Making a new Magic System Part III: Terraforming

[Sephi]

• Terraforming is mostly done with Rituals
• Rituals cost mana, effect a few tiles and are repeatable. Spring for example transforms a few desert tiles in your territory into Plains.
• Some Rituals effect Enemy Territory. Dark Magic allows you to blight forests, create Volcanos or Deserts
• There will be about 15-20 Terraforming Rituals
• Terraforming Rituals are unlocked by Spell Research
• Advanced Terraforming Gameoption removed. Instead more Powerful Terraforming Rituals are unlocked by lategame Spell Research
• Elemental Magic has the widest range of Terraforming Rituals, Light Magic gives access to Bloom and Genesis (reworked), Dark Magic allows to transform enemy land

If you have some ideas for more Terraforming Rituals, feel free to post them

 

[tesb]

very very nice

lord knows how much i dislike the current tile per tile system, that occupies my mages.

edit: how will factions that automatically change their environment, like infernal or malakim change?

 

[Pazyryk]

When you're trying to balance this, please err on the "expensive" side. Terraforming is too trivially easy now. It shouldn't be easy or necessarily even possible for all civs to turn Sahara-sized deserts into fertile paradises.

 

[Sephi]

automatic terraforming from Malakim etc. will stay. Maybe add some global Enchantments for those Civs later that modify the rate at witch terraform changes.

And terraforming will be quite a bit more expensive compared to now which is one of the big reasons for the new system. Right now a single Adept with Water can remove all desert you encounter in the whole game. In the new system terraforming costs quite a bit of mana, so in some games you will want to use the terraforming rituals, in other games where you for example did spell research on a very powerful summon you might want to use your mana to summon a few of them.

 

[hbar]

Is there going to be any terrain-type balancing? For example, plains hills are generally more useful then grassland, because of the extra hammer.

Will the effect be localized? i.e. near the city you build the ritual in?

Will you be able to target enemies, or will the ritual affect all/random civs you are at war with?

If an enemy targets your lands, will you know who did it? Will it be permanent? Will terraforming rituals affect diplomacy? (-2: You blighted our lands!)

Sorry for all the questions. Have you imported the dark forests feature from FF? That would make a great ritual curse.

 

[captainmission]

some ideas for terraform spells

-a ritual to increase the rate of forest spread for elves/FoL. Maybe similar for kelp and OO, and haunted lands and scoin.

-rituals with a upkeep to increase the chance of randomly discovering resouses. metals and gems for RoK, seafood for OO, game/cattle/grains for FoL, happiness and health resources (wine/incense/dye) for empy.

-FoL can use rituals to expand forest into enmey lands, destroying their imporvement and allowing elven units to move quickly on the attack.

-unlinking hell spawning from alignment. Instead hell terrain can expand into any territory, but light magic rituals can provide protection. The upkeep cost rises with the AC.

-possably it would be more of a spell than a terraform, but late game rituals that can be used offensively against the whole of the enemy's territory. Eathqukaes that can destroy mines and chance of loss of builidngs. Floods to destroy costal and riverside improvements and cause pop loss in costal cities. fire storms to cause random blazes to occur in forests.

 

[Valkrionn]

Honestly, there are better ways to handle terraforming than either Rituals or Unit Spells.

The first is too random, untargeted, and likely to terraform areas you don't want (thereby being pretty much a waste)... The second is too easy.

Meh. Not my mod. And RifE will have the system I prefer when we release 1.4.

 

[Randomness]

 

[hbar]

Personally, I like the idea of terraforming being hard, expensive, and somewhat random. Terraforming changed the way the game is played, and forced unfun micro onto the player. It took all of the choice out of pursuing desert cities to grab some resource, because you knew that in 10 turns the city would be at least decent.

Terraforming should be hard, because it is pretty much impossible, magic or no.

 

[Valkrionn]

I agree with points 1 and 2. Hell, even 3. I just don't think it should be random across the entire empire; Some ability to target would be required for it to work well, IMO. If it's a few random plots in your territory... Well, who the hell wants that random desert tile blocked off by mountains to become plains?

edit: Meh. I suppose you could have a ritual which affects just the building city or the area around it... But again, we have a better method than rituals in store, which will come in 1.3, and be applied to terraforming in 1.4.

 

[hbar]

Oooh, brainstorm! This may be unnecessarily complex, but here goes:

When you start constructing a terraforming ritual, any arcane unit passing through the city can choose to gain the "Locus" promotion. Then, when the ritual fires, the effect will be centered on the locus unit, otherwise it is random. The power of the ritual could even scale with the power of the Locus unit (spell extension could increase the range, for example), but maybe have side effects (as a result of channeling so much arcane energy) such as mutation or damage.

Maybe this is too similar to the previous implementation, but it does provide a amount of control, and it engages your arcane units, which I like. It also gives a counter to civs under magical terraforming attack - kill the Locus, and the effects will be weaker and more distributed.

 

[Sephi]

Is there going to be any terrain-type balancing? For example, plains hills are generally more useful then grassland, because of the extra hammer.

Will the effect be localized? i.e. near the city you build the ritual in?

Will you be able to target enemies, or will the ritual affect all/random civs you are at war with?

If an enemy targets your lands, will you know who did it? Will it be permanent? Will terraforming rituals affect diplomacy? (-2: You blighted our lands!)

Sorry for all the questions. Have you imported the dark forests feature from FF? That would make a great ritual curse.

Plains is +1f +1h, while grassland is +2f. I do not see how a hill unbalances this. Sometimes you want hammers more than food, sometimes not.

The Terraforming effect won't be local. And it won't be random either. No idea why Valkrionn is spreading this misinformation. I might allow to target specific enemies, depends on what the interface allows. Terraforming will have an effect on diplomacy.

some ideas for terraform spells

-a ritual to increase the rate of forest spread for elves/FoL. Maybe similar for kelp and OO, and haunted lands and scoin.

-rituals with a upkeep to increase the chance of randomly discovering resouses. metals and gems for RoK, seafood for OO, game/cattle/grains for FoL, happiness and health resources (wine/incense/dye) for empy.

-FoL can use rituals to expand forest into enmey lands, destroying their imporvement and allowing elven units to move quickly on the attack.

-unlinking hell spawning from alignment. Instead hell terrain can expand into any territory, but light magic rituals can provide protection. The upkeep cost rises with the AC.

-possably it would be more of a spell than a terraform, but late game rituals that can be used offensively against the whole of the enemy's territory. Eathqukaes that can destroy mines and chance of loss of builidngs. Floods to destroy costal and riverside improvements and cause pop loss in costal cities. fire storms to cause random blazes to occur in forests.

great ideas! Some will definetly be used. Keep it coming

 

[hbar]

Plains is +1f +1h, while grassland is +2f. I do not see how a hill unbalances this. Sometimes you want hammers more than food, sometimes not.

A plains hill is 0f 2h. I like to specialize my tiles. Not at all a big deal.

 

[Valkrionn]

Plains is +1f +1h, while grassland is +2f. I do not see how a hill unbalances this. Sometimes you want hammers more than food, sometimes not.

The Terraforming effect won't be local. And it won't be random either. No idea why Valkrionn is spreading this misinformation. I might allow to target specific enemies, depends on what the interface allows. Terraforming will have an effect on diplomacy.

Maybe from reading your own post on the matter?

Rituals cost mana, effect a few tiles and are repeatable. Spring for example transforms a few desert tiles in your territory into Plains.

That certainly implies to me that it would be set up randomly; How else would you do it? Unless you are going with a FAR more complicated system allowing you to manually select X tiles per casting of the Ritual, I really don't see how you can say it's not random?

It's not spreading misinformation when all I've stated is my own opinions on the matter, and you have not given any specifics at all about how it works; My conclusions are the logical ones atm. Particularly when you've worked to REMOVE micromanagement; Any system with a unit able to target a tile seems like it would have at least the same amount of micro that currently exists.

 

[Sephi]

Maybe from reading your own post on the matter?

it says nowhere random.

That certainly implies to me that it would be set up randomly; How else would you do it?

Calculate the value of the Terraforming and then choose a plot with a high value. When you attack an enemy stack the defender isn't choosen randomly either.

It's not spreading misinformation when all I've stated is my own opinions on the matter, and you have not given any specifics at all about how it works;

When you say that terraforming rituals must be random that is not an opinion but simply wrong.

I think you have a point that any terraforming system that is too random is not good for gameplay, even more when terraforming is expensive.

 

[Valkrionn]

it says nowhere random.


Calculate the value of the Terraforming and then choose a plot with a high value. When you attack an enemy stack the defender isn't choosen randomly either.


When you say that terraforming rituals must be random that is not an opinion but simply wrong.

I think you have a point that any terraforming system that is too random is not good for gameplay, even more when terraforming is expensive.

It seems that we have a disagreement about what is random, here, as I still consider your system too random for my tastes (granted, something like that was planned to be part of mine, but only one half of the system... The other is more targeted, and uses a new feature implemented by Grey Fox).

Your system, while a weighted rand, yes, still is too random for me. Unless it takes into account the items below, I think it is too random to be the sole method.

• Proximity to a city.
• Population of said city.
• Surrounding tiles of the city (large pop city with 1 desert tile needs it less than large pop city with 5)
• civ-specific yields
• Improvement on the tile.
• Feature on the tile.
• etc

Basically, everything a player would take into account.

Just to be completely clear: I still think this is better than the current system. I just think it can be improved upon further. The ability to target a specific area with the terraform is what is lacking for me, and what will be allowed in RifE via the new mechanic.

And I suppose I should have phrased my statement better: A terraforming ritual is uncontrollable by the player. Even if you can guess which plots will be converted, you still have no choice in the matter. That is what has me convinced that it is not desirable as the sole method of terraforming.

 

[Sephi]

And I suppose I should have phrased my statement better: A terraforming ritual is uncontrollable by the player. Even if you can guess which plots will be converted, you still have no choice in the matter. That is what has me convinced that it is not desirable as the sole method of terraforming.

Actually if you want to you can still decide in 99% of all cases of Rituals targeting your own land which plots are terraformed. It's just that by default the AI picks the plots for you, but if you want to micromanage that you can overwrite it. But I doubt that anyone will actually use that as the AI takes a lot into consideration and it picks really good plots.

 

[Kalina]

Calculate the value of the Terraforming and then choose a plot with a high value. When you attack an enemy stack the defender isn't choosen randomly either.

You can see which unit will defend stack with just one click. It is more like maintenance cost where you can only guess how much founding city in given tile will cost you

 

[Valkrionn]

Actually if you want to you can still decide in 99% of all cases of Rituals targeting your own land which plots are terraformed. It's just that by default the AI picks the plots for you, but if you want to micromanage that you can overwrite it. But I doubt that anyone will actually use that as the AI takes a lot into consideration and it picks really good plots.

In that case, it is the far more complex method; You are able to select individual plots.

That may work fine as a sole method, then... Though I honestly still prefer ours, which should be easily clear when we release 1.3.

 

[Valkrionn]

Actually, no real reason not to at least say what it is, given that Tesb has known about it for a few weeks; Basically, Cities themselves are able to use spells. The spell is implemented the same way as always, just uses a bCitySpell tag to separate them; Using this, you can have a ritual effect the empire, and a city spell effect the individual city. Of course, this relies on a mana cost to balance it, hence terraforming won't switch to that system in RifE until 1.4.

So far simpler than allowing you to select individual tiles, but still allowing you to target general areas rather than have the effect occur throughout your territory (more important in RifE than Wild Mana, admittedly, given Cultural Control on Forts).