Favorite Mana?

[Breunor]

Nature mana. Why? Druids.

Treants are way better than fireballs, guardian vines are lovely stack defenders, and who doesnt appreciate Vitalize?

Yup, this is my view too. Vitalize ROCKS!

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Once I get my modmod working, I think I can safely say Ice Mana is by far the coolest (no pun intended)

In my modmod,

Spoiler :

(among many other things) I add Ice mana, nodes, promotions, and spells. I make the Doviello and Illian palaces provide ice mana, and I give the Illians White Hand religions units as UUs, at least an inquisitor with access to all ice spells (sorcery, summoning, and divine. Only Illians get divine ice spells, but everyone will find ice sorcery quite useful).

The spells are:
Ice I: Frost: (temporarily) turns tiles to tundra/ice (the code calls the land terrain snow to differentiate it from the impassible water feature, but the text you would read calls it ice), making rival cities less productive and allowing ice summons

Ice II Sorcery: Ice House: creates a (caster requires temporary) building of the same name, which adds to health, stores food, makes cities immune to shrinking from starvation (probably only safe from shrinking below a certain level, like 4* # Ice mana), and slows city growth (probably based on the amount of ice mana) (I haven't written it yet, as it involves SDK changes)

Ice II Summoning: summon frosting: borrowed from AoI, probably using frosting archer actually (which would mean it could use arrow barrages), permanent summon that is stronger on ice/tundra but will "melt" (take damage and eventually die) on warmer tiles

Ice II Divine: Craft Ice Golem: only can be cast on ice tiles, permanent summon, unit borrowed from AoI but made weaker and given ice affinity. Melts on warmer tiles

Ice III Sorcery: Blizzard: area damage spell like maelstrom, slightly weaker and in Ice damage. Also gives living enemy units a frostbite promotion (living units on ice or tundra without cold resistance may also get this randomly. Promotion may randomly do cold damage to the unit ot immobilize him each turn.). Perhaps most importantly, it turns all nearby terrain (Including water!) into temporary tundra/ice, so you have no need to worry about having a navy.

Ice III Summoning: Summon Frost Giant: permanent summon borrowed from AoI, ice affinity, prone to melting, stronger on tundras/ice

Ice III Divine: The Sinister Icy White Hand of Death: Does lots of death damage and gives all nearby enemy units the frostbite promotion.

Dimensional is also better, as I added a dimentsional 2 promotions. I only added a sorcery spell to it (which creates a temporary "requires caster" building otherwise identical to an obsidian gate), but it is great for summoners too because it grants the starting settler bonus to summons.


I also changed the requirements for lichdom (requires either staff of souls or broken sepulcher) and added a death 3 sorcery spell that just creates a terrain feature; a feature that resurrects all living units that die there as barbarian skeletons of equal strength. (there is also a spell available to a new limit 1 national unit, requiring the tower of necromancy, or to any arcane unit with the staff of souls that lets it take control of nearby undead units)

 

[TheJopa]

In addition to almighty fire:
Death is nice. Permanent skeletons on level 1- probably best lvl. 1 spell. Contagion is also among best lvl. 2 spells- IMO even better than fireball. Lichdom is great but has to be combined with, say, fire to have any effect. Specters and Wraiths are nice, esp. Specters fear ability (And face it, they are among coolest looking units, hehe)
Earth- Nice, rust is even better now as an AoE spell, even if resistible.
Water- Not so good except for spring. Well Tsunami is nice as well but divine and sorcery 2 - water walking - is too lame for lvl. 2 spell. Maybe water walking and spring should change places?
Enchant- Lvl. 1 is great but lvl. 3 is just marginally more powerful- shield of faith needs to be boosted. And it has no summons. But it does give +1 happy, enchantment is indeed a nice mana. But shouldn't enchantment give hammers and not happy? Spirit should give happy IMO
Entropy- Well defile is really lame. Wither not too good either. Imp mediocre. But Balors rock!

 

[Squiggs]

I just like crushing my enemies with earth and then throwing rocks in the form of an earth elemental at my bewildered foes...

Also, the resource discovery bonus has paid off for me, but that depends on having two or three nodes you're willing to turn into earth nodes.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Water walking's one of those spells that's normally useless but a godsend the few times it's not.

See, the power differences in FFH ships are pretty narrow, so if an enemy ship manages to get, say, combat 5, it will be capable of steamrolling any ship you throw at it while blockading and pillaging your coast, even if you have a serious tech edge. Your only option in this scenario is to give water walking to one of your best land units and have it walk onto the water and bust the ship up.

 

[Roghar]

or just send 2 or 3 ships at it, or fireball it when it comes close, or fireball it with arcane barges at sea

 

[zxcvbnm]

Maelstrom is quite cool but otherwise air mana isn't so great. Fire is a good all-round battle mana, not exceptional but does what it should. Mind, life, law etc. boosting passively are nice when hoarded. Magister's modmod's ice seems really cool, and banana is simply great. I vote for banana because I can't decide, but dimensional has thus far been the least useful.

 

[Mesix]

In addition to almighty fire:
Death is nice. Permanent skeletons on level 1- probably best lvl. 1 spell. Contagion is also among best lvl. 2 spells- IMO even better than fireball. Lichdom is great but has to be combined with, say, fire to have any effect. Specters and Wraiths are nice, esp. Specters fear ability (And face it, they are among coolest looking units, hehe)

I personally like to have liches with Nature III. I get a good laugh from having my liches running around Vitalizing the world .

 

[Slvynn]

Mind and Water, mostly
Mind more

1. +3 resereach bonus per node. (getting stack of 3 nodes give you +9% resereach bonus - if you have already water / body / spirit / enchantment )
2. Domination
(last time i converted Baron Duin Halfmorn and couple of champions )
3. Inspiration - mage act like +4 in city.
4. Charm can be usefull very much too in particular moments.

The 1st nodes i get are : (by order) (not build in case palace provide them)
water
enchantment
spirit
body
mind
mind
mind

 

[skallben]

Clearly Bananas, only Mana I can get IRL too.

 

[Don Lope]

Watching the results, nothing to add about Fire mana, which is clearly overpowered (see previous post about twincasted archmage).

However, very few people seem to like shadow mana.

I myself like to use it a lot - In my last game as Keelyn (Balseraph summoner), I had 4 puppeteers. I positioned them in Jonas Endain territory and was pumping Mistforms like crazy so that his city got depleted right before barbarian assault.

Yep, he was at war with the Barbarians and I think he was second in score (right after me), although his territory was at least twice the size of mine.

Overall it was a powerful tactic:
I was sitting in a castle and waiting till I got my 12 mistforms before sending them on his city, apart from his capital it was pretty sufficient to let the Barbs invade his empire easily. Then I would just come and raze the city (I was trying to get a culture victory, so the only thing I wanted was to prevent him from winning and get a couple of XP against Barb).

So shadow for me is great ... for summoner only, sorcery sucks.

 

[jenks]

Does anyone else sing the course line of the song "My Shirona" every time they heal their unit with Shirona's Touch?

every time

 

[Taels]

Does anyone else sing the course line of the song "My Shirona" every time they heal their unit with Shirona's Touch?

I never made that connection, but I'm sure I will now.

 

[sylvain5477]

In addition to almighty fire:
Entropy- Well defile is really lame. Wither not too good either. Imp mediocre. But Balors rock!

Why is defile lame ? (I was planning on using it to destroy the ressource of my opponent in my next game...)

 

[TheJopa]

Why is defile lame ? (I was planning on using it to destroy the ressource of my opponent in my next game...)

First of, AI can't use it, nor clean it up. So it directly qualifies it as lame.
Secondly, It just didn't seem useful, except when you really want to humiliate opponent, defile the entire territory and let him live. But if you have time and resources to go around defiling you could as well take the city and make it part of your empire.

It is fine when you want to destroy Elves- defiling tile instantly removes all terrain features like forest, ancient forests or floodplains :evilsmile:

 

[sylvain5477]

I would think that combined with shadow's hide it could be powerful and sneaky against human opponent.

 

[TheJopa]

I would think that combined with shadow's hide it could be powerful and sneaky against human opponent.

Definitely. But if
1) AI knew how to deal with it
2) Defile had something more interesting to it, like spreading itself to adjacent tile like forests but faster
It would then be a cool mechanism

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I changed it so that defile also raises the plot counter (moving towards becoming hell, so multiple uses can force the spread of hell in good lands)

 

[popejubal]

Your only option in this scenario is to give water walking to one of your best land units and have it walk onto the water and bust the ship up.

How?

I can only get the Water Walking promotion on the casting mage and haven't figured out how to get a Water Walking Ranger yet. I really want one so that I can go wander over to that other continent and grab up the animals I don't have yet.

...or maybe just a dozen Axemen to take over the neighbors I haven't met yet.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How?

I can only get the Water Walking promotion on the casting mage and haven't figured out how to get a Water Walking Ranger yet. I really want one so that I can go wander over to that other continent and grab up the animals I don't have yet.

...or maybe just a dozen Axemen to take over the neighbors I haven't met yet.

Both mages and OO priests can get water-walking through a spell, and Drowns (and Stygian Guards and Eidola upgraded from Drowns), but there is no way to get it for a ranger (without cheating, via worldbuilder or making some xml changes)

Personally I'd love the spells (or one of them) instead to give a temporary waterwalking promotion to multiple units and possibly having the unit drown (die) if it ends a turn on water after the promotion wears off (it might be easier to implement drowning as a pyperturn effect of the promotion instead). I'm not a fan of spells that can only be used once (meaning those that become useless for a unit to cats again, not referring to world spells). Of course, the AI probably wouldn't understand this very well.