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I Removed the spell PDF as it is almost a year old and woefully out of date.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
I think people are raising valid issues about the spell lists. Sure, some comments are premature and of course we are not seeing the whole picture. But I remember quite distinctly the time when I tried to raise discussion of how AI would cope with teleportation magic in WoM. I got shut down by fanboys with no good answers. And we all know how well that turned out.
The spell list for FE simply looks underwhelming compared to many games, MoM in particular. I hope something can be done about it.
On a side note, it isn't necessary for the AI to be able to use all the spells itself. Given say 12 spellbooks and a single player could use a maximum of 3 in a game, it would be sufficient for the AI to be able to use 6 spellbooks. AI 1 would have books 1, 2 and 4. AI 2 would have 4, 5, 6 and so forth. Sometime later you could expand the AI to cover even more ground. Most important is that the AI takes into account the books and spells the player has and knows how to plan accordingly. For example is prepared for some teleportation if the player has the spell.
Therefore as long as the books were balanced, we could add whatever books we wanted without compromising the AI - as long as they understand possible counter-measures.
Me too. There are some things that can't be told at this early stage, but the variety and number of spells in the list is cause to worry, especially since the developers have explicity mentioned MoM as the game they are most looking to. FFH2 had a reasonable list, and although the combat systems are different between Elemental and FFH2, there are some very interesting spells in the FFH2 lineup.
Best regards,Steven.
Id like to see a some spells/abilities that involve moving the unit hit and/or the unit using it. Disgaea had this and it opened up some interesting situations since you were able to target friends of foes with all of your attacks (though the effect of the attack being damage was usually targeted at enemies). For example there is a 'cut thru' type attack with a sword equiped that has an attack zone three spaces long and one wide in the direction of your choice, with a 4th box reserved for your character to move to (or if Im remembering it incorrectly it was a space that had to be unoccupied as the character would cut thru the enemies moving to the reserved space and then jump back to their starting possition). There could be a situation where you want to move the unit out of danger but have no movement left. You could use the attack on a friendly unit (as it had to hit something) to get your injured unit back behind your line of defenders. There were several times where I would target a friendly unit with an attack spell as the range I needed was just shy of what I needed, and the hit zone of the spell could reach my intended target(s) with the orientaion of the strike zone (a lvl 2 spell hits the target square and one square diagonaly). I'll see about finding an example on youtube and adding a link when I get home (I cant do it from here due to restricted access).
No mana cap-Huge issue here. Basically, because mana will be able to stored without limit, the most powerful magic using empire late game will be the empire that never uses magic prior to the late game. Seems a bit counter intuitive to me. While there should be some trade off between storing mana and using mana, the system as it exists seems to go to far, and will discourage any use of mana in the early game for fear of not having enough when the volcano's start erupting. If I want to have huge mana reserves late game make me focus on magic throughout the game, building mage towers, mana banks, etc. Having a simple mechanic like a mana cap would go a long way to removing this problem. There is still an interesting tradeoff between using mana for big strategic spells and smaller tactical spells, and even a tradeoff in terms of when you use your mana and saving vs. spending. But it also grants the freedom to cast fireballs on turn 10-100 without making me worry that I'll be crippling myself at turn 500.Add to that the fact that you can then include buildings that increase the mana cap and you have another interesting tradeoff. Do I construct buildings that increase my mana cap so I can focus on magic, or buildings that increase my economy or military production?Without something like this I think its going to be even harder to balance the big powerful spells that we all want to see included. Volcano's are great, but if I can destroy every single one of my enemy's cities with no warning the turn after I have access to them then there might be a potential balance problem. With a mana cap, I can destroy an important city, but I because of the cap, there's just no way I can do it again in the near future (unless I take some penalty like 'Sacrifice', which is a great spell).
I have played AOW:SM for a great many years (still play it in fact) and I have never had an issue in MP or SP with no mana cap. You would not be very wise to just hold onto all your mana until late in the game, more likely you would have been defeated by then if using this tactic. And FE Magic system seems to be very similar to AOW:SM so you have nothing to worry about. Personally I don't want a level cap.
Why so much comparison to MoM?
-.-
That's going to happen when your game is originally marketed as "a spiritual successor to MoM".
And that the developers have specificially mentioned MoM as the game they are looking most at when making FE.
I also see a problem with people saving up for the super spells and not using the little ones. I could cast firebolt to help in combat a little or save up and blow up a opponents city... Perhaps instead of a mana cap how about several thresholds with mana upkeeps. For example every 100 mana you store up costs you -1 mana per turn.
To all the people complaining about not enough or cool enough spells the bottom line is unless you are actually giving constructive advice you are just being whiny. There is no way we can know for sure how good the game is until we at least get into the beta. You have a problem with a specific mechanic and feel like sharing a way to improve it go ahead, but this early in development it's really stupid and irrational to make broad general denouncements about the game.
I suppose....
But if the games played the same (EWoM & MoM), then wouldn't that be copyright infringement? And if EWoM played better than MoM then wouldn't that mean that it would be MoM but only better? Still opens up possibility to law suits, me thinks... -- unless SD owns MoM.
The 0.7mm black uni-ball pen laying on the desk next to my paper work could be the "spiritual successor" to my junked 88 Honda Accord Lxi if I wanted it to be. It's all psychological.
Perhaps some of us would enjoy EWoM more if we accepted it as an entirely different game altogether? I'm still trying to figure out how to give my sovereign more wives -- one in each town.
Sorry to get back to it, but I believe the issue of piling up mana has been misunderstood by someone. The point is not that someone might pay a cost (renounce to using magic) in the beginning for some gain in the late game (have more mana). The point is that one could have a lot of mana in the end without having paid any cost in the early game, simply because he focused on one of the other 4 winning strategies, and let mana pile up.
A somewhat connected issue may be that shards are useful for magic alone, but the game has 5 winning strategies. It'd be nice if shards could be used to improve towards the 4 other winning strategies as well (by building 4 different buildings on shards, for instance).
Anyway, my point is that this issue of piling up mana has little to do with weird strategies that people may decide to try, and more to do with balancing the different parts of the game.
About intelligence having an influence on spells, though it makes sense, I have one thing to say: Mom did not have intelligence, and it was a great game. This is only to make one point clear: a game should not include all things that make sense, but the right amount to make the game interesting, deep, and balanced. What the game needs is something that makes the same spell have an increasing power over the game time, in order to make it useful for a large part of the game. You can achieve this with having shards increase spell power, or with intelligence, or with magic items, or research, or whatever. My point is that sometimes less is more: a few interesting and well balanced trade offs are better than a huge mess where it is not clear what the tradeoff is. I have not played E:wom, but it seems that the main problem with that game was that they tried to do too many things in a single game.
Let me finally say that I have great confidence in Derek, Jon and all others, who have great experience in creating a balanced, fun game.
PS: Sorry to repear myself but please, more spells, and especially more World and Global-Tactic spells !!
If you're focused on some other strategy, how can you just hit a button at some point and suddenly have access to the ultimate spells? Someone who is focused on something else (assuming this is similar to WoM) won't have gone far enough down the magic tree to have those spells.
If you were focused on say building up the best armies on the map and STILL also have the best spellcasters on the map... then again you're playing at the wrong difficulty or the game is far too easy.
Somehow lots of companies manage to make totally interchangable FPS games without that problem. Most MMOs play remarkably like WoW (which plays remarkably like Everquest). And let's not forget games like AoW, which itself was pretty similar to MoM.
If somebody manages to make something like a game from the 90s, only better? That's not copyright infringement, that's progress.
And if you tried to sell it that way, you'd get a lot of annoyed people.
Maybe, but since MoM is a flat out better game then WoM probably not. Then again, many people here never would have bought WoM if it wasn't pitched as being like MoM. This isn't an unfair expectation that disappointed people foisted on Stardock. They created it.
Also, no one's asking for a total clone. What would be reasonable to expect, is a game with at least a comparable amount of options and inventiveness. But as long as you go the other way in every field (less races, less types of movements, less spells and so on) there's little reason to be hopeful for a comparable level of fun.
WoM 1.3 is out so now would be the time to make example spells and send them to the devs. Food for thought.
Personally I've never played MoM. The angle I was interested in was the 'fantasy civ type game', since I liked the fantasy mods for civ4 (and had enjoyed some gal civ by the time I purchaed WoM). On the same note- I had purchased Gal Civ2 because I liked the space retool on civ4. The aspect that I like the most (in both games) is the ability to customize your units and factions, even if I don't mess with it all the time. For example on Gal Civ2 I created a Vocaloid race and built them around social an cultural aspects. Named my planets with a music theme (Glorious Anthem, Grand Duet), but only changed the colors for my ships for the most part.
I like the same aspects in WoM- if a premade race or sov doesn't fit your intended play style, you can make one that does and give it an appropriate background.
As far as copyright infringement goes, I look to the glut of 90's fighting games (especially the bad ones) that were mostly clones of Street Fighter 2. You can't copyright an idea. I think it comes down more to the technical side of things or the art assets for that kind of thing.
On the spell thing, the trait requirements help work as a throttle to spell spam. I do like the idea of making shards usable to advance the other win conditions though, it would give a good strategic choice. They could be made to perform more efficently or have bonus effects the longer the improvement is in play (making it a tougher choice on if a different improvement should replace the existing one), or need to be in play for a set time before an upgrade can be applied- it could also build up a little xp each turn to pay for the upgrades. For example mana shrine generates 1magic exp per turn and 40 are required to make it aid spell research for that element by some % or fixed amount. It could add to production of a resource such as 'great progress has provided new tools' giving an extra material every 4th turn, or giving a boost to the material production of other buildings in the same town. Some could be repeatable such as the first example (increased cost or not) and some could be tiered where anouther improvement is required first, such as the second example if it needed the building to have an efficency trait first (reducing maintenance cost). There could be general upgrades, and ones specific to a certain win condition path.
1.3 is out ? I didn't even see it ! Or do you mean 1.2F ?
But yes, I agree, making some comparison of spell is the best except we're already making comparison of spells from MoM to the list provided in the post.
I seriously think that the devs are reading our post and that will be for the best of the game ! I hope we wont have to rely on modders to see spells we all think should be in the game ! No offense to modders, they're truly great but relying so much on modders would mean again, that the game is unfinished
Edit: My bad ! I saw 1.3 is out ! YOUHOUUUU ! LOL
Ah, but how much mana you have has nothing to do with army size or even spellcaster strength. Mana is basically collected through shards which require next to no micromanagement. Even if you focus on say armies instead of magic you will still collect mana. You will probably even have more mana then someone who focused on spellcasters because spellcasters consume mana and armies don't. Thus someone who completely ignores magic except to grab a a few traits could mass a huge mana reserve and then unload for a win. If lv5 spells are nukes then that would be like nukes in Civ requiring no infrastructure or unique techs to build.
Building up that huge mana reserve in order to cast those massive spells should require something more then just not casting spells earlier. Players should actually have to invest in mana in order to get it. For other resources you have to spend it in order to make it, but more mana that simply isn't true.
Guys there's a lot of assumptions going around right now. A viable magic tech tree (for example, shard improvements) could completely offset the need for a mana cap. Some things you just have to wait and see what it looks like.
Anyone else notice there are over half a dozen death special research or quest spells, more if you include Ceresa's Book, but only 1 life spell? Seems kinda stacked for death.
Count me in as a huge MoM fan who still plays it from time to time. Let's not kid anyone though about it being a perfect game. It had and still has its share of problems.
For example, Game balance is pretty important and let's just say that MoM still has problems in that area. That would be another thing that E:FE should be better than MoM at.
So, Graphics, Customizable units and Game balance should all be better than MoM for starters.
What about modability? I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any particular mod tools for MoM. In my eyes, that's a huge advantage for FE. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Good point. E:FE should certainly be more moddable than MoM.
Army Customization, you don't see that in MoM, which is really great.
The world, the quests, the monsters, the graphics + general feeling (FE will have more charisma than MoM)
(I could even add the Zoom option I really like)
The different environments
Boss
The dynasties (wife, child, ...)
Weapons
Maybe mounts (there I don't really know what FE plans for the mounts but WoM was okay I guess with Mounts)
Your sovereign is physically present and can act in fights, move, etc.
Customization of the sovereign won't stop at how many books of one school you posess and a couple perk/flaws
Customization of the city that you can do by yourself (those who played MoM will know what I mean, I think almost everybody here, lol)
The Tech Tree while in MoM Magic is the only research.
Indeed for fun, it really made me laugh, like Louist said it doesn't require DosBox ! LOOOL !!! (hi Louist, long time no see by the way)
+ I would say the economical system which looks like it will be more developped
As well as the diplomatic system !
I think the IA will be more developped too which will be a big + because everybody how dumb the IA is in MoM and how easy it is.
I even want to say the battle system which will be better, based on more attributes than MoM where it stays pretty simple even if MoM has still an advantage with the City Battle System we won't see here.
Now Artefact creation (might still come?), Spells (main goal of the game after all), City Battle (might still come?) and Races (FE's lore is set, we won't see our klackons, Trolls, Elves, ...) and finally flying units or Water Units (We might still get stuff like that) will be the down point of FE compared to MoM.
There, you see ? There's a lot in FE that will be greater than MoM I think but right now with how the spells are, it's a bit dull
I haven't been thinking that much but I'm sure if I think more, I can find more good points for FE =D
I'd really like to see Air and Sea units, don't tell me that FE's Lore won't have any Air / Sea creatures with all those demons and uuuh "stuff" (lol) it already has ? Any summon giant shark / octopus or giant Sharktopus or Octoshark (yes, little reference those movies for those who saw them ! LOL)
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but wasn't there some talk about releasing the source code? Wasn't that was Civ4 did that made it very moddable (eh, sp?).
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