Others have suggested moving it later in the magic tech tree, and I tend to agree.  As far as I know, you are the first to suggest moving the tower of the sword and the tower of the padars to the other trees.  I'll have to think about that.

A victory type which make you automaticly win the game after you builded some achievements our did tech research is kind of standard for games these day. You won't find a 4x game which doesn't have this kind of victory, so I think some players will even expect a victory condition like that. So you can't really remove that option completely, especially since there are still players who don't play very war focused (even if this is usually the easiest way to win). That's why this kind of victory is usually made very late game, to give less agressive players a doable victory type.

Anyway I don't dislike the idea of some magical superweapons.

I have suggested changes the population points at which your cities level up to the adjusted following:

100 pop - lvl 2 city
200 pop - lvl 3 city
300 pop - lvl 4 city
400 pop - lvl 5 city

add the following:

500 pop - lvl 6 city - gains you the core building of the Spell of Making Victory.

The lvl 6 cities open to any of your cities, and grants the city the following ability: "you can now build Spell of Making Towers in this city"

Thus, you would need at least 1 lvl 6 city in order to persue a Spell of Making victory. Note that this change would make the achievement of this victory type harder as you would need to focus on city growth in at least one city in addition to technology research.

I would also propose that reaching lvl 6 status should result in a cutscene.

I would also propose that reaching lvl 6 status should change the City into a Citadel. (for astetical reasons)

Sounds like a bug. You should report this.

I've played a couple of games on huge maps where Pariden (in one) and Oracle whatever-her-name is started building the towers before I'd explored far enough to find them.  Since then I've been turning off the spell of mastery victory.

spell of making shoud be alot earlie and provide magical superweapon to clean towns, wipe armies and be manifestation of ultimate power, but not just gg no re

current implementation is ugly and only option is to disable it.

You could just remove the shard bonuses from the different towers and then still require one of each of the base elemental shards ignoring life/death shards to be able to cast the spell as well as making it require the sov caster be a certain level to cast such as say 11 thus making it a focus to not only got out and get the shards but also level your sov so that they are strong enough to cast the spell.  Since the AI already levels their sov pretty well already it wouldn't affect them so much as getting the shards.  Since most AI's highly value shards once they had all 4 they have the ability to cast the spell, that and the forge of the overlords which would still be needed in addition to the shards..

Another topic with a thread per week for it.

I disagree. I don't want to waste my time clicking next turn waiting my targetted city to grow to next level especially since it will take forever. SoM is not so much about growing, but about controlling magic.

I'd rather have to control a wildland to harvest magic power from it (putting back wildland into the gameplay). But as others have already pointed out, SoM or whatever you want to call scientific victory is a builder's way. Right now it's unfun and unbalanced.

Totally agree on the cutscene (no hope for it though). As you finish your 3 Towers/Forge of the Overlord everyone who is not an ally should go hostile/attack you.

I disagree that this is a problem. It's a standard in nowadays 4x games that there is at least one possible victory, which doesn't need interaction with other factions and can be done in isolation (for someone who might enjoy that). But those victorys are without exception very late game, a military victory usually will be faster.

The point is, that a victory by achievement is allready competative: Whoever spends most resources into research will win. Not the mage with most resources or the most shards not the most powerfull leader will achieve Mastery over the Arts if Magic, but the most wise one will do so. There are still different ways to achieve that: Build less military units, which will make you vulnarable, which is a risk; Build more research buildings than other faction, which actually does mean aggressive expansion; Or by having more research treaties with other faction. Concentration on the resource science isn't that easy as it sounds.

But such a victory has to be late game or even end game. Winning this way without having seen most of the research tree is very wrong and no fun. I really think you should research all three trees allmost until the end, before you can achieve Spell of Making victory.

(By the way I am sorry for my bad english, I am not a native english speaker. I hope people do understand what I mean.)

Yeah, Spell of Making has been my go to VC, so it's probably a little too easy as it stands.  Moving it down the tech tree might be a start.

In one of my recent playtests, I saw three empires/kingdoms start building towers before I had the relevant tech, some of which had the third tower online before I built my first tower.  I was able to get all four towers built and cast Spell Of Making before they could, which I'm still scratching my head about.  Is the AI not 'seeing' this VC correctly?

I sort of agree with the splitting up the towers between several techs idea, or at least the requirements for spell of making.

The three towers, by the nature of their bonuses, are inherently magical.  So they probably should remain in the magic tree, OR, be merged into a single tower with upgrades: i.e. bonuses to 2 elements, upgrade 3 elements, and then upgrade to 4 elements for the 'Full Monty' Tower.  As there are 4 towers, 3 prerequisite to the fourth, I actually like the idea of having 4 techs for the 4 towers.

I do like the multiple towers though, but for a different reason than you might think.  Their footprint when placing them makes them nice for expanding your city borders next to an improvment (shard, stables, etc.), so they can be incorporated within the city borders.

The other two 'structures/requirements' for Spell of Making could be put in other trees.  The question is: 'What non-magical requirements make sense for a Spell of Making?"

A suggestion might be 4 techs in Magic (one for each element) with the final required tower to merge their effects requiring some civ tech, perhaps involving a combination of crystal and metalworking or somesuch.  I can't think of a good reason to include a warfare tech, but perhaps others here might have thoughs on this/which tech might be relevant to such a pursuit.

This is definitely a VC that needs further discussion and tweaking.

Some thoughts on how to make spell of making more competitive:

1. Require player casting it to have at least 50% of the shards on the map, or allied with factions, giving his alliance that amount.  If that seems too high, put in a lower shard percentage.   Casting spell of making imo, should at least force you to not be turtled in 2-3 cities.

2. Each tower must be built in a separate city, and each tower will have a corresponding shard requirement (life /death, earth, fire, water) which must be in the cities resource.

3. The spell can be interrupted in one of several ways: killing the sovereign, capturing/destroying a city with any of the towers, or destroying the towers themselves via destroy improvement spell (earthquake), or causing the player to lose control of more than 50% of the maps shards.  

4. All non-allied factions will hostile at the start of construction of the third tower.  Towers cannot be rushed. 

I really don't think spell of making should be a tech race divorced from combat / map control -- that's what makes it so uncompetitive now.  It currently can be completed by a faction long before you've made any contact with them.  And well before you can send your armies to the other side of a gigantic map.  Map presence at least ensure the the ability of the player to be attacked on multiple fronts.

If its moved to late game tech, do you really want 5-10 factions all trying to cast spell of making, having to run around and bash every single one of them every few turns?  Forcing you into constant war with allies and enemies alike.  Better to have some dominance criteria to prevent everyone trying to constantly cast it.  Perhaps its 50% shard control through alliances, perhaps its 33% and more than 1 player can cast it...But I don't think everyone with the tech should be able to turtle up and get a chance to declare victory, when other players may control more of the map, more shards, and be more technologically advanced, etc.