Fleshing out an idea: Geomancers

[Onionsoilder]

I'm considering working on a new unit that will function more like a spellsword then a mage. This Geomancer unit will be able to use weapons but unlike the Amurite Battlemage won't actually learn spells from promotions. Instead, when they are ontop of a mana node they can attune themselves to match the node. When they attune themselves they gain either a spell or a passive effect.

Passive Abilities:

Earth - Resilience: +3 Defense Strength
Water - Calm Mind: Immune to Dominate, Charm Person, Enraged, Fear
Air - Quickstep: +2 Movement Range
Fire - Frenzy: +3 Attack Strength
Ice - Steeled Nerves: +1 Strength; Immune to Fear
Body - Vitality: Heals an additional 30% in all lands; Heals while moving.
Mind - Comprehension: +30% Withdrawl Chance; Gains +50% EXP from combat
Life - Purity: Immune to Disease, Wither, Poison, Mutation
Shadow - Shadowstep: Invisibility to most units
Chaos - Corruption: Mutates Unit; Mutates other units engaged in combat/in stack.

Active Abilities:

Creation - Rejuvenation: +3 +3 +3 ; Removes Mana node.
Death - Terrify: -20% Strength in targeted tile; Fear in targeted tile
Dimensional - Warp: Teleports targeted unit to caster's position
Enchantement - Enrichment: Enriched Improvement(+1 +1 +1; Requires Mana Node)
Entropy - Degeneration: Deals 40-60% damage to target unit
Force - Momentum: Adds Momentum promotion to all units in tile(+50% attack strength; -50% defense strength)
Law - Order: increases by +10% for every unit on tile
Metamagic - Manifestation: -4 -4 -4; Creates raw Mana node.
Nature - Twisted Growth: Entangles(Can't Move) units on targeted tile.
Sun - Holy Flare: Deals holy + fire damage to all units on targeted tile.

Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions?

 

[Opera]

And the effect gained stays forever? They can theoretically gain all the effects?

I have thought of something like that for the civilizatin I'm adding to Orbis. A spell that produces an effect based on the terrain type of the tile its standing on.

Anyway, I think it's nice. The Order spell seems a bit much, though.

 

[Valkrionn]

I like it.

 

[deadliver]

I think these are pretty cool. I like the corruption ability, could be useful when I finalize Pariahs.

 

[Onionsoilder]

And the effect gained stays forever? They can theoretically gain all the effects?

No. Geomancers can only attune themselves to several elements at a time. When geomancers first become available to the play they can only obtain a few(2-3?) and stronger versions that come later(and have higher base strength, just like any other unit) can obtain more (6-7?).

Anyway, I think it's nice. The Order spell seems a bit much, though.

Yeah... I was thinking about instituting a law of diminishing returns(I.E., first 3 units give +10, next 3 give +7, next 3 +5, next 3 +3, next 5 +1, then nothing[so a max of +80%]) though I have no idea how to code that.

 

[Droon]

Creative idea, however the "Metamagic - Manifestation: -4 -4 -4; Creates raw Mana node." make spaming outside of the city cross possible.

Other then that I like it, good strategic value as well.

Also, even thought every civ would want to have it giving it to only one civ would be a great way to boost some of the more "boring" civs.

 

[Opera]

No. Geomancers can only attune themselves to several elements at a time. When geomancers first become available to the play they can only obtain a few(2-3?) and stronger versions that come later(and have higher base strength, just like any other unit) can obtain more (6-7?).

How would you set up this?

Yeah... I was thinking about instituting a law of diminishing returns(I.E., first 3 units give +10, next 3 give +7, next 3 +5, next 3 +3, next 5 +1, then nothing[so a max of +80%]) though I have no idea how to code that.

The thing is I don't know how you could modify the strength of a unit while still making it removable and without having to use multiple promotions. There may be a way that I don't know, though... Anyway, what you're saying, if you could modify strength, is actually easily done. You have to check for every unit on the tile, do a loop with a counter and check the counter to see how many units you've already used to set up the strength modifier. However, when would the check be done? Would it be like a promotion that make it so every turn the bonus is modified function of how many units are in the tile?

Funny enough, I also had a similar idea, a spell that gives a strength bonus to all units in the caster tile; the bonus depending on the level of the caster. However, since I don't know how to modify strength without multiple stackable promotions... I'll use promotions

 

[Onionsoilder]

Or possibly make it a religious unit... FoL + Unique Civic still seems hideously overpowered to me... Giving it to a different religion might balance things somewhat.

 

[Onionsoilder]

How would you set up this?

I was hoping to figure out some variation of the crew promotions for naval units(I.E., gain one promotion lose another) though I don't know how to make it on a individual basis instead of all at once...

I might just end up making it so they can only attune to one element at a time, and make the bonuses stronger... I duno.

 

[cyther]

It looks pretty cool, I think I might add this ability to the Geomancer units in Rise of Darkness.

 

[xienwolf]

Changing a unit's strength is easy, just use changeStrBoost(x) and it gains/loses x points at will. And with getStrBoost you can ensure that you never remove too much.


I assume the unit is allowed to carry the promotions off the tile and keep them for a while. So to have diminishing returns, you would need to do a loop over all units that the player owns when someone gains that affinity and check if they are Geomancers, then if they have this promotion already. If they do, mark it in a counting function so you know how many exist and then grant the appropriate return. Won't run often, so a loop over all units isn't a huge deal (for the AI's sake, if they attempt to get it and the returns are too small, refuse the caster the new promotion and apply an EffectPromotion which blocks them from being able to try casting it again).


Limiting how many of these promotions a unit is allowed to have might be trickier to accomplish without causing a performance hit, but since you need to be a Geomancer to cast these spells it won't be too bad, nobody will have any massive stacks of them I assume. So just check the unit, count how many it has, then compare to how many you want to let them have (gameturn, techs known, unit type or whatever limit you use)

 

[The NeverTide]

This is a great idea. Personally I think it would be great for a civ like the Chislev. While I'm not too informed of their lore, they are similar to Native Americans and as such I imagine they may share that same affinity with the natural land. Perhaps geomancers could act as a druid UU for them?

 

[dyx]

It's a nice idea, but sounds quite overpowered.
The passive abilities depend on the raw strenght, but that load of passive ones is really heavy, outclassing all other national casters. Without your metamagic idea it could be more in line, but that way you just keep some free space (or build one city less = 20 free tiles or so) and spam mana there. Even if you had just one mana from start, you'd just need to place metamagic there and could create an endless amount of mana node, acting as training grounds for further Geomancers. Or you just build 20 nodes of one type, resulting in uber powerful Yvain/Chalid/summons.

 

[Onionsoilder]

It's a nice idea, but sounds quite overpowered.
The passive abilities depend on the raw strenght, but that load of passive ones is really heavy, outclassing all other national casters. Without your metamagic idea it could be more in line, but that way you just keep some free space (or build one city less = 20 free tiles or so) and spam mana there. Even if you had just one mana from start, you'd just need to place metamagic there and could create an endless amount of mana node, acting as training grounds for further Geomancers. Or you just build 20 nodes of one type, resulting in uber powerful Yvain/Chalid/summons.

These are the only spells/abilities that geomancers get however, so they woldn't be competing with casters really, but competing more with melee units. The whole point of the geomancer is adaptability, you can change them whenever you want. Fighting weak units? Take the EXP promotion to level up faster. Defending against a SoD? Take defense promotions. Opponent spamming debuffs? Take the element that immunizes you to them.

As far as the node spamming thing, it shouldn't be too hard to make it like the Lanun Pirate Coves, were you can't have more then 1 within 3 or 4 tiles of another. Alternatively(or in addition to), I could make it so nearby cities have health and happiness penalties.

 

[Niveras]

Perhaps to also help control their strength, the different tiers of geomancers could have a chance to lose their promotions over time.

For instance, the first geomancer rank (available, I would guess, at Tier2 concurrently with Adepts) can have 3 attunements, but if they have more than 1 there is a chance they will lose a random attunement every turn. The next rank available at T3 could have a max of 5 attunements, but if they have more than two they can lose a random attunement each turn. Likewise at T4, 6 attunements but more than 3 and they may fade. The chance an attunement may fade increases as they exceed their 'safecap.'

This makes them limited in what they can do effectively outside of your borders (assuming the mana node needs to be owned by you for them to attune to it, but then you're also not likely to come across the node you want outside your borders), but still gives them additional power over a regular spellcaster at the cost of a limited set of spells.

Even so, some of those abilities probably need adjusting.

 

[dyx]

These are the only spells/abilities that geomancers get however, so they woldn't be competing with casters really, but competing more with melee units. The whole point of the geomancer is adaptability, you can change them whenever you want. Fighting weak units? Take the EXP promotion to level up faster. Defending against a SoD? Take defense promotions. Opponent spamming debuffs? Take the element that immunizes you to them.

As far as the node spamming thing, it shouldn't be too hard to make it like the Lanun Pirate Coves, were you can't have more then 1 within 3 or 4 tiles of another. Alternatively(or in addition to), I could make it so nearby cities have health and happiness penalties.

The distance would have to be way larger than with the Pirate Coves, because even with three tiles distance you could easily have two nodes per city. That's not good, but quite neglectable, like having two mountains in every city cross. While it's a nice idea, I wouldn't do the megamagic thing. It just scales way too much. On standard it maybe wouldn't be an issue, but on huge maps you easily have 20 cities, which would mean 40 nodes if you just place two per city. And 20 cities is not even much, you could go way above. With 50 cities, thats 100 nodes. Meaning 101 strenght Djinns.
I thought about making it usable only once, but then one could just delete the unit and build it anew.

The outclassing issue is probably moot, I just thought that Archmages usually have only a few tier3 spells. But I personally don't like Archmages and find them quite useless because most of the spells are summons. It's just that I weighted Archmages with a handful of spells vs those monsters with 10 active abilites (and good ones) and the strenght of a tier 4 unit. An invisible tier 4 unit.
Where I come back to the node spamming issue, granted by metamagic.

It would also let the unit's combat strenght scale too much. If one has to pick abilities, that's cool (but then you usually choose your mana depending on other factors) but being able to get every mana would lead to your unit having all abilites. Let's say the raw str is 4 and it has a good amount of xp:
12 (mithril, fire, ice), which is balanced for a t4 unit with abilities I'd say.
But then it would have 4 movement (air + mobility) or more, depending on the unit class, I'm assuming melee.
30% withdrawal, quite nice on top.
Healing additional 30% and since it's classified as melee, you get march on top. Immunity to everything and to make it just plain uber powerful: Invisibility.

I think it would outclass everything, except Immortals, which have the no-brainer bonus.

If you happen to conquer a lot of territory, resulting in lots of mana nodes, it would be a nice reward and since you're probably the most powerful player anyways, it would speed up the mopping up.

One solution could be the mentioned restriction to just a few abilities, but having lots of mana has other benefits which would make the unit very powerful, and could inflate mana, marginalizing that feature.

To make long things short: While it's a very cool thing, I think the active metamagic ability should be changed.

 

[Onionsoilder]

A lot of stuff

I already mentioned before that the geomancers wouldn't be able to get all the promotions! I don't think you need to worry about an invisible tier IV unit with 12 strength and 3 movement pre-promotions, with spells ontop of that!

I agree that the metamagic node idea can be too powerful is abused... That is why I'm trying to figure out a way to balance it. However, I don't want to just not have it, because I like the idea... At any rate, when I release the first version of this there probably won't be any active abilities at all, just passive ones to make sure the promotion system works.

 

[xienwolf]

Metamagic still creating Mana Nodes, but being balanced:


Have it create apply negative health AND happiness to the working city, and ONLY be allowed to be cast in the working radius of a city. Then your tile goes to (probably) no output, AND your city suffers, meaning a natural limit on how many you are willing to build. To get the Health/Happy adjustment you probably need to use a feature which cannot be destroyed, so something along the lines of Fallout without a matching Scrub build order.

 

[Willgar]

nice idea although cant see the AI using it effectively...

 

[WarKirby]

Metamagic still creating Mana Nodes, but being balanced:


Have it create apply negative health AND happiness to the working city, and ONLY be allowed to be cast in the working radius of a city. Then your tile goes to (probably) no output, AND your city suffers, meaning a natural limit on how many you are willing to build. To get the Health/Happy adjustment you probably need to use a feature which cannot be destroyed, so something along the lines of Fallout without a matching Scrub build order.

1. Build one "junk" city that will never grow.
2. Cram 20 mana nodes around it
3. ????????
4. PROFIT

The cost of maintenance for one extra useless city would easily be worth the mana