Design: World Spells

[[NWO]_Valis]

Some glitch in the martix. Sory for the double-double-double post. Dono what happened.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Didnt know it gave it to settlements too. If yes then that is great and I see your point.

 

[Nimbus]

so far have tried 3 games, all with no special options selected except no tech brokering and have seen The Clan Of Embers cast For The Horde on turns 11, 14 and 12. This is very disappointing as all they have a chance at are a few animals and when looking at the map in all 3 games there was never a goblin on warrior to be seen. Maybe this spell needs to be tied to a tech as toslow down its casting and give them a better shot at more uniys.

 

[Lark]

Just to set my cat amongst the pigeons, how about if Motherlode put a commerce yield (say 3, just to pluck a number out of the air) on all peaks within the Khazad's cultural borders. This may entail a new terrain type though, to make them workable by citizens. I've long wanted some mechanism by which the Khazad could make use of peaks.

Maybe just have it change the Khazad worker specs so they can move to peaks afterwards? Though it would be necessary for the basic mined (or windmilled?) peak, when worked, to be of more use than the upgraded engineer or other specialist it would replace.

Another alternative might be to double the chance of discovering a new mined resource (or more than double*) and/or randomly planting (in hills within your borders) one each of the mined resources you can currently find. This would give you the choice of taking more production and gold early or waiting to make sure you have sources of gunpowder and mithril.
Or just one each, period, and then you'll know you'll have them, which it seems like the Khazad ought to, instead of having the lowest chance to have them, which is the way the Khazad early-game turtle makes the game tend to go now.


* I think this is too low to start, and especially so for a mining race. And I think the Lanun should have a better chance at finding ocean resources (everybody should have some chance), the Ljosalfar forest resources, etc..

 

[Polycrates]

Amurites seems the weakest. +1 xp per node, of which there can sometimes be only 6 in the world, is pretty weak. I guess you can use that one ritual to create some, but by the time you can build it you are probably unlikely to need the +10 xp from this spell. Plus they already have an xp-node mechanic, this seems repetitive. Would prefer something like all mages learn a random spell, or straight free level, or something.

I haven't tried my beloved Amurites in shadow yet, but I suspect this will actually be very very powerful. The greatest strength of the Amurites (Dain in particular) is the mage rush; fireball mages stomp all over their contemporaries like no other unit, and the Amurites do it much better than anyone else. Dain can reach sorcery faster than anyone else (with the possible exception of Varn Gosam), he already has fire mana, with the Caves he can churn out a mass of adepts that are already well on their way to magehood, and his firemages get a one-off twincast (which is much more useful than it sounds). This would just make their trip that much faster and their rush that much stronger.
In fact, I suspect that a good way of using it would be to build masses of adepts upon hitting KotE, sagerushing to Sorcery and then using this on the same turn that it's researched, then declaring war the very next turn. I'm interested to try this to see just how early I can get a mass of mages.

The other option would be to race to Sorcery (trading the hell out of KotE, Alteration and Elementalism along the way, so that everyone can build more nodes), delay for a little bit while building the caves and quickly churning out an even bigger horde of halfway-there adepts, then hit the spell and watch everyone else burn.

Another advantage with this: you can make a couple of fire nodes so that all your earlier adepts start with Fire II, then replace them with something else for more longterm benefit after the spell has cleared them.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

so far have tried 3 games, all with no special options selected except no tech brokering and have seen The Clan Of Embers cast For The Horde on turns 11, 14 and 12. This is very disappointing as all they have a chance at are a few animals and when looking at the map in all 3 games there was never a goblin on warrior to be seen. Maybe this spell needs to be tied to a tech as toslow down its casting and give them a better shot at more uniys.

They can't get non-orc units, they were probably going for lizardmen from ruins, but I doubt it helps them all that much.

 

[xienwolf]

If they could get animals we would finally see the Grand Menagerie in every game

 

[Nimbus]

They can't get non-orc units, they were probably going for lizardmen from ruins, but I doubt it helps them all that much.

If they can't get non-orc units and are waiting for the first sighting of a lizardman from a ruins, then it makes even more sense to tie it to a tech(maybe with rantine) so they can get a shot at more units and be more effective in the game.

 

[Arqane]

Feel free to see how badly you can break the game with any given world spell when it is released; that's what you're all there for. Over the next few versions they'll be brought under control if found to be ill-concieved.

If you say so...

I had 16 forests in my starting city's fat cross. By turn 8, I owned Kuriotates' capitol city and picked up Barbatos' staff. It's gonna be a quick game.

On the up side, it was actually an effective way to take out Barbatos finally .

 

[Calavente]

who were you, what civ ???

as you mention forest I guess you were ljos and used "way of the forest" but maybe not

 

[Arqane]

Yeah, forgot to mention that. It was the Ljosalfar world spell. Unfortunately, the treants didn't turn back into trees where they stopped. But then again, I didn't lose any forests, since they just turn into new forests.

Yvain can be quite nasty with both Nature and Death affinities .

 

[TravellingHat]

Just into my first game, and I've also noted the Clan casting For the Horde quite early. However, I can think of a useful application of this:

If you're seeing lizardmen or orc warriors on your continent, it's likely they are starting to spawn worldwide. If you can nab just some of them, you can have the world explored before anyone else can sail beyond sight of land. This itself gives a few benefits, namely:

You know where the choice land is. You may even luck out and find a few out-of-the-way islands worth settling.

Since you get a research bonus for every civ you encounter that already knows what you're researching, this could give a slight counter to the barbarian research penalty. It's minor, admittedly, but it all helps.

Contact will give you a wider market of potential tech trading partners, which may also help you from being at the back of the tech race.

You may even, with a great deal of luck, circumvent the world and get the sailing range bonus. Normally, it's unlikely you'll be beating anyone to optics.

This would probably be of little or no benefit on a pangea map.

 

[ElCommandante]

Instead of giving them one AV city, what if it made a certain portion of all world units gain the AV promotion, so as to provide more manes. This way, it could be more strategic, IMO.

 

[Bitwise]

The obvious use for the Amurites spell is to win a tower victory with only 1/2 the required nodes.

 

[princecharles]

Is it possible to give the Balseraphs a different world spell? Don't get me wrong, the free golden age is pretty useful, but it just seems kinda bland compared to other world spells...

 

[Calavente]

well balseraph are the less bland civ.. so if they have a world spell less fantastic than other civs.. why not.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

You know what would be wicked for Balseraphs as a world spell?
Upon casting it would switch randomly the names of cities on the whole world

If it had to be something useful [who said it did?] then maybe every player would get a negative diplo modifier "-2:you stole our capitol!" with the player who got its capitol name.

 

[ShadowDrgn]

Since you get a research bonus for every civ you encounter that already knows what you're researching, this could give a slight counter to the barbarian research penalty. It's minor, admittedly, but it all helps.

Really? I've never heard of this bonus before.

I wasn't sold on For the Horde until I randomed Sheelba in my current game. I got about 20 warriors, 20 goblins, and 2 lizardmen with it (used a few turns before Orthus spawned) - changed a few civics so I wouldn't have to pay for them for a few turns, and got a nice picture of the map plus met most of the civs in the world. I also got 2 free techs from the tribal villages the barbarians were sitting on. I was doing so well about 30 turns later that the barbarians actually declared war on me because my score had passed the 50% buffer, and this was on an epic speed monarch multiplayer game. I groaned when I saw whom I had randomed, but I think Sheelba is one of my favorite leaders now.

The obvious use for the Amurites spell is to win a tower victory with only 1/2 the required nodes.

I think it's brilliant, and no one else has mentioned it yet. It does seem obvious enough that it was designed partly for that purpose, but even if you aren't going for a tower victory, it's an extremely powerful spell on larger map types. An average huge map has about 20-30 nodes; if 20 are taken, that's enough xp to catapult a newly-trained adept to archmage level (factoring in cave, command post, etc.). Those are going to be some nasty mages, and if you have the money and techs, archmages/liches/flesh golems. The spell should probably scale based on map size so it's useful on small maps and not overpowered on huge ones.

 

[wr4th]

i can confirm that the ai casts "for the horde" extremely early. On nikis-knights huge erebus map the ai casts it on turn 6 and ended up with 2 lizardmen and 2 goblins, which is pretty much wasted on such a huge map.

 

[TravellingHat]

Really? I've never heard of this bonus before.

I believe (and will stand corrected if others know better) that the vanilla research mechanism gives you a small beaker discount for every civ you've met that already has the tech. I assume this remains the same.

As for nabbing the lion's share of goody huts, I didn't even think of that! Seems obvious now you've pointed it out.