I built this tower... So what?

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd guess that the reason was actually that the Tower of Mastery victory condition was off. The <VictoryPrereq>VICTORY_TOWER_OF_MASTERY</VictoryPrereq> makes the wonder require the victory condition. It is did something useful outside of victory then this line would presumably be removed.

 

[zup]

Djinns are the best, obviously. Get 4 of every mana and you have a free 85 str unit. Throw in illusion (Svartalfar) and you have weak enemys to farm xp from for permanent units. Get 10 of each mana and use combat 5 twincast archmage. It is the best summon by far.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

4 of every mana?!?! 10 of each mana?!?! I don't think I've ever played on a map with 50 mana, let alone 200.

 

[BugReportage]

-worldbuilder-
MUAHAHHAHA

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, you can get Djinni that strong with enough worldbuilder cheating, but it would be easier to just give yourself a few Aurics Ascended.


Djinni are quite nice when you make the unitcombat_adept and give them channeling 1 & 2 though, as they'd get free mage spells.

 

[zup]

Or perhaps change the limit of rites of oghma to -1 and spam spam the world full of mana? Play a fallow civ of course. I had some half a world full of mana nodes on a tiny sized map. Now consider huge ...

 

[rocklikeafool]

LOL! Holy . .. .. .. ., man.

 

[Blackmantle]

And that change even is sensible if cost is not modified (unlike World-Builder cheating...)
But it would still take hell of a lot time to set it up...

If you got that ritual casted 10 or 20 times in a row you could have won the game with that production (or other things like science / gold with scientists / merchants) anyways... Hyborem with 3-digit-size cities sure is a powerhouse...

As they the rites are either way overpriced / way underpowered in effect or to limited in number. (which of the 3 is best changed is left to whoever is the judge, but i doubt many players would find it worthwhile as is.)

It sounds ridiculously overpowered the way zup describes it, but it hardly is in terms of a real game i reckon...

 

[BillSeurer]

-worldbuilder-

Just eliminate all the foes with worldbuilder and YOU WIN. It's quicker but just as inevitable.

 

[SwampCow]

The towers are fine as they are. They all boost their respective spells- which coupled with metamagic upgrade- can be quite powerful. Divination tower gives you a free tech which, if you plan properly, can get you mithril weaps or Nexus close to 100 turns before your rivals.

They aren't meant to be badass but simply more world wonders. You can't have them be too powerful because that throws the balance out of whack. Besides, they really aren't that hard to get built. It isn't like the Carnival wonder that's level of difficulty to create far outweighs the bonuses it give.

 

[Psycho_Ivan]

One cool thing about the towers is that sometimes you can just stick to building a single one. It works, if you think the mana types required for one would benefit you.

 

[darkuss]

I agree that the efects of the 4 magic towers are not to strong (execpt the technology one) but since you can have all 4 of them with just 4 nodes and metamagic mage it seems balanced enough.
What I really would like to see is some kind of a reward for having a tower + sources of its mana.
Fe. you build tower of elements and get it's ussual bonuses. From now on as long as you control at least 1 source of fire, water, air, earth mana each, you also get additional bonus, let's say affinity to fire/water/air/earth increased by 1 to all units that already have such affinity. You will loose this bonus if you loose access to 1 of mentioned mana (by changing the node type, by trading the mana, and so on) and regeain it if you again have acces to all 4 mana.
This way you can swap the nodes to go for Tower of Mastery but you get only half the bonus from the towers (the ussual one), or you may stick to 1 or 2 of them and feel theier full power.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I still think that switching mana nodes with metamagic to build all the towers is lame and the AI will never get it and should be changed

 

[SwampCow]

I still think that switching mana nodes with metamagic to build all the towers is lame and the AI will never get it and should be changed

Yeah, it is a total cop-out. I don't mind people [not to imply it is any of my business what ppl do in their game] doing it to get the sub-towers built but the game should have a check to make sure you have all mana nodes prior to allowing the Master tower build. Let ppl get the four mini towers while they are building up and then force them to do a bit of conquest to get master.

Having said that, the flip side is all nations still declare war on you, so it isn't like you are cheating your way to victory that much. Besides, assuming you like to fight just a bit, it is still one of the easiest victories even if you legitimately do it. Getting all those nodes has never been an issue for me in any game. In fact, most of the time as I push for another victory condition, i usually find myself doing Mastery because I get all of the nodes/towers just pushing my borders. Toss a few engineers at the master tower with some gold and you can usually speed to completion within like 10 turns.

 

[onedreamer]

Yeah I agree. Not only the AI cannot compete on this victory condition, but the towers now cost way too much production to be national wonders. This means that industrious leaders are quite advantaged, just like philosophical ones with the tower of luonnotar.