As most would agree, the ability to port your Stack Of Doom (tm) clear across the world at the cost of 5 mana was game breaking.Once you had any children with in-combat mana regen, the cost became absolutely trivial and with it the entire concept of movement or garrisoning.And with 4X games being about growing ones empire, balancing a dominant strategy like teleport on a fixed cost is a recipe for failure.
MOIISKA pointed out one possible solution... which got me started...
Note that all numbers, that are mentioned anywhere here, are only there for visualisation. I talk about the system here, not any particular number. This is a thread in the Ideas forum without knowing how the game and mana balance will work out in 1.1 it would be completely futile to assign any cost at this point.(Yes, some seriously wanted to argue about a particular number in here. I kid you not.)
Spell: Teleport should have a base cost of 4. For that price it only ports the channeler around.
Every additional unit in your stack adds +2 mana to the cost of the spell.
Porting a stack of 3 would cost 8 mana, a stack of 12 would cost 26.
Spell: Teleport Friends would have a fixed cost of 10, plus 0.5 for every additional unit.
So 16 mana for a full stack. With a stack size of 5, either spell costs 12 mana. Any more units and Teleport group is cheaper.
Travel speed
Right now Teleport is instant. That is the bit that is entirely too strong. You can port to the other side of the continent, have a quick skirmish, and be home for dinner.
Magical transportation should still have a time component and it should not be entirely predictable. I say: If you cast Teleport, this stack is put in limbo - completely unaccessible by any means - and will appear at the destination 2-4 turns later. Much like a MOO2 fleet would be "in hyperspace" for 4 turns and you could not alter it's destination before it arrived.
Travel time could scale with distance teleported although it should still have a small random element at least. Scaling mana cost the same way is probably too messy because you wouldn't find out if you can cast the spell at all until you had selected the destination.
If you only have one Teleporting Stack Of Doom (tm), then this may actually become your weakness. Yes, you teleported towards where the intruders are coming from. You can probably even kick their butt before they do any harm to your cities. But what if this was not the real attack? If they simply turn around and deny you the open field battle your Stack Of Doom is built for? What about the 2 smaller stacks that were sneaking around or used sea transports to stab you in the back? The Stack Of Doom would take up to 8 turns to turn around and that can be a very long time. A powerful spell / ability / strategy is balanced if sole reliance on that strategy results in a weakness.
Other potential features in no particular order
Elemental Teleport Variants after all, Elemental is the name of the game...
The quickly increasing cost of the low level Teleport is actually a good thing.It gives us a reason to pick the Air book (which costs reasonable pick points now!) and research Teleport Friends.
Teleport Friends would eventually take over once your empire and your army grows.Teleport can remain the early and general spell and an expensive fall-back for players without the Air book.Sometimes you absolutely have to teleport, regardless of having the group port or not. Regardless of the cost.That should not immediately be a game over situation (No, you cannot teleport that army!) but merely put a painful dent in your mana supply so it turns into a temporary setback.That creates another option to think about. Another case of pricey but worth it.
Of course, I don't know if the numbers work out like this. This is only a draft for a system that could work.Maybe Teleport is still too good and needs to cost +2.5 or +3 mana for every passenger unit. Until we know the mana situation in 1.1, it's all guesswork.
Related: [Suggestion] Travel takes too long, add Gate spells.
You'd expect a high end spell to be capable of teleporting armies across the world in an instant. A spell of this power at level 1 is a bit much.
Definitely
And Teleport actually requires some high level AI coding too - it's such a versatile spell and all.
If we have 10 levels of spells, then, as I have above, why not spread it out?
New additions:
Sometimes I think you guys are dreaming all these complications because you secretly love patches and a game that is never going to be ready!
Personally I'd go just with optional teleport, but if you guys really insist and there is still "essence" as a concept in the game , why not just making teleport affect permanntly that? Once a wizard has to substantially cripple his essence in order to cast a spell he won't just spend the whole game using it!
There: it wasn't that hard!
Still I wish for a optional teleport because it stinks no matter how you limit it, since the attacker has no way to prevent it.
I don't think you actually read the OP man. It includes methods of detection which can lead to enemies being prepared for teleported units, and that is a means to prevent the offensive advantage of teleport. Besides limits, it includes hazards and weaknesses. I think you need to differentiate the ALLEVILBADGOAWAYYUCKY teleport that is in your mind from the teleport that is being suggested here.
How about if we make it so that units can only teleport between places they've already been? This makes more sense from a lore perspective, as a wizard who tries to teleport to somewhere they've never been might end up materializing inside a mountain, or inside the walls of the city they are trying to attack.
So, a magic using unit is stationed at Point B, and they've already been to Point A once before. They should then be able to teleport everyone in their stack to Point A.
You can still apply any number of the restrictions, hazards and weaknesses that are listed in the original post.
That would be a bind / anchor spell to "remember" one or several locations for a caster.Number of locations to be very limited (to avoid the mad rabbit hopping) but could possibly be increased with high INT.
The Summoning Circle (one per faction) should also be a valid destination on top of that to give casters a little flexibility there and you really need a Get-Outta-Dodge spell if teleporting is an option at all.
Black Knight,
Sorry, you don't speak for all of us. Your way is not the only right way, nor is it the way at all. In your quest to do away with teleport (and isn't that ironic, a black knight on a quest - by definition it can't be a good quest), you're seeking to limit options rather than opening them.
A very simple way to limit teleport is to have it require an additional resource -something that's relatively rare and requires research to aquire access to. If this material has another use - say as an additional component for magic creation - that means you have to decide between rapid transport versus using the resource for something else.
You could set other limits on it too. But a relatively non-renewable resource - one that may have other practical and attractive uses - would probably be best.
As for this whole anti-teleport sentiment - in the immortal words of the movie version of Gollum "go away, and NEVER come back".
Like Rogue Stones in Neverwinter Nights. That doesn't sound too bad actually.
Well, I was actually thinking along the lines of anywhere, without having to perform a bind or anchor. However, the limited anchoring would definitely force you to make strategic choices.
Come to think of it, this is probably the most simple and potentially successful teleport mechanic, for the following reasons:
If you combined this with a reasonable cost factor along the lines of what is detailed in the OP, and possibly some sort of temporary teleportation sickness or other restriction/hazard, I believe it would add some fun strategy to the game while at the same time making it very difficult to exploit without being needlessly complicated.
I don't think that the costs and restrictions need to be too harsh with this form of teleport, as the mechanics of it are really the primary restrictors and are almost enough of a gimp on their own, in my opinion.
Yeh, cost is a very bad way to balance a potentially powerful spell.
At a certain point of empire size, the cost can become inconsequential, leaving only the power in the balancing scales.
This cannot possibly be the only limit and not even the most important one.There must be other considerations, no matter how they look.
I was really only brewing up ideas. Which combination thereof produces the best results - no clue. That really takes some planning... and some experimenting.Some may indeed prove too awkward and complicated. Teleport traps and countertraps and anti-countertraps... That's just one possibility to consider. I don't see this as a primary candidate but maybe someone comes up with a cool way to work it in there in a perfectly logical fashion...
For instance, here's another twist to the "Memorize Location" spell:
Instead of locking it to the caster, this consumes X resources and creates a tradeable item. If that's a global spell, you're only casting one of them at a time so no teleporting all 6 channelers to the "attack spot" to memorize this location.
Each channeler would have a bag for a limited number of those... and they might even decay over time or with use, creating an increasing risk when teleporting there with a large army.And you could capture them when defeating an enemy channeler.
Of course, if you "find" them like that, you'd have no idea where you end up. This could be fun. Since that is a good thing, quests might give random teleport runes as a reward.Where do you want to go today?
I agree completely there. The mechanic itself should ideally be the primary limiting factor.
Personally, I think it's the best suggestion I've seen thus far, and well worth having a tinker with. It deals quite well with the largest complaints related to teleport, that is, it doesn't discount the world between teleport locations, and it doesn't make popping over to anywhere on the map a simple 'cast spell at location x to destination y' affair. Some people have argued that some work arounds to deal with the problems of teleport are too complicated and might alienate players, whereas this possible solution is relatively simple. Plus, rather than breaking the game, it actually adds some strategy goodness, as their is careful planning involved.
Regarding costs, perhaps this is one of those situations where the mana spend can be determined by distance, as the destination is always predetermined and from a finite list. For example, on casting the spell, a selection screen would appear containing the anchor points that are currently bound to the caster, and each point would have an associated mana cost, with those anchor points being greyed out when there is insufficient mana to travel to those locations. Just as a note, the selection screen should have a minimap attached that displays the location of the currently selected anchor point.
That's one possible way to do it, as rather than have all teleport costs become eventually inconsequential, it instead improves on the teleport by allowing greater distances for higher level heroes.
Oh, God, .... NOOOOO! You've injected the vile MS Disease into the fantasy and forever marred the atmosphere! No one wants to picture Bill Gates when deciding where they are going to teleport to.
Just thought of something. Setting an anchor point could be a multi-turn affair. Thus, if you send a caster into or near enemy territory to create an anchor point, that caster is vulnerable for N turns as they stand there 'memorizing' the location and casting the appropriate magics. Any interruption to this process will result in the caster having to start from scratch. The caster could be frozen in place and more prone to any attacks than they normally would be.
Neutral units might take special advantage of this weakness and attack a caster that might otherwise easily defeat them, plus it would give enemies a chance to prevent armies teleporting into their region.
In principle that's what I was getting at with the "global spell" thing. I don't know how this will work in 1.1. Who is casting what and when, how multi-turn spells are cast and by whom...
It would probably be safer to lock on to a location that's not in visual range, cutting down on the instant surprise attacks out of nowhere.
While I'm not completely convinced that the "marker stone" system is worth the added complexity for Teleport alone, it doesn't have to be limited to Teleport.
Such stones could be a reagent (and consumed) for the most powerful strategic spells. A simplistic approach to creating "ritual magic" because you would have to prepare / sense / mark the target site beforehand. You couldn't just throw the beefy spells clear across the strategic map.Sure, the odd Fireball or Flame Column - that wouldn't require such a thing but a 5x5 strategic tiles Firestorm - that should require some preparation.
Also:Such a marker stone with the location to your arch enemy's backyard could be an interesting bargaining chip in diplomacy.Magic does not need to be limited to just casting spells.
You would have to buy a Teleport 2010 license for every channeler.
Regardless of how Teleport works, it should not be the only travel spell in the game.Well, there is Endurance for +1 moves but that's kind of a joke on large maps.
How about: Swiftness of the Cojote
This spell speeds up the unit by +1 every turn with a max of maybe +5.(possibly accelerating to top speed slower, like a speed bonus per turn of: 1,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,5 )
The first step that a unit takes assigns the general direction. The spell will break if the unit ever completely stops moving for a turn or makes a turn of more than 45° from the original movement direction.Once you fire up that rocket, you can only go forward, swerving a bit to the sides to evade obstacles.MEEP MEEP!
The cool bit about it? The spell scales with the map size. A spell, that gives a flat +1 moves on a huge map, is pointless. A spell, that gives +5 on a tiny map, is insanely overpowered.Now with this concept on a small map, there are hardly any stretches long enough to "achieve top speed" - much less make use of it after that. The bigger the map, the faster you can go.
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