One of the three focuses for Fallen Enchantress is Magic. We want the spells to be unique, to feel like casters with enough mana can change the world. We want magic to fill the game, all the sovereigns start with spells though some like Procipinee are better spell casters than Verga. As in Master of Magic you can choose your sovereigns proficiency with the various magic types when you create them.
I’ve attached a PDF of the spells with this post. It includes the normal spells the player can cast, it doesn’t include spell abilities of creatures, spell like abilities granted by equipment and some other special abilities in the game.
I’d like to give a special thanks both to Unacomn for suggesting the Shadow World spell and NuclearNeumann for suggesting the Blood Curse spell. They are fun spells to play with.
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I Removed the spell PDF as it is almost a year old and woefully out of date. New spells have been added and even more are coming. check out out dev journal on spells here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArdQVqLHsI&feature=youtu.be
- Derek 4/11/2012
While I agree with the fear that the late game spells are too powerful without some sort of counter (counter spelling, artificial cast limits, mana limits, whatever) I think this paragraph is completely wrong. If the systems are properly balanced you should be making gains for that magic you are expending. The earlier you make these gains the greater the benefit should be later.
For example, using magic to conquer the wilderness or a weaker foe and therefore gaining resources or shards.
If you're not gaining anything for your magic use, that's not necessarily the fault of the game. It could just be a bad player.
How about a damage mitigation resistance (rather than just all or nothing resistance) for cities based on the buildings/population etc. in that city, and/or a much greater mana cost for destroying cities the bigger and more developed they are?
Best regards,Steven.
Firstly, I really appreciate what Derek has done, and I think it is a massive improvement over War of Magic.
I do agree with Campaigner though that there are some issues. Firstly, there are a lot fewer spells than either Age of Wonder 2 - Shadow Magic or Master of Magic. The system also allows for a lot of overlap between players. So expect most players having very similar spell sets. Also, there are no world wrecking spells like armaggedon in Master of Magic.
So my feedback is that I like what has been done but I would like to see -
1. Many more unique spell books like Ceresa's spell book. Love the idea but there should be tonnes of these that are only unlocked by pre-game selections. Not just one! For example a spider themed book, a necromancy themed book.
2. Also think mebbe there should be a few 'findable' spellbooks again with several spells where there is only one (or no) instance per game world and the only way to get the spells is to find that book or trade with someone who has them.
3. The spells at level 5 are not powerful enough. Where is Armageddon? Great Wasting? Dominions 3, AoW SM and MoM all had more powerful top tier spells.
A few comments:
First nitpicking: Third book of the magic, and third book of the magi? I assume they are supposed to be the same and probably magi.
More importantly. Teleport should not belong to air school. Make it caster only (perhaps even only as return, teleport to friendly city, caster only). Instead make cloud walk +1 or x2 movement rate to caster + army. Still a very powerfull spell making air school very awesome, but not playing by different rules.
I love that the vulcano spell is a quest spell. This way it requires both the correct school, caster and quest. It may still be slightly overpowered. Losing a city or most of a city this way I guess is okay, losing a game is not, so I hope at least sovereigns can escape. Loosing the army and half the city would make it like a classic Civ nuclear bomb.
Water might need some cleaning up, and some metaschools or advanced books would be awesome. I could imagine books that require both research and caster with certain prerequisites, or perhaps even: A quest enabling research, with research enabling new abilities for the casters. For instance the spell of making could be a level 5 of a meta-school, requiring more work in several areas.
As far as I could tell book are not just chosen on start, right? You can learn new books and advance books during the game? That is how I read it, but some comments seems to have read it differently.
Anyway, most importantly: This looks generally awesome. Things can always be improved and balanced, but this already looks really fun.
I just realised a fun thing about making cloudwalking something x2 movement rate. It could be implemented as army always walking on road. This means there is two ways to achieve the same effect
Not airmage: Build and use roads
Airmage: Build no or few roads, but move armies around just as fast with a spell-caster.
If we have more control over road-construction than in WoM, this could make air-specialized empires/kingdoms very different, with few domestic roads that also makes invasions different. And air-mages might even have the fast armies that attack into other empires along non-road routes.
@jpmcconnell,
I like the way that you quoted someone and then totally disregarded their point as if you had not read it. You remind me of a young Glen Beck.
MANA IS AN EXPONENTIAL GROWTH SYSTEM
Saving in the early game limits your expansion and costs valuable units. It limits how many casters you have. In the first 1000 turns you can generally get about 600 mana saved with fairly liberal use. In the next 1000 turn I can usually get a few thousand more mana points just by going after shards.
I realize we don't all play the exact same game and everyone has their own strategies and experiences, but you quoted the point. Mana saving is not really an issue in the late game.
Spider Themed Spell Book - Excellent Idea - Discovered by Quest - 2 to 4 spells per level
Primary Focus: Tactical Spells
17 Spells - 13 tactical, 2 strategic, 2 city enchantment, 1 Enchantment
"In ages past there was a titan that was the master of all giant spiders. It is said that their exists a tome that instructs one in the magic of this titan and how he controlled his creations. Legends say that this tome can be found deep in a forest guarded by the spiders spawned by his creations. Defeat these guardians, retrieve the tome and decipher its writings to know the secrets of the Spider Titan."
Note: Only characters of high intelligence can decipher all the writings within this tome.
Level 1 - Requires Intelligence 14
Level 2 - Requires Intelligence 16
Level 3 - Requires Intelligence 18
Level 4 - Requires Intelligence 20
Level 5 - Requires Intelligence 22
Giant Spider Types and Battle Tactics
Spiders are insects and do not make morale checks, they attack until they are dead. Spiders are immune to the effect of web spells (Web, Web Wall, Sticky Walls).
01. Giant Spiders
02. Poisonous Spiders - the bite of these spiders are poisonous and cause and additional +1hp of damage per turn.
03. Web Casters - These huge spiders cast a web spell at targeted unit before attacking. A webbed unit can't move unless it resists and suffers a penalty to its attack and dodge ratings.
04. Spider Demon - Summoned from the planes of the Titans these spiders are deadly, are as large as a house, tower over mortal men and are hard to kill (200+ hit points). They can cast a web spell that ensnares units. Taking orders from no one (100% AI controlled) these spiders will attack the last creature that attacked them.
I like the new spells especially multi-element stuff. I dont even think its op because a manablast needs as much "levels" as an 4th level spell of a single element.
I would like to see some more metamechanics for spells and abilitys - say a spell that gets more powerfull depending on how many spells were casted in the same turn or a enchantment that adds its effect to spells you cast.
What are your ideas for Item and Monsterabilities?
You could do stuff like that in AoW 2 as well, though you very rarely built roads. Air Mages could throw up stuff like Haste Domain and Flight, and burn mana to have an entire army of flying high speed (whatever). Fire Mages had no answer to that kind of mobility, but they could set their domain on fire and do damage per turn to everything hostile inside. I saw there's a wall of fire spell for cities, that's a pretty good start.
I think they're going in the right direction with the spellbooks they have now, and just hope it's not a "final" list. If we get into a beta there will hopefully be a chance to add some more to flesh it out.
Great post Derek. I quite like the direction you are taking magic in for EFE. I agree with some of the posts above though, I want MOAR!!! spells, for starters some early summons.
My biggest peeve though, is with the terraforming spells. All the spellbooks lvl1 spells are some decent utility spells, quite appropriate for that level. But what's the first thing a Earth apprentice learns? How to move several hundreds of thousands tons of earth and rock to or from the bottom of the sea! That just feels wrong to me. But also gameplay wise it's wrong. While everyone else has to work with the map and all of its difficulties and choke points, someone who picks the very first level of earth magic can create, destroy, or bypass choke points from day one. Spells like this should be rewards for specialising in earth magic through the game. And even then they shouldn't be thrown around like mere cantrips. Creating or destroying a mountain range should be something epic, not every day busywork.
More importantly. Teleport should not belong to air school. Make it caster only (perhaps even only as return, teleport to friendly city, caster only). Instead make cloud walk +1 or x2 movement rate to caster + army. Still a very powerfull spell making air school very awesome, but not playing by different rules....
Excellent suggestions! Teleporting armies, in whatever form, has to go. Caster only might be acceptable, with spells like Return allowing you to save your sovereign, but ditching your army in the process. If you really want to have it in the game, it should be a high level spell that's not part of the 'normal' spellbooks. Also, mana cost should scale with the size of the army being teleported.
You can't force yourself to be innovative, the core of evolution is to take what is the current best and improve on it, trying to reinvent the wheel is not how things work.
Whatever it is, the system presented in here was not based on MoM's system, there are merely some borrowed spells and shared themes but the mechanics are fundamentally different.
Alas, in the end you will leave and travel the world, only to return and realize that which you craved was where you left all along.
I don't remember who but someone said that we remember MoM better that it was ! I have to totally disagree here !
MoM has great spells in every school there's powerful spells ! The chaos school was really impressive with damage and mass target spells.
Death had everything you want + some really cool summoning and buff that could make you quickly win a game if you would start with them (not that I want to see someone starting with powerful spells) but the difference was there !
Sorcery had lots of dispell which are not in the list here and those are really important if you face an army fully magically buffed !
Nature had really impressive summonings and life was really good at buff and healing, air had some really really nice invincibility buffs but not against magic.
Everyschool was way cool + enchantment of the battlefield etc...
Here, you cannot even cast some buff or sumoning unless you're on the strategic map... I think it's a big flaw. You should be able to cast a summoning during a tactical battle (all of them) but the summoning would disapear at the end of the fight. Same for buff, I don't want my armies to wander with a perma buff, this is not fun (Even if you have to upkeep it)
This list of spells is fun but is far from the promises Derek told us about being closer to MoM IMHO
I like that there are some area denial type effects, though I think there could be more for both tactical and strategic. Currently that is what mountains can be used for, being able to make other difficult terrain or a cost/benefitt choice such as slower movement or damage to go thru a tile would help beef up the options. Or being able drop a wall or movement altering areas in tactical to change unit movement options. The control type spells of the 4th edition AD&D for the mage class are a good place to look for ideas.
I also like the idea mentioned to have options for making your controlled terrain more difficult for enemy forces (such as overall slower movement as the starbases could do in gal civ) could work to allow you to use your magic to stall advancing armies as you rush fortifications on your cities.
In regard to the shard conversion and caster schools, having a conversion option (filter) for aligning a shard with your casting types OR having the choice of specializing come up once you've captured a shard would be the way to go. It would allow the player to adapt to the world or adapt the world to meet their needs. For example you could place an enchantment on a fire shard to make it count as an earth shard (for purposes of spell boosts only- not for the spell of making for example) this way the shard still maintains it's natural type, but a player can take a reduction in mana production to power the enchantment to alter the bonus. This would especially be helpful for the first case as then you arent stuck with an inferior shard if your starting position matches you up with one that doesn't match the choice you made when making your sovereign. This would also have the benefit of having a shard that changes ownership revert to its natural state, such as the life to death conversion for empires.
I believe there were caster units you could make for the empire faction, would they have access to the spells based on their traits then? For example, if the unit is given the fire 1 trait at creation it can cast rank one fire spells. Would they be able to cast life/death spells as default based on their faction or would they have to put traits into it at unit creation?
I do have to say that the art is awesome. Though the pictures for the curse and mass curse are rightfully similar the single unit one looks better with the stronger one not seeming more powerful by the art. Some effected unit(s) in the background and or an alteration to the energy effect could help.
I agree disappointing. Not at MOM level or Dominion level of magic. AOW2 also has more inventive spells. The level of magic in here is around HOMM level which can be cool, but then again HOMM is not about magic really.
Don't get me wrong, this is an improvement over WOM (hard not to top that), a few nice unbalanced quest/hybrid spells (as many have pointed out the one that does 1/10 of total mana pool damage might be a one-shot killer if there is no cap unless the spell is really costly in mana), some interesting effects (which I suspect aren't actually useful but are cool) but mostly disappointing.
Echo what everyone has said
* More summons please, every level should have at l-5 (more for earth maybe) , either strategic, tactical only or universal. Not sure why this isnt done, since fairly easy to do. Elementals alone are boring
* More meta-magic kind of spells - For a War of magic (okay this one is Fallen enchantress), there isn't anyway to counter/blast spells? MOM had dozens including Dispel Magic, Disenchant Area, Disjunction, Detect Magic, Counter Magic, Dispel Magic True, Disenchant True, Spell Lock, Spell Blast, Disjunction True, Spell Blinding, Great Unsummoning, Spell ward, Supress Magic, Lifeforce, Mana leak ete etc
* More variety in buffs - Not just +5s to dodge/dex/speed type spells, the one that takes damage out of mana pool is an example of the type of bluffs I want to see.
* More high level world wrecking/altering spells... Armeggdon/time stop/meteor storm type spells...Even crusade level spells (all units gain one experience rank) are not in there..
* As someone wrote, more variety in spells rather than simply +5 to dodge. Give us illusion/invisibility/mind control/magic immunity/invulnerability/
* You can see how MOM's spell system was planned, there had 4 levels (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare), and for each level they tried to put at least one spell in the following categories Summoning/city enchantment/Create enchantment/Global Enchantment/Combat Enchantment/Special . They differentiated each Realm of magic by having more or less in each category so for example, Chaos had more Combat enchantments (As many as 5 per level), Nature had more summonings (including 3 for highest level), Life has the fewest summons but the most or strongest creature enchantments etc
Such a system should be emulated to make spells interesting...
I would prioritize the first 2. But the 2nd one is hard to do due to AI issues i bet. The AI of WOM:FE better be a killer, if it's still as brain dead as I expect it to be, you might as well throw in all these spells and let us at least have fun using it.
Yes, concerning the artwork for spells, I think the artword is amazing and make the spell really look powerful but in WoM I was always disapointed with Artwork vs Effect... And especially for the terraforming spells which are amazing on the drawing and then the animation is just a normal animation you can see in any game I hope the effects will match a bit more the artwork for fallen enchantress
It is closer I suppose, but not by much
I am okay with some bluffs being strategic only (some restrictions are good), but many should be universal as well. I suspect modders are going to fix this.
I suspect though once you type MOM in a post, the post is automatically blocked from developers view cause they must be sick of being constantly compared to it.
I apologize if this has already been asked and answered. I was wondering where acuity stats fit into the spells. Does Intelligence, charisma or any other stat have an effect on damage or number of targets etc for spells?
Unless stated in the spell description it seems no.
Another thing I noticed, there aren't any "destruction" type effects that kill units regardless of HPs unlike in MOM.
I notice spells that make a unit practically unkillable by damage, one soaks up damage via mana so you can eventually wear it down but could take ages late game.
Is mana blast set to a fixed cost or does it take say 3/10 of your mana when you cast it (ie being more than a 1 to 1 ratio of cost vs. damage dealt). We wouldn't want it to be able to one-shot bosses or something it would make them completely anti-climatic, perhaps the cost to damage ratio increases beyond a certain point or with a popup choice? Otherwise there could be a monster trait that prevents or minimizes damage beyond a certain % of total health threshold.
I too like the mana shield and the spells that are at least partially fueled by more than just your mana.
I vote to open spell making to the modders, let them make spells at there will, then take all or most of these changing them up as necessary to fit in as needed (With it known that all made are then stardock's property to do with as they wish). There are many here that would love to assist if only given a chance, seems like a huge resource not being taken advantage of. Saves time, money, & you'd gain an enormous amount of variation (Might reward those that assist in some way, maybe a mention in the credits or something). One could assign these spells then to a type of simple process to help the ai decide when to use them, those that need particulars could be assigned 'when & where'. I know we had the spell contest (Or think that was one of them, been a while) but why stop there, heavenfall & others are constantly working on mods & would be nice to 'join' them into the fold a little more.
I don't know, sounds like a win - win to me.
I wasn't going to comment on the journal, because I didn't want to add a whole lot of negativity (because it seems like that's all I do) but I have to disagree on this. The one game that is always on my hard drive no matter what is Master of Magic, until I find a better game. It's not remembering the game being better, it actually was. At least IMHO, Fallen Enchantress's spellbook can't compare to the one in MoM (and anyone saying FE's spell book is better is lying). Yes, the direction they have taken with the expansion is good, but that doesn't mean that it's great yet. The way it feels from the first game, and the info we've been given of FE, is that the game is about battles of armies with a bit of magic thrown in here and there.
It feels like magic is so rare in the game, and then when you finally have it, even some of the higher level spells don't seem worth it. There's a bunch of good spells in there that I can see myself using, but a LOT of them are not going to be useful unless you get random luck. Too many spells based on shards means that there had better be more shards in the world, otherwise even those high level spells utilizing them will be worthless. Too many spells with low numbers and multipliers; didn't we see creatures with like hundreds or thousands of life in Elemental? How is Regeneration or even Heal going to help later in the game, unless you have tons of shards?
Like I said, there are good spells in there (like the Death spells, and Falling Star and Call of the Titans seem crazy powerful) , but for the most part it's missing the point of what makes a good spellbook in a game. There's a reason that every spellbook in any GOOD game shares a few similarities. See it's OK if you want to be different and NOT copy any of the standard stuff or borrow from others and say you're 100% original ... but if that means it's not even as good as the competition, was it worth it?
I think Master of Magic is going to be on my hard drives for a bit longer. ... Ugh, see, another negative post.
I think the way spells are presented in the PDF, it seems that FE is more an expansion rather than a new game, at least in terms of magic. It doesn't matter quite so much if some spells are overpowerful when there is such variety in character and use that MoM had. And FE is going to be primarily a single player game - it looks like FE could be quite a good game, but in some areas it doesn't *seem* that FE is advancing as much on WoM as could be. Note I say "seem" not "is". Why not open up the spell system to modders to really get some cool spells implemented as that other poster suggested? Hopefully the spell system is sufficiently set up so that a wide variety of spell ideas can be implemented.
I agree with a lot of the other comments. The spells are definitely an improvement over WoM but still doesn't seem to be up to par with some of the older fantasy 4x games. I'd love for FE to be a great game but the pre-release hype WoM and its subsequent failure has already largely destroyed my faith in Stardock. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong.
+1 after removing dynasties these hapend to me too
and the spells look good but the number is really low 5-7 spells per shool is low
FE could still be a lot of fun. It just looks like, the spells do not have that "magical touch", at least from reading their effects.
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