We HAVE planned big things for rituals. I personally want each technology to open up a World ____, most of them being projects, some being wonders, and rare ones being units. I just prefer how it feels. And with Rituals most of them would be repeatable preferably.
Rituals is what makes the world start to REALLY feel mystical. You devote your cities to doing war for you, instead of always pumping out units and watching them have the fun.
Main reason it hasn't been done already though is a lack of ideas for rituals which would be strategically interesting, would make sense, and would be enjoyable. We do have some ideas, just not really ENOUGH yet.
In the interest of having some ideas pop out which are useful, I'll explain some of the mechanics which are currently about 50% complete and already in the code:
Resisting: Rituals can be set to be resistable, either on a Player basis, or a City basis.
Shielding: The primary method of resisting rituals. Can be gained directly from a building (+30 shielding), or can be gained as a mana affinity (+5 Shielding per Entropy Mana). Can also be applied in either way Globally (full Player/Team) or locally (City which holds the building), as well as being able to be gained through the player himself (I think I coded that one already anyway... should be trait or civic based, if not already both). Can also gain Shielding through CityBonus effects from Unit Promotions. Shielding would quite likely extend to provide magical resistance to fortified troops, and debuff hostile summons in the area.
Mystical Power: The counter to shielding. Can be gained the same way (direct or affinity. Also available globally or locally and whatnot, and by civic/trait/units). Power would be included in each ritual in unique ways unless it is a boring ritual that just does damage of some kind (ie - Additional turns of WorldSpell effect based on net Power of your cities is easy. But having a ritual which grants Empower to every unit you control would need special consideration to base the level of empowerment on your current Power).
The Power/Shielding approach will allow us to have rituals and counter-rituals. It lets you make annoying things like the Illian Worldspell resistable on a per-city basis so that they suck a LOT less (you got completely shut down? Your own dang fault then. Shouldn't have let the Illians generate so much more Power than you)
Rituals can have a base resistance rate set, as well as Maximum and Minimum rates configured. Mostly the mins would be used for really debilitating things (Stasis), and the Maxes for things which are not easily re-done when you don't get the desired level of effect (worldspells in general)
You can have rituals which do nothing but decrease the shielding of your opponent's cities (resistable of course, but if you succeed even partially the next one will hit them harder, and eventually you can wipe out their resistance completely. Of course, like Defense being bombarded, it will regenerate over time). Then you can have rituals which are VERY easily resisted, and can't be augmented by your own power. That lets a tactical element enter the game where a player needs to spam you with Anti-Shielding rituals, then time the big bang to hit you while you are recovering.
Anyway. As I said most of this is already coded and available in the game, we just haven't gotten a chance to sit down and flesh out the system enough to implement it, so there isn't motivation to finish the code. If some nice ideas get generated though...
