Design: World Spells

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

My apologies if this was brought up somewhere else


Raging Seas, Lanun. I recall hearing that "We made Raging seas powerful to balance out the relatively weak Lanun." Except, the Lanun are weak on land. In the sort of map where this spell would be useful, like an arhcipelego, this would accentuate an already large Lanun advantage on the water. And if they're getting clobbered on Pangea, well............



I would like to see something like "airships" which allows their naval units to fly on land for a short while.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I tried adding flying ships a while ago, but it turned out pretty weird; a flying ship cannot move onto a land tile if it could unload a passenger there. It also seems like it doesn't let them move through most terrain, although they can move through mountains.

I may try to see if it will work again, and maybe add a spell that grants a temporary flying promotion.

 

[Breunor]

I agree with Ur_Vile. The Lanun are killers on island maps, weak on land maps. Their spell should blance, instead it reinforces their position.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Quetz]

I tried adding flying ships a while ago, but it turned out pretty weird; a flying ship cannot move onto a land tile if it could unload a passenger there. It also seems like it doesn't let them move through most terrain, although they can move through mountains.

I may try to see if it will work again, and maybe add a spell that grants a temporary flying promotion.

why not just make base transport units like vanilla gunships

 

[eerr]

Spoiler :

My apologies if this was brought up somewhere else


Raging Seas, Lanun. I recall hearing that "We made Raging seas powerful to balance out the relatively weak Lanun." Except, the Lanun are weak on land. In the sort of map where this spell would be useful, like an arhcipelego, this would accentuate an already large Lanun advantage on the water. And if they're getting clobbered on Pangea, well............



I would like to see something like "airships" which allows their naval units to fly on land for a short while.

yeah, the lanun don't need a spell that makes them "win more", they need a spell that makes them "win" in general, most especially... on land!
raging seas is very flavor full, but the lanun don't particularly need an extra edge in the naval deparment.

-perhaps raging seas could produce many water tiles, and destroy forest and jungle near lanun cities ?
(randomly near cities, won't destroy resources-or cut off a land route)

 

[xienwolf]

Heh heh. Raging Water: All irrigated tiles become Coast tiles. That'd really mess up a map FAST.

 

[coko]

Perhaps mass flooding that can come from river tiles as well destroying all the upgrades on them and damaging units on it, that way you wouldn't need a map with lots of water, because more damage was done on river tiles! I think fully changing parts into water would be more difficult to do and error prone anyway!?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Changing random river-bordering tiles into water would be a nice effect to, combined with lower damage.

 

[andrew_yaweb]

For the first time I got hit by some huge spell and/or pestililence. Might have been worldbreak, I'm not sure. I never went back into the logs to see if it was in there.

I was Gregori, with awesome heroes, dragon's hoard, Orthus' axe. My guys were dragon slayers up to 17th level of some cool high level like that. Have Sorcerers equally high.

All of a sudden all cities in the world are population 1 and everyone is dead, I mean everyone. The little blurb that popped up about something happening to the world did not justice to that silent carnage.

There should be a freakin' howl from hell and screams of pain when that happens. I was shocked that even my beefy guys were dead. Maybe if they were not in cities they'd be ok, but everyone was camping in cities at the time.

All my workers were dead too, so I didn't think it was worldbreak because that says is damages units in cities if I'm to believe that wording.

Awesome 0.3 release though. As usual, cool changes from 0.2x stuff.
Props to ffh.

 

[Mewtarthio]

There's a rather... unfortunate glitch with the Pestilence event. It has an annoying tendancy to exterminate all life on Erebus.

 

[eerr]

There's a rather... unfortunate glitch with the Pestilence event. It has an annoying tendancy to exterminate all life on Erebus.

could turn out bad for the sheiam if some summons were left behind, perhaps training mages with chaos marauders?

 

[Mesix]

For the horde is a good idea, but may need to be tweeked a little. I like that it gives the Orcish player more units from barbarian ranks, but I don't like how it esentially reveals almost the entire map. Orcs never struck me as the omnicient type, and even though the units are coming from all over, thier world knowledge and maps would be suspect. Getting instant contact with ever civ in the world is a bit uncharastic as well.

My suggestion is to have the barbarian units arrive in the lands of Clan of Embers. This could be a gradual migration where 50% of the barbarian units arrive over the course of 20-30 turns (perhaps longer for larger maps) and change from barbarian units to Clan units when they cross into cultural borders. Another idea would be for them to "appear" in Clan cities at the time the World spell is cast.

Either way, I think that a change is in order. For the Horde should give the Clan a big military boost with which to wage war, but the side effects do not seem to be consistent with the flavor of the Orcish player.

 

[xienwolf]

I would hate for the spell to feel just like the Doviello though, with a bunch of units just appearing where you already are.

Besides, I don't often actually use this spell for simply getting in contact with other civs and mapping things out, I love to declare war on anyone and everyone I find if I suspect I am on another continent Sometimes you can take out 2 or 3 Civs if you get just enough guys or do it early enough that a lizardman is still a strong force

 

[Mesix]

"For the Horde" effectively breaks Terra maps; for me, at least. The AI Clan gets lizardmen and other units in the 'New' World, giving them decades or centuries to explore it. Part of the allure of this map is being among the first to find and explore (and settle) the New World.

Along these lines, I feel it illogical for this world spell to be effective on continents where the Clan has no presence. Perhaps this spell should be limited to those landmasses where the Clan either has cities or, at least, has a unit.

This is a very good point. For the Horde should be redone a bit.

 

[andrew_yaweb]

There's a rather... unfortunate glitch with the Pestilence event. It has an annoying tendancy to exterminate all life on Erebus.

Glitch is an understatement. It ruins a game. What's the points of building up powerful units and then halfway thru the games they all die and your cities are all size one. I smiled the way you said that...
Happy thoughts,
Andrew

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

I hate the Lanum world spell with a passion. For some reason, they always seem to get access to it around the same time the AC hits 40. These two factors combine to create a period of the game I call "The Age of Suck". The giant tsunami tends to destroy a bunch of my coastal improvements and usually picks off a bunch of workers, then pestilence kills 15% of my population. Cue 35-50 turns of rebuilding. Oh Falamar, why do you hurt the ones you love?

Not that this is any reason to change the Lanum worldspell.

If you're worried about the Lanum spell being too map specific though, you could swap out Raging Seas for something equally pirate-y, such as this:

World Spell: "Five Finger Discount" (available at Warfare)

For 8 (*timescale) turns all living Lanum units gain haste. The Lanum leader gains all the benefits of the Raider trait. All gold and gem mines not belonging to the Lanum are destroyed (the resource remains) and the Lanum gain 10 gold plunder for each.

Otherwise known as the "Falamar goes Henry Morgan on their buttocks" world spell.

or:

World Spell: "Pirate Gold" (available at Crafting)

Creates a treasure chest in the Lanum capital. This chest can be consumed to create a city improvement (treasure trove, +2 culture, +4 commerce, +1 happiness). The chest or trove can be picked up by a unit and sacrificed to "bribe" a barbarian unit stack/city into defecting to the Lanum. If captured, a rival civ can use the trove for the same purpose.

Otherwise known as the "Orthus insurance" world spell.


Heck, there's no reason you couldn't make the Lanum the exception to the one-spell / civ rule. Give them two world spells.

 

[Mewtarthio]

World Spell: "Pirate Gold" (available at Crafting)

Creates a treasure chest in the Lanum capital. This chest can be consumed to create a city improvement (treasure trove, +2 culture, +4 commerce, +1 happiness). The chest or trove can be picked up by a unit and sacrificed to "bribe" a barbarian unit stack/city into defecting to the Lanum. If captured, a rival civ can use the trove for the same purpose.

Otherwise known as the "Orthus insurance" world spell.

I can see one potential problem with this:

Parih reached out and took Ars skeletal hand. In that instant the memories of his life were lost and he was reborn as one of the mindless Mane legions of hell.
"That soul was not yours to claim, demon!"
Ars turned to see a Valkyrie with her weapon drawn. She paled when she recognized him, instinctively stepping back even though he hadn't made any move towards her.
"I am unbound, and claim any I choose. And right now, the Lanun are offering me a ridiculous sum of money to claim their enemies so they can crush the world with an army of wraiths. Seriously, you should have seen the size of that treasure chest. It was really, really shiny."

 

[Fenboy]

Simple enough to beat, just exclude Undead, Demon etc. units from being swayed by the shiny monies.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Would be a bigger problem if they bribed Acheron really.

 

[Fenboy]

Not really, he'd be all "okay, I'm going to stay in my city like usual, except the Lanun are paying me a fortune to not attack them, and spit meteors at anyone they don't like." Sounds like a great deal really!