Design: Improvements

Kael

Kael

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Spell Sphere Nodes
[tab]Body Node
[tab]Chaos Node
[tab]Creation Node
[tab]Death Node- kills the worker that created it
[tab]Dimensional Node-
[tab]Earth Node- has a chance to pop gem and gold clusters within 1 tile
[tab]Enchantment Node
[tab]Entropy Node- builds fallout within 1 tile
[tab]Fire Node- does damage to all units within 1 tile
[tab]Law Node
[tab]Life Node- heals all untis with 1 tile
[tab]Metamagic Node
[tab]Mind Node
[tab]Nature Node- builds forests within 1 tile
[tab]Spirit Node
[tab]Water Node- builds rivers within 1 tile

Veil only improvement that destroyes the bonus but give a large benifit for a medium amount of time. (Chalid)

+Pirate Cove- Is only available to civs that start with the seafaring tech (the Lanun). Allows workers to create a cove on a coast tile (owned by the player or unowned) that can be entered by ships. While in the cove the ships gain a defensive bonus, increased heal and a slightly better site range. If a cove is in an owned tile it provides a small amount of gold. A cove can't be built within 3 tiles of another cove.
 
Reserved for ideas under consideration.
 
Kael said:
Ancient Forests

Spell Sphere Nodes (placed on magic nodes to make them into Fire Nodes, Air Nodes, etc)
Click to expand...

Ancient forests: great idea.
What if they got better over time, like a cottage.
But no logging allowed in them.

Spell sphere nodes: i see why you need them. Would they give a food/ production/ commerce bonus, or just give you a needed resource.

Maybe combining this with the spell system, a spellcaster built in a civ with a magic node would start with the appropriate sphere knowledge of that type.
 
Just a random thought wen reading magic nodes: What about a 4th tile-yield "mana" that will be handled globally and is used for spell casting and possibly "ritual spell" and "magic unit"-construction. Any surplus should be lost at the end of the turn.
 
That would be difficult to get the AI to understand w/o me delving far deeper into the AI than I have currently. Still, it ought to be possible to do somehow.
 
Would there be any way to model Mana after Great People points? I don't know how you would tie those type of points to improvements, but the AI does know how to exchange those types of points for units or GAs.
 
woodelf said:
Would there be any way to model Mana after Great People points? I don't know how you would tie those type of points to improvements, but the AI does know how to exchange those types of points for units or GAs.
Click to expand...

I hadnt planned for mana to be a "currency" like it was in MoM. Instead I had wanted to use it just as a resource. Possibly with multiple upgrades, but I wanted to make it required for certain units, buildings, and upgrades on units.
 
Here's an idea for an improvement:
Dwarven Tunnels
buildable only by Dwarves, or dwarven slaves
buildable only in hills, mountain, or cities
gives dwarves in them extra movement, a defense bonus, and a first strike chance
acts as a traderoute only to other dwarven/runes civs, or cities with runes as a religion.
 
What about restricting the Magic Node improvement to certain terrain types?

A Earth Node might need an Mana Resource on a hill, a life node might need it to be on a Forest or on Grassland, a Air node might need flatlands, an Ice Node can be only built on Ice or Tundra (I know we have no Ice-Sphere but it is a very good example), a water node only near a river and so forth.

This would make some kinds of Mana be more rare then others but should nevertheless give a player choice between several kinds of diffenent nodes for each mana ressource.
 
Chalid said:
What about restricting the Magic Node improvement to certain terrain types?

A Earth Node might need an Mana Resource on a hill, a life node might need it to be on a Forest or on Grassland, a Air node might need flatlands, an Ice Node can be only built on Ice or Tundra (I know we have no Ice-Sphere but it is a very good example), a water node only near a river and so forth.

This would make some kinds of Mana be more rare then others but should nevertheless give a player choice between several kinds of diffenent nodes for each mana ressource.
Click to expand...

I hate to do that because I really do want to give the player complete control over what form of magic he wants to pursue. Instead I was considering have the node effect the region (instead of the region effect the node).

This would be mostly for flavor, I listed a few exampels above and none of them are too impactive. I just think it would be neat to see a water node surrounded by rivers, a earth node with a few resources around it, a nature node surrounded by forests, etc.
 
Yeah thats good for me.

But one other thing:

Kael said:
Death Node- kills the worker that created it
Click to expand...

Workers do build nodes? I would prefer Adepts and Mages to do this.
 
Dimensional Node-Allows airdropping untis from the node.
Law Node-Gives +35% tile defense?
Metamagic Node-Creates an anti-magic sheild for it and the adjacent spaces.
 
Chalid said:
Yeah thats good for me.

But one other thing:



Workers do build nodes? I would prefer Adepts and Mages to do this.
Click to expand...

The reason I have workers doing it is because the AI understands using workers to improve resources. I'll switch it to the adepts (your right it does make more sense), assign the worker ai to adepts, lower their strength to 0 and see if the ai handles it well.
 
Chaos Node - Random node effect, chosen from the list of the others. Perhaps the effects change every 10 turns.

Creation Node - Periodically Vitalizes the land around it.(might be a little too similar to Nature, though)

Enchantment Node - Enchants weapons, giving military units passing through it a low temporary strength bonus, which disappears after next battle.

Mind Node - units within 1 tile immune to mental spells

Spirit Node - Occasionally spawns rather weak barbarian ghosts(or ghostly allies? Or both with 50% chance of each?).
 
Kael said:
The reason I have workers doing it is because the AI understands using workers to improve resources. I'll switch it to the adepts (your right it does make more sense), assign the worker ai to adepts, lower their strength to 0 and see if the ai handles it well.
Click to expand...

Hmm might lead to the same problem as with Aprenntices. As soon as the upgrade to Mages/Summoners becomes available AI will stop building nodes due to upgrading all their Adepts.

Possible solutions that come to my mind:
- leave it in for the Worker and simple add the ability to Adepts?
- give the Ability to Mages too?
- create a Special Worker for the AI only that can build both and for human players differentiate between Workers and Adepts. (By using that cannot_build-funtion) ?
- as soon as we have an AI function that allows to upgrade the land automatically via magical spells add that abity as spell to all mages and use this one instead.
 
Chalid said:
Hmm might lead to the same problem as with Aprenntices. As soon as the upgrade to Mages/Summoners becomes available AI will stop building nodes due to upgrading all their Adepts.

Possible solutions that come to my mind:
- leave it in for the Worker and simple add the ability to Adepts?
- give the Ability to Mages too?
- create a Special Worker for the AI only that can build both and for human players differentiate between Workers and Adepts. (By using that cannot_build-funtion) ?
- as soon as we have an AI function that allows to upgrade the land automatically via magical spells add that abity as spell to all mages and use this one instead.
Click to expand...

I like the idea to have it on workers and adepts, just make it take longer for workers. I will do that.
 
In this SMAC like mod they are using a Improvement that gives a big reward at the beginning and degenerates with time. Something like that would be really Veil Flavour... sucking the live form the land... we just ned some barren terrain that is no longer usable for anything.

Or we could do something like this with the one or other ressource? You build the improvement and the ressource is gone but you can use its power (production commerce or foodwise) for 20 or 50 turns..
 
Chalid said:
In this SMAC like mod they are using a Improvement that gives a big reward at the beginning and degenerates with time. Something like that would be really Veil Flavour... sucking the live form the land... we just ned some barren terrain that is no longer usable for anything.

Or we could do something like this with the one or other ressource? You build the improvement and the ressource is gone but you can use its power (production commerce or foodwise) for 20 or 50 turns..
Click to expand...

I like it, Ill add it to the ideas list!
 
Is anyone working on pedia, strategy, or any descriptions of the various nodes and what they actually do for your Adepts? I'm choosing blindly just to try them out, but would jot stuff down for XML editing if no one else is.
 
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