The Firebow

[Iceciro]

I wrote that code for Fall Flat, so I can tell you how it works...

The Amurites count each mana source, not each unique mana source. The chance increases with a Cave of Ancestors, though perhaps not enough. Before I stopped working on Fall Flat, a very low chance for 3rd level spells was in the code, but I think it didn't get passed along into Fall Further. Or that version might not have ever made it to release.

I still feel the Amurites are strong, and a lot of it has to do with the kind of mana you focus on. If you get Nature and Enchantment mana, yes, your t2 spells are going to bite big wind. If, however, you get fire, sun, and death mana, you have random swordsmen capable of doing the city siege thing all on their own.

I'll be the first to admit getting Nature II on a Longbow or Enchantment II on a Hunter bites big wind, but the reverse of those sucks a lot less. The unit-specificness of those spells sucks but has nothing to do with getting them for free. As a second comment - another option you have for boosting this is very occasionally granting a random unit Channeling I, or Channeling I and II with the Cave, making some units full mages at random. I think this also is neat - represents someone whose magical talents showed up after he was drafted to go poke guys with a sword, and now he can do both.

A lot of the random unit gets spell is more nifty than omg incredibly useful, but that's due to the yawn-inducing abilities of many tier 1 spells in a lot of cases. On a neat level, though, sometimes it's handy to have a swordsman who can cast law I running around being able to make your soldiers loyal instead of having to drop a wizard promo on it.

 

[Darksaber1]

He just always thinks of chocolate bunnies...

Everyone knows the favourite time of year for Daleks is Easter. All the little Daleks sit up and wait for the Easterbunny, so they can Exterminate him. Same with Christmas.

 

[fish_sticks]

I really like one idea that was brought up.

One reason that I love to play as the Balseraph is the ability to build freaks. They can upgrade to almost anything and you can decide that after they are built and you see what they are capible of. Such as having heroic defense or mobility or sentry. Depending on that I decide which direction to take.

Using a similar mechanic why not allow the Amurites to build a unit, available at Knowledge of Ether, that would allow them to build a half-adept. You could give lower the hammer cost a little but give it a near certain chance to learn a random teir-1 spell. At that point you can upgrade it into multiple lines of units (i.e. ranged, disciple, melee, recon...) depending on what it managed to get.

 

[Kjara]

Heres an idea that I came up with last night:

One of the main complaints about the random spells was with govornnan making these random 1 spells rather pointless. Rather than reworking this part of the mechanic, we could play around with how govornnan works. One idea I had was to make him a "commander"(or rather a mentor), and allow the 3 or 4 units that he is mentoring chances to learn spells(but not limited to level 1, at least up to level 2 and possibly with a low chance level 3 spells) that he himself knows(aka have him apply a promotion to those he is leading that gives them a chance to learn spells each turn).

This made me think that this would be a cool mechanic for all mages/archmagi as well. Give them the ability to mentor adepts/mages(govornnan would be unique that he could mentor non-arcane), and have this give a bit of a exp boost and some chance of teaching the lower level arcane unit free spheres the teacher has(and make this boost much better in towns with a mage guild, that way you have to choose to use your archmagi/first few mages offensively or to get the next wave of casters leveled up faster).

Then the random spells are still useful, as gov can only teach so many units, so you will have a few non-arcane units that can cast a decent spread(or you can have him teach lots of different units for only a few turns each to give each of them a few spells).

 

[Merddyn]

As interesting as the idea would be, with the exception of being able to do that with mages/archmagi, that'd weaken the Amurites a lot, and increase the requisite micromanagement quite a bit. As things are now, all you have to do is teach Govannon the spells, walk him onto the tile with your units, and cast teach spellcasting, then head to the next set of units. Your way basically involves, walk to tile, have units fall under his command, wait a turn, check if they have the spells you want them to have, ad inifinitum, finally they get the spells, and you switch him to the next set of units which could easily be on the same tile.

I think that increasing the reliability on getting new spells with it would make it better (on a random note, with a little testing [aka playing a game] when you have only 3 mana sources, I get maybe 10% of the units learning any spell (and usually not even one of the ones I want them to have, oh well), however, when I had 12 it was 80% of the units or so... Though getting that many is not normally easy.)

Actually, here's a thought on the buildings... Why not instead of having it apply a random promotion, it have a chance to give the unit a free promotion that can only be used on the spell spheres you have access to? At least then you can choose what spell you give the unit, and can thus make sure it's something Govannon doesn't teach.

 

[readercolin]

If you look on the first page, you can see the code that runs that gives the random spells. Basically, with just a mage guild, you have a 10%+5% per mana you have to get a random spell - so with just the 3 palace, thats a 25% chance. With a mage guild and a Cave of Ancestors, its a 20%+5% per mana, so with just the three palace mana, thats a 35% chance to get a free spell.

As for the get a free promotion thats a neat idea, but there are a few problems. Namely, no unit starts with channeling 2, so you could therefore never get a level 2 spell for free. Secondly, you would have to spend these free promotions before you unit could increase in level. That means that combined with the no unit starting with channeling 2, you could never get a free teir 2 spell. If you want to write the code to make it work though, feel free and I'm sure it will get borrowed plenty.

-Colin

 

[methane]

I really like one idea that was brought up.

One reason that I love to play as the Balseraph is the ability to build freaks. They can upgrade to almost anything and you can decide that after they are built and you see what they are capible of. Such as having heroic defense or mobility or sentry. Depending on that I decide which direction to take.

Using a similar mechanic why not allow the Amurites to build a unit, available at Knowledge of Ether, that would allow them to build a half-adept. You could give lower the hammer cost a little but give it a near certain chance to learn a random teir-1 spell. At that point you can upgrade it into multiple lines of units (i.e. ranged, disciple, melee, recon...) depending on what it managed to get.

Depending on how low you make the hammer costs, this would give the Amurite player a double bonus, as he could freely cast mutate on every one of these units (or maybe just the mediocre ones), and disband the ones that come up with unfavorable results. Of course, the upgrade costs get higher the lower you make the basic hammer costs, so there is a trade-off.

Unit gets earth 1 or mind 1 -->city defender
unit gets body 1 --> recon or melee
unit gets most other spells -->mutate then upgrade or disband.