Making a new Magic System Part I: Summons

[Sephi]

• Allmost all Summons will be Permanent (except Fireballs, Floating Eye)
• Summons will be created by Rituals rather than Spells. These Rituals cost mana instead of hammers.
• Mana is a new "Commerce" Type, created by few buildings like Mage Guilds and Mana Nodes
• Summons have a medium mana cost, thus allowing only a very limited amount of them
• Summons have unique abilities like a Combataura, making them very unique and different from normal units
• Summons can be promoted to either increase their combat abilities or to increase their Combataura abilities
• Summoner Trait greatly reduces the amount of mana needed as upkeep, maybe also gives access to a Unique Summon
• AI will understand these new Summons a lot better

 

[Sephi]

list of Summons

Spoiler list of Summons :

Dark Spellschool Summons

Skeleton
Combat Role: Stack Defender
Combat Aura:

• Type: Fearful Presence(Curse)
• Tier: 1
• Primary Effect: Fear
• Secondary Effects: Reduces Strength

Spectre
Combat Role: Stack Defender
Combat Aura:

• Type: Fearful Presence(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Fear
• Secondary Effect: Reduces Strength, % to Rust Weapon

Wraith

Combat Role: Stack Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Fearful Presence(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Fear
• Secondary Effect: Reduces Strength, % to Rust Weapon, Reduces Healing

Chaos Marouder
Combat Role: City Attacker
Combat Aura:

• Type: Withering(Curse)
• Tier: 1
• Primary Effect: Reduces First Strikes
• Secondary Effect: Reduces Strength

Pit Beast
Combat Role: City Attacker
Combat Aura:

• Type: Withering(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Reduces First Strikes
• Secondary Effect: Reduces Strength

Balor
Combat Role: Counter
Combat Aura:

• Type: Withering(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Reduces First Strikes
• Secondary Effect: Reduces Strength, Damage

Kraken
Combat Role: Sea

Light Spellschool Summons

Host of the Einherjar
Combat Role: Stack Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Guardian Angel(Blessing)
• Tier: 1
• Primary Effect: Guardian Angel
• Secondary Effect: Healing

Tiger
Combat Role: Stack Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Mobility(Blessing)
• Tier: 1
• Primary Effect: Ignore Number of First Strikes
• Secondary Effect: Strength

Aurealis
Combat Role: Area Damage
Combat Aura:

• Type: Damage(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Damage
• Secondary Effect: reduces Strength

Sandlion
Combat Role: Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Sneak(Blessing)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: gain Invisibility in Desert
• Secondary Effect: increases Firststrikes

*Malakim automatically know this ritual once they discover Sorcery

Crusader
Combat Role: City Attacker
Combat Aura:

• Type: Strength(Blessing)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Strength
• Secondary Effect: Bonus vs. Cities, Bonus vs. Evil

Holy Avenger
Combat Role: Counter
Combat Aura:

• Type: Strength(Blessing)
• Tier: 3
• Primary Effect: Strength
• Secondary Effect: Bonus vs. Demons, Bonus vs. Evil

Angel
Combat Role: Stack Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Regeneration(Blessing)
• Tier: 3
• Primary Effect: Guardian Angel
• Secondary Effect: Healin, increases Strength

Elementalism School

Earth Elemental
Combat Role: Stack Defender
Combat Aura:

• Type: Strength(Blessings)
• Tier: 1
• Primary Effect: Strength
• Secondary Effect: Healing, might remove weak, Illness, etc.

Mistform
Combat Role: City Attacker
Combat Aura:

• Type: Sneak(Blessing)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Invisibility
• Secondary Effect: ?

Air Elemental
Combat Role: City Attacker
Combat Aura:

• Type: Mobility(Blessing)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Increases First Strikes
• Secondary Effect: applies Haste Promotion

Fire Elemental
Combat Role: Area Damage
Combat Aura:

• Type: Damage(Curse)
• Tier: 2
• Primary Effect: Damage
• Secondary Effect: can set forest, jungle on fire

Djinn
Combat Role: Stack Support
Combat Aura:

• Type: Withering(Curse)
• Tier: 3
• Primary Effect: reduces Strength
• Secondary Effect: reduces Magic/Elemental Resistance

Ice Elemental
Combat Role: Area Damage
Combat Aura:

• Type: Damage(Curse)
• Tier: 3
• Primary Effect: Damage
• Secondary Effect: applies Slow Promotion

Water Elemental
Combat Role: Sea

Summons also tied to Religion
Aurealis (Light/Emyprean)
Treant (Elementalism/FoL)
Tiger (Elementalism/FoL)

Affinity:
Summons from Dark Magic School have Death Affinity
Summons from Light Magic School have Creation Affinity
Summons from Elementalism School have Metamagic Affinity

Light has the most buffspells, Elementalism the most damaging spells and Dark the most debuff spells

Light

• Sun
• Spirit
• Law
• Life
• Creation
• Nature
• Enchantment

Elementalism

• Earth
• Fire
• Air
• Ice
• Water
• Metamagic
• Force

Dark

• Chaos
• Entropy
• Death
• Shadow
• Dimensional
• Mind
• Body

Spoiler toDo :

• Playtesting and Tweaking

 

[tesb]

omg, have my babies


1) do you need any help (xml work, buttons, new art, models etc.)?

2) do you plan on adding this system to patch 9 or for a later release?

3) with summons going over to rituals, have you planned on new spells for air III, death I ,II, III, ...? what is stepping in those places?
edit: i just went over all spells there are 14 summons with arcane magic alone, if you need new spells i can help you

4) will you divide between arcane and divine mana, since many summons are tied to religions?

 

[Neomega]

wow. Being able to hoard mana a la Master of Magic?
That's crazy. Crazy good... but probably also crazy complex. Good luck.

 

[Sephi]

1) do you need any help (xml work, buttons, new art, models etc.)?

2) do you plan on adding this system to patch 9 or for a later release?

3) with summons going over to rituals, have you planned on new spells for air III, death I ,II, III, ...? what is stepping in those places?

4) will you divide between arcane and divine mana, since many summons are tied to religions?

1) I will need a lot of help.

2) 9.0 But I am not hurrying it.

3) Spellschools will have most functions of the mana spheres. Arcane Units, rather than picking individual spells, will specialize in a Spellschool (probably allow archmages a second one)

4) Not really divine mana, but there is a new commerce Type called Faith. Many spells from divine units will become miracles that require Faith and some religious units will get a Faith upkeep. Don't know if I keep divine summons or move them to the arcane sphere. Balor for example would fit a dark magic school pretty good.

 

[Valkrionn]

This sounds rather familiar, here.....

Or implement a global/national 'mana pool'...

Spells cost a certain amount of mana to cast, limiting the number each civ can use in a turn.

Summons are all permanent, but take a certain amount of mana as upkeep. Large initial cost, constant perturn drain, killed off if there isn't enough mana available for them.

Only X mana regenerates each turn, increased by certain buildings/resources (maybe even by untyped mana? Cost/benefit for gaining access to spells or leaving the mana unimproved).

Mana can only be accumulated to a cap of Y (a cap keeps a civ like, say, the Doviello, from becoming arcane beasts after suddenly gaining mages when they capture the Amurites. Without it, they'd have massive amounts accumulated), affected by buildings/traits/etc.


Tarq may recognize this idea.

Actually, that's a good idea; Opera had an idea for faith points of some kind, rewarding staying with one religion rather than switching. Would be a very good way to do it.

 

[Pazyryk]

Wow. This sounds like as big an innovation from FFH as FFH was from vanilla Civ. Great!

Here is my one single suggestion: don't do all the things that civ4 does to make and (and to a lesser extent, ) so easily interchangeable. That includes the slider and the ability of cities to "build" science or gold. This interchangeability problem in Civ4 is why you can't really have distinct science vs. financial traits (benefit one and it just gets converted to the other via the slider). Being "rich" or "poor" in this new form of mana should be something that can't be overcome (in any trivial way) by some other benefit like being financial.

 

[tesb]

4) Not really divine mana, but there is a new commerce Type called Faith. Many spells from divine units will become miracles that require Faith and some religious units will get a Faith upkeep. Don't know if I keep divine summons or move them to the arcane sphere. Balor for example would fit a dark magic school pretty good.

that is true: tigers and treants to nature, sand lion to sun, balor to dimensional or entropy and make those rituals only build able with state religion.

3) Spellschools will have most functions of the mana spheres. Arcane Units, rather than picking individual spells, will specialize in a Spellschool (probably allow archmages a second one)

can you expand on this? the way you written it spellschools will be an overarching thing for example spell school: "dark magic" includes death, entropy and chaos magic and an adpet can choose only one spellschool. (this would be quite nice, amurites could have one spellschool more by default for example)

edit: or do you plan on eliminating the current manaspheres all together and replace them with spellschools?

2) 9.0 But I am not hurrying it.

9.0 has a ton of new content already are you sure you will put it in there?

1) I will need a lot of help.

if you have specific tasks let me know. what i could do right now is provide you with new spells to replace the summons (or at least part of them)

edit: i would create .xml files with new spells, button art, descriptions and you could choose what to implement.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

9.0 is gonna be huge! there's also a "reworking the magic system" thread in Orbis subforum so that might be a good place to borrow ideas.

I gotta say I'm not too keen on this "mana as a new commerce" system though. we already have mana has a resource, isn't that enough? just make it so that each node of mana gives X amount of mana per turn and you're set. of course each type of mana would generate its own pool, so you'd have a good reason to hoard a certain type if you're going to rely heavily on it.

 

[Valkrionn]

Gekko, that is exactly what it would be with the commerce, unless you can convert yields into it. Which would be bad, IMO.

A separate pool for each mana type would be too much. Better ways to do it, but I won't go into detail again.

 

[JujZe]

More and more awesome features coming
I hope when I finish Final Fantasy XIII I can go play wildmana 9,x

 

[Till]

Great concept, but i hope the rituals can be cast outside of cities and are short. If you have to build them (albeit with mana), then summons lose a great deal of their current value.

Right now they fill the niche for expendable cannon fodder, which is available directly on the frontlines. If you had to summon them through lengthy rituals in cities, then both of these values would be lost, and they'd become pretty much regular units.

 

[tesb]

@Till you may keep the upcoming changes to the economy in mind. higher tier units and large stacks of units in general will cost much more gold (upkeep), so no more gigantic stacks. the summons will allow you to increase your army further since they draw from a different recourse pool.
Also it will force you to make much more strategic decisions on how to spend your mana:
keep a small army, but with possible use for lots of spells, or a greater army with lots of summons ...

Edit: if you played age of wonders you should know how these changes will turn out (awesome that is )


@sephi
if you played the planetfall mod (an alpha centauri remake for civ4) you will notice that all units have two types of strength: normal and psionic. maybe we could change the spell system so there are also two types of units strengths (magic and normal), so a heavy armored champion could be a strong combat unit but die rather quickly to spells. (i admit that implementing such a system would be a bit much and with resists and damgetypes this can, to an extend, be already imitated)

 

[Till]

Good point, but i would still hate to lose the existing mechanic. Maybe both could co exist? The new rituals bind creatures permanently, while the old spells summon them for the duration of a battle?

 

[Sephi]

This sounds rather familiar, here.....

yeah, this is going to be a cheap ripoff heavily inspired by Master of Magic

Wow. This sounds like as big an innovation from FFH as FFH was from vanilla Civ. Great!

Here is my one single suggestion: don't do all the things that civ4 does to make and (and to a lesser extent, ) so easily interchangeable. That includes the slider and the ability of cities to "build" science or gold. This interchangeability problem in Civ4 is why you can't really have distinct science vs. financial traits (benefit one and it just gets converted to the other via the slider). Being "rich" or "poor" in this new form of mana should be something that can't be overcome (in any trivial way) by some other benefit like being financial.

mana will be special and rare.

Great concept, but i hope the rituals can be cast outside of cities and are short. If you have to build them (albeit with mana), then summons lose a great deal of their current value.

Right now they fill the niche for expendable cannon fodder, which is available directly on the frontlines. If you had to summon them through lengthy rituals in cities, then both of these values would be lost, and they'd become pretty much regular units.

I am sure a Fire Elemental that automatically damages all enemy Units adjacent to it will not feel like a regular unit

 

[tesb]

it could be possible, but then they would need a huge upfront cost to cast. i rather see the whole magic system revamped and knowing sephis work i guess these changes will be rather huge

i would like to see them dropped to be honest, imho one turn summons don't add that much to the gameplay (i use them like offensive spells)

 

[tesb]

@sephi i just saw you update to the op:
maybe add a fourth spellschool:

arcane:
-dimensional
-metamagic
-force
-body
-enchantment

light magic -> buffs
dark magic ->debuffs
elementalism ->damage
arcane -> utility

ideas for promotions/spells:
-deals damage per round until removed (for debuffs)
-decrease first strike change / withdrawal change (i don't know if this is already possible)
-chance for immediate death, based on caster to victim level difference (like dnd spell finger of death)
-% of damage done by spell is gained in health (life drain spells)
-counterspell (a mage can use turn preparing a counterspell (cheap to cast) and will annul the first enemy spell that is casted the next round in an adjective tile)

 

[Sephi]

can you expand on this? the way you written it spellschools will be an overarching thing for example spell school: "dark magic" includes death, entropy and chaos magic and an adpet can choose only one spellschool. (this would be quite nice, amurites could have one spellschool more by default for example)

yes, it will be an overarching thing. Mostly an interface for the AI to understand magic.

9.0 has a ton of new content already are you sure you will put it in there?

yes, a lot of the dll stuff is already done.

if you have specific tasks let me know. what i could do right now is provide you with new spells to replace the summons (or at least part of them)

edit: i would create .xml files with new spells, button art, descriptions and you could choose what to implement.

sounds good to me. Do you know how to modify the gamefonts files? You could try to improve the symbols for the new commerce Types, or replace them with better ones.

 

[Sephi]

it could be possible, but then they would need a huge upfront cost to cast. i rather see the whole magic system revamped and knowing sephis work i guess these changes will be rather huge

yes, the whole magic system gets revamped. Having one expendable summen per spellschool sounds good to me (Elementalism will have fireball). It just needs to be limited in numbers so that there is no more summon 25 free units every turn boredom anymore.

 

[tesb]

Do you know how to modify the gamefonts files? You could try to improve the symbols for the new commerce Types, or replace them with better ones.

what exactly do you want, new icons for mana? just post a screenshot of what you think should change with the ui. i don't really know how to modify the gamefont files but i can look at existing ones (file type, resolution etc.) and send you the new stuff for implementation.

Spoiler :

how exactly are you planning on changing the ui?
1) new icons for different mana types?
2) a new resource for mana?
3) a new icon for a new manaoverview (similiar to the financial screen)?


i will further make some xmls with spells, promotions etc. from which you can choose (i will mostly orient myself on dnd spells)