Design: Spells

[Lunargent]

The mind div II one sounds like a good way to suicide your unit....unless it lasts forever and can be cast far from combat.

I actually like the life sor II, spring of life idea alot.

Life sum I-Summon wisp. This unit acts as a medic in all surrounding squares, moves like a gunship (3 moves, ignores terrain), cannot attack, and can only be killed by spells.

I think it would be a good idea if the Mind div I spell only worked 50% of the time on a random chance per turn. So that way you can't see everything the AI is doing. Casting it on a stealth unit would make that unit permanently useless. There should probably be something preventing that.

For entropy div II. How about it creates something similar to fallout terrain (-3food,gold,ham) that can be cleansed by a worker in a few turns in the same way. You could wreck an enemy's lands during a war so that it takes longer than normal for them to recover, but they can still do so.

Law sorc II- Target unit comes under the iron rule of law, and fufills it's last orders even if slain. A unit targeted by this spell can still make one more move or attack even after it has been slain. After this, it falls over dead.

Treants only being able to move in forests makes no sense to me. Perhaps desert terrain could lower their strength a bit though. Maybe even make it permanent until they get back into a forest.

For the other summoning imbalances, I think the relative unit strengths should be tweaked rather than adding even more layers of complexity.

 

[Corlindale]

Perhaps there could also be some very, very, very powerful summoned units, but the catch could be that summoning would kill the caster, sacrificing an expensive unit to gain the use of an extremely powerful unit for 1 turn. Demon type summons could be good candidates for this, perhaps the Balor should be boosted in power and get the drawback of killing the summoner. I don't know if 1 turn use would be too little for the price though, perhaps it could borrow the Host of the Eirnjhar effect of lingering as long as it wins combat.Sort of like the Bloodthirster unit from Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War.

 

[Lunargent]

Balancing sucha spell would be tricky. I has to be powerfull to come with such a price, but if it's that powerfull, it's probably overpowered. ( it becomes an easy win spell, and so what that you lose the unit)

Though, how about summons that have a GP, or happiness ( like Dis), cost, or even cost research points? You wouldn't spam them so much if the cost was high, so the power could be slightly higher.

 

[Chalid]

Points to http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3904423&postcount=118

 

[loki1232]

Law sor II: Rule of Law--
Reduces maintenance in the caster's city and increases trade route yeild.

Life sum I: Unicorn--
Perhaps allows caster to cast again if it kills an enemy?
Life sor II: Reward of Immortality--
Target high level unit has a 50% of gaining the immortality promotion the next time it kills an enemy.

Spirit sor I: Gaurdian angel--
Target unit becomes the caster's gaurdian angel. Basically, any attack that would hit the caster instead hits this unit. 1 per caster, must be in same square to work.

Nature div I: Ancient forest--
Makes an ancient forest. I think this is the best way to include ancient forests.

 

[loki1232]

I know this isn't important at the moment, but I think that neither the sun nor shadow spheres should have summoning spells.

Nature div II: The trees have eyes--
Reveal all forests that are connected to the caster's forest by forests. Can only be cast on a forest.
Earth sum I: Dwarven Assistance--
Summons a dwarf. Can only be cast on hills. Medium strength, starts with guerilla I, II.

 

[loki1232]

Entropy div I: Filth--
Target unit becomes diseased. can't be used on units immune to disease.

Water div I: Hurricane--
Deals a lot of damage to all ships in target sea tile and destroys all fishing/whaling boats in it.

 

[Kael]

I see a bit of unbalance between the Sorcery and the summoning at our momentary configuration. The problem is that each sphere gives fighting power to the conjurer in contast to the mage that only gets real firepower by the fire sphere (at the moment). this makes most of the summoners quite equal. the only difference is the power of the summoned units. How about
a) creating a lot of non combat units for summoners.
There comes to mind:
Summon helpful spirit (akind of worker thet stays for three turns),
summon birds or magical eyes that are used as flying air recconnaisance,
summon minor metal elemental that can be used for production in the city (ok that one would force micromanegement, so let ist stay for some turns and add to production as long as it is placed in a city.).
summon watcher (a unit with spiing ability that stays for some turns and allows espionage)

b) make some of the powerfull beasts harder to summon. for example the balor or the host of einha... are quite powerfull compared to the fire elemental (all level 3 at the moment) so there are different ideas to make them harder to summon.
- summoning one of those will leave the summoner without casting ability for some turns.
- summoning one will cost the caster some XP each time.
- those powerfull beasts need more than one kind of magic (probably not a good idea as it again would make a combination of spheres more powerfull and therefor take choices instead of giving them)
- give more limits to the units:
#(dont know if this is tho or if that works) treants should not only be summonable just in forest, they should only be able to move within forests.
#host of einh.. does not fight against good civilization.
and so forth...

I think there is a ton of balancing to do. I'll take a first run at evening them out.

Im okay with making non-combat summon spells. But they have to match the flavor of "summoning". the easiest way to balance is to make oth options the same, but I don't want to make sorcery spells into summons just to even things out. Lunargents Summon Wisp spell is a good example of a non-combat summon. I like your idea for the air recon unit too.

I don't mind the treants being able to leave the forests. Their range is limited by their duration, and they have a significant bonus in forests so while they are out they are vulnerable.

I do think that some summons should have significant downsides, but only a handful. Most should just be well balanced (which they arent now). Ill try to get them a bit more even and we will see where we should go from there.

 

[loki1232]

Spheres coming in later phases:

Air Sphere

Sorcery 1.
Sorcery 2. Chain Lightning- Summons a strength 12 lightning bolt that has the Blitz promotion

I don't think that this should be a sorcery spell. What if instead we made it a force summoning spell?

 

[Kael]

Law sor II: Rule of Law--
Reduces maintenance in the caster's city and increases trade route yeild.

I like using the guardsmen for this same effect instead of a spell.

Life sum I: Unicorn--
Perhaps allows caster to cast again if it kills an enemy?

Life sor II: Reward of Immortality--
Target high level unit has a 50% of gaining the immortality promotion the next time it kills an enemy.[/quote]

Rewarding for killing seems out of alignment with the life sphere.

Spirit sor I: Gaurdian angel--
Target unit becomes the caster's gaurdian angel. Basically, any attack that would hit the caster instead hits this unit. 1 per caster, must be in same square to work.

I like this idea, but I like it better as a stoneskin spell (deflects a certain number of attacks), and the summoning spell you recommended that does a similiar effect.

Nature div I: Ancient forest--
Makes an ancient forest. I think this is the best way to include ancient forests.

I was thinking that in fellowship lands there was just a certain low percentage chance that a forest would turn into an ancient forest each turn. That way players couldnt rush them (so you had to be fellowship for a while to get the effect) and there wasnt any micromanagement involved. What do you think?

 

[Chalid]

I was thinking that in fellowship lands there was just a certain low percentage chance that a forest would turn into an ancient forest each turn. That way players couldnt rush them (so you had to be fellowship for a while to get the effect) and there wasnt any micromanagement involved. What do you think?

Yeap thats quite good...

 

[loki1232]

Life sor II: Reward of Immortality--
Target high level unit has a 50% of gaining the immortality promotion the next time it kills an enemy.

Rewarding for killing seems out of alignment with the life sphere.
[/QUOTE]

What if we put it as a divine? This seems to fit the mercurians nicely.

 

[Kael]

Removed the Xag-yi and Xeg-ya because... well... because it was a stupid idea.

Switched the first metamagic summon to a Djinn, which Chalid's "xasomething" model reminded me of.

 

[Kael]

Cut the creation sphere (combined the spells i liked the best into the nature sphere). Cut the dimensional sphere down to 1 spell.

 

[Chalid]

Cut means completly removed or means will probably come back later ?

 

[Kael]

Cut means completly removed or means will probably come back later ?

Just cut for now. Moved from the 1st post to the 2nd post. I definitly want to have 21 spell spheres when we are done.

 

[loki1232]

Water Div I:
Hurricane. Summons a fireball like thing that is twice as effective on the water and half as effective against non-coastal land targets.
Water Div II:
Whirlpool. Turns target water tile into a whirlpool. Ships moving into that tile are automatically sent into hell. That tile is no longer workable. All effects end after 5 turns.

Spirit Sphere
N.B. Trust should instead give you a bonus with a target civ and to cast it you must be in one of that player's centers of government.
Sor I:
Helpful Spirit. Summons a low strength spirit unit that has medic I promotion. 1 per caster.

 

[Kael]

I was trying to think of an adequate control for the Domination spell. What im playing with is that if the spell is resisted then the targets controlled gains control of the caster. Simulating a mental battle between the caster and the target, whichever way they go, they go together.

 

[Kael]

Okay, I need some help with a few empty spell slots. I've read the suggestions but I can't find anything that seems quite right. The slots we need are:

1. Entry 2 divine (the spell Veil priests start with).

2. Spirit 1 (the spell Elohim adepts start with).

3. Water 2 divine (the spell Overlord priests start with).

Let me know what you guys think, the more ideas the better.

 

[talchas]

I forgot to say this earlier, but for Flesh Golem, you probably don't want unitai_spell - thats just for short lived summons (my understanding was that flesh golemn is permenent). Same with Righteous Cause and the crusader. They should both use NO_UNITAI and let the DLL assign it.