve tiles or plant forests for a turn. Better yet a single cast spell, wich is removed after casting.

Just an Idea, but I'd really love to see the terraform system expanded!

Thx again for the mod Sephi, I think it is just amazing. The best thing that happened to FFH in the last years! Keep up the good work, please!

Click to expand...

Isn't rise land kind of a hostile terraforming?? Doesn't it just target hostile territory? But maybe I'am wrong here... but rise land has maybe more sense to do when you settled your city in land, just one tile from coast away and want to have a nice costal city...
Hostile terraforming is really a pain in the but on the other hand it is a nice weapon in the hand of hostile AI. But it has to be balanced a bit, especiallly not only via prevent hostile terraforming, but via terraforming spells.

Greez,

Tschuggi

Sephi said:

next patch there will be a Sorcerer as a type of Great Person. And you can settle the great sorcerer in a city to increase your mana income permanently.

Click to expand...

Excellent! I was wishing for more ways to increase mana income. Though until the documentation comes out I may just be missing currently included methods.

And that'd be something the Scion Thaumaturge's Keep would be good for: A Sorcerer point or two/turn.

I've been thinking about my ideas for the Keep posted on the MoM forum, btw, and I think they mostly suck. Some Sorcerer points and maybe Spell Research points would cover the ongoing-research nature of the Keep in a way easy on the AI. An arcane Promotion or less-favorable "mutation" could occasionally be given to an Arcane unit made in the Keep's city for the rest of the flavor.

Perhaps one could cause the newly-made unit to fatally explode (doing a little damage to surrounding units) into a few-tens points of mana.

I also plan some changes to the Terraforming Rituals that aren't much useful at the moment. Gonna see what's possible to mod.

Click to expand...

Heh. I was trying to drown the Bannor in sand in my current game. I kept hitting them with Desertification every 5 turns or so, and nothing seemed to be happening. Then I got Awareness and realized that the Bannor coastline was just their starting position. My efforts were being spread over the conquered the Elohim territory, too. And the conquered Sheaim, Calabim, and Lanun territories...

Looking at the map it was fun to see all the city-based enchantments. My magic walls, some sort of (ultimately futile) shield or something over the last Lanun city, and the purple miasma from my curse (something from Entropy, I think) over the Bannor.

Finished my first game yesterday a bit earlier than expected.
Fairly beaten by two AI's who rushed me.
The AI seems to be definitely improved.
I've rarely seen them rushing so early and so efficient.
Don't know about the later stages but so far it looks very good.


However there are still a lot of things bugging me about the new spell system:

Although I wasn't really doing anything to support spell research, the game was researching almost all T1 and T2 spells of dark magic surprisingly fast.
Since I'm usually not informed about a finished spell research the game just continues to research 'something'.

I'm also not sure why exactly spells have to be a separate research. The separate screens are great but a second research system seems a bit overcomplicating to me.
Especially since important info like time to finish and current research is missing.
If they'd be normal research items it would be easier to balance, I actually have to invest some research power for it and don't get the spells for free on silver plate.

Another thing is that I get all spells of a specific realm (dark, light, elemental) too easy.
Before, I had to have the specific mana type to get access to the spells.
If I didn't have that type I had to research the 'spell realm' and build a mana node of the specific magic type.
That system wasn't bad, I wonder why it was changed.
If you would only be able to research spells of the mana types you own, there's no easy access to 'foreign' spell spheres and a questionable random generator system that can kill your whole game strategy wouldn't be required.

I'm also not sure about the mana costs of some spells. If skeleton really costs 200 mana, it has to be very, very powerful to justify that price.

@arkhan
summons are no in a completely different place. they are somewhere between heroes and normal units now.
they not seem to be that strong in raw strength, but they have a great utility with their auras.
also keep in mind that certain mana nodes increase the strength of summons, you can see those in the magic overview screen.

regarding the new tech tree, we much have more stuff to play around with now (much more strategic options). we could never introduce a techtree that deep into the current one, it would have blown it out of proportions.
spell research cost as well as many spells themselves will be getting tweaks in the next update.

we could never introduce a techtree that deep into the current one, it would have blown it out of proportions.

Click to expand...

Is this an engine restriction or a design restriction?
Since it's one of the biggest achievements of FFH2 in comparison to Civ4 Vanilla, to have a tech tree so big, that you can't research anything.
You have to decide for certain parts of the tech tree that are required for your strategy.
Actually, I find the complete spell trees and the common research tree less confusing than the old one since it's ordered very good.
Though I agree that if you would have to fit them all on one tech page could get a bit too much.
Otherwise it wouldn't be a problem: You just pick the 1 - 2 spell spheres you want and ignore the other ones. Any maybe you have to decide if you want to have a powerfull T5 spell or the beasts of agares.

summons are no in a completely different place. they are somewhere between heroes and normal units now.
they not seem to be that strong in raw strength, but they have a great utility with their auras.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I guess that would be a good ability for a wraith or a banshee.
But skeletons are typically 'rank and file' troops. Summon whole armies of them was one of the things that worked really great with the old system.
I hope the new system has more options than the old one and not less.
A skeleton unit with mana upkeep 1 wouldn't be impossible, would it?!

How do auras work? Can you only have like two or three effects until you buy aura improvement promotions? The default aura range is one, or is it zero and I'm just seeing residual effects? Is the regen effect broken or just self only? One of my adepts has it but it doesn't land on other units, and onlyseems to give a 5% heal rate increase which is a lot less than i was expecting. Windfall is another one, I think I've seen it on my melee units but usually I haven't.

One more question. Is the civilopedia still up to date on mana resources? Do some nodes still have multiple functions? Like water, does it increase elemental research AND reduce terraforming cost? On the magic screen I see a readout that shows only one of them. I couldn't build an ice node, are some of them unbuildable or reserved for select civs?

Also, what is the difference between aura improvement and aura dispersion? Does improvement make the enhancements do more or is it increased number of effects? Does dispersion increase the number of allies affected or the number of effects?

each combat aura has a certain strength, range and targets a maximum amount of units. those properties can be enhanced by promotions: aura strength I to III increases the effect of the aura, aura dispersion increases the targets that are affected and aura range increases the range of the aura. you can see those properties by selecting the unit that grants the aura.

whenever an aura provides a promotion the effect is static, i.e. will not increase with aura strength. direct aura effect however do. most summons have direct aura effects, while arcane units mostly provide static effects. there are some exceptions though, like valor, dance of blades or blur afaik.

auras can either benefit you own troops or enemies. if you want your whole stack to be buffed by an aura you either need a high level arcane unit that has aura dispersion III or multiple arcane units that provide the same aura. if the aura range is zero the aura will only apply to units on the same tile.
keep in mind that auras from arcane units do not have any effects themselves you need to reaseach some spell technologies and unlock promotions (like valor) that your arcane unit can now choose and will have this effect on his aura. there can be multiple effects for one arcane unit and i don't think it is limited, so if you have enough expirience you could have all aura effects from one magic school on one aura carrier.

Thank you! Is there a bug where some effects don't land right now? Some are very consistent while others seem bugged.