Mana sources and spells

[xalien]

Few questions I'm still not sure about:

1. I've only tried it in unpatched version so I don't know how it is supposed to work - if I build, lets say, a water node on a raw mana source and then later destroy the node, the mana source remains as water and won't let me build a different node - unless it goes outside my cultural borders, then it resets back to raw (happened after making beast of Agares). Is this how it is supposed to be?

2. Do you need to maintain a mana source to cast associated spells if your units already have a required promotion? This didn't seem to be the case, but it was in the same unpatched game, so I'm not sure.

 

[hbar]

1 - That is intended. The Metamagic 2 spell (Dispel Magic) can revert used nodes back to raw mana. Metamagic is available at Sorcery.

2 - You do not need to maintain the mana to cast the spell (personally, I think this should be changed). However, if you have summons with affinity for a certain type of mana, they only get the bonus for mana you currently have.

 

[Tarquelne]

The Promotion representing the first level of each sphere requires a mana node of the appropriate type. I think you can give the second and third level Promotions the same requirement. That wouldn't mean you need the mana to cast the spells (which I'd like, too) but at least you'd need the mana around to keep learning spells of that sphere.

I think. I've made the change to the XML but haven't tried it yet.

 

[xienwolf]

That is correct, Tarquelne.

 

[MMDuran]

Follow-up question on mana nodes. I was playing as the Malakim in a SP game and built a few nodes (Fire and Sun) near my capital. About 100 or so turns later, I noted that the nodes were gone. I re-built different types of mana on the nodes but have no idea why they were reset and/or why I didn't have to go back to the type of mana I'd bought previously. I'm still a relative newbie, so I suppose my question is - do mana nodes have an expiration point? It didn't appear my (automated) workers had built a farm or somesuch which destroyed the node, so I'm a bit confused as to what may have happened.

 

[xalien]

Amurite world spell "Arcane Lacuna" resets all nodes back to raw mana.

 

[MMDuran]

I thought that might be the case, but wanted to be sure there wasn't any other possibility of reversion. Otherwise, established nodes stay that way and only change as described above, correct?

 

[Gelvan]

funny, i had the same when playing with Malakim, but I thought that could be something with the CoE Svartalfar units which (so I thought) sneaked in and destroyed them. Have never looked at Worldbuilder so I don't know. But I had exactly the same thing with Malakim.

 

[MMDuran]

funny, i had the same when playing with Malakim, but I thought that could be something with the CoE Svartalfar units which (so I thought) sneaked in and destroyed them. Have never looked at Worldbuilder so I don't know. But I had exactly the same thing with Malakim.

I'm not sure if it's a Malakim thing or not. I -do- know that I had the Amurites out there in my game, but I don't recall seeing the Arcane Lacuna message pop -- although that means nothing as it'd've been easy for me to miss in the course of things. I'll play again and see if it recurs, but the Amurites would seem the Ockham's Razor answer. ;-)

 

[Wyrmhero]

IIRC, the only things that turn mana into raw mana are the Amurite worldspell, passing through cultural boundaries (through revolt, taking over a city, building a beast of agares, or purge the unfaithful ritual), and the Metamagic 2 spell Dispell.

 

[xienwolf]

Wyrmhero is correct on his list of what will revert a Node.


It would be nice if instead of a World Announcement which is fairly easily missed (especially if in a war and spammed with defender messages), players were given a pop-up box, like what you get when a Civilization is wiped out, announcing certain Worldspells with far-ranging, but subtle effects. For now all I can think of really is the Sheaim, Mercurian and Amurite spells which would be nice to have a pop-up which you CANNOT ignore.