I built this tower... So what?

I'm not sure if someone's already brought this up but some of the Mana Towers are kind of... Crappy. You figure you collected all this mana, you built this BAD ASS tower and its... somewhat meh.
I understand that some towers require less mana than others to build but... All in all you figure that someone who builds this BAD ASS tower should get some BAD ASS upgrades. Strong is a decent promotion for summons, having more skeletons is meh at best. Getting a free tech is kind of uncreative.

I figure if you build a tower of necromancy, you should get some pretty awesome synergies with the manas you possess, stronger summons (already like this)... mana effects are DOUBLED... spell effects are stronger... mage-type units get experience when being built in the city with this wonder(a tower of necromancy is like a big library of books on necromancy isn't it?). Maybe get a special unit that makes a Sanction Graveyard or something (you can use to summon more undead like the graveyards already but one that you can't dig up)

I think lore-wise you expect more from a Tower of <Craft Here> than a free tech or a stronger summon. At least that's what I felt. I was thinking it'd make my city the center of the necromancy world. Like the MiT or Caltech of Necromancy!

My opinion anyways, and I'm sure there's alot of balancing/costs to look at but I'll throw this scrap of meat on the table for you all to chew on.

Death Mana is already crazy powerful... and the tower makes them more so...

What about divination o_o

I'd have to agree, the Towers are rather underwhelming. There's actually a thread in the FF forums discussing whether or not implementing a 4th spell tier would be wise... I believe they've decided it would be better to add one spell per tower, and only allow one Archmage to learn each.

yeah, those are pretty dull right now, something kewl provided by the towers would make them more exciting

here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293748 is the FF thread Valkrionn was talking about btw

The Divination tower is epically awesome. Could use it for mythril weapons, or mebe the archmage tech or the obsidion gate tech.

My problem with the towers is this; I could get one of each elemental mana and have slightly stronger summons with the tower, or I get get four of the same kind and have much stronger summons (what with affinity an' all).

or you could get one metamagic node and a handful of others, and get both.

Metamagic is dumb...
It's definitely the most useful node to get because once you have meta magic and a second magic node you have the potential of owning every possible mana type. And with 4-5 magic nodes you can build a tower of mastery... LAME.
That couldn't be what Kael intended when he came up with the tower of mastery.

Oh, going from his comments in the forum i whould guess you err. And yep, it seems like the most powerful Tier2-spell easily. (And ToM was borderline unachivable before since if i remember rightly, once you really needed all the available mana to even start it let alone complete it.
The balancing has allready been done by pushing the ToM itself back to Strength of Will. I belive way back it was as low as sorcery, then got pushed back to Arcane lore and sometime afterwards to strength of will. So that has allready been taken into account. Sorts of.)

Ecofarm has once put it a rather good way how nice Meta 2 is. Somewhere in the strategy-forums i belive...

But mind that Meatmagic Tier 1 (except for the civs starting with it because the eye replaces recon-part for exploration quite well) and Tier 3 usually are not all that good... (and the passive effect right now also is rather negligable)
So its more or less balanced out
(and according to the team worked out just like they wanted the node-changing to do if i don't completely misremember...)

All the team needs to do still in that regard is to teach the AI how to use Mana and Metamagic 2 in a good way.
I guess that they will get this done somehow, but not be done before Ice-phase actually begins...

Ya know, maybe we should think of flashy things to make the lame towers badass? Huh?

For example, maybe the towers could give a nice lil spell for ur mages?

The towers should be a place where your archmages have completely mastered the genre of magic the tower represents. This should provide you with better archmages and maybe a passive empire wide bonus.

Tower ideas:

Divination- Grants archmage units the spell "Clairvoyance". it would act like a floating eye without the distance restrictions. This would be in addition to the free tech now.

Necromancy- Grants archmage units a promotion "Necromancer" this would make them into walking Mokka's Cauldrons.

Alteration- Could give your archmages a spell that turns selected enemy unit into a baboon or random animal unit. This would also let you get animal cages in late game.

Elements- In addition to current effects, could spawn a permanent summon of water, fire, aurelis, earth, and air. Or make this tower let your archmages let your summon Djinn and we can come up with a new Metamagic 3 spell.

jimi12 has some awesome suggestions here. I especially love the Necromancy tower one

I like the necromancy 1.

Divination could let you see the whole map, elements could double affinity bonuses, alteration could increase the combat strength of all your magic units and necromancy could make all your adepts/mages/archmages (or just archmages) immortal.

BugReportage said:

I'm not sure if someone's already brought this up but some of the Mana Towers are kind of... Crappy.

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that's your opinion. Remember to add a nice IMHO, thank you.

I understand that some towers require less mana than others to build

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You understand wrong, they all require 4 mana. Besides, it's clearly written in the civilopedia, so you don't need to understand anything.

All in all you figure that someone who builds this BAD ASS tower should get some BAD ASS upgrades. Strong is a decent promotion for summons, having more skeletons is meh at best. Getting a free tech is kind of uncreative.

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Again, why did you "figure" or "understand" ? Can't you just read the freaking stats of the Tower and decide if it's worth building or not BEFORE doing it ?

I'd say "meh" to your strategic approach to the game instead.

BugReportage said:

And with 4-5 magic nodes you can build a tower of mastery... LAME.
That couldn't be what Kael intended when he came up with the tower of mastery.

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You're right in your second statement, in fact to build the Tower of Mastery you need all the minor towers PLUS all mana types. At the same time. Got it ? Again, press the holy F12 button and read up.

Towers used to have different number of mana requirements, but in the latest version they are all the same.


No mana is required to build the Tower of Mastery, just the lesser towers. You cannot have more than 5 resource requirements for any building, much less 12. Thanks to the metamagic 2 spell you can never need more than 4 nodes to get the tower of mastery.

I don´t like the tower of necromancy, because you need several Mana and get a necromancy bonus. I think it´s power should be a buff for all Manatypes it uses. And call it tower of dark magic or something similar.

MagisterCultuum said:

Thanks to the metamagic 2 spell you can never need more than 4 nodes to get the tower of mastery.

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cool then, a reason more why Towers aren't so crappy since they lead to Victory. When I tried it (before BtS) it wasn't working with just the lesser towers though, odd.