teaser for FfH II version 0.16

[QES]

They are just national wonders, everyone can build them.

Ok, then I shall ammend my previous post to suggest that they should be WORLD wonders, and get the power approrpirately .


My main issue is that I never build them. Becuase it seems like a long road, and really not very effecient way to win the game. Even if i want to do the tower of mastery, im bascially forced to conquer the world anyway to build up the appropriate amount of mana nodes.
This seems a bit redunant.

But, it seems far more likely that different civs might be able to specialize, and grab a tower for themselves, then through strategic warfare, the tower of mastery could be built without the all out genocide.

Or, if needed, then still use them as national wonders..but make them WORTH the effort.
-Qes

 

[C.Roland]

I can reskin your towers Kael

 

[retro V]

I believe the amount of availabe mana nodes should be doubled, regardless. So what if your Adepts get more spells? It's not like many of them open up access to agressive spells. It only serves to make playing on smaller maps more open to Tower Mastery victories. And on larger maps? I don't know, I've never played them through, myself. But they take longer to succumb, anyway. So, just for a while for the sake of playtesting, increase the likelihood of mana nodes, and let us test the viabliilty of Tower Mastery victories. As it stands, I've only won on Large or larger maps via this route.

 

[Grey Fox]

Ok, then I shall ammend my previous post to suggest that they should be WORLD wonders, and get the power approrpirately .

Isnt it hard enough to win this way atm? If you make them world wonders someone would just have to build ONE of the wonders and noone else could win that way. What is the competition in that? It would only force more warfare on the player trying to win that way.

 

[Kael]

I can reskin your towers Kael

Cool, I'll pass you a copy of the tower of necromancy and the tower of the elements for skinning.

 

[MrUnderhill]

Ok, then I shall ammend my previous post to suggest that they should be WORLD wonders, and get the power approrpirately .

If they were world wonders, then Tower of Mastery victory would be nearly impossible (okay, it's nearly impossible already, but still...). All you need is some idiotic (or genius) AI civ to build one of the towers before you do and there goes your strategy. And with no useful way to know who-has-what and where, taking the Towers from other civs isn't likely, either. And if someone razes a city with a Tower in it (Scorched Earth, anyone?), then nobody can get the Tower of Mastery.

A while ago we were talking in the "Design:Spells" thread, about tieing metamagic spells into gathering other types of mana. Maybe we could use the Towers as a way of facilitating this, by having each of them provide 1 metamagic mana?

EDIT: Grey Fox, you beat me to it.

 

[QES]

Bah
YOU TAKE those individual cities fools!

I find it easier to try and conquer 3 cities (assuming I have one of the towers) that I would consider invading/holding enough territory to warrent having the node resources to BUILD all 5 Myself.

You want to wage war on EVERYONE? Or systematic planning around 3-4 cities? I find the latter MUCH easier.
-Qes

 

[Sureshot]

could try trading for mana

 

[MrUnderhill]

Bah
YOU TAKE those individual cities fools!

I find it easier to try and conquer 3 cities (assuming I have one of the towers) that I would consider invading/holding enough territory to warrent having the node resources to BUILD all 5 Myself.

You want to wage war on EVERYONE? Or systematic planning around 3-4 cities? I find the latter MUCH easier.
-Qes

And what if one of the Towers is built by a civ you don't know, halfway across the map? Or you forget which city it's in and accidentally raze it? Or you're playing as a civ with Scorched Earth? Or an AI civ razes it before you get the chance?

The problem with making the Towers world wonders is that it's too easy mess up the other civs and prevent everyone from getting Tower of Mastery victory. Thats why the spaceship parts in vanilla are national projects, not world ones.

If you want to be able to capture the Towers (which I actually think is a cool idea), we should mod the SDK to allow certain national wonders to survive conquest like world wonders do.

While we're at it, we should probably add some text to the "You just conquered a city!" popup, to show what transferrable buildings are in the city.

 

[QES]

And what if one of the Towers is built by a civ you don't know, halfway across the map? Or you forget which city it's in and accidentally raze it? Or you're playing as a civ with Scorched Earth? Or an AI civ razes it before you get the chance?

The problem with making the Towers world wonders is that it's too easy mess up the other civs and prevent everyone from getting Tower of Mastery victory. Thats why the spaceship parts in vanilla are national projects, not world ones.

If you want to be able to capture the Towers (which I actually think is a cool idea), we should mod the SDK to allow certain national wonders to survive conquest like world wonders do.

While we're at it, we should probably add some text to the "You just conquered a city!" popup, to show what transferrable buildings are in the city.

It shouldnt be a guarentee, there should be ways to DESTROY the viability of that victory path. Scorched earth SHOULD be the antithesis of that kind of strategy. I see none of the aforementioned issues as problems. I think that it SHOULD be difficult.
As World wonders A) they get more powerful bonuses which make them viable for themselves outside of a Matster vicotry and B) they can become conquerable and therefore an easier Master victory can be achieved.

The threat of razing those cities SHOULD exist so that the victory path isnt always assured. Plus if you do the "normal" way of gaining a tower of mastery, then you've built them all and dont have to worry about it.

You're all acting as though im ripping your firstborns away, but how many of you actually win by mastery tower victories? Unless its a realatively easy case to accomplish now (and somehow differes from outright slaughter of enemies) I dont see the problems of city razing a major issue. Yes, if the City is razed, your strategy to victory has failed, you have to seek another method. SO???

-Qes

 

[MrUnderhill]

It shouldnt be a guarentee, there should be ways to DESTROY the viability of that victory path.

Why? None of the other victory conditions have such a glaring weak point, nor is ToM victory ridiculously easy to achieve already. There's no way to stop a cultural victory aside from razing a civ down to 2 cities or winning some other way beforehand. Victory denial has always been (and should always be) civ-to-civ, not civ-to-world. The only way to affect things on a global scale, IMO, should be through rituals like the armageddon spells, and you don't need rituals to raze 1 or 2 cities. The cause is too small for the effect.

You're all acting as though im ripping your firstborns away, but how many of you actually win by mastery tower victories? Unless its a realatively easy case to accomplish now (and somehow differes from outright slaughter of enemies) I dont see the problems of city razing a major issue. Yes, if the City is razed, your strategy to victory has failed, you have to seek another method. SO???

Because if a victory condition is next-to-impossible and vulnerable to catastrophic failure because of things entirely outside the player's control, it might as well not be there.

The reason nobody wins via the Tower of Mastery is because it's so hard to build already. Making the other towers world wonders would only make things worse, not better. Besides, if you lose the city that has one of your towers in it, you're out of the running for the ToM victory as-it-is. There's no need to spread that victory denial to the other civs who had nothing to do with it.

EDIT: Anyway, QES, we're both getting way off-topic. Let's either stop arguing or make a new thread for this conversation. I'd still like to hear your other ideas to make the Towers better; I just don't like the world wonder idea.


EDIT2: Hmm, I just had a thought. Maybe the towers could be set up as world wonders, but as a safety measure, they can be rebuilt by someone else if they get razed. In addition, the hammer requirement could be doubled and all the mana requirements become double-speeds instead. How does that sound?

 

[QES]

I guess I majorly disagree about the nature of victory conditions in itself, but that is a seperate issue from the nature of towers as world wonders.
I like your EDIT2 comment. And that would be fine, the razing of a city would delay but not permanently destroy the process, im perfectly fine with that. Although I think we could also (in addition) make it so that the AI wants to keep tower cities (because it'd bring THEM closer to victory) than to raze it. And players may be inclined to do the same thing naturally. To keep it fair, you could have them rebuildable (but perhaps more prohibitively expensive than the first time). I do like this idea.
-Qes

EDIT: Gernerally i simply want a reason to build the towers, i want insentive. The only way to incentavise it, as i can see, is to make it a scarce thing, so that you want it before others get it, and that it has a lot of potential goodness in it, so that you might want to build it even if your not going for a mastery victory. Maybe you just want to be the "Elemental King" or the "Alteration Overlord". The tower should reflect that particular form of mastery.

 

[Grey Fox]

But that still kinda makes that victory more military oriented. We already have conquest and domination. I'd like that victory condition to be tweaked so it can be finished under totally peaceful conditions.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

How about this: building the Tower of Mastery requires that the four lesser towers be built. However, you only have to own one of them.

 

[Silverkiss]

Or even you don´t need any of them.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Heh, that might be going a little too far. Of course, if you haven't managed to build all four towers, chances are you don't have all the mana types anyway. I've always been a proponent of slackening the mana requirements for the Tower a bit, but that's another issue, I guess.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I actually think it's okay where it is, but if more mana spheres are added, it may need to be changed a bit.

 

[MrUnderhill]

By the light of Lugus this thread has been cleansed (again)!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4624334#post4624334
Go here to discuss the Tower of Mastery.

 

[Silverkiss]

The light of Lugus doesn´t reach down here, it has been tainted too deep by the darkness of Agares XD

 

[QES]

The light of Lugus doesn´t reach down here, it has been tainted too deep by the darkness of Agares XD

Ya, that was my fault. I didnt get back in time to walk the Agares, so he left his presesnt in the middle of the floor, after that the light was sort of swallowed up by the infanite night. My bad.

-Qes