Tower of Mastery Victory

[R0GERSHRUBBER]

I think most will agree that there are currently issues with the Tower of Mastery victory (although not nearly as pressing as the recent Altar of the Luonnotar issues).

AI
Has anyone witnessed an AI Tower of Mastery victory? Does the AI even know how to accomplish it? They often seem to improve Mana nodes to provide additional mana that they already have.

Human Player
Unless you're playing on an enormous map, a Terra map, or at a sufficiently-low difficulty that you can reliably get many of the wonders that provide mana, you will be approaching a Domination or Conquest victory before you complete the tower, and the game is probably effectively over anyway.

My Proposed Solution
Why not make the assorted Towers buildable with at least one of the prerequisite mana, but at massive penalties without additional mana. Currently the build speed of Bane Divine and Glory Everlasting are doubled with one mana type and tripled with two mana types. Why not balance the towers in a similar fashion to make the Tower of Mastery victory more reasonable for players and potentially achievable to the AI?

I understand that there are several mana types which have not been implemented yet, and that their implementation will affect the Tower of Mastery victory condition. Given that increasing the number of mana necessary to achieve this victory will exacerbate the existing problem, I think it is prudent to work toward a solution now.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

My Proposed Solution
Why not make the assorted Towers buildable with at least one of the prerequisite mana, but at massive penalties without additional mana. Currently the build speed of Bane Divine and Glory Everlasting are doubled with one mana type and tripled with two mana types. Why not balance the towers in a similar fashion to make the Tower of Mastery victory more reasonable for players and potentially achievable to the AI?

I wholeheartedly support this notion.

 

[kenken244]

metamagic shoudl be wiht arcane lore and not be used ina ny of teh lesser toweres but be the only requirement for the tower of mastery

 

[wig]

Just some brainstorming here

Mana nodes on water tiles. It would make allow for more nodes without bunching them up, and add more importance to naval dominance.

An arcane ship that could create improved water nodes as Civ-3 style colonies

Mana node colonies on land.

I like your idea, roger. Just trying to preserve the pan-mana requirement if possible.

 

[MrUnderhill]

metamagic shoudl be wiht arcane lore and not be used ina ny of teh lesser toweres but be the only requirement for the tower of mastery

Perhaps metamagic mana shouldn't be found on the map at all, but derived entirely from the 4 towers (and the Amurite palace, of course), and that 4 are needed for the Tower of Mastery. Of course, metamagic spells should be made ridiculously strong (almost game-breaking, even - Annihilate City, anyone?) to make players want that mana even if they have to work to get it. This would also give the Amurites an inherent advantage in building the Tower of Mastery, as they would only need 3 towers; not all 4.

 

[arcaner]

There is a really simple way to get the tower of mastery victory on just about any size and style map. Rights of Oghma, without it you you probably will get conquest first.

 

[R0GERSHRUBBER]

There is a really simple way to get the tower of mastery victory on just about any size and style map. Rights of Oghma, without it you you probably will get conquest first.

I probably should have addressed that in the initial post, but my experience (which is largely consistent with what I've read on the boards) has been that Rites of Oghma helps, but is too little too late. It will depend upon luck and the size of your empire, but you will typically receive 0-3 new mana nodes, with 2 being a common number. A Tower victory will still likely require a significant amount of conquest.

Also, has anyone ever witnessed the AI building or completing the Rites of Oghma?

 

[Gravage]

I haven't seen em do any ritual tbh.

 

[Saien]

Using normal map scripts you'll get a density of about 15ish on a huge map. It's not dependent on number of players or anything, just on size of map.

I've switched to modified map scripts and settled on 2.5mana per player, giving 37 on my 15 player huge maps. However, I also play with tower victory turned off simply because I've never had an AI come anywhere near winning with it. I still build a couple of the sub towers sometimes though.

 

[AndrewDJ]

I probably should have addressed that in the initial post, but my experience (which is largely consistent with what I've read on the boards) has been that Rites of Oghma helps, but is too little too late. It will depend upon luck and the size of your empire, but you will typically receive 0-3 new mana nodes, with 2 being a common number. A Tower victory will still likely require a significant amount of conquest.

Also, has anyone ever witnessed the AI building or completing the Rites of Oghma?

I've never seen the AI do this, but in my last game (Varn Gosam, Large, Chieftain) the Rites of Oghma popped just enough nodes on my territory that all I had to do was build the Soul Forge to get Death and I could finish Tower of Alteration & Tower of Necromancy (between the Malakim palace, Code of Junil, and my starting nodes, I was able to build Divination & Elements early), and then start building the Tower of Mastery in my capital city.

It was looking like about 88 turns to complete, with 291 left to play, when I used a Great Engineer I'd been saving for ~150 turns to rush the Mastery Tower to 52 turns. Three turns after that, everybody declared war on me. So the dogpile function definitely works . . .

ETA: Oh, and when I did build the Rites of Oghma, IIRC I had three nodes pop on my territory, don't remember about nodes in other people's lands.

 

[eerr]

the problem is that the tower of mastery isn't a builder victory, but rather a collectors victory(gotta catch em-all, but catching em all really isn't that fun)

if you add a way to complete the tower of victory without obtaining "all" the rescources(mana), or a way to compensate for not having "all" the rescources(mana)-then it will become much more interesting/viable

 

[Gravage]

It was looking like about 88 turns to complete, with 291 left to play, when I used a Great Engineer I'd been saving for ~150 turns to rush the Mastery Tower to 52 turns. Three turns after that, everybody declared war on me. So the dogpile function definitely works . . .

Yea, I just tried a ToM victory aswell.. Everyone save for Morgoth/Basium and Einion Logos declared war on me. Even my dear Cassiel who I was friendly with. I was dominating in land and power, but they were rather difficult to fend off. So once you (finally) get the nodes, build the towers (at 1200 hammers each, without giving real big benefits), you have to KEEP the nodes during the whole building process (hard when 8 civs are pillaging your every improvement!) and then you also have to fend the enemy's off your building city and the city's which got the nodes within their borders.

Quite a lot of work. I should've gone for the altar. (Had that one at the before-last stage aswell btw)

 

[R0GERSHRUBBER]

Quite a lot of work. I should've gone for the altar.

It's hard to imagine circumstances where an Altar victory is not easier to achieve than a Tower victory.

 

[Gravage]

Aye, but one can leave his/her specialists fulfill the other jobs if you don't go for a altar victory, and ToM can "incidentally" be thrown on your path if you try a conquest/domination victory. But all in all I agree, altar is way easier than ToM. In fact, way easier than any other victory tbh. Just save up Great Prophets until you reach stage 6 and then save up some engineers to greatly speed up your final altar stage.

 

[wig]

How about utilizing the Palace Mana of the other civs? Make the nodes into objects, similar to the Dragon's Horde, that could be pillaged and moved to another city. It would cut down on the amount of conquest needed for a ToM victory, without littering the map with extra mana nodes.

 

[eerr]

perhaps- all of the towers require 2-3 of thier mana type, and have each mana for the tower gives +100% production, while increasing the cost to build by maybe- 8x?

the tower of mastery will uhm, have +100% for each mana but not specifically require mana (don't want it to be messy) and have about 20x the original cost

 

[Red Boxer]

So, It looks like I'm going to get a ToM victory! All it took was a continent packed with barbarians...

...on a similar note, should the Towers give a point or two of XP to wizardly types built (in that city), that would be quite nice to train in the Tower of Divination...

...or maybe a free promo from one of the spheres required to build that specific tower?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How about a chance of getting a third level promo for the appropriate spheres for free, if and only if the adept would already start with the first 2.

 

[eerr]

How about a chance of getting a third level promo for the appropriate spheres for free, if and only if the adept would already start with the first 2.

how about it just gives them outright with the appropriate mana?

 

[Red Boxer]

Seriously... these aren't things which will be appearing everywhere in the game. The Altar gives more benefits and every civ can have it!