Is the Tower of Mastery easier to build?

[Minor Annoyance]

Now that you can change a mana node back into a raw node and chance it's type again, does that mean you could build one tower and then change the man nodes to what you need for another tower until you have them all?

 

[Roghar]

Yes you can, and a Tower victory has become much easier for the Amurites with their world spell. Combined with Rite of Oghma to create more raw nodes, it is a very viable winning condition for them without needing a large civ

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Frankly, their world spell isn't important anymore. Just cast Dispel Magic (Meta Magic II) on a node to revert it back to raw, as often as you like. The fact that they start with this mana is probably much more important.

 

[Roghar]

I had no idea that Dispel Magic could do that..

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Thats new in .31, it wasn't like that when it was a chaos spell...and there are still bugs in the spell, but they should be fixed by the next patch, tonight.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Personally, I think it's a huge step forward. No longer will the Amurites ( EDIT-or anyone, but the Amurites are the most thematic to win a Tower victory, don't you think?) have to conquer or vassalize half the world to build the Tower. We have a real "Builder win" analogous to the spaceship. Three cheers!

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I think the biggest change to the Tower victory is that people OTHER than the Amurites can realistically build the Tower of Mastery now without already achieving a domination/conquest victory.

 

[kdodge]

Personally, I think it's a huge step forward. No longer will the Amurites ( EDIT-or anyone, but the Amurites are the most thematic to win a Tower victory, don't you think?) have to conquer or vassalize half the world to build the Tower. We have a real "Builder win" analogous to the spaceship. Three cheers!

We always had the altar of the lunnotar for a build win.
This does make it a little odd.

 

[R0GERSHRUBBER]

The Altar is not thematically appropriate for many Civs. On the other hand, there are even some evil Civs that could reasonably pursue the Tower.

The Amurites do need a new World Spell. The only real advantage of their current spell is that it could disrupt some other Civs mana access.

Starting with Metamagic could be an advantage for the Amurites if they could actually use it to change mana nodes before the other Civs have access to Metamagic, but since that node is granted at the same time as the Mages necessary to cast Dispel Magic anyway, it really doesn't have any effect (other than perhaps a scouting advantage).

 

[Roghar]

Well, metamagic at starting is still useful when you want to build strong fire mages from the start. Agreed that the world spell needs changing if Dispel Magic can do the same thing. Perhaps it should add the Spellstaff promotion to all Amurite mages at time of casting?

 

[Nimbus]

the advantage I liked was the extra xp boost perhaps that is what should get a small increase

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

The Amurite worldspell is devastating in the right hands. Sure you can only have 4 archmages, but seriously, having a whole army of mages with an arsenal of level 2 spells causes all sorts of problems by itself. It's not a simple one to use, but for the creative mind, you can create all sorts of havoc.

And no: it's not about fireballs. You've got firebows for that.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Is there really much point in having nodes revert when they cross through borders now that you can use matamagic to revert them?

 

[stp]

Is there really much point in having nodes revert when they cross through borders now that you can use matamagic to revert them?

Good question, but how would you remove negative diplomatic modifiers from conquered death or entropy mana before sorcery? Especially when you are teching the melee line and conquer an evil civ going arcane.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, you can still raze the node. There is no penalty just for having the resource in your borders if you don't have it available in your cities.

Personally, I'd rather the penalties actually come from casting death/entropy spells instead of just having the mana.

I'd also like to see Basium (and possibly a couple other good leaders) have a diplo penalty based on how many demonic units the leader owns. That could replace the automatic-war vs AV civs mechanic. Of course, this would probably much harder on the hardware.

 

[zxcvbnm]

That would be a good and realistic thing, Basium after all killed the two kuriotates because they summoned a demon, although they didn't worship AV (AFAIK)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I believe they brothers you are thinking of were Amurites, not Kuriotates..

 

[zxcvbnm]

Wait, -tes nonetheless. I got confused, it was the settlements which got destroyed the Kuriotates.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

Actually, I they ARE Kuriotates. From the 0.30 Civilopedia, for Summon Chaos Marauder:

"What does it do?"
"It....Marauds things. Chaotically."
"You don't know, do you?"
"Look, it says in the book, cast--then demand--then run."
"But you cast, then ran, and now, demanding..."
"Right. Do YOU want to go back and tell it what to do?"
"It looks mad."
"No, it looks chaotic, go talk to it. Tell it we need it to sack a city."
- Kuriotate Adepts and brothers Lars and Kobe Lort before the sacking of a Calabim Stronghold and two Kuriotates settlements.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Ok, I guess I'm wrong then. I didn't actually take the time to look it up.