Tower of Mastery

Nor'easter

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Feb 25, 2007
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Yesterday I won my first Tower of Mastery victory, playing as the Balseraphs (Keelyn) on a Huge Tectonics map, Raging Barbarians, Living World, Blessings of Amathaon, End of Winter. I completed the ToM on turn 598. Probably not that impressive an achievement, as I was playing only on Noble level.

Anyway, it got me thinking about earlier discussions to give the ToM some in-game effects -- in addition to winning the game -- like the final Altar of the Luonnotar does, since people sometimes keep playing just for fun.

I saw that there are no changes slated for the ToM in the 0.34 changelog, and I didn't want to clutter up that thread so I thought I'd start a new one for ideas on this. Of course, Kael may be happy with the ToM as it is, so this may not be needed.

Anyway, my thoughts on this are pretty simple. I think in game terms, since the ToM is a magic/arcane building, one could have arcane effects similar to the religious effects of the Altars of the Luonnotar. The final Altar does 3 things:

1) Golden Age
2) additional XP for disciple units built in its city
3) additional hammers from priests in all cities.

The ToM could at a minimum start a Golden Age. It could also provide some magic bonus, such as:

-- additional XP or some free promotion to arcane units, or
-- additional mana resources (maybe +1 of each mana type), or
-- allow non-arcane units to access the magic/mana promotions (I kind of like this, actually, as an expression of the "mastery of the arcane" that the ToM represents).

Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm sure people on these forums will have much more creative ideas than this.

Kael, I know that IF you decide on changes to the ToM, you're going to want some unusual or unique mechanic, not just copying the Altar of the Luonnotar's mechanic (I remember your post about terrain-related mechanics in the changelog thread). If you want to keep the ToM as is, that's cool, but my impression of you is that if someone comes up with a cool idea, you'll at least want to think about it. ;)
 
I still like having it give out the Channeling III promotion to arcane units onMove, so that adepts gain free xp faster and Mages have access to all Archmage spells.
 
Maybe it should make all of the mana nodes in the world belong to you no matter whose territory they are in?
 
Maybe it should make all of the mana nodes in the world belong to you no matter whose territory they are in?
I think that would really make sense. I don't think it should deny the mana to the owner, though, that would be too overpowered.
 
My thought would be to give a "minus one" to the amount of mana needed to start with a particular sphere (so you need only 1 death mana for adepts to get Raise Skeleton for free, and only 3 fire mana for free Fire Elementals for your archmages), and allow non-arcane units to get free spells. Probably also allow Adepts to get mage/archmage spells free.

That seems to me like it would represent a mastery of magic. :)
 
All of that would require some messy python code though. My idea needs only a couple simple xml changes.
 
It could create a Golden Age that is permanent. ;)
 
no permanent GAs plz
 
Buildings/wonders are currently unable to provide more than 3 kinds of resources. This would require a SDK/schema changes.
Drat. I know the team dislikes symmetry and I prefer simplicity in design. It doesn't need to be grandiose. If the tower is built and the victory condition is off, then it shouldn't give you enough to guarantee a win, but it should provide enough of an advantage that it's worth pursuing on it's own merits.
 
I'm in favor of ideas that are easy to implement because I don't want to have to play on any maps that are even smaller than the maps I have to restrict myself to now. . .
 
In another thread an idea was proposed on making the towers give a tier 4 spell that could be given to 1 arch mage, the tower of mastery could give all 4 spells to archmages.
 
In another thread an idea was proposed on making the towers give a tier 4 spell that could be given to 1 arch mage, the tower of mastery could give all 4 spells to archmages.
Nonono, maybe you didn't realize, but all the ideas are hard to implement except MC's, so his ideas it is!
Thread closed.
:hide:
 
Nonono, maybe you didn't realize, but all the ideas are hard to implement except MC's, so his ideas it is!
Thread closed.
:hide:

Actually, the Tier 4 spells requiring the Towers were my idea too. :p

Such spells are actually quite simple to implement. (Not all or even most of the specific ideas listed are easy/possible, but the concept of a spell that can only be cast in one of the Tower's cities are pretty easy.)
 
Tier 3 magic would be quite ifun and not completely game breaking if you're playing with ToM victory turned off. Mastery would seem to imply a little more control though...
Would it be possible to remove all arcane promotions from anyone not allied or vassaled to the tower holder? If I understand right, this would essentially mean no one else gets to use non-divine magic. That's pretty game breaking, but certainly fun for playing around with. Certainly explain how building the tower means instant victory.
 
Tier 3 magic would be quite ifun and not completely game breaking if you're playing with ToM victory turned off. Mastery would seem to imply a little more control though...
Would it be possible to remove all arcane promotions from anyone not allied or vassaled to the tower holder? If I understand right, this would essentially mean no one else gets to use non-divine magic. That's pretty game breaking, but certainly fun for playing around with. Certainly explain how building the tower means instant victory.

It wouldn't be too hard to remove them when it is first built, but stopping them from getting the promotions back would be harder. It is probably possible (similar to how the banning mana resolutions work), but I don't know how to do it; it would probably need SDK changes.


When you say Arcane promotions, I assume you don't just mean the "Arcane" promotion given by the Arcane trait, as that would only effect a couple leaders. Do you mean the spell spheres, or the spell spheres and channeling? Removing Channeling too would be a lot more powerful. Of course, the way things currently work, that would get rid of divine magic too. (Of course, it could be set to not effect disciple units.)
 
All the good ideas come from MagisterCultuum - either directly or with his help :)
He just needs some free time to make his modmod so we can all play it!
 
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