Design: Spells

[Psychic_Llamas]

Ethereal Doorway may be a bit much. maybey say units with an 'Ethereal Touch' promotion (given to them by the caster with etheral doorway) can be recalled to the casters side, not just anyone.
its a cool idea though

 

[Kael]

Llamas !!!

 

[Bringa]

My apologies for not reading through this very long thread, just wondering if this idea's already been mentioned:

How about spells that require MULTIPLE mana types? Like Water and Fire for a Jet of Steam spell? Or Alteration and Body for Become a Giant etc.

 

[Kael]

My apologies for not reading through this very long thread, just wondering if this idea's already been mentioned:

How about spells that require MULTIPLE mana types? Like Water and Fire for a Jet of Steam spell? Or Alteration and Body for Become a Giant etc.

We talked about it. My thought was that we should focus on filling the slots we have with as good of spells as possible rather than looking to add more.

The spell system was designed to allow for exactly what you are saying. But I would rather get ideas for "this spell isnt really used, can we replace it with <whatever> to make it more interesting?" rather then just adding new spells.

 

[Yoshi2942]

How about creating a POLL which asks players to name the spell they never use - should be pretty easy to find a couple that are rarely used. I would like to see a spell which creates a Road (or other improvement, but road would be my first choice) - possibly as an earth spell.. Infact, I'd rather see roadbuilding than Walls.

 

[BeefontheBone]

I can't remeber ever using Sanctify. However, I fully expect to get some use out of it in the later phases of the mod

 

[Adrogans]

Yeah especially if Sanctify gets reworked for anti hell tile use.

 

[Quetz]

I want a spell that uses the nuke effect!!

I know, that was pretty random, but I love it so.. it is a good vfx that is already in the game. Maybe only learnable by a combat 5 sheiam Sparklie Mage, or whatever the one that comes out of the gate thing is..

 

[BCalchet]

I want a spell that uses the nuke effect!!

I know, that was pretty random, but I love it so.. it is a good vfx that is already in the game. Maybe only learnable by a combat 5 sheiam Sparklie Mage, or whatever the one that comes out of the gate thing is..

Hmm...

"Planetbuster": Fire 3, Entropy 3. Requires X armageddon counter. Instantly turns the caster's alignment to evil, and has all non-evil civilizations (as well as the target) declare permanent war on the user.

Converts the target tile and four other tiles in a '+' shape to a lake of boiling lava. (Also converts any tiles surrounding those, if the caster has twincast)

Feedback: Burns out the caster's magical abilities, preventing any future spellcasting.

 

[Jono]

Summon Hell (Chaos 3/Entropy 3/Fire 3, Force 3, Summoning): Slowly draws hell tiles towards the caster (moving existing ones). The speed at which the tiles move depend on the Armageddon Counter.

 

[Adrogans]

You could have a wonder built like this:

Tome of Destruction

gives 1 free sage specialist to the city
creates unit - Hellfury Mage

Hellfury Mage has one spell the aforementioned - and twincast effect

Spoiler :

"Planetbuster": Fire 3, Entropy 3. Requires X armageddon counter. Instantly turns the caster's alignment to evil, and has all non-evil civilizations (as well as the target) declare permanent war on the user.

Converts the target tile and four other tiles in a '+' shape to a lake of boiling lava. (Also converts any tiles surrounding those, if the caster has twincast)

Feedback: Burns out the caster's magical abilities, preventing any future spellcasting.

Basically giving you a living nuke! The sage was just kind of an added effect so there is a reason to build even if you dont use the Hellfury mage. Also you could give a diplomacy modifier like Beware I have the Hellfury mage making it less likely AI would go to war with you out of fear.

 

[Yoshi2942]

Ok, here is my feedback on the spells.

Basically, there seems to me to be two main reasons to research magic.

1) Summoned Creatures
2) Fireball/Meteors

There are a number of other spells - which are nice - but without the summons or fireballs, it wouldn't be worth researching magic (especially because the only other good spells can all be accomplished using Druids/Priests without having to get the mana or researching any of the schools of magic).

Ok. With this being said - as a background for where the rest of my views come from.

I hope when the mod is completed that there is more structure for the spell system... or less.

By more, I am mostly talking about the summoned creatures - The only summons, currently, which stick around permanently are Treants, Tigers, and Skeletons. Skeletons are level 1, Tigers are level 2, and Treants are level 3 - if I could put it like this. All the other summons are 1 turners. I would preffer to see the Tigers, which are not even a summoned creature, replaced with a spell.. and instead make ALL 3rd level summons (with the exception of Pitbeast, as it is a Chaos Summon) stick around until they die - 1 per caster.

By less, and this probably won't see traction, I mean get rid of the current system and replace it with a system of spells which are individually purchased and have Unit Level requirements to purchase, and mana requirements to cast.

As for the sorcery side of things - I think that most of the spells are usefull and the only spell that I would like to see changed is the resurection spell, I've never cast it -- because I've always felt that the loss of any mana node was too high a price to pay to get one unit - regardless of the unit.

 

[Arwon]

With the multiple damage types in the re-jigged combat system of Fire, there's scope for a wider range of offensive sorcery spells aside from fireball and meteor, each inflicting different damage types. Cold blasts, death attacks, lightning, etc. Likewise, there's scope for more functionally different summons as opposed to just "summon the strongest unit, fling it at the enemy" style stuff.

I'm looking forward to that.

 

[Yoshi2942]

I still want more options for summons that stick around - I hate having to micromanage 1 turn summons just to simulate summons who patrol my lands in case of attacks.

Actually... Here is a bit more of what I think of the Summons -

Treant (and this can apply to ALL summons) -- Great, Love them, Think they are pretty cool. Computer doesn't seem to know how to use them, which makes sense because the AI leaves mages in the cities until combat -- and the player knows to just step one space out of the city to be able to cast from woods. Maybe it would be better to remove the requirement for the woods since it basically makes the spell one which the AI isn't likely to use. Same with Sand Lions.. The AI obviously knows how to cast summon spells (Tigers come to mind), but once locational requirements are added - the AI doesn't seem to know how to cast them.

 

[c.fe]

By less, and this probably won't see traction, I mean get rid of the current system and replace it with a system of spells which are individually purchased and have Unit Level requirements to purchase, and mana requirements to cast.

Finally someone who shares my opinion (if I understand you right ). I still hope for more Master-Of-Magic-ness regarding the spell system, especially with regard to summons. At least for me it's simply more fun to have these around until they die but have some cap that you can raise (in Master of Magic build nodes).

And giving units mana to cast spells gives you room to make interesting promotions like better mana regeneration and more mana-reserves. So you get the choice: Cast more often or cast bigger spells.

 

[connerreeves]

sorry for not reading the entire thread, maybe it has already been mentioned: how is the inspiration spell working? haven't seen any change when i cast it in a city. duration until next tech invention remains the same and number of produced beakers doesn't change either.

 

[Maniac]

You should get a building named Inspiration in your city giving 4 beakers.

 

[connerreeves]

thanks. i'm sure there was no such building and as i wrote beakers didn't change. but will try again

 

[katika]

The inspiration building goes away when the mage leaves the city.

For the summons, I agree that I only ever use a few mana types, but with the new breakup for damage that should change. I'm not sure that I like permanent T3 summons because summoning is already a very powerful strategy and I don't think it needs another boost.

 

[Quetz]

And giving units mana to cast spells gives you room to make interesting promotions like better mana regeneration and more mana-reserves. So you get the choice: Cast more often or cast bigger spells.

I also want this. There is a system for mana-based spellcasting someone posted on the CivFanatics forum - it has mana as a global resource like gold, and your mages charge up from the pool in cities, using their individual store to cast spells. Its pretty neat, I'm hoping to be able to get it to work with FFh.. although from what I have seen so far it would require so much work that it would probably end up not being worth it.