Design: Spells

[H.GrenadeFrenzy]

After being on the religion thread definitely SandStorm for AIR

 

[TheBoatman]

There's been a lot of discussing on the religion thread about deserts lasting no longer than 400 turns, because they are always being terraformed. I would like to see terraforming taking more turns, like building improvements. Maybe 4 for desert->plains, 6 for plains->grassland and 4 for a new forest. I is too powerful for an adept to change the are of many square kilometers in one turn.

There is another thing I'm not sure if it's intentional. When I build an arcane golem with fireball promotion, it is able to summon sand lion. Or at least it was, I played Lurchuip v12 for the last time.

 

[QES]

There's been a lot of discussing on the religion thread about deserts lasting no longer than 400 turns, because they are always being terraformed. I would like to see terraforming taking more turns, like building improvements. Maybe 4 for desert->plains, 6 for plains->grassland and 4 for a new forest. I is too powerful for an adept to change the are of many square kilometers in one turn.

There is another thing I'm not sure if it's intentional. When I build an arcane golem with fireball promotion, it is able to summon sand lion. Or at least it was, I played Lurchuip v12 for the last time.

Well its magic...........but its VERY powerful magic. I still dont think that plauge is as powerful as being able to "vitalize" my realm and planet forests. I become nigh impenatrable, not to mention a huge production boost with mi elves.

I'd be ok with a few turns per tile. Though, mayhap better spellcasters take less long? Or have more powerful versions, that are instantanious (like now?)
-Qes

 

[Silverkiss]

How does the spell Consecrate works ? (The one that increases culture) Or is it broken in this version ? Cause im using it and seeing no change...

 

[loki1232]

How about for Life 2 sum: Crawling Flesh. Summons a flesh golem with twice the strength of the caster (combat promotinos give a bonus). This unit doesn't leave at end of turn but its strength is halved each turn until it dies.

Also have we thought of the Phoenix mechanic yet?
I've used up all of my ideas atm, but more later.

 

[c.fe]

There's been a lot of discussing on the religion thread about deserts lasting no longer than 400 turns, because they are always being terraformed. I would like to see terraforming taking more turns, like building improvements. Maybe 4 for desert->plains, 6 for plains->grassland and 4 for a new forest. I is too powerful for an adept to change the are of many square kilometers in one turn.

There comes again my proposal to give casters mana points . You could have 10 MP and regenerate 2 per turn. If spring would cost 10 MP you'd need 5 turns to turn deserts into plains. This system could be used to differentiate other spells, too. It isn't even too difficult, I did it in my small modcomp.

 

[vorshlumpf]

How does the spell Consecrate works ? (The one that increases culture) Or is it broken in this version ? Cause im using it and seeing no change...

According to notes I remember reading somewhere, Culture-affecting spells/units are under review.

Consecrate does work, though. Being a culture freak, I played around with Consecrate quite a bit - the best result was when I was in a 'corner' (a new city of mine built near someone else's borders). I placed the unit in the corner and cast the spell every turn. I first checked the influence percentages for every square around me to verify that I was actually doing something. And I was - on average 2 of the 5 squares I was monitoring lost a percentage point of foreign influence.

Of course, this got tiring pretty quick, and I stopped as soon as I had a single turn with no noticeable effect (but I had already helped to 'capture' two of the squares near my new city).

- Niilo

 

[BeefontheBone]

It adds culture to the city, but doesn't show up on the city's culture per turn total for obvious reasons. Since tile influence is based on culture per turn and how long the tile's been affected IIRC as well as total culture (which is why culture bombs sometimes have tiny effects) there often comes a point where they're hardly worth bothering with. Handy for cultural victories, though (until you get to the point where you're using the slider at least).

It would save a lot of repetetive button pressing for the player if the mechanic were changed so that the spell functions like the sleep button, except that culture is added to the city at the end of every turn until the unit is woken. No idea how easy that would be to code, mind.

On a related note, the effect of having disciple units able to do miniature culture bombs is that they become essential in warfare more than in peacetime not only to push borders but to instantly end unrest. Not sure how deliberate that was, but it feels a little cheap to me.

 

[Kael]

According to notes I remember reading somewhere, Culture-affecting spells/units are under review.

Consecrate does work, though. Being a culture freak, I played around with Consecrate quite a bit - the best result was when I was in a 'corner' (a new city of mine built near someone else's borders). I placed the unit in the corner and cast the spell every turn. I first checked the influence percentages for every square around me to verify that I was actually doing something. And I was - on average 2 of the 5 squares I was monitoring lost a percentage point of foreign influence.

Of course, this got tiring pretty quick, and I stopped as soon as I had a single turn with no noticeable effect (but I had already helped to 'capture' two of the squares near my new city).

- Niilo

Consecrate is fixed in 0.15. It drops culture in the casters tile and in all surrounding tiles. If they are unowned this is usually enough to flip them to the casters ownership. The culture wears off in a few turns so it will generally revert back but is handy for blocking access to areas or extending your ownership to get to resources, or the ability to cast spells that have to be cast in your lands.

I also found it makes a nice little bubble against animals since they are unable to enter owned lands (but I cheated and dropped an early caster to test out the spell, it normally wouldnt be usuable that early).

 

[SchpailsMan]

On a related note, the effect of having disciple units able to do miniature culture bombs is that they become essential in warfare more than in peacetime not only to push borders but to instantly end unrest. Not sure how deliberate that was, but it feels a little cheap to me.

I don't know if it's cheap, but I sure find that great strategy-wise. In times of war, I always keep craking up priests and disciples exactly for that: every captured city immediately gets out of disorder AND religion delivered with a temple. The way I see it, it becomes part of the strategy: instead of only devoting half of my cities to military production, I also want to make sure I won't run out of disciples and priests.

 

[loki1232]

Another try for Life Sum II: White Hart.
Summons a deer (cavalry type?) unit with medium strength and woodsman II. If used on a space with deer or furs, then two White Harts are summoned instead.

 

[QES]

Another try for Life Sum II: White Hart.
Summons a deer (cavalry type?) unit with medium strength and woodsman II. If used on a space with deer or furs, then two White Harts are summoned instead.

Maybe add a little side ability to the white hart.

-Sacrifice to give a specific unit +10 experienace.
How to prevent the abuse of resummoning though? Still this sounds neat.

-Qes

 

[Thonnas]

I don't know how set the existing spells are but here are some thoughts I've been jotting down:

water - sorcery - raise fog - all units in and entering the area (9 tiles) loose any first strikes and any chance of withdrawal. (promotion giving something like -100% withdraw and -8 first strikes and +1 movement cost)
maybe make waterwalking a devine spell (in my opinions its kind of a weak spell for mages, as you dont usually want to place any risk on them, but for a priest or even inquisitio it could be quite useful.)

air - adept - gust - chance to push back enemies (I think this would be similar to tremmor, but maybe not as effective, and openly available)

air - sorcery - tornado
air - sorcery2 - chain lightning (the effects of chain lightning seema bit powerful for lvl2)

body - sorcery2 - stone skin - gives unit heavy promotion (just and added thing)

chaos - divine2 - incite disorder - creates unhappines in the targeted city that last 5 (maybe 4) turns (either 1 unhappines or a percents like 10% of the city population. "Madness, madness, everywhere..." )(I was thinking this would help with rightious cause and if there is/will be anyting similar for the others, but I realize its the wrong sphere. Maybe you can find a good use/place for it, but it could still be prety effective for sieges.)

death - devine - rot - plague/disease upon the undead

 

[Jono]

Adept spells are level 1 sorcery spells... and Death won't have any divine spells from what I understand.

 

[z00t]

I have a question, how do the summoned imps spells get determined? I did a bit of testing and it seems fairly random.

Also i noticed u can tsunami or contagion on the AI units without it triggering war...

 

[Kael]

I have a question, how do the summoned imps spells get determined? I did a bit of testing and it seems fairly random.

Also i noticed u can tsunami or contagion on the AI units without it triggering war...

Yeap, its just random.

 

[Jono]

It seems you've accidentally cut the first post in half, Kael ^^

 

[Kael]

It seems you've accidentally cut the first post in half, Kael ^^

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe

 

[TheJopa]

Ability suggestion: Consume forest ability for wood golem

Wood golem can use this ability if standing on forest tile. It removes a forest but heals golem completely and gives him large strenght boost for a turn

 

[Kael]

Here is the table of the starting spells spheres for each civ. What do you guys think?

ffhbonus.htm