What's going on with Creation, Force and Dimensional mana?

What's really needed is a way to speed up non-living units (force?). Also, Health is something that I often find myself needing a great deal of (creation?). Magic Resistance is something that many units need (force?). It'd be nice to get food resources through mana much like mine resources (creation?)

 

I think the ultimate troof is that we're really thinking in the wrong spheres. We need to come up with new spheres that will seriously augment the magic line into something useful instead of a generic steamroller for the careful planner.

Therefore, I propose:

1. Douchetoolz Mana

A. Douchetoolz I: Freshness: Provides one health to city w/ caster present

B. Douchetoolz II: Cure disease: Why bother with a priest? It's the clap that gets the troops down when they're on the move.

C. Douchetoolz III: Stankonya: Transfers all diseased/plagued/withered promotions to units in surrounding tiles.

2. Bacon - "B" Is for Bacon.

A. Salting/Curing Raster: Plus 1 food for caster in city

B. The Gorge: Units in caster's tile gain the heavy promotion, percentage chance for disease.

C. Tastiness Inviolate: An archmage level taunt spell. Odors of cooking bacon waft to enemies in adjacent tile. Impossible to resist.


3. Permutationabilitationity Sphere

A. Alter terrain: Changes one tile to next level of terrain, like vitalize, only requires caster to be present in tile at all times.

B. Bestiality: Random chance to alter one or more units in stack into an animal w/ current promotions.

C. Zoo gone wrong: Chance to transform caster into great animal, e.g. dragon, manticore, great ape, or some other thing, bear, wolf, tiger, etc, with beastmaster-level strength.

Silly names, horrible ideas, but whatever. Laugh while you can.

 

Would be nifty to have an ability which lets the caster "leave existence" for a few turns, then they return to the tile the spell was cast from, or if it is not a valid tile for them anymore (enemies present), they appear on the nearest valid tile to that location. Preferably they continue to heal during that time so you can use it defensively. If it took the entire stack with them then it would add a strategic element to it as well (Archmage 1 casts a spell with a 4 turn delay, Archmage 2 winks them out of existence for 3 turns. Hope is that you have the tile free of enemies so that when you return in 3 turns you are now only 1 turn away from completing the delayed action spell of Archmage 1)


For your great person summoning, it would probably be best to create unique great people which either can perform reduced quality great works, or which can settle, but cannot do any great works or be used for Golden Ages, or can only be used for Golden Ages (15 turn spell delay to summon a Golden Age generating unit would be decent, as the number needed ramps up already, so it would be a self-limiting capability)

 

Seems a bit roundabout. Why not simply have a spell that generates a Golden Age of greatly reduced duration (say 1 or 2 turns) directly, with a substantial casting time?

 

Because straight up creating a GA will take the same amount of time for each Mini-Age. But doing it through a Person will require more people each time.

 

I still prefer to have it give a random great person in a random city of a random civ.

 

What I really want is more spells with delays, seriously there is not enough.

Question to the ffh team, when the AI is for the most part, able to use the spell system really well, do any of you think that the mod will then make a few more complicated and/or exiting spells to replace the boring ones. And like many others, I am a hater of the many summons, and would much rather have damage SPELLS.

 

Actually a polymorph spell might be cool, might even do wonders for the Grand M-something, I don't really know how to spell.

 

Oh yeah. In the true uber style of Warcraft 2. Muwaahahahaha no more enemy army, just dumb, weak critters.

 

After considering the whole GP thing, I'm going to throw this idea out there: the method involving the least amount of micro while maintaining balance would probably be to have the mage create a special building that disappears when they leave the city that adds some percentage to the GPP rate of the city. More GP, less fuss, archmage confined to city in exchange for nice benefit.

 

It's quite possible that both these spells already in exist in some form, but...

A spell which had Range of 2 that had a 20% chance of destroying an improvement in a tile. A simple way to seriously damage your opponents infrastructure. Tsunami for improvements.

A telepathy spell which allowed to gain 25% of the beakers that your opponent was researching. Slow down your opponent and get a science boost (albeit possibly in a tech you had no interest in)

 

The would have to be a mind spell but that sphere is already covered.

 

Didn't see this listed, but what about a dimensional spell that works semi-similar to fireball and severed soul?

Cast, summons a wisp/spirit/whatever, it can move 3 moves. The wisp lasts till the beginning of the next turn. If its alive at the beginning of the next turn, the caster's stack gets summoned to the wisp.

At its most basic, this allows you to get past obstacles such as mountains etc with some restrictions (ie you can't teleport across the world) which means it's less abusable...

This also allows some strategies since in theory you could cast the wisp, run a bunch of raiders deep into enemy territory then if they survive they're teleported back to the wisp at the beginning of the next turn.

 

Also seems to be a nice idea, personally i think the paratrooper mechanic would be enoug...

How about Force giving mages one defence/offence strength more? (i know we allready have a promotion for that... but normal mages have problems reaching that...).

 

Interesting. If it also could add the ability for that mage to gain promotions like City Raider, Shock I and II, etc we could have a battle mage. Throw in earth mana for stone skin and body mana for Regeneration... It would have to add +1 strength to an adept, +2 to a mage and +3 for an Archmage to be effective though and that could be overpowered.

 

You can get City Raider I and March if you upgrade a Savant with those promotions to a Mage.

 

A dimensional spell with Range 2 that prevents Summons and summoned creatures entering that zone. It's a two-edged sword because it prevents your own summons, but it would act as a counterbalance to summoning strategies.

 

It would also be awfully card to code.

 

I really like the idea of the whole Force field of magic giving mages more power for direct combat, stoneskin style. By having spells that just affect the caster it would be different than most other spheres with the exception of earth with stoneskin and water with waterwalking. The effects would probably have to include a decreased chance to defend the stack effect so you're not having your buff spellcasters getting killed on defence, wasting all the extra xp earned from being able to attack more frequently, or have the effects be specific to when the unit is attacking. The lower spells could be temporary like stoneskin and the higher spells permanent. Some of the spells could give existing promotions that mages couldn't normally get. Like city raider or barrage etc.
Of course I'm wondering if Kael has already thought of this or other ideas and already rejected them. I doubt he'd have time to show up and reject each individual post.
My idea for creation seems like something that would definitely have already been considered. That's having creation magic create resources like Hollywood and the other wonders like that do in the regular game. It could be like Inspiration and be dependant on the unit being there so it's like the mage is running his own creation workshop building that operates like the Kuriotates unique buildings. One specific resource I've thought of is a metal that is better than iron but not as good as mithril.

I was also thinking that dimensional promotions should have a passive effect of adding to withdrawal chance. Like a short range escape spell.

 

For an alternative use to teleportation for Dimension, perhaps it could be used logistically?

"Reveal" - reveals a 3*3 section anywhere on the map, or perhaps 9*9 section if centred on the caster him/herself.

For creation, perhaps you could have "Opus", which, rather than create a Great Person, would inspire a settled Great Person to double their output for x number of turns? Perhaps the spell would have to be re-purchased each time it is used in the same way that Dominate needs to be if it fails?