Since spells are gonna get all powerful on our butts soon, I think there should be some defense for the more practical minded rulers. If not, my tough well build experienced units will get blown away.
Deplete mana (I have already suggested this in another thread) - Strategic spell
When cast it cost 400 mana and it depletes 200 mana from an empire of my choosing.
Magic mirror - tactical spell, can be upgraded to mass function to go for all units
20% of direct damage done to unit with Magic mirror is returned to the caster
Necklace of shards - item
This necklace is made out of small pieces of magic shard and gives 30% protection against all magic and elemental damage
Ring of mana - item (can be researched and put on soldiers)
If the wearer is hit by a damage spell you get 50% of the mana used for the spell added to your pool of mana
Mana halt - strategc spell with high cost and some maintanance
All spells in your own territory have double cost (even your own). This will make it a lot more difficult to attack you with a spellbased strategy
Shard eruption - strategic spell with high cost
Can only be cast against enemies that you are currently at war with. Will destroy one of their shards
It's all good, but careful warrior can be powerful that way and mage are useless, unable to fight, for my game it's not easy to get lot, lot of mana when playing mage in early to mid game, even late game my mana is so low to nothing, while I playing warrior of densene, I had lot, lot of mana that I don't need very much.
My point it that you could use your mana for defense then. Before someone comes inn with fireballs and stuff that will just wipe you out.
It has to be balanced of course
Not to come across as too critical of your creative thinking,
but wouldn't most people playing this be doing so to have a fantasy war of magic? I mean the name, the MoM background... all these things make this different than Stronghold or Total War...
maybe a mod for your idea would appeal to people, but for the main game, I prefer magic to be magical. Part of the goal is to get them shards so my tactical magic is greater. Speaking of which, it would make sense to have more "shard" requirements for casting power spells... don't you think?
Anyway, my 2cents ....
ciao.
repuirement shard to casting power is not good for those who don't had shard, or weak, or bad luck for not having those on thier land or map on it, since due to random. Beside, there is a bouns for had more power per each shard areadly in this game.
You're not too cynical at all. I agree with you.
Anti-magic should only be available to a lesser degree than normal-anti-non-magic (aka anti-mundane spells). Magic is superior, that is why it is magic. Magic is a limited resource. Magic sometimes takes several turns to cast.
All this should play into the effectiveness of anti-magic. In a balanced game, this generally means you will end up with very powerful complete shutdown of melee/ranged spells, and then spells that reduce magic somewhat. Mundane counters mundane, Magic counters magic. However, magic should never compeltely shutdown magic ala "This spell makes the unit immune to magic for X turns".
Nope - complete and utter hogwash. So anything that reduces magic effectiveness past a minimal amount should counterable by magic itself. Magic isn't a type of weapon to be listed among long swords, glaives, warhammers and bows. No - it is more powerful and it trumps all the silly little weapons of blacksmith.
I like the OP's idea. It would be cool to at least have a feasible option of playing a sovereign who only used magic to stop the magic of others. It would need a lot of balancing though, perhaps more than Stardock would be able to do between now and launch. As has been mentioned, might be best done as a mod.
How does that fit in the idea that the very power of the soverigns is their ability to generate mana and to access the power of the shards?
Well, city do had generate of 1 or 2 mana per season, and if soverign can pick one of tabal gave generate one mana per season, but however as playing mage, one mana per season is not suffer, need more, LOL.
Mana Absorbtion - Instead of taking damage the Sov heals the amount of would be spell damage taken, Sov starts off with 10 more hp + 3 per shard owned (maybe +5 for life shards?) and starts with +2 hp regen with +1 additional regen per shard owned (maybe +2 for life shards), Sov is unable to cast spells or have enchants
I had this on another post as a Sov trait idea
I wouldn't mind this as long as you forced into only one type of defensive role. That is, if you have major armor (defense to weapons) then you had to be vulnerable to magic, and vice versa. Maybe the magic rings of fireball-protection could be exceptionally prone to oxidizing iron.
The name anti-magic is unfortunate.
It should be meta-magic.
maybe a mod for your idea would appeal to people, but for the main game, I prefer magic to be magical.
Well.. Given that this is a war of magic (well at least the original game was), I don't see why there shouldn't be magic that fights/blocks magics?
You mention MoM, MoM had plenty of spells that defended against magic.
Honestly if I am a very powerful Wizard fighting a weaker one, I don't just want to trade spell blast for spell blast (though that would be fun), but sometimes I want to laugh as I block, counter, dispel, absorb, sub-verse or otherwise alter his weak magics, before returning the favour with TRUE magic.
The warrior may have a lot of mana left over because he hasn't being using it much. In late game even if he has a lot mana, he *shouldn't* be able to do much either cos all he should have is weak spells, or champions that don't have the right traits to make the spells effective. So the warrior based champion shouldn't be able to cast many of the "Anti-magic" spells.
The problem of course is as currently balanced that isn't true. As such the magic casting champion is faced with a double whammy
1) He is likely to have lower mana reserves as he has being expanding them to kill monsters to level, while for a warrior champion, the marginal cost of swinging his sword one more time is zero.
2) With a lot of mana, even if a warrior can cast only low level spells, is almost as good as someone with equal mana casting higher level spells.
3) You can get a lot of powerful spells from tech/quests relatively easy to get right magic traits.
The problem isn't with anti-magic or the spells per se though.
Solutions?
1) Champions that go the "Way of the wizard" should have some way to scale. More *traits* that allow more mana generation , such as more effective shard channeling (in traits/not in tech, as "warriors" can get that too), more bonuses to mana generation per turn (like mediation), more mana absorbing abilities as you hit, more discounts to spell casting e.g Fire Archmage has 50% discount to casting Fire 1 spells etc.
2) Higher level spells must be really really powerful, such that even if the warrior had the same (or even x2 more mana) than the Wizard, and they fought
magic vs magic only, the Wizard would still stomp all over him because his spells are just more powerful given the same mana expansion. This could be qualitatively different (ability to time stop, raise the dead and yes block mahic) or quantitatively more effective.
I see talk that some high powered direct damage spells are OP. Nonsense I say. They *should* be more effective per mana than lower level spells.
If Firedart does the same damage per mana with say Mana blast, the advantages of the latter over the former would be relatively low.
True to get the same effect of the higher spell, you would have to cast it several times, but mana wise there is no efficiective gain and we
already said the mage is likely to have lower mana reserves.
3) Tech tree shouldnt have that much magic stuff
The difference between the "Way of the wizard" and the "Way of the warrior" lies in the traits you can unlock. But if you toss shard refining, powerful spells with no or little trait requirement in the tech tree that are more important than the traits you unlock as a wizard, you pretty much make it pointless.
I will go way of the warrior to get an early lead.. then once i have it, I pour resources into the magic tech tree just as any magic using champion can, and hey, I can be almost as powerful magically..
MoM had paladins with Magic Immunity. Very powerful.
But this didn't protect against cracks call or web (I think) spell because logically speaking the spell was not directed at the unit. They were almost 100% immune to spell blasts from say Warlocks but not 100%, they just had 50 "shields" resistance, so it would take a lot of firepower to punch through.
In short there are in deed problems with magic using vs warrior using champions. But this isn;t the fault of anti-magic/meta magic or any
other school of spells.
Champions who go the way of the warrior should either have very few anti-magic spells
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
