Idea for Enchantment Mana Summons

[kumquatelvis]

Just a quick thought I had on enchantment mana based summons. The stats are just off of the top of my head; they could be anything really.

Enchantment II - Summon Enchanted Sword
Size 4, comes with the "Enchanted Blade" promotion.

Enchantment II - Summon Enchanted Armor
Size 7, comes with the "City Raider I and II" promotions.

And for these the artwork should be pretty simple. I figure it would simply be a matter of taking the Mercenary artwork and deleting the face (or everything, for the enchanted sword). Other units could work too, but I suggested the Mercenary because the helmet doesn't cover the head very much, making the lack of a person inside more noticeable.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

This gave me an idea ... summoning equipment with various effects. The equipment would be a permanent summon and should have a national cap, or each summoner should only be able to summon 1 piece of equipment.

I've only got one suggestion atm, a sword that gives fractional affinity for enchantment mana to a unit.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Unfortunately you cannot have fractional affinity, although I've been pushing for it (and other forms of affinity like movements boosts) for quite a while. Also, when you turn the equipment into a promotion or building it would no longer count towards the national cap, so you could use the spell as often as you like. Of course, you could make the equipment promotion wear off if you wanted to.

 

[xienwolf]

Actually one way you could limit the amount of summoned equipment would be to make the caster lose the promotion when he summons the item.

So for a Conjurer to summon a sword that gives a flat out +1 Strength, he must learn Enchantment 2, then he casts the spell and creates a sword. But now he no longer knows Enchantment 2, so must wait till he gains another level, re-learns the Enchant 2 sphere, and then he may summon another sword.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

I thought that maybe they code just code a new variable that tracks all the equipment and summoners created and compares their number... but I don't know they available calls etc.

 

[xienwolf]

BTW, what on earth is the Size attribute? ?

 

[popejubal]

Actually one way you could limit the amount of summoned equipment would be to make the caster lose the promotion when he summons the item.

So for a Conjurer to summon a sword that gives a flat out +1 Strength, he must learn Enchantment 2, then he casts the spell and creates a sword. But now he no longer knows Enchantment 2, so must wait till he gains another level, re-learns the Enchant 2 sphere, and then he may summon another sword.

If you can do a limit of Skeletons > Death I promoted spellcasters = no new Skeletons cast, couldn't the same logic work for the Enchantment summons? In this case, you'd have to count the number of summons + the number of your nationality units with that promotion, but the other end could work out fine.

The only exploit that I could see is gifting the units to another civ (and I expect this exploit probably works the same with Skeletons and other permanent summoned units).

 

[xienwolf]

Summons are limited to the number of viable casters, but there is not any such tag for promotions yet, only for units. So it COULD be done, but would require an SDK re-write I believe to have the game create a variable to track the number of usmmons and number of viable casters to decide if you are allowed to cast or not.

And if you design the summon to create an equipment unit, which is then turned into a promotion, that means it has to count up both units AND promotions, which might be a bit excessive for process time.

 

[kumquatelvis]

BTW, what on earth is the Size attribute? ?

Er, yes, I meant the strength. I usually think of Scouts as size 2, warriors size 3, etc...

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Does enchantment really need summons? It already gives a happiness to all cities just for having it, and you get enchanted blade, a sick tier one spell, flaming arrows as a real good level 2, and enchant spellstaff, which is awesome again. I would think adding more to enchantment would be unbalancing.........

Maybe dimensional should have some summons. Right now, the only reason I would ever bother with dimensional is to get the Nexus........ Escape is not only lame, it's their only spell :S

 

[xienwolf]

Um... if you have the summons then you DON'T have flaming arrows or Spellstaff on that unit though.

My personal view was that Enchantment summons should be weak, but have other utility to them. Dimensional wound up being some really fun summons, but unfortunately the promotions for Dimensional 2 & 3 don't work quite right for the pre-reqs if you leave it in Modular form

 

[kumquatelvis]

Dimensional summons? Like displacer beasts, or what?

 

[xienwolf]

Not quite, they aren't technically summons, so much as utilizing what they have learned about bridging the gap between realities. At rank 2 they stick people into the gap and use it to move them quickly (ie - summons a transport unit), and at Rank 3 they have seen enough people get lost inside the gap they were using for transport that they realized it can be used as a weapon, so they create a fold in space which will roam the lands until it consumes a target (permanent summon which is invisible that dies after attacking, potentially very strong. Can hit 2 people at once.)

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Maybe I said this wrong.

*tries again*

When it comes time to build a mana node from raw mana, you're making a strategic calculation of "what effects benefit me the most" Now, Enchantment mana offers a +1 happiness in all cities, a very nice bonus, as well as some *very* powerful Sorcery and divine spells, making it, at least IMO, one of the best mana types. It's weakness, is that it's bad on summoning, so if you're the Sheim or Kaelyn Balseraphs, it probably isn't your thing.

If you add in some nifty summons, I would think that enchantment is OP relative to other mana types.

 

[xienwolf]

Okies, I gotcha now