Suggestion: Autocast bloom from city tile

[travathian]

I like the elves.
I like bloom.
I like forests as far as the eye can see.

I dislike micromanagement.

Suggestion: Priests of Leaves' standing on a city tile will have a new spell available - Autocast Bloom. This spell works exactly like Bloom, except it chooses a random tile within the BFC to effect every 3rd turn. This continues until canceled or until all tiles within the BFC have new forest, forest, ancient forest or burnt forest, at which time the Priest goes idle and prompts for orders. This spell does not replace Bloom. Multiple PoL' can do this simultaneously, the time to cast does not change, it just allows for parallel efforts, same as if they were manually controlled.

Justification: Besides offering the human a further option to pawn off some micromanagement in exchange for minor loss of control, I would hope it would be trivial to teach the AI how to make use of the spell. PoL sitting in a city tile, nothing going on, start Autocasting Bloom!

 

[Lone Wolf]

That does sound like a good idea to reduce the micro.

 

[DarkxL0rd]

so the PoL can cast from the safety of city walls? i don't think that's gonna fly. and I play elves! Why stop there. workers can improve tile in the city radius while in a city.

 

[Fafnir13]

All the terrain modifying spells are a hassle. What really needs to happen is for the AI to understand what the spells do and where it's a good idea to use them. Once that is properly in place, an automate caster function (much like automate worker) could be created to make use of it.
However, I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. Even with a good sized continent, it didn't seem like too much of a chore to get forests covering everything. The biggest problem I had was determining where the forests were. I really wish elven improvements like towns and farms would not displace the trees.

 

[Calavente]

so the PoL can cast from the safety of city walls? i don't think that's gonna fly. and I play elves! Why stop there. workers can improve tile in the city radius while in a city.

welll if your worker is idle in a city it's normal that he will go outside, in auto-improve...
He was saying the same for priest : if idle in city, not needed for defense, /me elf, then : PoL goes in auto-mode, goes out of city and cast auto-bloom everywhere ...

 

[Wits]

Sephi's Wild mana mod does this. Kael has also announced that he will be integrating some of Sephi's stuff into the main mod.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Sounds like a cool ideal. The AI could handle that; the forests would bloom in a useful location. The human player would be spared some micromanagement.

 

[JonathanStrange]

welll if your worker is idle in a city it's normal that he will go outside, in auto-improve...
He was saying the same for priest : if idle in city, not needed for defense, /me elf, then : PoL goes in auto-mode, goes out of city and cast auto-bloom everywhere ...

As I understood it, the Priest would stay in the city, be put into Bloom automode, and the Bloom spell would affect city tiles in the BFC - so the human player wouldn't have to bother moving the Priest around.

I like the idea and while it would make give the Priest the safety of the city, I don't think that's a major practical advantage at all. I play the Ljos alot. I use the PoLs alot to bloom BUT almost never in a combat zone. 99% of the time, the war's moved on and I'm deep within my own borders. Blooming's not a hazardous occupation most times and since it's magical, it doesn't strain believability that the magic-user isn't in the tile for it to work, while a worker in a city building a farm would not be so realistic.

However, perhaps not allowing Bloom automode if the enemy's within the tile to be bloomed or even anywhere in the city's BFC, would that be OK? That would stop someone from casually taking advantage of automode's city safety for Priests and blooming newly captured border cities.

 

[DarkxL0rd]

well said sir. i just know that when my stack of doom starts moving, cities start dropping fast. right behind the main force is the wagon train. complete with workers, PoL, and vitalizers. every once in a while a chariot will slip through and snag a priest or worse yet, kill a stack of workers switching over the 8 lumber mills per city( why does the AI do that? ). I just thought blooming from the safety of cities would give the powerhouse elves yet another perk that we don't really need.

 

[travathian]

Calavente - no

I think the no autobloom if an enemy combatant is in the BFC would work to balance concerns.

Like Jon, I'm usually blooming relatively safe areas anyway, and its not like the PoL is a prime target for sniping. He has a base str of 5, and he's a disciple unit which most units wont have bonuses against, meaning he'll put up a fight for most units in the game.

I'm not sure how well this would work for the other terrain modifying spells. I know in a thread about Genesis, a lot of players were irked that their plains hills were converted to grasslands and such. It might be useful to the noob or lazy player, or to the AI who doesn't really understand the min/maxing of every tile, but creating it as an option certainly doesn't hurt the hardcore players.

I just know that in my current game I dropped down 4 desert cities and border pushed them right before I completed Genesis. Autocasting of Bloom and Vitalize would be awesome. The game isn't won yet and long term those cities might make the difference, I just dread the micromanagement.

 

[Calavente]

Calavente - no.

you're right, I misunderstood the proposition of the OP ...
your (and J.Strange's) props are ok for me...
for the influence I have ... :/