Last night, I won a game (v1.1, Resoln / Ceresa, large map, 8 players, challenging AI) in around 330 turns using the Spell of Making victory condition (my first such win). I thought it was a bit too easy. My first reaction was: the Spell of Making tech is too early and it should be an end of game tech. After thinking about it for a while though I actually agreed that it is probably better it's not the very last tech as it gives another different way of victory for the players that want to pursue it. However as it stands, the spell of making victory condition a bit too easy because of the following:
The AI players don't realize you're about to win the game. Every time you build one of the towers required for the spell of making, your opponents should get a notification (I don't know if they do) and you should get bad and progressively worse diplomatic penalties from every opponent you already met. By the time you complete all 4 towers, it should pretty much be instant war declaration from everyone you met with no possibility of making peace. Also, I didn't check if this is in the game or not but any time you lose one of the towers required for the spell of making, the spell of making you are casting should be interrupted so one way to stop a player from casting the spell should be capturing/razing a tower city she owns.
Now even with all this, stopping spell of making may still not be possible. You can rush build the towers very easily in a few turns if you have a lot money and 10 turns is a very short amount of time to cast the spell. No one may be able to stop you in time even they are vastly more powerful than you. So, I also think a combination of increasing costs of towers, casting cost and time of spell of making may be necessary.
In my game last night, before I started casting the spell of making I was at war with Magnar and Yithril. After I started casting the spell of making, I actually paid them off to make peace (95 gold and 114 gold or something) even though they hated me. That shouldn't be possible at all when I am less than 10 turns of winning the game.
What do you all think?
It seems odd that I can have that many, I really think the Towers should be Wonders--one per world. Once they get built than keeping them would also be part of the fun. Or if you want a particular one that has already been built you would to conquer the city.
If you really want to make the towers difficult, create a quest that has an item each one of them needs to be built in the first place. The quests could be activated when you research the towers in the tech tree. That way if you want to go that route you need to go get the pieces. Perhaps, some type of totem or gem that is the focal point of each tower.
****update****
In my final push to defeat the Kraxis, I came across another city that has a Tower of the Witch. I do not know if the Kraxis built another one, or this they took this one over previously, but now I have four Towers of the Witch. Seems even more silly than before.
I didn't read all of these posts, so I apologize if someone else said this.
While the costs of building the towers is high, they give off a reward for building in terms of mana of a particular color. If you instead took away one mana of that color for each tower ( or perhaps two? ), it would make amassing the mana required to cast the spell more difficult. In addition, if you lose the colored mana source supplying that tower, it ceases to function and the spell of making casting time is reset to zero. As others have mentioned, it should make the entire world aggro against you to the point of all empire declaring war immediately and any kingdom with less than close relations falling to war as well.
One way to modify SoM is not concerning towers at all. The towers do add up spell effectiveness more or less, and thus should be open to anyone, and not restricted with wolrd wonder ideology.
But the spell itself could be modified. It could have vast initial cost (5000 mana or even more) and then it consumes all your "mana income" for the time it's being casted. The more surplus mana you have got, the faster the spell also finishes. For example, if decided it would need 2000 mana income in addition to initial cast a player having +200 mana each turn would get it in 10 turns. Notice also, that it draws all the mana income so upkeeping existing enhancements one needs to pile up existing mana since otherwise they would end up mana pool showing out.
The actual numbers required is more of balancing the mechanics.
The problem is that the Towers give you an advantage for conquest. There is a reason I can only build one; however, I still have amassed four of them now. I think the Towers are more of a World Wonder ideology than the Merchant Bazaar or Great Mill. The Towers are magical and could easily be explained why there is only one of the tem. The Great Mill, is just a big Mill--anybody could copy it. Don't get me wrong, I am fine with the Great Mill being a World Wonder, and I am fine with the methodolgy of the World Wonders (onced queued they are the only one). But making the Towers wonders would really add something to the process of completely the Spell of Making.
It was so easy that I got the victory by mistake. Seriously, I didn't even really know it was a victory condition until after the fact. The game is really cool, it is just things like this that make it very annoying. It almost reminds me of FFH2, there were some towers you could build in that mod which were a victory condition. However, in that game(mod) when you got close, all other AI's would instantly go to war with you and there was a game counter that let you know that victory was imminent...
Had I known that it was a victory, I would not have cast the spell. Also, when I did realize, there was then no way to stop my Sovereign from casting it...I saw a little red "x" over the head, but no way to cancel the action of casting...
Wow, I cannot say that I have encountered this, but I cannot say that I am surprised either by it...
Same issue in the Legendary Heroes beta. Spell of Making is too easy to achieve. Even with "Epic" research times setting it's an easiest and fastest way to win.
Yeah, I just turn it off as well. The free shard power from the towers is more than good enough to justify building them.
Spell of making isn't as easy as it used to be. Once you start building the towers, you get a -9 relations modifier, and everyone hates you.
Although, I've seen the AI build all 4 towers but not bother to cast the SOM too, so I think that should be fixed to increase the challenge.
...and besides, sometimes after a long game, when you don't feel like attacking dozens of cities to win a conquest victory, it's a nice way to "quickly" end the game.
The -9 does not change much, especially with the change to accumulative diplomacy modifiers - it simply takes too long to degrade the accumulated goodwill to have any effect.
This victory condition is so easy it can be done in about 100 turns on ridiculous... Definitely needs a major nerf: increase in tech requirement, even if it branches off before the end of the tech tree, and increase in mana requirement (it's way too cheap a spell, especiallly compared to other spells: should be raised more than 10-fold to at least 5000 mana). The towers are cheap too, they hardly cost more than a regular building...
And to quickly end a won domination game, there's already an easy way: diplomacy. Since the AI all suck up to the big guy in town, they will more than gladly become allies.
Well then, I guess I'm just not very neighborly.
Yes, the mana cost should be increased, but 5,000 IMO, is too much.
The AIs are usually very friendly in the first 100 turns, and only tend to become sour after that. Plus if you're strong, they will like you even more
5000 mana is fairly quick to accumulate with a 6 to 8 city empire, which is fairly easy on medium and large map sizes. Perhaps the mana requirement should increase with map size ? And with difficulty level (only for the player) ?
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