RifE Blogpost: Magic Revisited

[Valkrionn]

Questions on mana (the stat) accumulation :

1. If I have three fire mana (resources), then how many mana (stat) that I collect per turn and what kind of type (or if there is a mana-type at all)?
2. Will it differ with having one fire mana, one air mana and one earth (all three are elemental mana)?
3. Will it differ with having one spirit, one fire and one body mana (all three from different school)?

1. No idea exactly how much yet. Like I said, it's only the basic design, not implementation. But all mana goes to a single pool... There will not be 21 different types.
2. This question could be taken two ways, so I'll answer both.
   1. Will the different elemental types provide different amounts of Mana? Most likely, yes. Depends on the strength of the specific spells they allow.
   2. Will the different elemental types provide different types of Mana? No.
3. Same answer as #2.

 

[Castar]

Will the different elemental types provide different amounts of Mana? Most likely, yes. Depends on the strength of the specific spells they allow.

So, if I get this straight:

• If I recall the previous discussions, there will be no affinity-esque mechanic which increases spellpower based on how much mana of the spell's type you have.
• There will be no typed mana, all the mana is the same
• There will be no more "free spells" or somesuch, if you have more than one of a certain type of mana

These three points would mean that I could get one of the "strongest" type of mana, then use all other mana nodes to harvest the mana type that gives the most mana, effectively negating the balancing effect of the amount of mana a specific type gives.

I presume here, of course, that the mana related to the strongest spells would provide fewer amounts of mana per turn than mana related to weaker spells. It would (imho) make even less sense if it were the other way around.

 

[Calavente]

I think you've go the gist of it.
but maybe the summons have affinity to a mana type. so getting x fire nodes can still be more interesting than having 1fire node (to learn the spell) then dispel it and have x raw node that give more mana.

 

[odalrick]

These three points would mean that I could get one of the "strongest" type of mana, then use all other mana nodes to harvest the mana type that gives the most mana, effectively negating the balancing effect of the amount of mana a specific type gives.

More than one of a kind of mana will give discounts to the related spells.

I'd say mana income will be balanced by the other cumulative effects from mana. So enchantment give a little, entropy a lot, raw mana the most.

 

[arcticnightwolf]

speaking of multiple mana, this idea came to my mind, what if *all* spells would be affected by number of their mana ?

elementals affected by affinity, +x% strength, +x% collateral dmg
offensive spells ((maelstorm)) +x% spellpower, increasing dmg cap limit
buff spells chance to affect surrounding units as well, maybe some weak +x% strength/defense/withdrawal/etc
defensive spells ((wall of stone)) maybe +x% city defense bonus, some weak +x% defense bonus
utility spells ((flesh golem)) chance to create additional unit

don't stone me for that, it's just an idea ...

 

[Castar]

They already said they wouldn't do that, because it is very difficult to balance that.


Sorry if I broke your sarcasm-meters with that comment. I could not resist

 

[arcticnightwolf]

They already said they wouldn't do that, because it is very difficult to balance that.

idk that that was already discussed

Sorry if I broke your sarcasm-meters with that comment. I could not resist

err ... huh ?

 

[Meldon]

What concept has become perturn?

Guess I wasn't really clear, the whole gaining mana-per-turn. I don't know anything about coding or anything, just an educated guess and pessimistic tendencies.

 

[Forral]

I read that your Mana stockpiles would have a sort of dynamic cap to which it would only be able to climb to, modified by techs, buildings and so on- this in order to prevent a Civ that has rarely used magic from suddenly throwing magic all over the place. Is that actually sound to prevent? Why should the player not be allowed to gorge himself on the stockpiles of mana he has accumulated? It sounds like fair game to me. Just like the player that has let his coffers of gold grow can suddenly upgrade all his obsolete units and hire countless mercenaries, should he want to.

Perhaps more importantly I wonder if it really is a good idea to have mages gain experience from casting spells, given the above cap on Mana accumulation. If you find yourself at the cap with such a mechanic in place chances are you'd feel the need to cast spells needlessly, just to make *some* use of the overflow. All in all, I either don't think there should be a cap on Mana accumulation, or not have experience gained from casting spells. They are both good on their own, but combined I feel they would reward/force nonsensical repetitions of micromanagement.

Gaining experience from casting spells- with no Mana cap, ensures that your mages would be much more powerful than others if you've been casting spells throughout the game, balancing that benefit against the excessive mana supplies someone who chooses to not cast untill late game. What you'd end up with is an actual choice, where its never obvious whether to cast now or wait untill later. Both would have their benefits and drawbacks, and thus I think that's the better choice (Ditching the cap, implementing experience gain for casting).

Unrelated to those arguments, I wonder what made you pick the schools of magic that you picked? Ie, Alteration, Divination, Elementalism, and Necromancy? What about Abjuration, Evocation, Enchantment, Illusion, Thaumaturgy and such? I guess, specifically I'm just curious what made you decide on those Spheres rather than others? I know for example that I personally had issues designing diverse spells that would not somehow infringe on the Elemental Sphere for one of my own projects in the past. I ended up cutting the Elemental Sphere, and introucing a few other spheres in its place. It's just a very diverse sphere where you could feasibly fit spells for just about every purpose, since the elements pretty much make up the fabric of reality. Divination, on the other has a very slim spectrum of posibilities by comparison, at least if it's not meant to simply encompass "Divine Magic" under a name I asscociate with things such as fortune telling.

So yeah, I find the sphere choices a bit curious and request a bit of illumination.

Edit:

What about trading mana? Not the actual resource types but the 'mana currency' like you can trade money. Offering technologies or money for your oponent's raw mana stockpiles. I think it could be a good use of mana for players and civilizations that aren't primarily interested in magic, and it would also help those that require even more Mana for their mages than their feeble empire can sustain. I could definitely see that the possibility that Magic oriented civilizations with multiple units capable of casting spells, such as the Amurites, would find themselves in dire need of extra mana. I could also see that strategies involving excessive summoning would require considerable mana beyond what a Civ alone could harvest.

 

[Calavente]

Unrelated to those arguments, I wonder what made you pick the schools of magic that you picked? Ie, Alteration, Divination, Elementalism, and Necromancy? What about Abjuration, Evocation, Enchantment, Illusion, Thaumaturgy and such?

because Kael designed the arcan path around those techs, thus creating groups of mana spheres, linked by tech, and with the 4 "arcane" towers.
as a side note, elementalism is not a mana sphere in FFH or it's modmodmods.
Fire is a sphere,
ice is another,
force is another sphere,
shadow...etc

lastly :
Necromancy is a bad name but it encompasse all the dark mana spheres : entropy, death, shadow, chaos :all that sow destruction.

Divination is all that is linked to a higher self /more spiritual self : mind, spirit, life, law, sun (what is sun doing here? EDIT: because sun mana represents LIGHT )

Alteration is all modifying the existant + less spiritual : body, enchantment, nature,

Elementalism is the control of the wild elements : fire, water, earth, air, ice (maybe ice should be in necromancy due to Mulcarn being as much a destructor as Agares, Esus, Bhall and Camulos ; or maybe it is the opposite of fire...)

then you have Force, dimensionnal, creation that can be spread around : force and creation in ALTERATION and dimensionnal in .. divination?

and then there is Metamagic that is a school in itself.
(How come I have 21mana sphere and Dagda has no mana ... thus 22angels... there should be only 21.. does that mean that dimensionnal is Dagda's Mana sphere?)

If I were to change it I would have positionned the 21 mana spheres in 4 groups of 5 + metamagic.

alt : body, creation, enchant, force, dimensionnal,
div : law, life, mind, spirit, sun
Elem : air, earth, fire, water nature (IIRC in taoism there are 5 elements ; air, earth, fire, water and wood ; then vitalize should become a creation spell and Nature 3 be "summon treant" or something like that)
necro : chaos, death, entropy, ice, shadow

 

[Opera]

Those schools come from the techs available after Knowledge of the Ether has been researched, namely Alteration, Divination, Elementalism and Necromancy.

 

[dunedainjedi]

If I'm not mistaken dimensional is in necromancy. I thought that there were four 'new' mana types, one for each school.

And I think Sun got put in divination since all of the FFH sun spells are pretty closely related to the Empyrem.

 

[Calavente]

If I'm not mistaken dimensional is in necromancy. I thought that there were four 'new' mana types, one for each school.

And I think Sun got put in divination since all of the FFH sun spells are pretty closely related to the Empyrem.

well, IIRC, there were not "four new mana", 1 per school... there were always 21 mana spheres but Kael was not satisfied with the spell imagined at the time for those 4 mana spheres.
Thus they were not attributed a mana node.

But that doesn't tell us that they should be spread "one per school"

Nowadays, the modmodmods have some pretty interesting spells for those mana spheres.

lastly, for sun, i think you are right... It is not the "sun" as a star, but sun as "representative of light"...etc

 

[Opera]

Dagda's mana is Force.

 

[Swinkscalibur]

First of all I really like the idea of this change to the magic system.

Some thoughts:
1. I like the idea of a variable max mana (stat) for the civ. Just like the units only being able to channel so much mana (their capacity), the technology, structures and improvements of a civ would set a cap for the amount of mana that can be controlled (like an infrastructural capacity of the civ).
2. I like the term "mana quanta" for the stat and mana for the resource. As in my metamagic mana is producing 10 mana quanta per turn.
3. These are just ideas continuing the thought process developed by people relating gold to (as I will call it) mana quanta. Would it be possible to clone the code for gold an create an entirely new stat on par with it. We have discussed the fact that rituals might be constructed from the mana pool, what if they could be rushed not by using gold but by using mana quanta. Mana quanta could be used instead of gold to pay for arcane (and maybe religious) unit upgrades. Mana quanta could be traded in quantity (As has been mentioned) or per turn. Perhaps mana quanta could be a new tile yield with various improvements (mana nodes and the new raw mana collector) giving it as a yield. Then it would be possible for unimproved mana to give a small yield. Unique features could have yields. Techs could give added yields to the improvements and features and buildings could be built which increased the mana quanta yeild percentage. I'm not sure how feasible any of this is but it seems like if it was possible it would be easier for the AI to understand how to value the resources, build the right improvements, value/trade the mana quanta, and perhaps even weigh decisions about spells "cost"

 

[Valkrionn]

So, if I get this straight:

• If I recall the previous discussions, there will be no affinity-esque mechanic which increases spellpower based on how much mana of the spell's type you have.
• There will be no typed mana, all the mana is the same
• There will be no more "free spells" or somesuch, if you have more than one of a certain type of mana

These three points would mean that I could get one of the "strongest" type of mana, then use all other mana nodes to harvest the mana type that gives the most mana, effectively negating the balancing effect of the amount of mana a specific type gives.

I presume here, of course, that the mana related to the strongest spells would provide fewer amounts of mana per turn than mana related to weaker spells. It would (imho) make even less sense if it were the other way around.

Not quite.

• I don't remember saying that. I do remember saying that having multiple mana of the same type (ex: Fire Mana) might discount the cost of spells of that type (ex: Fireball).
• Yes. There is only one mana stat. More than that becomes extremely clunky.
• Yes.

The first point is enough, IMO, to encourage stacking. Particularly when combined with a better affinity system (which IS planned, for Guilds if not 1.4).

speaking of multiple mana, this idea came to my mind, what if *all* spells would be affected by number of their mana ?

elementals affected by affinity, +x% strength, +x% collateral dmg
offensive spells ((maelstorm)) +x% spellpower, increasing dmg cap limit
buff spells chance to affect surrounding units as well, maybe some weak +x% strength/defense/withdrawal/etc
defensive spells ((wall of stone)) maybe +x% city defense bonus, some weak +x% defense bonus
utility spells ((flesh golem)) chance to create additional unit

don't stone me for that, it's just an idea ...

Well, I wouldn't go that far into it. Would mostly be affinity on summons, and discounted costs on spells.

Guess I wasn't really clear, the whole gaining mana-per-turn. I don't know anything about coding or anything, just an educated guess and pessimistic tendencies.

Oh. You'd be surprised how much is done each turn. So long as it's handled in the C++, it's reasonably fast; Main slowdown is the python interface with the C++.

I read that your Mana stockpiles would have a sort of dynamic cap to which it would only be able to climb to, modified by techs, buildings and so on- this in order to prevent a Civ that has rarely used magic from suddenly throwing magic all over the place. Is that actually sound to prevent? Why should the player not be allowed to gorge himself on the stockpiles of mana he has accumulated? It sounds like fair game to me. Just like the player that has let his coffers of gold grow can suddenly upgrade all his obsolete units and hire countless mercenaries, should he want to.

Hmm... You bring up a good point, mechanically. I don't care for the idea of the Doviello suddenly becoming a magic powerhouse, basically.

Perhaps more importantly I wonder if it really is a good idea to have mages gain experience from casting spells, given the above cap on Mana accumulation. If you find yourself at the cap with such a mechanic in place chances are you'd feel the need to cast spells needlessly, just to make *some* use of the overflow. All in all, I either don't think there should be a cap on Mana accumulation, or not have experience gained from casting spells. They are both good on their own, but combined I feel they would reward/force nonsensical repetitions of micromanagement.

This is a VERY good point. And I think I prefer the xp, over the cap.

Gaining experience from casting spells- with no Mana cap, ensures that your mages would be much more powerful than others if you've been casting spells throughout the game, balancing that benefit against the excessive mana supplies someone who chooses to not cast untill late game. What you'd end up with is an actual choice, where its never obvious whether to cast now or wait untill later. Both would have their benefits and drawbacks, and thus I think that's the better choice (Ditching the cap, implementing experience gain for casting).

I rather agree.

Unrelated to those arguments, I wonder what made you pick the schools of magic that you picked? Ie, Alteration, Divination, Elementalism, and Necromancy? What about Abjuration, Evocation, Enchantment, Illusion, Thaumaturgy and such? I guess, specifically I'm just curious what made you decide on those Spheres rather than others? I know for example that I personally had issues designing diverse spells that would not somehow infringe on the Elemental Sphere for one of my own projects in the past. I ended up cutting the Elemental Sphere, and introucing a few other spheres in its place. It's just a very diverse sphere where you could feasibly fit spells for just about every purpose, since the elements pretty much make up the fabric of reality. Divination, on the other has a very slim spectrum of posibilities by comparison, at least if it's not meant to simply encompass "Divine Magic" under a name I asscociate with things such as fortune telling.

So yeah, I find the sphere choices a bit curious and request a bit of illumination.

They are already in game. Those are the names of the techs which allow the mana nodes to be built. I have no interest in regrouping spell spheres, destroying part of FfH's lore in the process.

What about trading mana? Not the actual resource types but the 'mana currency' like you can trade money. Offering technologies or money for your oponent's raw mana stockpiles. I think it could be a good use of mana for players and civilizations that aren't primarily interested in magic, and it would also help those that require even more Mana for their mages than their feeble empire can sustain. I could definitely see that the possibility that Magic oriented civilizations with multiple units capable of casting spells, such as the Amurites, would find themselves in dire need of extra mana. I could also see that strategies involving excessive summoning would require considerable mana beyond what a Civ alone could harvest.

Would be an interesting idea.

because Kael designed the arcan path around those techs, thus creating groups of mana spheres, linked by tech, and with the 4 "arcane" towers.
as a side note, elementalism is not a mana sphere in FFH or it's modmodmods.
Fire is a sphere,
ice is another,
force is another sphere,
shadow...etc

lastly :
Necromancy is a bad name but it encompasse all the dark mana spheres : entropy, death, shadow, chaos :all that sow destruction.

Divination is all that is linked to a higher self /more spiritual self : mind, spirit, life, law, sun (what is sun doing here? EDIT: because sun mana represents LIGHT )

Alteration is all modifying the existant + less spiritual : body, enchantment, nature,

Elementalism is the control of the wild elements : fire, water, earth, air, ice (maybe ice should be in necromancy due to Mulcarn being as much a destructor as Agares, Esus, Bhall and Camulos ; or maybe it is the opposite of fire...)

then you have Force, dimensionnal, creation that can be spread around : force and creation in ALTERATION and dimensionnal in .. divination?

and then there is Metamagic that is a school in itself.
(How come I have 21mana sphere and Dagda has no mana ... thus 22angels... there should be only 21.. does that mean that dimensionnal is Dagda's Mana sphere?)

If I were to change it I would have positionned the 21 mana spheres in 4 groups of 5 + metamagic.

alt : body, creation, enchant, force, dimensionnal,
div : law, life, mind, spirit, sun
Elem : air, earth, fire, water nature (IIRC in taoism there are 5 elements ; air, earth, fire, water and wood ; then vitalize should become a creation spell and Nature 3 be "summon treant" or something like that)
necro : chaos, death, entropy, ice, shadow

The spheres are already in groups of 4 groups of 5 + metamagic.

Alteration - Body, Creation, Enchantment, Force, Nature
Divination - Law, Life, Mind, Spirit, Sun
Elementalism - Air, Earth, Fire, Ice, Water
Necromancy - Chaos, Death, Dimensional, Entropy, Shadow

So basically, you switched Dimensional (very, very Evil in FfH; Ceridwen. More so than Death), Ice (Opposite of Fire, not so much evil as resisting change; Really, Mulcarn's actions were completely in keeping with his sphere), and Nature (dunno, was always there )

First of all I really like the idea of this change to the magic system.

Some thoughts:
1. I like the idea of a variable max mana (stat) for the civ. Just like the units only being able to channel so much mana (their capacity), the technology, structures and improvements of a civ would set a cap for the amount of mana that can be controlled (like an infrastructural capacity of the civ).
2. I like the term "mana quanta" for the stat and mana for the resource. As in my metamagic mana is producing 10 mana quanta per turn.
3. These are just ideas continuing the thought process developed by people relating gold to (as I will call it) mana quanta. Would it be possible to clone the code for gold an create an entirely new stat on par with it. We have discussed the fact that rituals might be constructed from the mana pool, what if they could be rushed not by using gold but by using mana quanta. Mana quanta could be used instead of gold to pay for arcane (and maybe religious) unit upgrades. Mana quanta could be traded in quantity (As has been mentioned) or per turn. Perhaps mana quanta could be a new tile yield with various improvements (mana nodes and the new raw mana collector) giving it as a yield. Then it would be possible for unimproved mana to give a small yield. Unique features could have yields. Techs could give added yields to the improvements and features and buildings could be built which increased the mana quanta yeild percentage. I'm not sure how feasible any of this is but it seems like if it was possible it would be easier for the AI to understand how to value the resources, build the right improvements, value/trade the mana quanta, and perhaps even weigh decisions about spells "cost"

1. It may go away.
2. I don't care for that term. It will likely just remain Mana.
3. Lots here, so each in turn.
   • Very possible to make a clone of Gold. That is the intent.
   • Possible to make rituals rush with it.
   • Will not be used for upgrades. Aside from possibly summons.
   • Trading it could be possible.
   • Can't add a new yield. Issues with being able to display more than three yields on a tile.
   • AI will understand it because it will be a combination Commerce/Tracking stat. As with Gold.

 

[Castar]

I don't remember saying that. I do remember saying that having multiple mana of the same type (ex: Fire Mana) might discount the cost of spells of that type (ex: Fireball).

OK, then I misunderstood. And indeed, having a single use for stacking is basically enough to make that part of the system work, if well balanced.

 

[Jabie]

The mana system could have some interesting side-effects if combined with some of the existing variables in the game. D'Tesh could sacrifice slaves for extra mana, Khazad could build a magical forge to convert excess mana to hammers, the Amurites could have a process availabel to them to convert hammers to mana, the Sheaim could pray to demons for extra power - essentially sacrificing culture for mana, the Elohim could earn bonus mana if their cities are healthy and happy, but lose mana if thier cities are unhealthy and unhappy.

 

[2000AD]

So does this mean that a Tower of Mastery victory will become a bit harder as you'll now want some untapped mana to power your spells?
Also will there be any benefits to having multiples of the same manner, for example boosts to spell effects, cheaper mana costs, etc ?

 

[Swinkscalibur]

If you did add another tile yield, would it not be possible to assure that tile could never have more than three types of yield at once? For example making commerce and mana exclusive?

Ex) If a tile has "x" commerce and "y" mana yield, have the tile give "x+y" mana and 0 commerce.

A more complicated solution (yet probably still possible) would be an assessment of all the possible situations involving all four yields on one tile and finding an individual solution for each. I really don't think there would be many situations where all four yields would happen at once. These are the only ones that come to mind.

- riverside tiles with both food and production (like grasslandhill, plain, or grasslandforest) that also have a mana node or unique feature. This could be solved by adding a check to the spawning of mana nodes and unique features in map creation/rights of Oghma that prevents them from spawning on tiles with commerce.

- a tile with a unique feature that spawns on top of a commerce resource (mana nodes are resources and cannot spawn on other resources). Again in map creation/Rights of Oghma, this should be a quick check.

- a tile with haunted lands. Haunted lands on mana nodes/mana features should either give additional mana instead of commerce or be prevented from spreading to mana nodes.

- an ocean/coast tile with a reef or after heron's thrown with a mana node (I'm assuming water tiles will eventually get mana nodes with the advent of aquatic civs). Again the chances of this happening should be fairly slim, but a simple check should solve this problem too.

- a commerce improvement on a mana node (with food and production) restrict the types of improvements that can be built on mana nodes to the mana collecting improvements.

In the end it mostly boils down to a check that on land mana nodes and mana granting unique features are not added to tiles with commerce and on water that mana nodes (and unique features?) aren't placed on tiles with hammers. Along with a few other changes

Another possibly simple solution could also be giving water based mana nodes -"x" hammers and land based mana nodes -"y" commerce assuming that a yield can't be less than 0. Unique features that grant mana could also have similar modifiers. Essentially "x" and "y" just have to be high enough that the corresponding yields can never be more than 0.

Basically what I am trying to say is that the situations where all four yields are present would be rare, and that preventing (what IMHO is) a convenient and clear method of explaining the source of mana because of graphical issues is a bit hasty.