Tower of Mastery Victory condition

[Kael]

I've (again) been thinking of the builder type/magical victory and i have a descent concept in mind (might need some minor SDk adjustments).

It should look the following:
You have to built several towers of Magic. When you have all towers you can built a tower of mastery and upon completion of this you have won.
Now the details.
Each tower is an national building associated with 3 to 5 Sources of mana.
He will have a quite good visible graphic that everyone can see in which city it is built. It is needed for the victory, but it should provide a decent bonus to the city/civ, too.
E.g. The Tower of the Dark Arts needs Necromancy and all the Manas that come with that tech (Death, Entropy and Chaos). A benefit he could provid would be one of the following:
- Allows summoning of 5 Additional Skeletons
- Death, Entropy and Chaos summons gain one additional Point of Strength or an Additional Promotion (Scourge or something)
- Mages with Death, Entropy or Chaos Mana get XP faster.
- Free random promotion in Death,Entropy or Chaos Sphere when a Adept or Mage is upgraded.

There would be similar towers for the other Magic Techs as well:
Tower of Healing/Light
Tower of the Elements
Tower of Alteration

If you have all towers and "ALL" differnent Manas Resources you can built the "Tower of Mastery" that lets you win.

SDK changes would be:
Allowing National ond World wonders to count As Victory condition and beeing presented in the victory screen.
Some AI adjustments that the AI recognizes National Wonders as counting for Victory and building them correctly.

Later on AI adjustments that the AI tries to counter that Strategy.

Okay, I have the Tower of Mastery checked in, it is a victory condition selectable at the custom game menu, etc etc.

Now I need to build the requirements. Following the tech tree design I would expect that we would have:

1. Tower of Alteration (Body, Dimensional, Enchantment and Mind)- Special ability for Mages/Archmages? Free spell on upgrade?
2. Tower of Divination (Law, Life and Spirit)- Research boost, replaces the Crown of Alhakien?
3. Tower of Elementalism (Earth, Fire, Nature and Water)- +2 strength to summoned units (not fireballs or meteors) in these spheres?
4. Tower of Necromancy (Chaos, Death and Entropy)- Maybe this does what the Knell of Darkness wonder is speced to do and all living creatures that die in the casters lands are raised as undead?

We may want to make it so you can't pillage mana reosurces. Once anyone has converted a raw node to a final node it is that forever. That will probably take care of a lot of these issues for now and in the future.

I assume each of the above towers would require its associated tech, is there any other later game tech we want to associate with them? Do we want to scatter the 4 of them around 4 different mid game techs so players cant ruch the tower of mastery victory?

And what tech should be required for the final tower?

 

[Chalid]

Crown of Alhakien is a World wonder i always hate to miss. This means its a good one as Worlds wonder .

Hmm that Knell of Darkness ability seems powerfull for a national Wonder. Id like that to stay in the list as World wonder, too.

I think i have to think some more about special effects for the towers .
Necromancy tower should add 5 or 10 skeletons to the number of summonables on any account.
The extra strength for the elemnts is a good thing two.


Mana nodes:

No longer allowing to mana nodes to raw mana is partly a good and partly a bad thing. Bad if you conquer an death or entropy node. A downside is also if you conquer multiple nodes of one Kind. You most often want to excange them to nodes you do not already posess.
But on the other side the AI does not pillage them either.

I also always built a fire node and then the eternal flame and pillage that node again. Such trick would be prevented by keeping the mana fixed.

All in all i like both sides. How about allowing the pillaging back to the raw mana but the node switches to inactive. In this state you can not do anything with it. And then together with the Ancient forest checker the node has a chance of 2% or something to get back to raw mana. If you are unlucky the node stays inactive to the end of the game, in average it is inactive for 250 turns. That will also make players protect their nodes.

We could then introduce an 2rd level spell in the Metamagic Sphere (maybe additional) that reempowers a mana resource at the cost of the Mage.

Tech:
I think gaining 16 manas it a challenge by itself so no late game tech i would say. Arcane Lore might be at the right point in the tech tree !?

 

[woodelf]

I think I've had 6 mana sources in a game once, max including Wonders, palaces, ect. 16 sounds hardcore!

 

[Chalid]

Its actually 14.. i miscounted

 

[Kael]

Crown of Alhakien is a World wonder i always hate to miss. This means its a good one as Worlds wonder .

Hmm that Knell of Darkness ability seems powerfull for a national Wonder. Id like that to stay in the list as World wonder, too.

You're right, I was forgetting that everyone will be able to build these.

I think i have to think some more about special effects for the towers .
Necromancy tower should add 5 or 10 skeletons to the number of summonables on any account.
The extra strength for the elemnts is a good thing two.

Those 2 sound good, maybe only +1 on the elementals strength. Just need something for divination and alteration now.

Mana nodes:

No longer allowing to mana nodes to raw mana is partly a good and partly a bad thing. Bad if you conquer an death or entropy node. A downside is also if you conquer multiple nodes of one Kind. You most often want to excange them to nodes you do not already posess.
But on the other side the AI does not pillage them either.

I also always built a fire node and then the eternal flame and pillage that node again. Such trick would be prevented by keeping the mana fixed.

Yeah, I dont like that players can do that. I want them to commit to their decisions.

All in all i like both sides. How about allowing the pillaging back to the raw mana but the node switches to inactive. In this state you can not do anything with it. And then together with the Ancient forest checker the node has a chance of 2% or something to get back to raw mana. If you are unlucky the node stays inactive to the end of the game, in average it is inactive for 250 turns. That will also make players protect their nodes.

I'd rather not switch it at all. Players can destroy the improvement on a death or entopy node if they want to avoid the attitude hit. We might add a metamagic spell later that allows playes to convert a node to a raw mana, but it shouldn't be as easy as hitting it with an axe as it is now.

 

[Chalid]

I'd rather not switch it at all. Players can destroy the improvement on a death or entopy node if they want to avoid the attitude hit. We might add a metamagic spell later that allows playes to convert a node to a raw mana, but it shouldn't be as easy as hitting it with an axe as it is now.

The Problem of not beein able to switch a node at all lies within the fact that it will make gettint that Victory Virtual impossible when the Ai decides to built strage nodes. Imagine one AI discovers one of the Node technologies and trades it to all others. The map will end with three or four different types of mana and the player that wants to go for the victory can never get all different spheres.

Thats why i voted for allowing to get rid of them easily but make it cost something. Like waiting an undefined time up to several hundred turns. Everything is better that not beeing able to do anything.

 

[wilboman]

I agree with Chalid. It has to be possible to get rid of "useless" nodes, but there needs to be some kind of penalty for it.

How about pillaging a node means it disappears, and the a new one appears nearby (say 5-10 squares radius). That way, it might appear in enemy terry...

 

[Chalid]

Back to the Mana Nodes. in the very beginning we had thought to change them when the land is conquered.
So how about changing Mana back to Raw Mana when a tile changes the cultural ownership?

 

[woodelf]

Yeah, I don't want death magic as a goodie goodie.

 

[wilboman]

Back to the Mana Nodes. in the very beginning we had thought to change them when the land is conquered.
So how about changing Mana back to Raw Mana when a tile changes the cultural ownership?

Can you do that? That should solve our problem perfectly.

 

[Chalid]

Can you do that? That should solve our problem perfectly.

10 Charakters

 

[Kael]

Im playing with a project called the Rites of Oghma that adds new raw mana nodes to the world. Its random, may place them in your opponents land, may place them in your own.

Its intended to be an option for players going for a tower of mastery win as well as give a late game mana boost.

The question is, do you think it should be a one time shot, dropping 7 new nodes (varied based on world size) or do you think it should be a repeatable project? World project? Or national project?

Or is it just a bad idea?

 

[Chalid]

I'd say we keep that rites of oghma on hold until we see how well the tower victory works. if there is need to add more mana such a project would be ok. But right now i think it would make the victory to easy.

 

[Kael]

I'd say we keep that rites of oghma on hold until we see how well the tower victory works. if there is need to add more mana such a project would be ok. But right now i think it would make the victory to easy.

Sounds good, it will be in the internal playtest. Check it out then and let me know if it should stay or not.

 

[Chalid]

Maybe do it the other way round. Keep it out and we report if we need more nodes (because when it is in there is the chance that the AI will built it and therefor we can hardly estimated if there are enough nodes by itself or if there are not.)

 

[wilboman]

My current game with Luichurp on standard map with one civ less than the map is meant to support, and I have all but 1 (I think) of the "good" mana. Don't have death, entropy or chaos either. Have tomb of Sucellus, but missed eternal flame. Haven't built Soul Forge on purpose.

But still, that's a fair bit of mana, without breaking much of a sweat. Have swept the floor with Amurites, is all, not fought anyone else. I think Chalid may be right, above small maps this is a fairly easily achievable goal. My only problem with it is that it is not achievable without going to war, so it's not really a total "builder's" victory.