Spell system needs to be rethought.

[hiphopin]

OK first and foremost, summons should NOT cost ANY support whatsoever, skeleton's DON'T need food. Water elementals DON'T need food, ect...

A few spell spheres that I don't think work are. Sun, its first 2 spells are great but the tier 3 summon is just plain stupid. Come on, its a little weaker than normal elementals but has +2 affinity, whooooaah! Thats exiting!(sarcasm)
Someone needs to rethink that sphere.

Shadow sphere is cool for the most part, blur is great for attacking citys, shadowstep even greater. Mistform is interesting, can wreak havok on the enemy. But come on, the sphere is SHADOW, is there not anything cooler for sphere 3? I was thinking a mass stealth would be better, but it should require council of esus religion and should be an additional spell along with Mistform.

Earth, good for the most part but im really bugged by stoneskin, archmages are weak and stoneskin won't protect you from an assassin, could you make it so in addition to giving the caster stoneskin, it also gives the stack a weaker but similar promotion.

Law, probably the worst one. Loyalty is situational, VERY situational. Host of the einhejar or whatever is easily the most pointless summon, seriously its just stupid. And valor, oh my god, what a dumb spell. It should be permenent, give you half an XP per turn, and give as it does now an extra xp point from combat, also it should automatically cast loyalty to. THEN it would be useful.

Entropy, rust=good, wither=Good before fall further, why did you take away the no XP part? If you want to take away that wither needs to be MUCH stronger, -20% hp per turn is to weak. pitbeast=COME ON, ANOTHER SUMMON!!!!!! My gosh let me list all the summons from the arcane powers.

Summon:Specter,water/air/fire/earth/ice elementals, wraiths, skeletons, aurealis, djinn, sand lions, mistform, host of the einherjar and the pit beast.
WOW thats a lot of summons, The elemental trees should for sure have summons, death should have summons. But anything else for the most part should not, entropy being no exception. I guess a djinn and mistform is OK, and the sand lion is civ specific, but the host of the einherjar, aurealis, and the pit beast should be elminated.

Thats pretty much it. For the most part the spell system is solid, just the overdose of summons can get annoying. I miss a bunch of the arcane spells from the old spell system, and a really think we should bring some back and get rid of a lot of the summons, or rather don't get rid of them but make two sphere 3 promotion choices, choosing one will block out the other.

Anyways I have been pushing for spell system changes for a long time on the vanilla FFH2 forum, but since this is non official im hoping that you guys will make the changes.

Im hoping the dev team for FF will brainstorm a few spell ideas in there free time and post them in this thread, then have the community help find the best path to take and give there own ideas and maybe in a month we could have a completely new spell system thats not just 1000000 summons.

Anyways for now PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Post ANY ideas you have for spell spheres that just don't work. Make sure that they aren't overpowered and also fit for the sphere. Im not talking a complete rewrite of everything, just a few changes, mostly for sphere 3.
Im hoping we can come up with an additional sphere 3 spell per sphere that could be an alternate choice. And for the sphere 3 spells that suck now, hopefully a fix for that, like my idea for valor.

POST YOUR IDEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[xienwolf]

Summons do NOT cost support in FF, though they do still cost you Unit Supply costs at present.

We have massively rethought the spell system as a whole. But a complete overhaul takes a lot of time, time which we don't really have during the schoolyear.

Main thing about the spell system that will change is a removal of Python from the majority of the spells. It will speed up the system as well as making the AI more capable with it. Rather than a simple AI Weight value telling them that spell X is ALWAYS better than spell Y, it will be able to weigh the current situation and surroundings to decide on what to cast.

I do encourage all players to post any ideas they have. Do NOT restrict yourself to things that "the code can handle" or "the AI can understand." Trust me, I work miracles when the idea is good enough. And even though we have our own ideas, it doesn't mean they won't change if you post something amazingly awesome.

 

[hiphopin]

Awesome its GREAT to hear you guys want to change it, I look forward to any changes to come and will think hard on new spell possibilities.

 

[MrUnderhill]

I wonder if Unyielding Order should or shouldn't be moved back to being an arcane spell instead of a divine one. The Order already has an incredible happycap-remover (Social Order), and giving them exclusive access to what are essentially 3 or 4 mobile Towers of Complacency seems like something of a game-breaker to me, not to mention overkill. You could then make Host of the Einherjar a divine spell and give them Law affinity to make them less of a Pit Beast clone and give the Order a bit more of an offensive bite (which they lost when Ring of Flames became Veil-exclusive and Pillar of Fire was made Chalid-exclusive).

 

[Vehem]

We have massively rethought the spell system as a whole. But a complete overhaul takes a lot of time, time which we don't really have during the schoolyear.

Awesome its GREAT to hear you guys want to change it, I look forward to any changes to come and will think hard on new spell possibilities.

Well - kinda.

We had a discussion for a feature that was initially going to be an "Amurite thing" that had potential to become a significant addition to the spell system in general. I don't think I've ever been close to considering it as a replacement though.

As it stands, some of that feature is a nice example of what we can do, but not all of it seems like something we should do without a more pressing reason. The rough draft of it also didn't tie too closely to the lore (most of the effects were "fantasy" but not "FfH"). It's something we're definitely looking at a little later on though, as there's some real potential there.

In the meantime, I may be tempted to take some of the proposed effects and apply them to the existing summons to further differentiate them.

====

Just as a quicky though - if you're making an objective poll, try not to skew the options quite so much. "YES!!!!!!" vs "No, even though <insert complaint here>" isn't so much looking for information from a neutral standpoint as it is a continuation of your argument.

 

[Arctic Circle]

First - +2 affinity for anything except perhaps Ice is an massive kick-ass thing. Have you really built five sun nodes + religious wonder (gives sun mana) and sent forth Chalid and some sun elementals? A 20+ super, super unit backed by summonable elementals with 5 (base) + 12 (sun) damage? Or similar.

And Order should not in any way be nerfed, it needs some more 'cool' things rather to stand against the awesomeness of the ashen veil. Hmm.. a little drunk and tired right now.

 

[heisenberg]

A few spell spheres that I don't think work are. Sun, its first 2 spells are great but the tier 3 summon is just plain stupid. Come on, its a little weaker than normal elementals but has +2 affinity, whooooaah! Thats exiting!(sarcasm)
Someone needs to rethink that sphere.

Just a suggestion, have you tried following empy and hoarding Sun mana for Chalid?
It makes him pretty much a beast, and having +2 affinity on their elementals mean that they can easily pick up +10 str on larger maps with simply 5 sun manas for example.

*edit* lol Arctic beat me to posting about that

Shadow sphere is cool for the most part, blur is great for attacking citys, shadowstep even greater. Mistform is interesting, can wreak havok on the enemy. But come on, the sphere is SHADOW, is there not anything cooler for sphere 3? I was thinking a mass stealth would be better, but it should require council of esus religion and should be an additional spell along with Mistform.

I like mistform, though undoubtedly it was nerfed with the raider trait in FF.
I used to like using them on the Svalts since they had raider+arcane, as well as shadow mana.
In FfH, archmages with spell extensions can simply let their mistforms pillage very far into enemy territory, not to mention earning very decent gold in the process.

Earth, good for the most part but im really bugged by stoneskin, archmages are weak and stoneskin won't protect you from an assassin, could you make it so in addition to giving the caster stoneskin, it also gives the stack a weaker but similar promotion.

Assassins are str 6, with stoneskin, archmages can very easily defend themselves from at least one assassin. Especially summonner archmages who pick up combat promos to buff their summons.
Of course if you let multiple assassins attack your archmage he would undoubtedly die, but thats what the guardsman promo is for.

Law, probably the worst one. Loyalty is situational, VERY situational. Host of the einhejar or whatever is easily the most pointless summon, seriously its just stupid. And valor, oh my god, what a dumb spell. It should be permenent, give you half an XP per turn, and give as it does now an extra xp point from combat, also it should automatically cast loyalty to. THEN it would be useful.

Loyalty is easily one of the best tier 1 spells being so accessible.
Any frequent mutation user would attest to that. I go out of my way to grab law mana when I play bals just for loyalty.
Oh and in MP a simple loyalty spell would make rival Domination archmages cringe.
Host being "pointless" and "stupid"? I'd never scoff at a tier 2 summon. A str 5 summon at tier 2 is already a very useful spell. For any arcane civ getting tons of mages early, tier 2 summons are what's important.
Undoubtedly its not as strong as spectres when you hoard death mana, but its very useful in the midgame when you can't get that much either.
The same can be said about Tier 2 pit beasts.

On the whole the spell system could be tinkered with to perhaps include more interesting spells than a bunch of summons I agree there.
But that is what Vehem and Xien did when they added the Force, Ice, Creation, Dimension spheres, so give them credit for that.

 

[hiphopin]

Quick responce about the Aurealis. I totally know they can be amazingly powerful with a bunch of sun nodes (im in the middle of a game with the malakim right now actually), its just that, its SOOOOO boring. Oh and loyalty is GREAT with crazed/enraged units, but aside from that there are very VERY few uses for it. It is situational but I agree its very powerful when the situation calls for it.

Most of my complaints are because the summons are so cut and dry for the most part, I can't take it. As to the tier 2 summons, I understand they can be useful, very much so that early on. However theres NOTHING interesting about them otherwise, its just a base strength unit with angel or demon race. Too dull in my opinion.

I just want each summon to have more unique features, water/air/fire are really cool and unique, THOSE are the innovations I want to see for summons. Not just base strength adjustments.

Again one of the main things I miss is spells like contagion, damages enemy units and gives disease. (forgot the name) but it turns the enemy unit barbarian. Stuff like that. I would still love in the arcane tree to see an ice bridge spell, possibly an alternate tier 3 sphere. It turns the water tiles from +2 spaces adjacent into ice for a couple turns, that way you could traverse sea with an army without ships.

I can't take cut and dry, anything that repeats itself to much is dull to me, thats my main problem with the summons, yes there all powerful, but some are to dry.


And to Vehem: Thanks for your post, and when I did the poll I was kinda in the heat of the moment pissed off at summons like aurealis' and earth elementals. So pay no attention to the !!!!'s

On another note if you can implement a newer system but don't want to. Could you just make a module with the changes, people who want it could get it and people who don't could play the game as normal.


And again im going to say it just may be me ticked off with a few things. Repetition bores me in game like this, civ is great because theres SOOOOO many different things you can do. And when I do something as in depth as magic in FFH2+FF I want it to feel different every sphere. And when half of the summons I have used feel like the same thing I want to just quit. So its my vice. I may sound like a broken record with this but I still can't believe how few spell damage spells there are in the arcane tree. Maelstrom and wither (which was nerfed in FF) are all that come to mind right now.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

some more spells would be great. MaxAstro posted some great suggestions for new ones in the RLD thread

 

[hiphopin]

OK im brainstorming some spell ideas for a second 3rd sphere choice. If it was implemented it could be a module instead of in the actual mod should you guys choose.

Entropy: Drain life. Damages enemy units within a tile of your choice (tile would be the 8 surrounding the caster, but can be expanded by 1 tile length per spell extension) 20% (modified by spell damage) and heals your own units within one tile (starting in your tile) by 20% once per unit(modified by spell damage) per enemy unit drained. Will only heal living units, can be demon and undead for example but not catapults and ships. For example you have combat 3 and spell extension 1, you cast this on a stack of 5 champions 2 tiles away. There are 3 friendly units in your stack including the archmage and 3 units in another stack a tile next to you. The spell damages each champion by 35% and one champion resists it. The archmage is full health, the other two units in your stack are not and recive 35% health each. The units next to you are all at 50% health. Since you drained 4 units and two of yours were already healed only 2 units in the stack next to you will be healed.

Sun: Heat wave. Turns 50% of surrounding tiles into desert and forrests into scrub for about 8-12 turns and damages units surrounding the archmages Teamates AND enemys by 10-35% fire damage modified by spell damage.

Force: Force Push. I seriously did not want it to sound like a star wars refrence. Pushes enemy units surrounding the archmage away by 1-2 tiles depending on strength of the unit. Higher strength=less chance to be moved 2 tiles. Lower=Higher chance of being moved two tiles. The chances to move a certain ammount of tiles would be %'s modified by strength. There is a small resist chance and if your high strength you would have a small chance of not being affected by it at all regardless of resist. After being push backed the unit is snared and has 1 less movement speed for one turn. Only affects units surrounding the archmage. Has one turn cooldown where the spell cannot be casted.

Air: Hurricane. Similar to Force push but is more focused on damage. Takes one turn of casting to work. Deals 15-20% damage (modified by spell damage) to units in a selected tile. The tile is by default +1 space from the caster but spell extension increases the range by 1 tile. Units in the tile have a default 33% chance to be pushed back one tile. The chance is modified by strength. 10 strength would have a 33% chance. 7 strength would be 50% (just rough estimates) Units pushed back a tile will have an additional 50% fall damage (modified by spell damage) inflicted on them and if it takes the unit past 90% damage can kill it, the kill chance is a base 60% chance. In addition if cast on a city it will have a chance to destroy building based off of how many hammers they cost. So a monument would be destroyed before a forge in most cases. It would have a small chance to destroy each building, maybe 10% and the chance would increase or decrease depending on the hammer cost. It will not destroy wonders. A market would probably have a 30% chance of being destroyed for example.

Water: (You saw this one coming) Flood: Deals damage to units surrounding the caster. Deals very heavy damage to units with any fire damage. Extra damage dealt is dependant on percent of the units damage being fire. Otherwise it deals average damage to the tiles affected. Probably about 30%. 25% chance that a tile affected will have flood improvement, if it lands on a tile with an improvement on it already (save unique features) the existing improvement is destroyed. The flood imrpovement lasts 1-3 turns and blocks off the tile to anything without cold resist or cold damage.

Body: Grow muscle. Range 1. Unit of your choice will gain a promotion "Bulked Muscle" for 2-3 turns, the unit will deal drastically more damage. 50% more and an additional 10% per 5 spell damage. For example metamagic 3 and combat 5 will give your unit 130% damage. After the muscle wears off the unit will feel the effect of small muscles again and the arms will remain expanded causing them pain. 10% damage will be dealt to the unit and they will experience 1-2 turns were the spell will not be able to be cast on them.

Fire: Supernova. Takes SIX! Turns to cast. Very destructive spell but can also hurt you. Range=2. The mage harnesses all magical power availible to create a supernova on a small scale. The spell can damage your own units, enemy, and friendly units. You cannot cast the spell near friendly units, however if the units stay in the area after you start casting there will be no negative diplomacy effects. Every turn the mage gains 30% strength per turn due to all the power being harnessed, this allows your units to get out of the way while the mage casts the spell without the mage at too big a risk of dieing. When you cast the spell the AI will try very hard to kill the archmage. So it is risky even with your troops out of the way. However if the spell is able to cast the damage is immence. It will take the enemy citys population down by 1/4 if a city is within the two tile radius. And deal a wide range of damage to units caught within the radius, units within one tile from the caster will be damaged by about 80%, damage will be scaled on strength of the unit and increased by spell damage. A warrior with iron weapons would most likely be fully damaged by it while a champion with bronze will be more around the 65% mark. If the spell deals 80% damage there is a 70% chance the unit will be killed based off strength, warriors and hunters will have a very high chance of dieing. The second tile will be damage by about 60-70% A warrior will most likely be killed still, and a champion or two might. All tiles effected will undergo 5-10 turns of radiation, applying a -10% heal aura to all units and causing the tile to be unworkable. The units caught in the blast will recieve a promotion "Radiated" dealing an additonal -10% heal aura and reducing strength by 40%. A very powerful spell but I feel for the fire tree and for having a LONG cast time it is balanced. I can't imagine how hard it would be to code it though.

Spirit: Encouragement. You encourage the city and its workers to be positive in all actions and working harder for the good of the city, this generates happiness, more production, less crime and mantinance, and yields more gold return. This spell applies the hope building as well as the encouragement building in one cast. Last as long as the caster stays in the city. Provides 2 happiness a 25% production boost in the city plus an extra 4 hammers (making it great in citys with low production) lowers crime by 30% and mantinance by 50%. In addition each tile will yield an extra coin as the workers will work for less money for the good of thier city.

Ice: Ice bridge. Creates a bridge out of ice allowing your units to cross continents without ships. Range +3. Only affects water tiles, must be next to water in order to cast. Each Ice block will last from 2-5 turns.

(I will add to this list as I come up with more ideas)
Most of the percents I list are just estimates, it can be freely modified. I am trying to get as close as possible to what I see the spell being. Also a note, some of my spells will have different %'s based off the units strength. In most cases I think stronger units should be more resistant to some of the effects.

A big question for anyone who knows the answer. When a spell says "deals 20% damage" will it damage each unit affected by 20%, or will it deal damage depending on the strength of the unit. I would find it odd for a warrior with strength 3 to be damaged only .6 while a champion with 6 strength would be damaged double that with 1.2 Now does the spell system we have deal damage dependant on strength or does it deal damage dependant on percent. The latter would be really wierd as stronger units would be punished more. If this is true is it possible to make spells instead do damage = to strength. For example a spell could have a damage of .5 strength, and each unit affected would be damaged by that ammount. I ask this because the damage in spells is a percent number and that confuses me.

 

[odalrick]

OK first and foremost, summons should NOT cost ANY support whatsoever, skeleton's DON'T need food. Water elementals DON'T need food, ect...

What, you think mystic incense, rare paints for summoning circles and custom made arcane foci are free? Not to mention mages require hazard pay for risking their immortal souls bargaining with other-worldly entities.

If anything summons should cost more than normal units.

That would make sense from a gameplay perspective as well. You don't pay anything to create them, they are powerful and there is no incentive to keep them alive. Make them cost a little more for the few turns you actually use them, it's still a lot cheaper than paying for a standing army all the time.

The problem is of course that you wouldn't pay for units that you lost during you turn, so there would be tricks you could use to avoid paying upkeep. But that's a technical issue.

 

[hiphopin]

What, you think mystic incense, rare paints for summoning circles and custom made arcane foci are free? Not to mention mages require hazard pay for risking their immortal souls bargaining with other-worldly entities.

If anything summons should cost more than normal units.

That would make sense from a gameplay perspective as well. You don't pay anything to create them, they are powerful and there is no incentive to keep them alive. Make them cost a little more for the few turns you actually use them, it's still a lot cheaper than paying for a standing army all the time.

The problem is of course that you wouldn't pay for units that you lost during you turn, so there would be tricks you could use to avoid paying upkeep. But that's a technical issue.

Never even thought of that. I guess its fine the way it is. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

[Breez]

While on the subject of spells, I jsut wanted to say...

I like all the spells that create a temp building in a city. They are a neat mechanic that I enjoy.

One spell I don't care for is Water walking. Since it is Caster only and not the stack it doesn't help me very often at all.

The biggest issue with redoing the Magic system is the AI has to get better with it. I never blink at trading away KotE since I know the AI does a terrible job of using its mages and spells on them when it does.

 

[the343danny]

Your Entropy 3 spell sounds great for vampires, not to mention that the other ones sound interesting and useful as well.

 

[hiphopin]

Thanks, I only wish I had the experience or know how to make these spells possible. Then I would totally make a module with these things.

I still don't exactly know how the spell system works as far as how dealing damage goes. If someone could elabrate on it that would be great. Like is the damage dealt based of the strength of the unit. Does all damage have to be in percents. Can the damage just do a base strength without having to summon a unit. Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[Caradoc]

Let's face it: there are too many kinds of Mana to support a robust, differentiated spell set for each. Instead of so many sets, each with only three spells, I'd like fewer sets with more spells. For instance, arcane units could progress in Alteration/Divination/Elementalism/Necromancy with different Mana needed for varied spells in each school.

 

[rezaf]

For instance, arcane units could progress in Alteration/Divination/Elementalism/Necromancy with different Mana needed for varied spells in each school.

Something like this could end up being really cool, with spell requirements kinda like in a trading card game.
So, for example there could be a Meteor Shower spell requiring 3 Fire, 1 Sun and 1 Creation Mana or something.
Mix in spell levels (kinda like in D&D), i.e. there are for example 9 spell levels, adepts can only handle 1-3, but archmages can handle 1-9, and make level 9 spells as powerful as one'd expect, and this be made of awesome.
I guess this would require more ways to obtain mana, and as a balancing measure, mana types should be usable only once each turn - so even if you have three archmages, only one of them cast Meteor Shower each turn if you have 3 fire mana, two (or possibly one twice) if you have six etc.

Currently, my use of spellcasters is quite limited in most games, since they require a lot of micromanagement to get anywhere and the rewards aren't really that great in my book.
With such changes, though ...
Archmages would become really badass. Should probably incure diplomatic penalties then. "You are using Archmages. -4"
_____
rezaf

 

[hiphopin]

That is a great idea! If it were made it would have to be a mod-mod or module because some people might not like that way of doing things, but totally cool! I would play either that or a second sphere system.

 

[hbar]

I still like the idea I had a while ago for a meteor strike spell. I'm not talking the old meteor swarm spell that just pops a couple stronger fireballs. I'm talking Ultimate Destruction Magic Fantasy-Nuke meteors. I'm even thinking reskinning the ICBM for an animation.

Ultimate stackbuster, avg. damage of 75% with a spread of 50%, can kill units and destroy buildings/improvements. The catch? It hits a random tile surrounding the caster including the tile the caster is on. Spell extension can increase the range from one (9 tiles) to three (49 tiles) and also calls an additional meteor with each rank.

I know a lot of people don't like randomness in the game, and the risk of losing your caster would keep a lot of people from using this spell, but I think if the spell is powerful enough, people will take the risk.

 

[Willgar]

Interesting thread. Personally, I would rather have an AI that can correctly use the current spell system then a more complex and shiny version that is cant use at all. If any changes makes it easier for teh AI and less micromangement then great but more "stuff" just for the sake of it seems a waste of effort