FfH Acetum Cucumbis

-Mana and faith resources will be added. (Broadly similar to, and somewhat based on, Master of Mana). Faith would be used for religious spellcasting, mana for "magical" spellcasting.
-Most spellcasters given "casting points". Some spells would shift to use channeling points instead. These channeling points would work something like casting points in Age of Wonders: If a mage had more than enough casting points for a spell, they could cast it and continue casting in the same turn, if a mage did not have enough casting points, the spell would take multiple turns. Casting points would be effected by channeling promotions, plus a few other promotions like potency. This system would not effect spells used by non caster units (Drown, spread Esus, join city, etc.), who would likely continue with the old system intact.
-Many summons would become permanent units, that use mana or faith for upkeep rather than gold (If possible). These units would likely have a lot of special abilities, but would be limited by spellcasting, mana, and other types of limits. Some instant summons would be included as well. The full system is something I haven't worked out completely yet.
-Mana would come from certain buildings acting like a corporation on mana resources. Raw mana and possibly metamagic manage would provide higher yields in some way or another.
-Mana would be given extra effects
-Faith would come from religious buildings and certain specialists, and might be effected by state religions in a similar way as Master of Mana.

-Faith for a particular civilization would likely increase the spread rate of that civilization's state religion, even allowing natural spread to cities with other religions in them. Faith might also provide resistance to non-state religions spreading within the civilization. Details are something I'll have to work out.
-Faith might also provide random bonuses related to the religion (for example, with Ashen Veil as a state religion, higher faith levels might increase the armageddon counter and provide an occasional free demon unit.)

-The basics would likely be broadly the same as standard expionage , but simplified somewhat.
-Missions specifics would likely change
-Overall, I'll try to make espionage into an area that a civilization could focus on and do about as well as, say, spellcasting units. The exact details are still up for grabs.
-Out of the original civilizations, Svartalfar, Sidar, Balseraphs, and Malakim would likely get enhanced, or diffrentiated, expionage abilities. Espionage units themselves would be subject to any unique mechanics that the civilization alreayd had (so Calabim spies could become vampires, Grigori spies could come from adventurers, Amurite spies taught by Govannon, etc.)

-Spell of Mastery: If the magic system is completed, the tower of mastery condition will be changed to have more of a focus on spells rather than production ability.
-Steamworks: A new "production" vistory condition. Would be based on machinery and engineering technologies, and would provide a large hammer bonus in addition to being a victory condition.
-Gone to Hell, Return to Winter: These are pretty similar to the victory conditions found in other modmods, and would be victory conditions to the Ashen Veil and a possible White Hand religion. Conditions would likely involve transforming a certain amount of the world, plus a high plot counter, plus having the religion in question. (They would not be based off the plot counter itself, as the Sheaim worldspell would be made less effective.)

*Desert changes: Deserts no longer produce an additional +1 trade for the Malakim. Instead, improvements on non-floodplains desert improve yields in a way that mimics +1 production and +1 commerce.

*Desert Improvements: Malakim get a few new desert Improvements, to help make desert terrain competitive with other types of terrain.

-Desert Farm: Uses plantation art. Produces +2 food, +1 hammer, +1 commerce. Requires irrigation, spreads irrigation. Effected by Agrarianism, Aristocracy, and Sanitation as normal farms are.

-Desert Mine: Uses Quarry art. Produces +2 hammer, +1 commerce, +1 commerce if irrigated, +1 hammer with engineering.

-Trade Post: Produces +1 production, +2 commerce. Produces +1 food if irrigated, spreads irrigation. Art 9and the general idea) is taken from RiFE, possibly other mods, bedouin improvements, though the effects are different. Upgrades to Trade Crossroads if worked.

-Trade Crossroads: Produces +1 commerce over trade posts, otherwise same yields. Upgrades to trade settlement.

-Trade Settlement: Produces +1 commerce over trade crossroads, otherwise same yields.

-Oasis: Spell copied from RiFE, though without sacrificing the caster, and with a lower separation requirement from other Oases. Supplies irrigation.

To prevent building these improvements, converting to plains, and getting really high yield terrain (keep in mind that yields of these improvements are now on top of no normal production deserts), the scorch and vitalize spells convert the improvements to types more fitting for wet terrain. Desert mines get eliminated, Desert farms change to normal farms, Trade posts, crossroads, and settlements get changed to cottages, hamlets, and villages, respectively.

*Malakim can now build priest units without needing particular state religions. (This was done through unique units). Temple requirements, and other requirements, are still in place.

*New unit: Ascetics. Disciple units, requires fanaticism, start with 7 strength, can use copper, iron, or mithril weapons. Ascetics get a free "ascetic of (religion)" promotion that changes based on the Malakim state religion. Only 4 are allowed at a time.

-Order: Ascetics gain immunity to fear and capture, gain 100% death and unholy resistance, gain 75% fire resistance.
-Empyrean: Can see invisible, can attack multiple times a turn, gain 15% health back after combat.
-Runes of Kilmorph: Acts as a guardsman, acts as a 20% healing medic, 40% chance to do a 20% defensive strike.
-Fellowship of Leaves: Heals an extra 20% in enemy, neutral, and friendly territory, can use enemy roads, immune to defensive and first strikes, gets 2 first strikes.
-Octopus Overlords: Causes fear, can walk on water
-Council of Esus: Acts as a marksman promotion
-Ashen Veil: +1 poison damage, +1 unholy damage, +1 death damage, immune to holy damage

*Bazaar: replaces market. Looses the +3 gold, gains +1 trade route, +1 happiness from reagents, incense

*Monk Promotions

Monks now gain additional promotions if the civilization has certain types of mana. These types are the "good" types, plus earth, and all can be gotten from features or from founding "good" religions.

Earth: Monks gain magic resistance.
Enchantment: Monks gain +1 combat strength.
Life: Monks gain an enhanced medic like ability.
Law: defends against marksman units, +1 defense.
Sun: Sees invisible, +1 offense

*New Spell: Sanctify Sepulcher

This changes the broken sepulcher to supply enchantment mana rather than death mana (Both preventing the diplomatic penalty, and providing the monk promotion.)

*Bonuses from unique improvements

Each of these effects are updated every 10 turns.

-Spirit Guardian spawn: Spirit guardians (7 strength, heal instantly after combat, held), will spawn on any unique improvements within Elohim territory if no other units are on the same square.

-Monastery: Requires Writing, 1 can be built for every 3 libraries the Elohim have. On their own, monasteries supply +2 culture and +2 science, and supply additional culture the more improvements the elohim control.

-Hall of Preservation: If a city has a hall of preservation, and the Elohim control particular unique features the city gains bonuses to food, hammers, gold, or science.

In order to "control" a unique improvement for culture and resource purposes, the Elohim must , with decreasing bonuses to production, either have it within their territory, have an open borders agreement with a civilization with the improvement in its territory, or be at peace with the civilization who has the improvement.

*New golem promotion system: Adularia chamber, Pallens engine, Blasting workshop now provide golems with "mode" spells. These spells are used to specialize the golems which provides certain promotions, but removes other promotions associated with other modes. Current modes and promotions:

Blasting mode: The golem can cast fireball
Sentry mode: The golem has guardsman and perfect sight
Fast Mode: The golem has mobility 1

*Drop Hammer

Added a new spell to allow units to drop golden hammers they are carrying (no more sacrificial hammer scouts). AI implications, and needed adjustments, haven't been tested yet. (Hopefully it won't end up in an infinite "drop and pick up" loop, though for next update I'll be looking through how other items are handled.)

-Ljosalfar now get +.5 happiness from forests and ancient forests. See the religion section for more information.

Shades from level 6 units removed. Instead, three different spells are added for high level units:
-Wane level 6: Adds the stealth promotion, and the "shade" racial promotion, at the moment giving extra damage vs. undead and resistance to death damage.
-Wane level 8: (forget the exact name) Adds the invisible promotion.
-Wane leve l10 (incorporeal): Adds the immortal promotion

*New ritual: Wane citizens. 80 production costs, requires Necromancy, the city looses 4 population and produces 2 shades.

*New unit: Shadow guardian. Strength 7, illusion, held, requires necromancy. Only 1 can be in a city at a time.

*New Building: Waned City: Provides 4 free specialists, reduces trade income by 50%, foreign income by 100%, production and commerce by 10%. Requires education.

*Sever soul now available to all recon units.

*Govannon's teach spellcasting spell now effects all units, instead of merely teaching only to units on his tile. Govannon only starts with channeling 2, but is accessible at Sorcery rather than Arcane Lore.

This change is to reduce micromanagement, so Govannon no longer has to run around teaching units his spells.

*Amurites get a unique unit, Arcanists, to replace Archmages. these unit get twincast, but are otherwise the same.

This was recommended by this post.

*New Spell: Energy Node. Usable by great sages. Sacrifices the caster, creates a raw mana node.

*New Spell: Inspire. Usable by great engineers, great sages, great bards, great merchants, and great prophets

Reduces the great person requirements by 1 great person (So, if the current great person requirement is 500 points, and the previous was 300 points, the spell will drop the requirement to 300 points). Also provides a bit less than half this requirement to the city the unit is in.

This is added to take some sting out of building wonders, for instance, and getting sages or engineers when you really want adventurers.


*New Grigori specific great people: Immigrants (expansion oriented), and Master Craftsmen (Fill several "normal" great person roles.)

*Great person changes:

Adventurer:
-Can use "Heroic story" within a city, and inspiration like spell that provides +2 culture and +2 experience to units built within the city. This is to help early cities build some culture, or add culture than religion would normally provide.
-Can upgrade to medics and Luonnotars.

Immigrant:
-Acts as a fast worker (3x faster work rate)
-Can "Join to city", adding 2 population to the city. the spell also provides a "Skilled Administrator" great specialist, who adds +2 health and +2 happiness
-Can "Settle". This creates a new city with 3 population and 25 culture, allowing it to work 2 spaces out immediately. The spell also changes the immigrant into a worker.

Master Craftsman.
-Can Culture bomb and Speed production. These abilities provide 2.5x the effect of bards and engineers, to compensate the the reduced number of craftsmen.
-Can cast the "craftsman shop" spell that provides +2 culture per turn and +2 production to a city. This spell is to help early cities get going more quickly.
-Can be sacrificed to build a "Master Craftsman's workshop", "Artist's Studio", or "Craftsman's Laboratory" in a city. These buildings provides +40% production, +75% culture, and +75% science, respectively.

*New Great Person generating system:

Instead of having buildings provide great person points directly, Grigori specific great people are generated by specialists.

-Storytellers generate adventurer points, and provide +3 culture
-Administrators provide immigrant points, and produce +3 gold
-Craftsmen produce Master craftsman points, and produce +2 materials

-Most buildings (Inns, Taverns, Grigori capital) that provided adventurer points before, now provide specialist slots. The Capital, Grigori Inn, and Grigori Tavern all provide 1 of each specialist slot. Museums provide 1 craftsman slot, Adventurer's guilds provide 1 storyteller slot, and Grigori Tribunals (A courthouse replacement) provide 1 administrator slot.

*Other changes
The Grigori capital provides a free specialist. This is to get great person production started early, as the current capital does, without needed to sacrifice a worker.

The grigori tribunal is a courthouse replacement that provides +1 happiness and an administrator specialist slot. Since the lore forum posts describe force as the magic type representing making and keeping agreements (Or at least, that's how it seems when I read them), the grigori seem the right civilization to get some extra courthouse benefits.

*Hunting Pack

This is a new improvement, with five levels, that can be created by animal units. Each level of the building adds an extra 2 food (So, for example, the first level, I forget what its called, provides 2 food, the 4th level produces 8 food, etc.). Levels 1, 3, and 5 add an extra 5% military production as well, levels 2,4,5 add 1 production also. (so level 1 produces +5% military production, level 4 adds 2 hammers, +10% military production).

Hunting pack level 1 may be built by any animal, and an additional animal is needed for level 2, another for 3, etc.

*Brawling Pit

This is a training yard replacement, which costs a lot less than a normal training yard, and provides 2 experience.

*Doviello Camp

Idea taken from Wildmana. The Doviello can build hunting camps without the hunting advance.

* Survivalist Promotion, Tame Animal

The Doviello now automatically get a "survivalist" promotion rather than the winterborn promotion. this survivalist promotion is the same as the winterborn promotion, but also captures animals as well.

Tame animal is a spell that can be used to capture barbarian animals in the same square.

Both of these abilities are added to allow Doviello to get some "seed" animals for hunting packs.

*Unit Spawns

Doviello cities spawn wolves and melee units. The animal spawn rate is 2% per turn in each city, plus an extra 2% for whichever level of hunting pack improvement is in the city. Melee units spawn at a 2% per turn in each city, plus 4% if a brawling pit is in the city. The melee unit that spawns is a battlemaster if Iron Working has been discovered, a Son of Asena if iron working was not discovered but bronze working is not, and a Beastman otherwise. Wolves spawn with 4 attack if hunting has been discovered, and 6 strength if animal handling was discovered.

-Svartalfar get +.5 happiness from forests and ancient forests.

This civilization is found within the other modmods, but is described here in case anyone downloading this file hasn't played them. They are an exploration oriented civilization, with some focus on recon units and expansion. In the game story, they are a nation of wanderers.

*Unique Units:

-Rogue: Scout substitute. Has a few extra abilities, though I don't remember specifics at the moment.
-Explorer: Hunter substitute, requires cartography. (Some other ability that I don't remember at the moment)
-Tracker: Ranger substitute. 5/6 strength rather than 7, but has some extra defensive abilities to make up for it.
-Highlander: Axman substitute. Stronger overall at combat, plus some hills bonuses, but weaker at attacking cities
-Windsword: Phalanx substitute. Different combat strength, has a spell that can damage nearby enemies
-Recurve Archer: Stronger longbowman substitute
-Pegasus: Summoned creature. Can only defend, moves quickly.

*Hero
Harmatt: 3 strength, 1 air affinity, high withdraw chance. Available early in the game.

*Buildings
Austrin settlement: Acts as a government center. This will be produced in all cities, greatly reducing austrin maintenance costs.
Austrin Palace: Provides shadow, spirit, and air mana. In this version, provides all cities with an austrin settlement. (In other versions, this is done through a different method.)
Exploration Guild: Hunting lodge substitute. Provides an extra trade route, plus extra experience to all recon and navy units.

*Leaders
Dierdra: Charismatic/expansive(adaptive).

*Spells

-Tempest: Spawns several air elementals in austrin territory, forces units out.
-Pegasus Rider: Gives several units the pegasus rider promotion. This promotion makes them flying and allows faster movement.
-Summon Pegasus: Summons a pegasus, as described above.

*Expansion mechanics
These mechanics help the austrin expand somewhat faster than other civilizations. When using these methods to found cities, settlers do not need to be moved to the location, but the city gets no defenders when founded. The ability to use Found Settlement is an on/off ability (it uses the feat system in civ 4), so several expeditions, for example, cannot be prepared at once.

-Found Settlement: Recon unit spell. When the spell is used, a new city is created at the recon unit's location. To use the spell, one of the following conditions must take place.
-Prepare expedition: Project. Allows recon units to use the above spell. This allows a city to continue growing while building an "expansion" ability
-Pioneer: has a 1/50 chance to spawn in each austrin city if the civilization is using the city states civic. If Found Settlement is not available, this ability makes it so.

*New building, the Coven of Esus. requires Esus as a state religion, currently provides +2 experience to recon units, +1 trade route, and a merchant slot. Increases crime rate by 20.

The abilities of this building may change in the future. Recon bonuses are meant ot synergize somewhat with the Svartalfar, and thematically fit the religion, trade routes and merchants are meant to represent a black market like effect. I'm hoping to create a building that differentiates somewhat from other religions, but without too much focus on recon units alone.

*New unit: Nightstalker.

Currently has:
4/3 strength +1 poison,
2 movement
Invisible
Sentry
50% withdrawal chance.

Is a recon unit, can upgrade to shadows. Requires Esus as state religion, the deception technology, and the Coven of Esus building to be built. Will leave is the state religion changes.

The current stats were chosen to fill a slightly different role to assasins and rangers. The roles I have in mind are either hidden hit and run attacks, to harass enemy units in a somewhat different way to horse units, or to attack weak enemy units in their territory. If the unit iends up being overpowered (which seems a good possibility), I'll likely limit its numbers of units per civilization to 4-8.

*New spells
All of these spells require the Council of Esus to be a state religion, and are cast by a unit with the Council of Esus as a religion. They have been tested for game mechanics, and appear to work, apart from the spells to remove specific religions. They have not been tested in a full game yet. (I'll probably do this while testing some civilization changes, and playing other civilizations that I have little experience.)

-"Black Market": costs 50 gold, creates a building that provides 5 health, but costs 10 gold per turn. (I'll probably reduce this in the next update. Original logic was from the planetfall mod, that has an antistarvation mechanics that costs 2 money per food needed to keep a base from starving.)
-"Seedy club": costs 50 gold, creates a building that adds 5 happiness but costs 15 gold per turn. (The per turn cost may be reduces as well. It should be high enough that the building won't just be built in every city, but low enough that the gold cost is worth it.)
-"Dark Healing" costs 50 gold, heals a unit completely.
-"Remove Religions" an inquisition like spell. Costs 50 gold, but casts instantly and does not cause any unhappiness. In setting terms, i imagine that while other religions make a big public deal out of removing non-state religions, the Esus leaders simply go "boy, those order priests are giving us trouble", and in a few days the order priests have suffered mysterious fatal accidents.

-"Remove Order", "Remove Ashen Veil", etc.: Cost 25 gold, and remove a specific religion from a city, while leaving the others unaffected.

-Guardian of Nature only gives .5 happiness from forests, ancient forests, and jungles.
-Hidden Paths technology allows "preserves", which can be built on forests and ancient forests, and provide +2 commerce and +.5 happiness.

These changes are designed to make elves and Fellowship of Leaves somewhat more flexible. Elves playing cottage economy+guardian of nature are unaffected statistically, but elves that go another religion do get some happiness benefit from forests as well. Similarly, Preserves are designed to act like a somewhat less powerful version of the elf economy, providing commerce and happiness for the other civilizations.

Certain spells have been given a "channeling point" requirement for casting, in addition to other prerequisites. In addition, some units and promotions have been given "channeling points" that they use to cast such spells. spells that use channeling points are mostly religion and magic based ones, while spells that are used for unit abilities, world spells, and such have kept the old system.

In the new system, when a unit with channeling points cast a spell, that unit loose an amount of channeling points equivalent to the casting point requirement of the spell. If the spell costs more channeling points than the unit has, the spell simply takes several turns to cast, depending on the casting point cost and the number of casting points available to the unit.

If you've played Age of Wonders, before, the casting point system for wizards in that game works in a very similar way.

The purpose of this change was mainly as a way to make more advanced casting units more powerful than less advanced ones at spellcasting. Even if a player doesn't need the spells or a more advanced priest or mage type unit, they still gain the benefit of faster casting and/or more spells per turn.

Currently, channeling points are provided by the following promotions (and no units, though this is possible to add):

-Channeling 1: 5 points
-Channeling 2: 5 points
-Channeling 3: 5 points
-Potency: 5 points (A way to help arcane and spiritual casters get an additional advantage within this system)

In the next update, Twincast will double the casting points available to units, though in this update it does nothing.

Mana: Currently used for "magical" spellcasting, and also for maintaining permanent summoned units. Mana income is increased by palaces, mage guilds, and caves of wonders acting on bonus resources, though some buildings in the future may also simply provide it. Ir may also add other effects to mana, though at the moment do not know what these would be.

Faith: Currently used just for spellcasting, though when i add religions I will add some other effects to increased faith (High faith will cause religions to spread, and also have unique effects based on the state religion of the civilization with the particular amount of faith.) Currently, faith comes from some temples while the civilization has their state religion.

A new type of permanent summon was added to the game. The spells to produce these summons can only be cast in a city with a building that allows ritual summons, and all of these spells currently in the game require certain mana resources as well, corresponding to the type of magic they come from. (for example, fire elementals are now a ritual summon, and require fire mana in the city in order to be summoned.) At the moment, the spells to summon ritual summons only require the 2nd level of the appropriate magic path, to avoid having to tie up archmages in summoning. These spells have relatively high mana costs and require several turns to summon.

The amount of ritual summons a player can have is unlimited, and they use mana rather than gold for maintenance. Most of unusual abilities or properties of some sort, but are overall strong in combat.

Buildings can now generate commerce types and yields in a similar way as corporations, where the amount of extra amount depends on the amount of particular bonuses. Currently, this ability is only used for mana generation, but I plan to use it for other types of resources at some point.

Palaces, Cave of Wonders, and Mage Guilds are the current buildings that produce mana in this way. At all these buildings, Raw mana provides the most mana yield, Metamagic provides a bit more than normal, and at palaces, the civilizations "patron" mana also provides a bit more than normal.

The "magic" spells in the game have been adjusted and reworked, and a lot of new ones have been added. These changes still have a lot of work to go, and I'll probably work in a section of spells at a time as I go through other updates. For now, the current spells for each magic type are listed after the next paragraph.

Spells changes are designed mainly to give each magic type 1-2 or so "themes" to focus the roles of all magic types. Some individual spells repeat, or are closely copied, across different magic types, but combined with other spells of a magic ype, fit within somewhat different roles. In addition, several "levels" of some types of spells have been added, to ensure that higher level mages have advantages in spellcasting compared to lower level mages.

Spells "levels" are used for when spells provide promotions or buildings as a way to have higher level mages by more powerful than low level ones. Spells that have "levels" are actually a set of 2-3 spells requiring higher level promotions to cast, and each version of the spell provides a nearby identical effect. For an example of how this works, the "inspiration" spell comes in three parts, one requiring mind 1, one requiring mind 2, and one requiring mind 3. Each of these spells produces an identical building in a city, providing 2 research and 1 scientist great person point. The net effect is that, if the player only uses an adept, they simply get +2 science and +1 scientist GPP in a city. If mages are used, the player could get +4 research and +2 scientist GPP's in a city, and an archmage could get +6 science and +3 scientist GPP's in a city. Promotions work in a similar maner ot stack bonuses and/or penalties.

Spells by Magic Type:

Fire:


Air:



Water Spells:



Ice:



Earth:



Body:



Force:



Nature:



Enchantment



Creation



Metamagic



Life:



Law



Mind



Spirit



Sun



Entropy



Chaos



Dimensional



Shadow



Death



Good:



Neutral:



Evil