Balance issues & suggestions

[Opera]

I forgot, here's how I would classify the mana spheres into the schools:

• Alteration
  • Body
  • Creation
  • Enchantment
  • Life
  • Nature
• Divination
  • Law
  • Metamagic
  • Mind
  • Spirit
  • Sun
• Necromancy
  • Chaos
  • Death
  • Dimensional
  • Entropy
  • Shadow
• Elementalism
  • Air
  • Earth
  • Fire
  • Ice
  • Water
• Force

I put Metamagic in Divination as its place as the "center" is now taken by Force. However, maybe it should be renamed. Metamagic implies that it is beyond magic, which it isn't really anymore. Force should get the Dispel ability, too.

 

[Opera]

Okay, so, I thought about something, but it may be a bit complicated.




An Adept has the possibility to learn any rank I spell, as long as he hasn't already learned a spell from a mana opposing the one he wants. So, if you learn Water I, you won't be able to learn Fire I in any way.
A Mage needs to do a choice when first upgraded. It would be required to choose one school: either Alteration, Necromancy, Divination or Elementalism. He would be able to reach rank III spells only in the spheres pertaining to the school he chooses.
So an Archmage would only be able to learn 5 rank III spells at max. But only 3 max in Elementalism and Divination due to internal complications.

Maybe that Alteration and Necromancy should exclude rank II spells of each other mana spheres, as they seem to be extremely opposed.

Edit: Nevermind, this won't work. Or not well. The Divination school basically allow only one sphere because each one excludes 2+ other spheres in the same school...

 

[Opera]

Fourpost!

Here's an updated chart:

Spoiler :

You can clearly see the internal issues of the Divination school. Apart from this one, only Elementalism as such conflicts. Alteration and Necromancy seems pretty unified and to oppose each other quite well.

 

[Jabie]

Hmm. I really don't like this idea. It adds a lot of confusion to the magic system, for only questionable benefits.

For instance, I want to build a mage whose sole job is terraforming. That's normally Water 1 (for Deserts), Sun 1 (for Ice), Life 1 (for Haunted Lands), plus potentially Mobility and Water 2 (for Water Walking to any nearby island chains I own) Yes, Nature 3 is nice, but it's a heck of a way off and I can do a lot of good with just the previous spells til I get to that level. If Water and Sun start to compete, I'll need more magic users and more micromanagement and that's a bad thing from a gameplay perspective.

Secondly, you can snooker yourself with free promotions. If I have 3 Fire nodes - all my mages get fireball, but now they'll never be able to get Spring to put out the flames in my forests. This latter problem can be solved by giving Mage Guilds the Train Spell ability, so that you don't *have* to learn fireball if you wish to learn Spring. This also allows you Archmages to learn new spells as you acquire new sorts of mana.

 

[Opera]

Hmm. I really don't like this idea. It adds a lot of confusion to the magic system, for only questionable benefits.

The benefits aren't questionable. As benefits, you'll get: boosts to your adept/mage/archmage with the spells promotions (Air I, Earth III, etc.) and more powerful spells because harder to get.

For instance, I want to build a mage whose sole job is terraforming. That's normally Water 1 (for Deserts), Sun 1 (for Ice), Life 1 (for Haunted Lands), plus potentially Mobility and Water 2 (for Water Walking to any nearby island chains I own) Yes, Nature 3 is nice, but it's a heck of a way off and I can do a lot of good with just the previous spells til I get to that level. If Water and Sun start to compete, I'll need more magic users and more micromanagement and that's a bad thing from a gameplay perspective.

Well, Water <-> Sun may not be a good idea, then. Nothing is set to stone yet. Gameplay will play a huge part in that, not only flavour. I didn't think about those two terraforming spells. However, if you pick Death I, you won't have access to Life I with that same adept, so he couldn't remove haunted lands. But you can either create another adept with Life I or take Fire I. IIRC, you can remove haunted lands with Blaze.

Secondly, you can snooker yourself with free promotions. If I have 3 Fire nodes - all my mages get fireball, but now they'll never be able to get Spring to put out the flames in my forests. This latter problem can be solved by giving Mage Guilds the Train Spell ability, so that you don't *have* to learn fireball if you wish to learn Spring. This also allows you Archmages to learn new spells as you acquire new sorts of mana.

Yeah, that something I'd like to work on too.

 

[xienwolf]

Maybe you could ditch the current 4 groups of spells and come up with a set of similar divisions (not necessarily 4, maybe 3 or 7) which work better for the schools as you set them up. Avoid internal conflicts and make it so that rank 1 spells block only their opposing sphere, rank 2 spells block an opposing school, and rank 3 spells block everything outside of your school. So with a 7 school split (you'd make each tech cheaper, and each tower as well) you would have 1 school which is fairly weak but doesn't oppose any other schools past level 1 (Force/Body/Nature?), and the other 6 schools would have 1 strictly opposing set each.

Splitting by techs can make it pretty clear for players what they will lose at rank 2 (the other tech worth of things) and what they lose at rank 3 (everything but this tech). The need to rename the towers and create 2 more could be an issue, so instead you could make it so you only need 1 of each opposing pair to generate a tower, plus the 4th unopposed tower from the 7th tech.


For the sake of the Tech Tree, you could make it so that the 7th tech (unopposed) is the prereq for all of the other 6 spheres, and is the ONLY prereq for Sorcery (So it goes KotE --> 7th --> Sorcery, and all the other 6 are dead-end paths from 7th)

If possible, it would be neat if the 3 pairs of techs matched the 3 spheres within the 7th Tech somehow (ie - two which oppose each other in some manner which relates to Body, 2 which oppose each other in some manner related to Force...) then you could make the 7th sphere offer enhancements to each of the two "sub-schools" and maybe even only allow players to choose 1 of the 3 items in school 7 per unit (so then as a Mage if you took a 7th school promotion you are able to promote in 3 separate schools, but one of them is stronger due to being enhanced by your 7th school promotion)


And yes, the idea of moving from auto-applied free promotions for multiple mana to elective application will be quite needed.

 

[Cylnar]

@Cylnar: See, I didn't know this about Summoners. Never saw them. I guess I came to FFH too late! How were they handled? Were they an alternative to Mage upgrade from Adepts? So they did have the same rank I spells but different rank II-III?

Yes. There was only one tier I spell list; when your unit reached level 4, you had two upgrade buttons. One would upgrade the unit to a mage, the other to a summoner; each had different spell lists. The mage mostly had buffs, debuffs and direct damage types and the summoner relied on summoned creatures.

For example (and my memory may be faulty) the Fire sphere had Blaze as tier I, then Fireball for mage tier II (the only "unit" that a mage could "summon") or Summon Azer for summoner tier II, and for tier III, Pillar of Fire for mages or Summon Fire Elemental for summoners. The relative strengths of the surviving summons were adjusted when Kael blended the two; Azer may have been the tier III summon though it is now a demonic/barbarian unit with a weaker base strength than a fire elemental.

I think a way to give arcane units ranged attack would be neat. Maybe with Force II (which would still give a spell) or with another mana...

If a mage can cast a damage spell, they should be able to have a ranged attack (it doesn't have to be powerful, necessarily). For example, a mage learns Fireball. This also gives it access to a strength 1 fire-based ranged attack with no collateral damage (hits a random unit in the stack or the primary stack defender). Perhaps learning the tier III fire spell could add +1 fire damage to that attack, or if the mage learns another damage spell (maelstrom, for instance) a +1 of that damage type could be added.

Hmm. I really don't like this idea. It adds a lot of confusion to the magic system, for only questionable benefits.

For instance, I want to build a mage whose sole job is terraforming. That's normally Water 1 (for Deserts), Sun 1 (for Ice), Life 1 (for Haunted Lands), plus potentially Mobility and Water 2 (for Water Walking to any nearby island chains I own) Yes, Nature 3 is nice, but it's a heck of a way off and I can do a lot of good with just the previous spells til I get to that level. If Water and Sun start to compete, I'll need more magic users and more micromanagement and that's a bad thing from a gameplay perspective.

This could be solved by simply allowing all Adepts to take any tier I spells without limitation. Let them learn the basics of several schools before they have to make a decision as to what school they will specialize in as they advance (tier II spells would begin to block access to spells from opposing schools). This also allows letting Khazad adepts/players bypass the whole specialization thing entirely - they're already weak enough (since they can't upgrade) without further limiting their spell selection.

Secondly, you can snooker yourself with free promotions. If I have 3 Fire nodes - all my mages get fireball, but now they'll never be able to get Spring to put out the flames in my forests. This latter problem can be solved by giving Mage Guilds the Train Spell ability, so that you don't *have* to learn fireball if you wish to learn Spring. This also allows you Archmages to learn new spells as you acquire new sorts of mana.

I like this idea. The second mana would give the tier I spell (if tier I didn't block other tiers) while further mana of that type would give a choice of free (or low-cost) promotion: either further spells in that mana type or a non-spell promo normally available to mages (either one of the existing ones or new ones implemented when the specialization system goes into effect).

So in Jabie's example, a new adept would start with Blaze; when upgrading it would be able to take Fireball, or perhaps Combat I (or maybe Magic Resistance or Resist Fire would be more thematic) thus allowing it to spend its normal free upgrade-to-mage promo to acquire Spring. If you go ahead with tier I spells blocking other tier I spells, this system would simply start at the adept level: the adept would either choose to learn Blaze or get another promo instead.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, since death magic in Erebus is actually unnatural undeath magic, death and nature can oppose each other.



I don't really have Creation up and running in my current version. In my previous version:
Creation I: Fertility: Creates a requires caster building called Fertility that provides and stores food.
Creation II: Inspiration: Creates a requires caster building called Inspiration that provides free slots for all kinds of specialists, plus aGP and research bonus.
Creation III: Prodigious Birth: Causes a random great person to be born in a random civ's random city.

I had Prodigious Birth working fine before, but broke it somehow. Inspiration seems more appropriate for the Creation sphere than for Mind, but I didn't really like the Mind I spell I added in my previous version and haven't come up with a better one so I've left that sphere alone for now and haven't changed the effects of the Inspiration building yet. Right now I have Mind I and Creation I being identical, and a Creation 2 spell called fertility that just increases the city population by 1. This is only temporary though.



Force 1: Temperance: Gives the temperance promotion, which grants 30% resistance to both holy and unholy damage.
Force 2: Repel Divine: pushes angels, demons, and priests back a tile, and deals a small amount of damage to them. Can be resisted
Force 3: Wall of Geiss - basically a copy of Sanctuary that doesn't usually last so long (length depends on the caster level), costs the caster all his force promotions.
Force 3/Spirit 3: Peace, taken from Corindale. Actually, I don't think I've added this in my current version.

Force 3: Summon Runewyn: as the name implies, it summons a Runewyn. I just added this last night, based on an entry in the Bestiary. Runewyns start with Angel, Flying, Magic Immune, Angel Slaying, and Demon Slaying, but more importantly they can target arcane units (and archmages in particular. I currently have it targeting high priests too, but I may drop that.) in stacks of better defenders, they defend against arcane units first, they have a 100% bonus vs arcane units, and they can cause their victims to loose random spell spheres and channeling promotions.


While allowing ranged attacks by promotions is not hard in FF based mods, I don't really think it is appropriate for the force sphere. Force is about balance, not physical pushes and pulls. It is also about reaching and enforcing consensuses, and since the natural laws of Erebus were set by consensus it entails preventing them from being broken or bent by supernatural means. Force magic is kind of a paradox, as the sphere prefers the mundane and delving too deep into studies of how to use it is against its nature. Reality itself could be considered one enormous force spell that all the souls of gods and men cast together without realizing it. I can't really imagine the ability to channeling and concentrate the essence of balance in order cast a spell with it, as balance seems by definition to be the state in which all the elements are least concentrated. Force seems like it is more anti-magic than magic. I suspect that one could at least theoretically however combine Force magic with powerful Mind, Shadow, or Spirit magic to manipulate the collective subconscious into reaching a consensus strong enough to change the laws of nature.

 

[Rutee]

Yeah, [Automatic Spell Upgrades] something I'd like to work on too.

Um... I know I've seen this in FF.. promotions I had for free, and paid ABSOLUTELY nothing for, but had to click on to get.. Could you run the automatic spell upgrades like that? That way there's a check you have to do (In case you want to forego auto-fire for some water...

But I may be misremembering, since it's been a couple months.

 

[Jabie]

Force 3: Wall of Geiss - basically a copy of Sanctuary that doesn't usually last so long (length depends on the caster level), costs the caster all his force promotions.

Doesn't that weaken the Elohim by allowing other nations to replicate their World Spell albeit in a shorter version? Perhaps you should limit it to the fat cross of one city and/or only make it block creatures 75% of the time - that'll slow down a SoD without completely stopping it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, that would require me to do a lot of SDK work instead of just using a preexistent python function.


I'm not a fan of most of the world spells, so I always turn them off. The similarity to the world spell doesn't weaken them if no one can use world spells.

 

[Caradoc]

I think maybe the tensions among the schools could be resolved by moving some of the spheres. Ones that seem out of place to me are Metamagic under Divination, Dimensional under Necromancy, and Ice under Elemental.

 

[civ_king]

I think maybe the tensions among the schools could be resolved by moving some of the spheres. Ones that seem out of place to me are Metamagic under Divination, Dimensional under Necromancy, and Ice under Elemental.

where would you put them (BTW dimensional is an evil sphere)

 

[darkarrow56]

in honesty i think fishing should give rivers extra+1 food because you fish from the river i like the ideas about specific mages make kinda a ring of affinity's that give for ex. ice and and water are similair so it would be hard to take out a water elemental with an ice elemental but pretty easy with a fireball earth strong against lightning water takes out fire ice takes out earth and lightning takes out water
does that make any sense?

 

[Morlark]

does that make any sense?

Nope. And I mean that quite literally. That sentence was literally incomprehensible to me.

where would you put them (BTW dimensional is an evil sphere)

Ice is an evil sphere too, but you don't see people trying to pigeonhole that into the "evil" school. I think the reason it feels like dimensional doesn't fit is because the whole school itself seems misnamed. If you think about it, necromancy is basically just a word for death magic. It's a single sphere masquerading as a whole school. But dimensional has nothing to do with that, and the other spheres are only peripherally related at best. I think it might make sense if the school were renamed to something else, like maybe abjuration? I dunno, that's not a very name, but I can't think of a better one.

 

[Opera]

I didn't put more thought in that since the last time I posted. It's indeed very hard to think of a way to revamp the current magic system. I guess it would be better to start from scratch, with only the manas as a base. Thus forgetting the current techs ("schools"), spells, and all.

 

[Cylnar]

I guess it would be better to start from scratch, with only the manas as a base. Thus forgetting the current techs ("schools"), spells, and all.

That might be too much of a deviation from base FfH - you'd be radically altering gameplay rather than just adding refinements. You'd also be going against all lore already written. The manas and spells unlocked by the tech "necromancy" are the only ones the game currently treats as evil (thus the diplo penalty associated with their use). You're better off just leaving it that way.

As stated above, I'd like to see a return to separate "mage" and "summoner" lines for arcane units with different spells for each. Another alternative would be to have more than one spell associated with each tier of spell ability. For example: in addition to Blaze at the first tier of fire ability, you could have "Agannazar's Scorcher" which would be used to attack a unit in an adjacent tile, or simply added +1 fire combat to the caster.

Another example: At the third tier of Enchantment an archmage would have access to "Tenser's Transformation" which would, for a single turn, make the caster the equivalent of a Champion/Heavy Infantry (or appropriate UU) as far as base strength goes, with mithril weapons; the caster could then attack or defend appropriately. Great to stymie assassins!

With additional spells at their disposal, players could customize their mages however they liked! Build a unit into a Pyromancer, master of fire, able to burn enemies' lands and units equally, and summon azers and fire elementals to help! Or an Enchanter, able to buff allies and debuff enemies - and eventually perhaps to enter the fray as an enchanted warrior!

 

[Opera]

That might be too much of a deviation from base FfH - you'd be radically altering gameplay rather than just adding refinements. You'd also be going against all lore already written. The manas and spells unlocked by the tech "necromancy" are the only ones the game currently treats as evil (thus the diplo penalty associated with their use). You're better off just leaving it that way.

Well, you're half-wrong there. Among the Necromancy manas, only two are treated as "evil" in diplomacy: Death and Entropy. Chaos, Dimensional and Shadow aren't treated like this.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that you aren't bound to those four techs/"schools" and that we always can move spells around. I'm not saying to entirely re-think the system and the spells, I'm just saying that we aren't bound to them absolutely.

As stated above, I'd like to see a return to separate "mage" and "summoner" lines for arcane units with different spells for each. Another alternative would be to have more than one spell associated with each tier of spell ability. For example: in addition to Blaze at the first tier of fire ability, you could have "Agannazar's Scorcher" which would be used to attack a unit in an adjacent tile, or simply added +1 fire combat to the caster.

Another example: At the third tier of Enchantment an archmage would have access to "Tenser's Transformation" which would, for a single turn, make the caster the equivalent of a Champion/Heavy Infantry (or appropriate UU) as far as base strength goes, with mithril weapons; the caster could then attack or defend appropriately. Great to stymie assassins!

With additional spells at their disposal, players could customize their mages however they liked! Build a unit into a Pyromancer, master of fire, able to burn enemies' lands and units equally, and summon azers and fire elementals to help! Or an Enchanter, able to buff allies and debuff enemies - and eventually perhaps to enter the fray as an enchanted warrior!

Yes, that could be great. A lot of work, though. And for the Summoners, idea that I like, you would need to find spells to replace the current summons of the Adepts and find new summon spells. If you do/help with that, adding Summoners will be easy

 

[Cylnar]

Well, you're half-wrong there. Among the Necromancy manas, only two are treated as "evil" in diplomacy: Death and Entropy. Chaos, Dimensional and Shadow aren't treated like this.

I thought chaos was too. Oh well. My point was only "necromancy" related schools get any negative reaction.

Yes, that could be great. A lot of work, though. And for the Summoners, idea that I like, you would need to find spells to replace the current summons of the Adepts and find new summon spells. If you do/help with that, adding Summoners will be easy

The code should still exist for all the spells (not to mention the code differentiating mage from summoner units) that were eliminated when Kael merged the two lines. If Kael deleted it, maybe Vehem still has it, or xienwolf, or MagisterCultuum. Ahwaric may even have it, if he was iterating Orbis at the time. If I still had that iteration of FfH2 laying around I would attach it but I don't.

 

[Valkrionn]

I'm sure you could get it from the vanilla Civ version, which should still exist in the download page.