Love the game so far, Brad. However, there are some VERY serious issues with the magic system that need at the very least looked at again, if not changed/removed. So anyone who has some brutal if honest opinions/observations feel free to add them.
Major Issues:
By repeatedly casting the same Brilliant over and over on my capital city I was able to generate ludicrous amounts of research. Noticed 'Enchantment Slots' mentioned. Hopefully this fixes it. Maybe that is just a bug? Please say yes. I had a level 2 city with 200 research, just for shits and giggles... yikes. Recommendations: 'Slots' and/or making the enchantment based off of pop + buildings + number of city enchant slots allocated to enchantment would help even this out.
Um... Some types of dragon may eat gold. But your average Troll/goblin/familiar will not. Recommendations: Have Intel or wisdom determine your summon cap. Wisdom hardly does jack otherwise anyway. (Monastic buildup negates any real need for Wis unless you are going 0 civtech)
As a sovereign you shouldn't have to personally oversee EVERY enchantment. Obviously the most powerful spells will need to be restricted to the most dangerous/most valuable unit Can't just have Joejack the Conjurer brewing up volcanoes. But Joejack should have the ability to summon 2-3 imps and cast a minor planar banishment.
Middling Issues:
As you have noted, currently 'pluck your eyes out horrible'. As you get more spells this becomes more important. A matrix would be superb. Recommendations: Having the spells arranged in a Book:Function matrix would be both quick and expandable. So across the top you would have something like Favorite, Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Summoning, Ruin. Upon selecting any of those top tabs, the side tabs would appear and have categorical fields based on the primary selector. I.E. Selecting Air, would bring up sidetabs like Direct, Area, Combat persistent, Combat buff, Enchantment, World and such. Favorite Tab would allow you to make a custom quick list for rapid spanking action.
Not a huge issue, but I would like to see no less than 200 spells at launch
Fireball should not require a shard. Godly storm of Fireballs of death should take 2 or 3.
This would also help cleanup the research enormously. Research Fireburst > Fireball > Explosion > Flaming Pink pony poo Would also be a good secondary check on early game Ragnarok'ing.
And that as they say is that. Despite the cruelty I have high hopes for this game.
Join me next time for Brutally Honest Tactical Combat Analysis and Champion Performance :}.
There is a logic gap with Shards and magic specialization. Unless you are going to guarantee a shard of the chosen magic type being in proximity to a sovereign, its a crap shoot when you are choosing your magical specializations.
Ideas
1. Allow magical mastery to be choosen AFTER finding a shard (ie. start with 3 generic slots to be choosen later). Could create suspense as you try to decide if you commit a slot to the first shard you find or hold off and hope for another shard around the corner.
2. Make mastery important but not necessary for high level spells (X percent bonus for those types of spells), still a gamble if choosen at start.
3. Make shards generic but with flavors (need 1 shard for a spell, but a fire shard cuts fire spell costs by x)
As far as the current spells, its unclear what the costs are in the pop up (I see a shard, something like a time cost, a magic point cost, and something? else).
Unclear why once you cast a spell you can't cast it again, is there a timer or something?
Ren
One thing is the magic, and schools and shards, all seem like great ideas.
But I would really like to see it expanded. And not just cost extra points to buy specializations at creation.
If War of Magic is the title. It would stand to reason that, magic should be a viable method to encounter battles in WAR.
One of the great things about 4th edition D&D. Was that they made all characters able to do something every round. And also feel distinct and different from the others.
While this is not D&D 4th edition. We can certainly learn something from that fantastically well balanced system.
The equivalent of powers. Attacks as they were.
Level 1, you get to choose 2 At-Will Attack powers, 1 Encounter Power, and 1 Daily power.
Now why did they do this?
Because as you go up in levels you start filling in your powers with new ones, and eventually replace older powers over time.
But this can apply here if we look. Depending on your class, you would get to choose your bread and butter powers. For example, Fighters, depending upon your base specialization, get certain benefits from those powers.
Like taking Invigorating Strike, where if they hit the opponent they get a lot of temp HP's. And if they miss, they get a smaller number. So it would make sense for one of their powers to be Invigorating Strike. But then they have a ton of other options, as well, are they sword and board, or two weapon style, and so on. Maybe they take Tide of Iron, hit an opponent and push them back a square, and you move into that square if you choose to.
Or take Wizards, in this version of D&D they are controllers, people who control the battlefield, dictating how it flows, for their allies. So they may take the standard Magic Missile, that does damage. And say a scorching burst, a little aoe fireball. Or maybe they take Nightmare Eruption and Thunderwave. The point being, there should be options right up front. Their bread and butter powers.
The encounter powers are only good once per that fight, and do a bit more damage, or some other controller aspect. (Depending upon class)
And Daily powers are the big guns. These spell are something that doesn't get used in every fight, but when they are, they have great impact in most cases.
But one thing we can learn from this approach.
The game is supposed to be fun, and even at first level it should be fun and you should have power at your fingertips separating YOU from the other normal people.
If these sovereigns are the only ones with starting magic, then they should start with it. They should have an alternative to needing a sword or staff. They should have magic spells that they can put in slots for their battle powers. And as they gain in levels they learn new battle slots, and get more powerful spells.
And then save the world altering ones for powerful rituals. Rituals that aren't done in the tactical battle scene.
That's what I would like to see be looked at. Separating tactical battle spells from the other spells that change the land, and affect many people or summon powerful monsters to do your bidding.
I can't express enough how important it is that Sovereigns start off with spells right in their hands. That are a replacement for weapons. Be it Wizard's Fire, or something else. But they should have a few options in the Tactical Battles to be tougher.
One thing about 4th edition D&D is they really streamlined the thoughts of making sure Everyone has fun, immediately right at level 1. And then as they gain in power, the player gets to enjoy it more and more. As they become really powerful, and eventually deity level strength.
They also broke the concept of classes into three phases. The early Heroic level tier is the player figuring out their identity and fighting smaller creatures, saving villages from rampaging monsters, saving the damsel in distress. Then you get to the national level as a Paragon. You are much more powerful than those lowly darklings. And you've also specialized at this point into a specific path which gives you distinct powers, like Blood Mage, or Battle Mage, Unseen Mage, or for barbarians, Bear Warrior, Frenzied Berzerker, Twinclaw Slayer, Winter Fury, Tribal Champion, and so on.
And then.. there is the Epic level tier, such as Chosen, Demigod, Avatar of Io, Prince of Hell, Godkiller, and so on. It's setting up the final tier of gameplay, and this is the time when the character's essentially going for the gold. Conquering the world, slaying the gods, reaching their final destiny.
Now I'm not saying that all of that is a must have for this style of game. But I think a good portion of it could be applied, or learned from. The sovereign if they are the great hero for their kingdom, then they should have powers right off the bat. And be good at using them. And then grow into the more powerful stuff as it's learned. And I really would like to see a difference between tactical spells and ritual powerful spells (stuff that is outside of combat). But I really want to see that if it's possible.
*•Current Essence = max mana. This is terrible. Needs fixed post haste. The reasoning why this is so terrible is simple to follow*
I agree that the Essence cost seems high, I think they should be in 0.x not full cost. But the idea stands quite well, somethings need you to put your soul into them, and should reflect that.
*•Stacking Enchantments. Ugh... really?*
Just a simple but to get rid of I hope, I didn't even think of trying it <G>
*•Summoning upkeep. Costs .2 gildars a turn...*
That would represent the cost of specific items used in up keeps, unless you wish to have to make a "bats wing" mine <G>
*•Sovereign specific spells. A good balance will be needed.
1.As a sovereign you shouldn't have to personally oversee EVERY enchantment.*
I think many spells should be able to be cast though champions(maybe a magic ability to learn such as "Possessive casting") or from any city (maybe an improvement for this like "Thrown of casting focus")
*2.Obviously the most powerful spells will need to be restricted to the most dangerous/most valuable unit*
Agreed, this is limited though the Essence limit.
*3.Can't just have Joejack the Conjurer brewing up volcanoes.*
Yup, unless you put a lot of level ups in to essence
*4.But Joejack should have the ability to summon 2-3 imps and cast a minor planar banishment.*
As above, they can if you spend the points, but I think all heroes should come with 1-5 points randomly.
Agreed, you should be able to chose X slots or get one free shard for each chosen one in your first city (you have found these shard, but they need to be rooted in the ground to be used, or maybe all shards coudl be picked up and planted where ever)
Not sure, but i think you meen there needs to be more "no shard spells", but the point of the shards woudl be to create points of focuse for hostily. So far It seems to be kinda balanced.
hmm, need X shards with a shard being a shard being a shard. Rather then "fire shards" might work.. then you just pick books at the start..
the hourglass symble is the 'cool down' time, maybe the ico with the Cross out shoudl have a count down so you know when you will get the spell back.
This.
Seems so obvious that I thought this was how it worked until the beta started!
I like the idea! Essence should work a little bit like HP (same thought than spicy mike), and maybe when using the most powerfull spell, including a % risk of loosing both essence and HP if the spell fail.
I agree essence does need a rework. It's to easy to end up being crippled through loss of essence and earning more is at a snail's pace. This is especially true when you realize that right now our SOV levels up way to quickly as XP gains as set pretty high. In release I imagine it will be much slower.
The other thing I think people are forgetting is we have been stuck on tiny maps for quite a while now. So only needing a couple cities was fine. But when you think about the fact that the largest map will be 4x larger then that of Civ4 suddenly you realize you won't have enough essence to properly build cities across that vast landscape. So far it seem like they are trying to balance with regards to a small map.
In regards to Essence, Wisdom, and Max Mana, I agree that something needs to be done. I just thought of this idea so I'd like to hear what you guys think.
The Wisdom determining mana I think was not done by the devs originally because they don't want every hero to be able to cast spells. So not sure if Wisdom = Max Mana approach will go over well with the devs or really work in general as suddenly all heroes are pretty much spell casters and it undermines your Sov ability.
On the other hand have Essence = Max Mana isn't really going over that well. So how about merging the two to determine max mana? Wisdom * Essence = Max Mana. This way wisdom becomes a lot more important since it's a multiplier for you Max Mana. It also means Essence use has a little more leeway in terms of loss. Since players will tend to have a large Max Mana pool it will be more about regen on how much they can cast.
I mean the base starting of 10 Wis & 10 Essence will give you 100 Mana compared to the starting 10 now. And because it's a multiplier boosting can really start to grow like say you start with 15 Wis & 10 Ess then you have a whole 50 more mana at start. With an increase of 5 Essence you will be at 225 Max Mana compared to say the default start of 10W & 10E which will only be at 150 by that point.
This will allow magic heavy SOV to really focus themselves in terms of casting. They will have INT for increasing their Regen which is important for how often they can cast. And now WIS which will be very important for how much they can cast. It also allows for really powerful spells to have really high Mana cost so that not everyone can cast them. After all someone who chose the fighter route with 5 WIS would need 40 Essence to cast a 200 Mana spell while some who focused on casting with 15 WIS would only need 14 Essence.
Also by tying the two together it means not every hero will be able to cast spells. Also not every hero will be equally good at casting spell like they are now if you give them some Essence at level up. I always found it a bit odd each level giving my heroes some Essence then suddenly they could cast spells just as well as any other hero.
BTW, in that thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/385685 I have proposed another formula for mana: mana = essence + max(0, INT + WIS - 20).
I somehow find it strange that Intelligence affects only the strength of your spells and not your ability to cast more spells.
I like that Phoenix. Although maybe something like '[Starting_Essence + (Int + Wis - 25)]'.
That's pretty harsh cause [10 + (10 + 10 - 25)] = 5 Mana for an average default character.
Your formula is a bit lack luster. As 1 extra point in either INT or WIS simply means 1 extra mana. Which is what you get from putting that point in essence. And it's kinda debatable which would be better. Essence if very valuable and let's you do other things while Int is only useful for some spells and lastly Wis is pretty useless which is why people keep trying to think of ways to make tied to something important.
Your mention of INT should effect your ability to cast though made me think of Skill from MoM. How about having INT work like skill did in MoM? For those that don't know you could horde as much mana as you wanted in MoM but your Skill determined how much you could use per turn. So in E:WoM say someone with 10 INT, 15 WIS, and 10 Ess would have 150 Max Mana but could only cast a total number of spells equal to 10 Mana each turn because they only have 10 INT.
Balancing would have to determine if that amount was enough so it might end up being INT * 2 (or 3). Or even tied to Wisdom like say INT * (WIS/5) giving further importance on WIS. That could be a very handy mechanic of further limiting the players ability to simply burn through all their mana at once.
Right now you don't feel like much of a caster since a lot of spells eat most of you mana so it's more like cast a spell wait several turns to cast another and so on. And with some spells costing most of your mana you kinda feel like you have to use it loss it similar to the way spell points are. The larger Max Mana and a limit on how much you can spend a turn would add a much nicer feel to the game. That way you could horde mana a bit more for those important times you need to burn several spells on back to back turns.
The obvious solution to the shard and book problem is that we get a potential number of slots and then research the ones that we happen to find in the game. At the Sov creation screen we should spend points on how many elemental books we want to be able to research. Then we get into the game and scout out the shards we plan on taking. Then we research those books which will fill the slots.
What do you guys think about giving a bonus to a Sov that has all four element slots at the begining? I would say that he or she should automatically have every book tech at game start. I also think this should apply to other parts of Sov creation.
The whole is more than just the sum of its parts. [e digicons](\(\[/e]
The idea was to give the same benefit for mana while having the player decides if he really wants to invest in essence or in another characteristics that increase mana. We just need nice incentive for making the choice between essence, INT and WIS not obvious
Another idea behind the formula was to be able to have magic oriented sovereign able to cast nice spells even if they have no longer lots of essence. see issue 1 in the OP post.
I agree in principle with the OP. Magic is a mess, confusing and leaves you wondering what the heck is a permanent essense loss vs a temporary one. Nothing is intuitive.
I had no idea I could study spells until I clicked on it wondering why no spells showed up in my spellbook.
There is nothing to tell me without reading each spell if I meet the requirements for shards. Gee thanks.
The spells aren't even organized by shard type! I know the beta is supposed to be "not fun" but that doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to back it a pain in the rear.
I would like to see the spells organized by shard type, then under that type, organized by type of spell (economic, terraforming, combat, healing, etc.)
I don't feel like an all powerful Morgoth, more like Dave the Magician, available for kids birthday parties.
I not just talking about the current build, if magic becomes too cheap/easy then, who is going to bother with non-magic (units, tech, etc.). There needs to be a good balance between magic and non-magic, other wise it just becomes a game of magic. Right now the magic system doesn't work very well but, making magic too easy also has a down side. I don't want the game to become a game of just capture the magic nodes to win!
Essence = mana could work but there needs to be a way to regain essence. maybe killing powerful creatures or stealing it from locations on the map. Maybe you find a small village on fertile ground and instead of helping the locals you suck the life out of the territory to expand your own power, something like that. Characters should probably recieve experience for using magic as well.
Magic should be a big part of the game, for two reasons.
The race of Men start knowing Life, and the Fallen knowing Ruin. If you custom design your Sovereign, you can choose to learn certain magics.
During gameplay, you can research Magic Technology that will give you access to various 'Books' of spells, such as Summoning or Enchantment, that will open up item purchases or new spells to learn. You can also build a city near, and build structures to tap, special magic Shard resources.
So...
Currently, as a custom Sovereign of the Race of Men, choosing no magic, I started a new game. I chose Brilliant & Meditative (+2 Research & +2 spell points). After a few turns, I have 14 Spell Points and can learn spells from the Books of Life, Fire (Firebolt, Wall of Fire, Protection from Fire) and Ice (Protection from Ice). At this early stage (about turn 6 or 8), I can see 5 Fire & 5 Ice spells that I can learn, when I have enough points. Including the 200 Spell Point spell, Volcano.
Since I did not choose knowledge of Fire or Ice at creation, I should not be able to learn any such spells. I should not even be able to see any spells from the Books I have not gained access to. Perhaps this is an error.
On another custom Sovereign, I chose Air magic at creation. It (apparently) gave me nothing.
Spells should, in my opinion, fall into 3 categories:
What I would really want is better freedom without being forced to have either Life or Death magic. There should be a neutral option of just being an Elementalist or a Sorcerer who doesn't concern himself with growing grass or black magic.
To me, it feels like Essence would make a more appropriate analogue to Skill. It'd essentially be a measure of how much magical power you are able to channel each turn.
The Master of Magic magic rules were very nice, so "borrowing" heavily from it might not be a bad idea. The Skill mechanic seems like something that could be a nice addition to Elemental.
Hi everyone,
Here is my suggestion to add a important layer of tactic to the current spell system :
Spell specialisation / ranking – Improving the same spell up to 10 levels of power
Rather than having several version of the “same spell” with upgraded damage/effects (like a fireblast spell with range 1 causing INT*1.4 damage vs a Firebolt range 1, INT*1.5 doesn’t add a lot of value to the the game) we could benefit from having a lower number of spells but each with a personalised effect, visual animation and strategical value.
To do so, I suggest that rather than researching only ONCE a spell, we could research it further up to 10 levels of specialisation, that will improve the spell damage and effect (similar to the INT stat) and lower the cost.
So, as for the research refined farming, we should be able to research the same “firebolt” spell over and over (up to 10 ranks), adding some damage, reducing the cost, at each iteration.
The research cost could be linear or exponential, but the idea behind this suggestion is:
1) This will add a tactical value of specialising in a spell rather than researching everything.
2) A mage could be “dangerous” even with a lower number of spellbooks, by specialising in few chosen spells. So a mage with the FIRE spellbook putting almost all his effort to increase his fireball spell could be deadly, but he will have less versatility than a mage having access to 80+ spells.
So, I suggest that we use the spells ranks like this:
Including the RANK of the spells in the spell definition:
By default, when we research a spell for the first time, I suggest that we see it as Spellname (Firebolt since we are at rank 0) but if we have researched it six time, we will be shown as Firebolt(6).
Feel free to comment and add your suggestions,
Thanks,
Ah, but the problem with this lies in founding cities. You need some land that has life to it. So far, there has been little of it to be found, so we need the Revive Land spell to be able to build cities.
I would agree with you, a bit, but we have only seen the Kingdom (Race of Man, Life magic) side of it so far. (Well, not sure what happened in Beta 1 - I wasn't there.) I'm not sure what Death magic, presumably from the Empire side (the Fallen) will have.
I know there was some mention, somewhere, about letting cities be built anywhere, and making it harder to build up on the desecrated land. If that is changed, then the magic could be made more open.
Agree with everything he posted, and also would prefer to see spell types classified by tabs; Fire, Water, etc..
Personal preference would also be NOT to have a favorites tab and superfluous matrix/sub-detail sorting.
As other people have suggested, a Soveriegn should only have access to research and develop the spellbooks that they anted up for on character creation. This would help limit the sheer volume of spells staring you in the face during play.
I this thread. Keep it going please.
Personally, I have a problem with a the pigeon holing that usually goes on in games. Why is it life magic and death magic = good and bad?
Simply put, the magic is a tool, just like all techbology. Do evil dictators use "life" technology like fertilizer, farm equipment, hosptitals, vaccines and other things that produce food, heal people or aide life? Do "good" nations build advanced military hardware, spy on others, build nuclear weapons? Of course they do both! It is how they are used that defines good and evil and often the truth is a blurry in between.
You can use a rifle to kill a deer for food, or kill a fellow human being. Now, why did you kill the other person? To steal, revenge, cold blood? or was it self-defense or war?
So please do not narrow spells into good or evil. My thought is everyone should be able to learn from any book. How you use the knowledge is the key.
That said, certain spells could be viewed as "unacceptable" just like the arguements for/against cloning and nukes. It isn't that you can't learn them, it is that you will take a diplomatic hit from those that view it as evil. Using it would be like using nukes.
Also perhaps the potency of your spell is determined by your use of it. The inital skill would be based on intelligence/wisdom, put you get better by using it. I know how to cut and prepare food, but those dudes at Benihana take that to a level I wouldn't be able to without missing fingers!
Just some ideas
On Essence... if it's supposed to reflect the Sov's life force, something he can use to help heal the world, then why not base it off a combination of Wisdom and Constitution, and mana be based off Wisdom and Intelligence? Then you can still gain more essence by putting points in those attributes.
Just a quick thought.
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