Mana Ideas

[War Chicken]

I had an Idea about the Mana effects, and wanted to post it here again, to avoid the post to drown in the big FfH2 Thread.

I've got an Idea for the Mana effects.
Many Manatypes have effects, but some don't. Maybe you've just not yet made up what effects they should do, so here are some suggestions I made up.

Air: Naval Units +1 Speed (if too powerful: Every Air Mana after the first maybe)
Water: Naval Units +1xp
Fire: Prduction +1 in desert tiles (or Movecost only one in desert, but that does Nomad already)
Death: Chance that enemy units get poisoned or diseased in Mana-owners lands.
Dimensional: Units with 3 or more speed get +1 additional speed
Nature: +1 Food in Djungle

Next to that, it would be great if some Manas would have impacts on the Landscape:

Fire: Scorches terrain, lowering it every say 10 turns Grassland->Plains->Desert and chance to set forests and djungles on fire - That would create a need to maintain a water adept, that removes theese effects regulary, if a firenode is near a city.

Water: the opposite of fire - Desert->Plains->Grassland, then a forest is created that changes into djungle then. This will need Maintainence by workers that need to remove the djungle periodically if in city radius.

Earth could create Hills or randomly let minerals appear and disappear around the Node or both.

Air - Creates tundra and Ice because of the cold winds... not that great idea, but i can't imagine something else now.

The others shouldn't have as big impacts - elemental influences are stronger on the landscape than others.

Maybe a Life node should inhibit the transfer into hell terrain and death creates hell terrain in close radius.

Nature Nodes could do things similar to the Water node or spawn Animals (barbarian animals?) and Guardian wines to protect itself.


That were just some Ideas, but I'd really like if you could tell me what you think about them.

I've already been told, that the impacts on the landscape are not such a great idea maybe, 'cos the AI cant work with it, but maybe you can use the other ideas.
Just tell me what you think about it.

 

[Sureshot]

they had tried the landscape thingies before, i found it fun heh, but apparently bad for AI.. even still id like it back

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Maybe the BtS AI could handle it (I hope)

I would really like to see landscape changes i the normal game (global warming, volcanic eruptions, islands rising from the sea, peaks eroding into hills, etc) and some ways to effect it then (maybe great engineers could eventually get such abilities as tunneling through mountains and reclaiming land out of the sea, with the proper techs). Implementing them in the mod would be great to (although the explanations would be more magical than scientific)

 

[War Chicken]

Yes, That'd be great.
I can imagine quite some Spells for the Earth Sphere here.
Like "rise land" turning Ocean to flat land to hills to peaks and "erode" or "lower terrain" doing the reverse thing. That would be great, but I suppose its too powerful. But maybe it would be possible to limit it to be castable only every few turns, or only make it available to the Patriarch of Kilmorph.
Or only if you have 3 or more earth mana. Or having the turn penalty reduced the more earth mana you have.

 

[Kolath]

Terraforming is great, but I wouldn't want to see mana creating more micromanagement. If fire mana caused land to degrade and have to be refreshed by water adepts, it would just add a repetitive maintenance task without much gain, same for randomly appearing mineral nodes. Though I do like the passive effect you suggested for life nodes to block the spread of hell terrain.

 

[Sureshot]

Yes, That'd be great.
I can imagine quite some Spells for the Earth Sphere here.
Like "rise land" turning Ocean to flat land to hills to peaks and "erode" or "lower terrain" doing the reverse thing. That would be great, but I suppose its too powerful. But maybe it would be possible to limit it to be castable only every few turns, or only make it available to the Patriarch of Kilmorph.
Or only if you have 3 or more earth mana. Or having the turn penalty reduced the more earth mana you have.

i made that spell for my svartalfar mod, its fun being able to make mountain walls all over the place heh

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I loved the terraforming spells, but was often irritated that they destroyed resources. Perhaps the next version of the Svaltafar mod should add a chance of an appropriate resource being discovered after raise earth (and tsunami)

 

[Jenaelha]

I like your idea ChickenHawk. I think it would add an interesting flavor for the game. I would prefer something subtle that doesn't require maintenance. Passive, like the structures that now appear on a worked node only more intune aesthetically with the type of node constructed, as you suggest.

 

[Sureshot]

I loved the terraforming spells, but was often irritated that they destroyed resources. Perhaps the next version of the Svaltafar mod should add a chance of an appropriate resource being discovered after raise earth (and tsunami)

there is a counterbalance to that in my light phase complete version, as all improvements can be built anywhere, and all have a chance of finding the resources they can normally connect, so like:
farms can find wheat, corn, rice
camps can find furs, ivory, deer
plantations can find incense, reagents, bananas, etc.

i also like it as a counterbalance to things like armagedons blight so ill be readding it for a 0.23 version

 

[mrtomsmith]

Had an idea for a mana effect I wanted to mention:

Would it be possible to have chaos mana affect the probability of random events occurring in your empire? So if you have (say) 3 chaos mana coming in, the chances of getting a random event (any random event) are quadrupled? Just a thought.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Great idea (I'm pretty sure I thought of it first, but somehow forgot to mention it )

 

[Calavente]

I think the passive cikv-wide effects of most mana are good as they are, water, air, fire, death,... needing none as their spells are already very powerful.

but passive landscape effect seems good. (as nature increase forest-jungle respawning...etc) or affecting event probability.
(maybe you can have different ranges of events... each always probable, but with increased probability for 2-3 manas per event type).

Cala.

 

[smurven]

maybe a neat idea, but not even close to balanced. If nature mana did that, and i had a big jungle, you could build super cities using enough nature nodes. The fact that some mana nodes do negative terraforming is annoying, especially if its not intended to be a balancing factor. I like the small detail ones, like life node stops hell terrain, and maybe death node spreads it (since youre not as likely to use death if you're good because of the alignment modifiers).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How would the jungle help you build a super city? the way I read it, it would make the jungle spread more, making cities even more unhealthy. Did you think he meant that it would turn jungle into forests (especially good for the elves)? The way he said it would have a positive (forest spawning) and negative (jungle spawning) effect, which would balance each other out. Likewise, the good good and bad events both being more likely with more chaos mana would balance each other out. Personally I am a huge fan of an uncontrolled changing landscape (especially if we also add terraforming spells, and can teach the AI to use them)

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Perhaps some mana nodes (life, death, entropy,law, etc.) could have alignment specific effects. Neutral has no effect for all these, while evil using life would have a negative effect, while death and entropy could be positive for them. The opposite would be true for good.

 

[smurven]

what i was referring to was the +1 food for each nature node on jungles

 

[MagisterCultuum]

When was that suggested? I don't see that anywhere.

 

[smurven]

It was in the beginning of the very first post.

Air: Naval Units +1 Speed (if too powerful: Every Air Mana after the first maybe)
Water: Naval Units +1xp
Fire: Prduction +1 in desert tiles (or Movecost only one in desert, but that does Nomad already)
Death: Chance that enemy units get poisoned or diseased in Mana-owners lands.
Dimensional: Units with 3 or more speed get +1 additional speed
Nature: +1 Food in Djungle

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Oh. Those are all overpowered (although I do kinda like the death mana idea. Could be good, if the chance is pretty low)

 

[BeefontheBone]

I expect there will be random events which depend on your posessing a certain mana type in Shadow - the system is very flexible, there's tons of scope for that sort of thing.