Spell system needs to be rethought.

[Palius84]

Has anyone ever thought about adding new spells that you need two adepts to produce? For example... two archmages with level 3 dimensional, could create a portal where x amount of units can pass through... etc. Or joining two current spells to create another spell. If mage 1 has Fire 2 promotion, and mage 2 has Fire 2 promotion, they together could make a stronger spell if they are used in unison. not as seperate. A possible spell of using units to create a forcefield around cities. Joining two entire mana spheres to create air and fire for a flame drift, where it shoots forth fire in a given direction up to so many spots away... or fire and earth, which allows the creation of volcanoes, etc...

 

[hiphopin]

Has anyone ever thought about adding new spells that you need two adepts to produce? For example... two archmages with level 3 dimensional, could create a portal where x amount of units can pass through... etc. Or joining two current spells to create another spell. If mage 1 has Fire 2 promotion, and mage 2 has Fire 2 promotion, they together could make a stronger spell if they are used in unison. not as seperate. A possible spell of using units to create a forcefield around cities. Joining two entire mana spheres to create air and fire for a flame drift, where it shoots forth fire in a given direction up to so many spots away... or fire and earth, which allows the creation of volcanoes, etc...

Interesting idea, the problem. Could the AI handle it? I don't think this would be possible for the AI to understand. Aside from that I would have loved to see this implemented.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Forget the AI for a second, how would we handle it? Would the spell only become available when both units are selected? Can you even select two units that are on different sides of the map at the same time (the only real way for you to control where both ends of the portal would be)? I'd love it if you could, but this sounds very difficult to code and to use.

Combining spheres that a single mage has to allow for better "cross sphere spells" isn't hard at all, and I've been planning that for quite a while.

 

[Tarquelne]

You could have one caster cast a spell that creates a promotion that lasts for one turn. The req is that, somewhere on the map, there's a caster with the promotion necessary to cast the other part of the spell.

The other caster has a spell that requires the first caster's new promotion on the map, and uses that caster's location as the target of the spell.

I'm glad we forgot about the AI.

I almost used a vaguely similar Goldberg device until Vehem suppled the 1 line of python I needed to replace it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What is that one line of python? I might want to use it for my Create Portal spell instead of making it always link to the capital. If it needs 2 Dimension III casters though I should probably make it a second spell instead of getting rid of the normal dimensional gate.

 

[Tarquelne]

What is that one line of python?

The similarity was just in the Goldbergian nature of what I considering doing - trying to do something with a lot of map searches plus a new unit and some promotions. All I needed was a modulo operation (%).

 

[Palius84]

I would think that in order to use the spells between two magic users, you would have them be in the same stack. As to choosing which magic users are linked together, is it possible to have a popup of all of the current magic users in the stack, like when choosing which unit you wish to have a general join, that way you can have more control over which units spells you wish to use.

 

[westamastaflash]

Why not just make portals an improvement, like castles, etc, except it requires archmages to build them. Make them work like the obsidian gate. In fact, they could basically be airfields...

 

[MagisterCultuum]

That could be tricky. The way it currently works, each tile stores information about what tile to target when the enter portal spell is used. The portal improvement itself isn't really needed, it is just a prereq for casting. If you just add a portal though world builder the spell will always take you to tile x=0, y=0, the lower left corner of the screen. Target locations are easy to set in python, but it would be kind of hard to control where it should go in game.

Having them work like obsidian gates could be nice, but I have no idea how that would be done. It would almost certainly require a lot of SDK work.

 

[Palius84]

How about not requiring the two archmages to be on the same tile, but use them as the ends of the portals... then x, y is equal to where they are located... have the conditions be that the portal can only open when both archmages use the spell. Also set the conditions that the archmage cannot cast other spells during this because of the strain of keeping the gate open, and also make sure the gate will close if the unit is lost, and/or the unit moves.

What is that one line of python? I might want to use it for my Create Portal spell instead of making it always link to the capital. If it needs 2 Dimension III casters though I should probably make it a second spell instead of getting rid of the normal dimensional gate.

I personally do not believe in deleting anything that is not redundant... so making it a second spell is a perfect idea.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

That leaves the problem of how to know which archmages are to be connected. It would probably require cycling though all the promotions of a lot of units quite often, and still be really awkward if you have more than 2 potential casters.

I'm thinking the best way to track both ends may be using the master/slave summon-tracking system. I don't think this can make a preexistant unit count as slave to another, so I'd probably have to make one end be the archmage and the other be a permanent summon that that unit must summon prior to moving to a new location to open the portal.



With normal FfH rules the dimensional gate spell and the obsidian gate building/Nexus wonder are redundant, but Xienwolf changed it so that more such buildings let you transport more units.



What if I decided to flip things around, and instead of making a different Dimensional III spell so as not to encroach on the uniqueness of the Nexus, I made the Nexus more unique by giving it a unique spell? (This would work like Sirona's Touch, but be much cooler.) It wouldn't be hard at all (only 1 line of xml) to make owning the Nexus be a prereq for the Open Portal spell, and to make all portals lead back to The Nexus. You could then only have 1 pair of portals at a time, but for whoever controls the Nexus Dimensional magic might only require a mere adept to tell the masters back in that city where to open the gate. Also, it would be quite simple (1 line of xml) to only let the owner of the Nexus use the portals, so there would be no risk of letting an enemy use the portal to steal the city without combat like there was in my "link the the caster's capital city" mechanism.

 

[xienwolf]

The cheap/easy way to accomplish it would be to override the "Defaults to (0,0)" mechanic. At the start of each player's turn you set their default portal location to (0,0) and you reset the feat "Portal_Targeted".

Then you make the spell available to the Archmage be "Open Portal Destination" and it sets the Archmage's current location as the target for the player's default settings (instead of (0,0)) and marks the feat accomplished. If the feat is accomplished, then nobody is allowed to cast "Open Portal Destination" (can only go to one location per turn), but Archmages are capable of casting "Open Portal Source" which creates a portal on the tile. As long as the tile doesn't have a destination set for itself (mechanic would require that tiles default location is (-1, -1) and the location is taken from Player based defaults instead of tile based as it is currently), then the portal opened would take your units to the destination you established earlier. (obviously this would also require that the portal be created for only a single turn)


Nifty thing you could do with this of course is to have a miscast chance assigned to both spells, and if either one is miscast, then it places a destination assignment on the tile (random location on the map is selected). This means if you ever do open a portal there at a future turn, instead of going where you wanted, it takes you to that random tile.


And yes, you can make a pre-existing unit a slave of another unit. I have been toying with the idea of making Domination form a Master/Slave relationship for a while.

Also, I changed nothing about how Obsidian gates would work, base BtS already had a limit for how many airlifts you could perform a turn. And Vehem made it so the Nexus grants you a free single-shot nexus portal, and Obsidian Gate is a tripple-shot portal IIRC. So with both each city can teleport 4 people a turn.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

And yes, you can make a pre-existing unit a slave of another unit. I have been toying with the idea of making Domination form a Master/Slave relationship for a while.

that would be awesome... if the Archmage dies, units it had dominated revert back to their old civ

 

[eerr]

Mwahahah, we'll have 3 paths, Mage, Summoner & Artificer! Oh wait, 4 paths, Mage, Summoner, Artificer & Infuser! (Infuser would be someone who uses magical methods to enhance their own bodies/capabilities. Kind of the difference between Megaman (learn ability to shoot something) and Zero (Learn ability to slash in a new way)

your going the wrong way with this
we don't need more spheres of magic, we need a new method of specialization for magic users, in a way that allows either summons, or spells like fireball
(diffrent techs)

 

[ExMachina]

Idea: How about a 4th spell tier? That way more spells could be included in the game, and spellcasters could choose whether to specialize or to dip their fingers in many different mana types.