Ideas for global mayhem magic » Forum Post by the Gorgon

The closest I can think of for spells like these would be the sinking of Atlantis or the Searing from Guild Wars. Oh, and the Cataclysm from this game

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Yep but not liked too much by the community.

I think there should be many devastating spells, that harm most but not all aspects of the game. E.g your silver death: killing most living things can be a good thing if you make a habit of animating corpses as troops, or do not use living troops (e.g. animated stone creatures: Golems, Gargoyles)

Why else would anyone cast spell like that

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See, I always LOVED in Master of Magic, casting things like "Armageddon" and watch as all the AI players start sweating. It was so fun and rewarding to get off, but you were suddently at war with everybody in the universe. It certainly isn't that balanced for multiplayer, but was good for top-tier gameplay against AI. In fact, I feel that AI players should be able to (and would) cast such spells to make it important to force your hand and attack one.

That being said, depending on how close to Master of Magic this is, Armageddon should really make a come-back (even if only when "powerful magic" is turned on in the map settings).

Other great spells are things like "just cause" which seems to make everybody love you for no reason. Or "wind mastery" which lets you effect all the wind effecting things (sails and stuff) for you and against others.

ok, now for some ideas that aren’t directly copied out of master of magic...

Electromagnetic eradication > stops all natural electric movement. Electric spells are halved in power and electronic devices are rendered unusable. Random electrical storms would appear around the world.

Zombie master > after every battle that doesn’t already have somebody raising dead from, a zombie unit would appear (appropriate to the number of deaths) next to the battle site. The zombies would then either A: wonder around as neutral undead or B: walk towards the caster’s tower at which point when they reached the caster’s tower they would turn into zombies under the caster’s control.

Magic Void > all magic is stopped (including the caster’s) and the only spells that can be cast by anyone would be directed towards dispelling the magic void spell.

Dimensional sundering > the barrier between worlds is being torn apart, rifts/gateways/portals between the game worlds would open and close randomly around the world. Occasionally some spawn from the abyss would emerge from them as a neutral monster to attack nearby towns.

Dark haze .> global clouding of the sun/sky/torch light. It would become dark and hard to see. Reduces all unit (friend and foe) without true sight or something vision through fog of war.

Angelic (or demonic) domininion >> Spell of Mastery replacement (alternative to the spell of mastery that is basically game ending) > throngs and throngs of angels (or devils) appear all around both worlds under the caster’s control. Whatever deity or element is completely under the caster’s control and the hunt begins. With near un-surmountable regenerating forces appearing everywhere it becomes basically a race to take over the world before the other players can somehow break the spell or banish the caster to limbo.

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Spells this powerful should be a double-edged sword. Effective, yes, but inherently risky to the caster. Sure, you could call down meteors from beyond the sky, but how good is your aim, really? Maybe you can unlock the waters of the deep to flood the land, but some of that beachfront property is yours, too.

My suggestion: A spell that greatly enrages the beasts, causing them to become much more powerful and aggressive. Prepare your own defenses ahead of time, and you can watch as your enemies are viciously devoured by fuzzy bunnies.

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I think that if you included spells powerful enough to affect the whole world, you should not be immune to the effects of your own spells. You would have to have to ensure that you were the best prepared player to take advantage of the spells effects.

For example, having an entirely undead army before casting a spell that puts every living thing to sleep.

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certainly. Things like Arrmagedon are double edged swords. volcanos hurt you too. Random zombies hurt the user as much as anybody. The vortexes only really help if you are prepared for it (again, possible neutral baddie spawn)

I like random meteor falling or fire storms. Better chance of hitting somebody else in a big game, but you have risk yourself.

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How about a "War Between the Heavens" type of spell? Since it seems like we'll have various types of good and bad aligned civilizations, make this spell so that large armies of devils and angel like beings burst forth from various nodes (sky for angels, ground for devils, or surface for angels and underground for devils). These armies attack each other and towns/troops of the opposite alignment. Once the war is won (all of the nodes spawning either the angels or devils are taken), then the armies disappear, however a large bonus is conferred to nations of the winning alignment.

A benefit here is that players of every type can play a direct role in how this plays out, who wins, and how this spell affects them.

+1

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Quoting lwarmonger,

reply 7

How about a "War Between the Heavens" type of spell? Since it seems like we'll have various types of good and bad aligned civilizations, make this spell so that large armies of devils and angel like beings burst forth from various nodes (sky for angels, ground for devils, or surface for angels and underground for devils). These armies attack each other and towns/troops of the opposite alignment. Once the war is won (all of the nodes spawning either the angels or devils are taken), then the armies disappear, however a large bonus is conferred to nations of the winning alignment.

A benefit here is that players of every type can play a direct role in how this plays out, who wins, and how this spell affects them.

This could also be natural event or something.

I think it would be key if players are then rewarded for their involvement in the war. World wars that are started and everybody is encouraged to pick a side (rather than just sit there and watch it happen) are always really fun. It forces conflict that doesn't nessicarily rush turtle players bybring the conflict between players to bare early, but still will let them compete indirectly for the compeditive types.

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Wormwood (the star that falls in Revelations and turns the waters "bitter"): A meteor falls, creating a massive creator and disturbed monsters come out from the underground. The meteor itself might have a Cloverfield type titan, or maybe just little green psions.

Pale Horse, Pale Rider: The reaper rides out, spreading a disease in which corpses have a % chance to rise as undead. The disease might act slow enough as to force players to decide to continue trade with an infected area at risk of spreading the contagion as it blooms in the flesh. At higher levels perhaps Death could ride a dracoliche instead of a horse.

World Tree: A physical axis mundi that empowers Life magic while drawing on Elemental sorcery - as a tree gains strength from sun (fire), soil (earth), air and rain (water). The aura of life magic also increases breeding and crop production, and could in theory cause an influx of Beasts that lie in its radius of influence.

Flight of Dragons: As in the cartoon classic, calls dragons from around the world to serve in your legions.

Gate Storm: Rainbow Bridges appear randomly, linking varied areas of the map via portals. Could completely change allies and enemies by shifting who is actually closer to you.

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Eternal darkness:

The world becomes shrouded in darkness. The morale of troops are lowered, incomes are lowered, creatures of the night roam the world and accuracy of ranged units gets lowered. Only half of the caravans will arrive in the other city.

Awaken Titan:

Over a hundred years ago, the world of Elemental was nearly destroyed by the powers that strove across the world like titans. In their quest for dominance, they unleashed utter devastation on the land, nearly wiping out all life.
Now, a channeler thinks he can muster enough power to enslave a titan, binding it to his power. Will it work or will the titan be to powerful for the channeler to handle?

Using this power requires a lot of Essence and the Titan will continue to drain your essence until it is depleted, when that happens, the titan breaks free from the grip of the channeler and will attack everything. Titans are incredibly powerful creatures that grow in power when given essence.

Wild growth:

Everywhere, forests are growing, slowly spreading over the whole world. Farms will produce a lot of products, but there's also a negative side to this spell: The trees become aggresive towards the sentient beings, eventually devouring the world.

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Not exactly game ending here... but could be an interesting one...

Conjure Antimatter - Creates one jar of magicly contained antimatter, an item which can be given to a hero. On death, the hero drops the jar, shattering it and causing a MASSIVE antimatter explosion with a few mile radius.

Kinda sci-fi ish, but could be made to work; after all what is stopping a powerful mage from pulling a bit of antimatter from some paralell universe

Oh, and at least one of The Fallen factions needs to have an "EVIL BUNNIES OF DOOM" spell, which turns all the little harmless creatures into huge abominations of nature "In tonights news, another 20 foot sheep attacked the small town of Farmersville, killing 8 locals and wounding 19 others. No information is available at this time as to the cause of these strange attacks.

A 'Global Warming' fire/air spell might be a good one... Melts all ice, raises sea levels destroying coastal towns and cities, changes weather patterns across the map causing many farmlands to become arid and many formerly cold areas to become farmable land.

A life/water spell, 'Algea blooms,' which blocks all freshwater to boats, halting transportation use of any rivers for a certain amount of time.

A water/earth spell, 'Rust,' which makes iron weapons do 10% of their normal damage and makes iron armor protect for only 50% of its normal protection.

A water/earth spell, 'Mudslide,' which lets you destory a mountain near a city and destroy a large portion of that city as well.

A very catastrophic life spell: 'Frisky,' which makes population growth increase by.. say... 10000%? Those who were not prepared would quickly find out the dangers of overpopulation. Many would starve to death, die of disease due to cramped quarters, increased crime and other civil unrest, ect, if the proper infrastructure was not built to prevent the drastic overpopulation which would result. This effect would end after a certain amount of time.

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woah, frisky is an idea I hadn't considered. I can just see a pour soul struggling to get their food production under control when that spell goes off and suddently all their towns revolt and armies disband. Thats pretty awesome!

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The trick to using magic effectively is by thinking of the most efficient means of doing something... Sure you could use fire to burn a bunch of peasants in one big incendiary pillar... But what would be MUCH more efficient would be to simply conjure a little bit of air straight into each soldier's brain. As long as you can conjure that cubic inch of air within an area of about a cubic foot accurately, it shouldn't be very difficult at all. That sort of accuracy is less than the accuracy required to do many of the other things mentioned here, such as causing a meteor to crash into the enemy territory.

With magic there are many routes to any given means... I hope they use this philosophy in the game, and let us use our imagination a bit more than most games, where you have your little toolbar of 20-30 spells and thats it.

If I wanted to stop my enemies for making use of a river for transporting goods and troops, I can think of many ways of stopping them with magic.
1. Clog the river with plant matter, as I wrote above.
2. Use fire near the source of the river to either boil off all the water before it turns into a river, or heat it up so much it cannot be used for trasportation
3. Make the magical equivalent of greek fire, and spread it over an area of the river, keeping all boats from passing that area.
4. Freeze the river.
5. Divert the river away from the enemy settlements.
6. Make the river acidic.
7. Make the river salty so noone can drink its water, making transport much more difficult due to the need to store water, and likely cutting off the river settlements from fresh water as it dispersed through the water table.
8. Create a magical golem tasked with destroying anything which enters the water.
9. Flood the river, making it to dangerous for travel and wiping out enemy settlements.
It all depends on creativity... As a general rule, the more complex a system is, the larger the variety of ways it can be destroyed by magic.

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Apocalyptic game enders don't have to be enchantment spells -

'Guardian of Caer Bannog' - Conjures the epic creature.

Unprepared opponents will not stand a chance. Watch out for the teeth!

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"That rabbit's dynamite!"

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Quoting alway,

reply 13

The trick to using magic effectively is by thinking of the most efficient means of doing something... Sure you could use fire to burn a bunch of peasants in one big incendiary pillar... But what would be MUCH more efficient would be to simply conjure a little bit of air straight into each soldier's brain. As long as you can conjure that cubic inch of air within an area of about a cubic foot accurately, it shouldn't be very difficult at all. That sort of accuracy is less than the accuracy required to do many of the other things mentioned here, such as causing a meteor to crash into the enemy territory.

I think you are putting a little too much thought into it if you are considering what is more accurate. Sure, teleporting a small part of someone's brain out of their skull is likely much easier to do than teleporting a meteor into earth's orbit from the kieper belt... But that isn't the point. Its about doing something in the flashiest method possible. As part of a video game I could watch a wizard cast mass-brain-mutilate and scramble everybodies brain, and then laugh as they slump to the ground.... or I could watch a wizard cast meteor, project himself into space, then ride a small moon into the planet. Well, I want to see the cosmic collision of course. So what if its inefficient, its flashy! Now if both abilities were in the game and the brain-scramble-the-whole-world cost less.... I would probebly do that because I'm conservitive with resources. but then it isn't as fun because I have no reason to crash a moon.

I like some of your ideas for spells. Freezing rivers or boiling all the water out of a lake is a pretty interesting idea. It would hurt the economy of a city for sure. It could be an alturnative to the "corruption" spell from MoM.

This game is diffinatly not going to have a dinky little 10-20 spell toolbar (unless its the quick-access toolbar that only shows your most commonly used spells). If it wants to be compared to MoM (which Brad Wardell did himself) then its going to have to rival the mountain of spells that is the MoM spellbook.

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Solam

Join Date 03/2007

+16

The trick to using magic effectively is by thinking of the most efficient means of doing something... Sure you could use fire to burn a bunch of peasants in one big incendiary pillar... But what would be MUCH more efficient would be to simply conjure a little bit of air straight into each soldier's brain. As long as you can conjure that cubic inch of air within an area of about a cubic foot accurately, it shouldn't be very difficult at all. That sort of accuracy is less than the accuracy required to do many of the other things mentioned here, such as causing a meteor to crash into the enemy territory.

With magic there are many routes to any given means... I hope they use this philosophy in the game, and let us use our imagination a bit more than most games, where you have your little toolbar of 20-30 spells and thats it.

If I wanted to stop my enemies for making use of a river for transporting goods and troops, I can think of many ways of stopping them with magic.

1. Clog the river with plant matter, as I wrote above.

2. Use fire near the source of the river to either boil off all the water before it turns into a river, or heat it up so much it cannot be used for trasportation

3. Make the magical equivalent of greek fire, and spread it over an area of the river, keeping all boats from passing that area.

4. Freeze the river.

5. Divert the river away from the enemy settlements.

6. Make the river acidic.

7. Make the river salty so noone can drink its water, making transport much more difficult due to the need to store water, and likely cutting off the river settlements from fresh water as it dispersed through the water table.

8. Create a magical golem tasked with destroying anything which enters the water.

9. Flood the river, making it to dangerous for travel and wiping out enemy settlements.

It all depends on creativity... As a general rule, the more complex a system is, the larger the variety of ways it can be destroyed by magic.

Makes me think of Zedd ion the Sword of truth series when he talked about the Albinos Mosquitos. You send a few of those in a city and let the mahem begin. They bite you and yuou die of the plague Not much magic there but just enough. I love your ideas.

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Quoting landisaurus,

reply 16

I think you are putting a little too much thought into it if you are considering what is more accurate. Sure, teleporting a small part of someone's brain out of their skull is likely much easier to do than teleporting a meteor into earth's orbit from the kieper belt... But that isn't the point. Its about doing something in the flashiest method possible. As part of a video game I could watch a wizard cast mass-brain-mutilate and scramble everybodies brain, and then laugh as they slump to the ground.... or I could watch a wizard cast meteor, project himself into space, then ride a small moon into the planet. Well, I want to see the cosmic collision of course. So what if its inefficient, its flashy! Now if both abilities were in the game and the brain-scramble-the-whole-world cost less.... I would probebly do that because I'm conservitive with resources. but then it isn't as fun because I have no reason to crash a moon.

The point is, there are many methods to an end The more methods, the more deep the gameplay will get... One thing I would like to see is spells which have multiple effects based on what you targeted. So a 'freeze' spell if targeting infantry might slow that group of infantry's movement by 75%. If used on a body of water, that body of water freezes. I also would like them to give us nothing but the name of the spell, if not even less, to figure out what it does on our own. And it would be fun to have a few funny and unexpected results, something like using volcano on an infantry instead of terrain and he gets zits

If they could do procedural spell effects, that would be great, although harder to make work than breeding a deer with a kangaroo... They could give you a few base spells with effects tied into them, then let you mix em together, increase potencies, ect, changing the effects and mana cost. There could also be additional base spells you could discover/research/gain from item, and some additional spells which could be learned but not combined with other spells. A procedural spell system would let you make fun spells such as one which uses a combination of 2 (hypothetical) spells, a strong fire spell and a necromancy-type spell, which burns the targeted units before then raising up any that died as undead soldiers of the caster. Increasing spell potencies would require increased mana, and thus make uber powerful spells somewhat rare.

But, if they use an ordinary spellbook as is likely, I at least hope they give many of the spells more than one use.

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Bad Moon Rising: What if a low altitude moon appears in the sky and colors the night and day sky? Would it affect menstrual cycles and thus births? Would it cause people to go mad and increase violent crimes and rebellions? Would lycanthropes and possibly undead be empowered to walk in the day time?

Mana Famine: An entire area goes into "mana debt" - any spell cast in this area can help lower the deficit of mana, or a channeler can spend an inordinate amount of mana to get the area out of debt.

Mana Storms: Fire Mana Storms mean rain of fire, geysers of magma, forest fires. Air Mana Storms mean tornadoes, hurricanes, erratic weather and poisonous vapors. Earth Mana Storms mean mountain ranges rising/falling, earth quakes, and hail of stones. Water Mana Storms mean floods/droughts, blizzards and tsunamis. Life Mana Storms means "Friskiness", or sudden rise in infant mortality, or possible rise in vermin/Beasts.

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Great wasting : entire world starts to convert to wasteland. wasteland space provides no food and reduces wealth that doesn't directly come from mined ore. It has a chance to destroy game life.

Death and Decay : Rots a large segmant of land (similar to great wasting, but more specific to a particular radius)

Oceanic destruction: The seas boil away leaving the entire map as land. forest burn, and volcanos erupt.

terra submersion: The oceans flood the world leaving nothing but cities that have also been enchanted onto floating islands. Mountains might become island tiles.

Floating landmass: Turns a tile or group of tiles into a small floating continent. If on the ocean edge it can break off and slowly (like 1 space every two turns or something) float around the map. If terra submersion is cast, they remain afloat.

Geographic sundering: Valleys and mountains form all over the globe. Great cracks appear in the planets surface that reach for miles (and fill with water and steam if crossing a large body of water). The planets geography is pretty much rearraged.

Planer detachment: The planes are not just help apart, but completely pulled from their connection to the other. Communication to the planes tha channelers are not currently on drains a significant amount of mana ( mana is spent per "user action" )

Planer connection: Pulls the worlds back together by rejoining the flows of magic between them. Counteres planer detachment.

Planer collision: The plans are pushed together. The map(s) are merged and everything on either plan has a chance of being destroyed. The map would be rebuilt to be the closest common factor between the previously seperate planes. Almost all populations are destroyed with a small chance that city structures (or even the cities themselves) remain standing. Situations where this isn't possible (like a mountain phases onto a city, and the mountain comes out as the dominant feature by chance) would have nothing or cave-ruins. Wizard towers or other joining portals/gateways would explode as their magic collapses ontop of themselves (scorching nearby hexes) and random enviromental effects appear all over Elemental. Cataclysms (or whatever they are) might then replace the joining portal/gateways that were sence destroyed.

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Wow. I can see a large number of empires frantically casting "floating land mass" as espionage informs them that another empire is getting close to "terra submersion." I like the ideas, but I also think that there should be something that other nations can do to mitigate the effects of some of the uber spells and influence the way in which those spells effect their particular empire. It would be very frustrating to have spent a great deal of time building an empire only to see it (along with the rest of the world) destroyed without anyway to influence the outcome. Something as simple as a dome of protection or something to protect an area of land from hostile magic.

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Another thing to keep in mind when you consider these effects: If you are playing a huge game, these spells will be fairly available by early-mid game relative to the amount of total time it will take to play. If when fighting one AI and the world is suddenly utterly destroyed, that could make it a real pain for the rest of the game. As in unplayable. The terra submersion is a good example of this. Even if the water itself isnt permanent, and goes down, it has still wiped out about 99% of the cities on the map, probably eliminating entire civilizations. A game as you would hope would go like this:
1. Base building
2. Raise Army
3. Conquest
4. Eventually win

But with a single spell like terra submersion, it would change to:
1. Base Building
2. Raise Army
3. terra submersion is cast by AI
4. Base building
5. Raise army
6. Conquest
7. Eventual win

Spells which destroy much of all players cities would be bad, since it would require players to essentially go back to the first two steps, rebuilding their base and raising a new army. Some would probably be eliminated instantly.

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I agree with having easy simple spells that might stop or weaken its effects. Something like "floating landmass" you might be able to cast on your few big cities, but you wouldn't be able to save everything (without spending a redicously high amount of resources) unless you had plenty of time to prepare. The caster could prepare, and probebly even boost his naval forces in ready. Those not paying close attention would be crushed (or at least drowned). This would make the super-spells both defeatable and crazy powerful. It would make spying or detect magic more useful and it would seriously change the face of the planet. I think more spell ideas like this should exist.

I see most powerful spells like this requiring something of a counterspell or conjunction. When I played Master of Magic back in the day I was alway sad because spells like Disjunction mostly sat in my spell book and did nothing. so it would force it to be ok.

I am also a fan of having certain super-power spells able to be turned off too. So in situations where a mass-destruction spell would seriously hamper the game (comp stomps where nobody likes espianoge and the AI seems to always get to it before a player does) then it can be turned off.

(honestly, I just want to have a floating island feature. I think the concept is cool and it doesn't appear in enough actual games in the form of something other than a giant turtle. Here it would literally be the force of magic keeping an island afloat in the oceans.)

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We're talking massive, global mayhem?

Starfire
As the sky catches fire, meteor burning flames comes crashing down through the atmosphere towards a huge game area, covering an enormous amount of land (or sea). All cities are basicly Alpha-Centauri-nuked, forests catches fires and are burnt to crisps, roads are destroyed, and thousands upon thousands, possibly millions, of people are incinerated. Entire armies are potentially destroyed; possibly even heroes if they suffer a direct hit. Any city that are struck directly by a stray ember could have entire squares temporarily destroyed, or/and city improvements permanently destroyed.

Solar Draught
The sun stings an immense area (quite possibly entire empires), drying up wells, slowly baking people in a murderous, never-ending sun. Farmland & villages suffer from severe famine, forest fires could start after a prolonged duration, and grass withers into savannah and ultimately, desert. Can be counteracted at great cost. A double-edged sword if aimed poorly. Can be protected against in areas (cities, etc) with magic.

Nature's Call
A wide area becomes prosperous. Birth rates of all creatures (living resources such as horses, bears, unicorns or chocobos increase) increase rapidly and at first exponentially (but later slowly tops off, but never ceases). Hills become teeming with life, rivers filled with fish and crops can be harvested more than once a year as yields are quadrupled.

Earthfury
A earth-based version of Starfire, with much higher material loss rather than human lives. Causes a massive earthquake. Armies in the field and such are mostly unscathed, but cities and structures crumble and mines collapse. In the aftermath; from the forests, the rivers, the canyons, the hills and all around, nature rises up in fury of this transgression, attacking any living thing (sometimes even eachother). Earthquakes may unveil (or collapse) mines.

Earthcleft
Creates a canyon. An actual canyon, that may or may not be filled with water, tearing land from land. Anything in the area of effect is lost forever. Has range restrictions (although the range is massive) and can be defended against with area-target magic shielding (including city improvements to prevent the capital or major cities from being completely destroyed). Also causes at least minor earthquakes in an area around the area of effect (where the actual canyon is created). Earthquakes may unveil (or collapse) mines.

Raise Structure
Not "global mayhem" but I want to mention it anyway. Raises structure X from the earth itself, built in materials and style appropriate to the surrounding land(s). In most cases, this would be stone & earth, but in a forest it may be entirely made out of wood, or coastland, coral. In hills or mountains, a chance for crystals. Not usable to build cities, since cities require an entire infrastructure, with people to go with it. This just raises the structure. Fortresses, Fortified mines, Node-fortification, Temples, are all possible.

Fabrics of Reality
Tears a hole in the fabric of reality, slowly, turn-by-turn, devouring everything around it. Spreads to a certain size (depending on mana spent). Permanent until dispelled. Destroys everything, permanently, leaving nothing, unless magically defended against. When dispelled, leaves nothing but fire-scorched, magic-drained, infertile land.

Mountain of a Thousand Winds
Tears a piece of land from the earth (filling the hole with water), floating it high into the air in the visage of a turned-around mountain. A city can be built on the land; Requires special equipment to have supplied by caravans, but flying creatures such as pegasi or gryphons are more likely to settle (and become resources) there, and also consider it better habitats (higher resource rate). Can be moved with concentrated use of magic, or have special improvements built in it to allow it to move, slowly, slowly, slowly. Can never leave the magical sphere of influence of the channeler (with the Channeler actually having the potential of being IN the city itself, circumventing this limitation). Can also be dispelled by a strong rivaling channeler (or the own channeler, if he wants) sending the land crashing down.

Spellplague
A violent, virulent plague spreads across the lands, feeding off magic and spirit alike, rapidly killing populations from the point of origin and outwards at an incredible rate. Can't be dispelled, but can be counteracted by having the proper improvements or throw the proper (healing/regenerating) spells. Devestates affected armies and city populations, and renders magic equipment (on armies and heroes alike) useless for the duration (if they are affected). Spreads by primarily along roads, from the point of origin, moving much slower in non-cities/non-roads & uncivilized areas. Watch how quickly the enemy can move their troops out of the cities and away from the roads.

Bear Proliferation
Turns all mount-resources (Horses, Unicorns, Chocobo, whatever) into Bears. All of them, within the Channeler's empire. Also doubles their production rate. Rawr!

___________________________________________________________________________
That's all I feel like penning at the moment, although I could probably come up with thousands of these.
BEAR CAVALRY!

+1

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I like the idea of a powerful counterspell mechanic. If you can figure out what spell an opposing channeler is preparing to cast, you should be able to counter it, preventing the spell from happening in the first place. This could work in a number of different ways:

1) When you finish casting the counterspell, it cancels the opposing channeler's spell and drains all the mana they had built up for it, and an equal amount of mana from you. The counterspell itself has no other cost associated with it, but requires an amount of time proportional to how long it would take you to cast that same spell.

2) The mana cost of the counterspell is a % of the cost of the spell you're trying to counter (maybe 50% or something), plus when you cast it, it costs the opposing channeler all the mana they've built up, and it costs you 50% of that. If this uses more mana than you have then it would prevent you from casting spells for a while afterwards.

Plus tons of other permutations... I like these two particular ones because both cost you at least as much mana as the opposition, but also make it possible for you to finish a counterspell against a channeler with a similar mana income even if you don't start on the same turn that the opposing channeler starts the spell. In addition it only weakens you and the opposing channeler, so if the spell you want to counter wouldn't affect you more than anyone else, countering it might be counterproductive!

A counterspell system like this would make for interesting choices. For example if someone else decides to cast "Terra submersion" and your empire is in the middle of a huge landmass, preventing you from preparing a large navy in advance, maybe you decide that you will be hurt more than most other empires. In this case it might be better for you to counter the spell than to let it happen. But if you're a coastal nation and already have a large standing navy, you might decide that allowing the channeler to cast Terra submersion would give you an advantage.

This would have to be balanced so that countering a spell is difficult and requires you to find out about it early on. There will always be some nations that will be at a disadvantage as a result of a major, world-altering spell, and it would be really disappointing if you're prevented from casting these spells very often.

Edit: I seriously hope that you won't be able to cast major spells immediately, regardless of how much mana you have or how high your mana income is. To begin casting a spell you should need to have the requisite mana, but the casting process should then depend on the spell and your channeler's skill. Minor spells should go into effect immediately, but major world-altering spells should take many turns.

On a different note, I also want there to be powerful global defensive magic. For example, if I'm a nature-loving, tree-hugging hippy nation, I want to be able to summon a sentient forest around my borders to slow down and weaken invaders, while giving my own troops the advantage of stealth (i.e. Fangorn forest ). I know that SD already plans for the land to evolve based on your nation's alignment, but it seems like that will just go in the direction of lush green vs. volcanic. That will probably provide some minor benefits/detriments, but I want to be able to affect my lands in bigger ways, like in my above example. I'm a big turtler - I would definitely like to be able to invest my channeler's resources into making it a difficult task for invaders to get at me.

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