Balance to World Changing Spells

Well since the sovereigns will use their own magic to "revitalize" their lands, it's seems only natural that a greater degree of control can be expected in ones own territory. And by extension a penalty for usage in enemy terrain would be logical. Since the game will contain multiplayer options, i expect it to be (or become) balanced, its the only sensible thing.

Frankly i'm more curious about the non-military use (and balance) of these spells. I mean, could it be possible to use the volcano spell to create your own version of Hawaii? Or use a river creation spell to increase trade in an otherwise land-locked city? Use a drought/raise land spell to drain/raise a lake? (as a dutchman, i hope the last one is in)

ps, what terrain deformation spells have been confirmed, i've only seen the volcano one.

I think it would really depend on the spell. I mean, unless there is some reason you might want a volcano in your land, it only makes sense that the cost is going to be based on casting it in enemy territory (althought I suppose I could see it being used to block a mountain pass...)

I think more than territory, though, cost should scale with distance from where you are casting it. If your channeler is actually in said enemies territory, and wants to raise a volcano nearby, I don't see why it being controlled by the other player comes into play at all.,,, I think that factoring that in just adds a needless level of complexity.

Well I think that makes sense LOGICALLY Denryu, i'm not sure from a gameplay/balance persepective, as you could just swoop in on their capital, with their HUGE AWESOME STACK OF KILLERS..and BAM, all gone with one spell.

Maybe not just a penalty for casting in enemy lands, but also have range modify cost?

Ive never been to fond of static limits on range, and i think if you can pull enough mana together, it should make targets that were normally far out of range of a spell, reachable.

I agree, with enough magic power one should be able to do anything.  ANYTHING!!! ...*cough*

Brad said that land modification was going to be a definite set of strategies that you could use in Elemental. He demonstrated that you could "Turtle" in your main city by raising Volcanos all around it for example and then slowly inherit all the other empires of the world by marrying off your children.

Anyways the balance to them from the presentation Brad gave on Saturday at PAX was that there was an avenue of magic research into defensive magic. You can ignore it at your own peril to focus on other things, but it is there to be researched and stop people from destroying your capitol with a volcano or other such calamity.

Though strolling up to the Black Gates of Mordor and creating Mt. Doom underneath it was a lot of fun in the Alpha build they had.

Fun once, too easy though.  Anyway, all shall be fixed in the beta.  Well, a lot anyway..

If you let an enemy Channeller get powerfull enough to raise a volcano, and let him get close enough to one of your cities to cast it on a city tile, you deserve to loose that (or part of that) city.

I would find it very strange to see the cost of such a spell be raised just because you try to cast it on a city compared to casting it on an army. The only things that should have an effect is power (if we can change that) and distance from the channeller who's casting it.

It has nothing to do with logic, but gameplay, especially since I don't see raising the volcanos, etc, being the pinnacle of magery, though I could be wrong.

I've always seen terrain-changing spells as something that should be preventable by an enemy when done in his territory.  The idea that I can be minding my own business and some other faction decides to drop a mountain or desert in the middle of my kingdom has never sat well with me.  I would propose that such an action would take multiple turns and that the player should have the opportunity to counteract the terrain change.

I'm not sure if defensive magic will be the kind of thing you can leave "on" and would defend against someone screwing with your terrain or if defense against such actions should be reactionary.  I sort of like the idea of it being reactionary because that would give the player to choose whether or not to expend energy defending against a particular attack.

Well if there's a whole tree for defensive magic I imagine there'll be area enchatments to protect from all sorts of things, I'd be cool with that as long as it wasn't too deep in (And of course as long as they could be broken)

Yeah, I think defensive magic is the way to go. I recall Black & White had something like barriers that prevented enemies from casting ANY spell in that area.

Another way may be to make such spells require casting over several turns uniterrupted. This would give an opportunity to opponents to make a mad desperate attack on you to disrupt you. You would need your own armies then to defend yourself from interruption.

I hope that the defensive magic is very deep! By that I don't mean there should be 3,281 different defensive spells to chose from, but I want the mechanic itself to be deep. I want there to be different ways of countering enemy offensive magic - blanket barriers that make it harder for enemies to cast spells over your magical domain, possibly broken down into specialized barriers intended to block certain types of spells.

And I want there to be reactionary defensive magic, like MHJeffries mentioned. I really think that the more devastating spells should take multiple turns to cast, and in that time (maybe towards the end, maybe at the start, maybe it'd depend on certain factors - maybe an awareness trait or something) you would get a warning like "Blue Player is attempting to summon a meteor shower over your lands! Would you like to set your will against his?" If you choose yes (and there would probably be parameters to set, as well) then your channeler and your opponent's engage in a battle of wills. The result of this mental struggle would depend on things like magical power, mana invested, etc. Possible results would range from completely blocking the spell to completely failing to block it, and anywhere in between.

This is an aspect of magic, or wizardry, that is completely missing in every single magic-related game I've ever played. And in my opinion it's one of the coolest. I love the mental struggles in LoTR. For example Sauron constantly, incessantly trying to see into Galadriel's thoughts (but failing completely - and in fact in doing so he allows Galadriel to see his thoughts). Actually, it'd be really cool if a successful reactionary defense has a chance to reveal something about the opponent

Another example where I think this kind of magic is done well is in the Sword of Truth series (despite its other failings). I liked how in a battle involving wizards of relatively equal ability on both sides, it wouldn't be apparent to regular soldiers that there was magic being used all around them because it would largely be countered by the other side before the effects could come to fruition. I don't want it to that extent in Elemental (although as one play-style, sure), because I want to actually see magic

I'd also like a variation on this in tactical combat, although the mechanics would obviously have to be somewhat different depending how combat actually ends up working.

I just meant you shouldn't have to research much to get basic defense enchatments from roving volcano spawning Enchanters.

In Master of Magic you can cast an overland spell called Detect Magic that lets you know what your opponents are casting and you can decide if you want to use a disjunction spell to interrupt it, a fairly simple and easy system.

As for defence, I hope there's a number of terrain altering spells to choose from, for example you can raise rocks out of the earth to create a natural barrier or wall at certain chokepoints to make sure your enemy has to pass through this area or block it off entirely. A lot of spells I'm sure are devoted to infrastructure, creating fertile lands, rivers and forests for use by your cities.

As for defense against vulcanoes I think the best way would be to simply ward an area against a certain magic school. Say you want this city and its surrounding lands protected from fire spells you cast a fire ward, the cost of the spell is proportional to the area you want to protect and when your enemy tries to raise a vulcano there it fails and your ward needs to be renewed. If your opponent is a better mage then you he might be able to raise another vulcano before you renew the ward but then you should have invested more in spell skill

Talking about reactionary defensive magic, how about spell traps that activate only when opponents cast some spell against you. Like Reflect trap. Oh boy, wouldn't the enemy channeller get the surprise of his life when that volcano spell comes bouncing right back at him.

Haha, that would be fun. I'd love it if specializing in defensive magic is viable. And by defensive magic I don't mean raising walls and stuff, I mean magic to be used as defense against other magic. This would include counter-/anti-magic, as well as things like your trap idea.

At the same time, though, it would also have to be accessible enough so that those who don't specialize in it can still make use of it. IMO, there *has* to be a way to prevent other people from doing things like casting volcanoes on your cities, provided you have the magical resources and power necessary. Specializing in defensive magic would give you more options and would make such magic more effective, but the basics would really have to be available to all.

Off course there has to be a way to counter city destroying volcanoes... I'm just against the idea that the volcano spell shouldn't be castable (or at a much higher cost) just because it's cast on a city...

If you need to research a lot to reach the volcano spell, you should also need to research about as much to be able to protect your cities completly against the volcano spell. There might be an easier to get to spell that gives partial protection, or negates some of the effect, but if I need to spend a lot of time to research a spell, my opponent shouldn't be able to counter it with a spell he got first thing in the game.

I'd suspect that the volcano in the final version isn't just a "destroy everything on Tile X" spell anyway.  Just because I can imagine far worse fire events than volcanoes, and we wouldn't want to stop the fire spell tree there.  

The final end game spells may not really have a counter though.   By that point in the game its likely thet its 'destroy them before they destroy you" with no real countering mechanic (other than direct spell counters like the spell "counter magic" or something).   I mean, using MoM as an example.  What is the counter for the Spell of Mastery?   There isn't one... when that spell starts going of you now have a timer to march your army to their fortress and kill them.  (the counter is that they can't cast overland spells without stopping their work on the spell of mastery)  

Even lesser spells like "the Great Wasting" and "Armagedon" are spells that ultimately mean that the game is going to end soon and the caster is a likely canidate for victor, and there isn't much you can do about it other than find a way to end it faster in your favor.

Volcano is certainly not an early game spell.  

Well, for a game like Armageddon or The Great Wasting, I would very much like to be able to invest a significant amount of effort into preventing or mitigating its effects within my own territory and/or against my people and armies. IMO, the only spell that shouldn't be fully counterable provided you have access to all the magical resources necessary, the power and perhaps the skill in some cases, is the Spell of Making.

Basically, if my channeler is as strong as your channeler and focuses on defensive magic to the extent that your channeler focuses on world-wrecking spells, and we have equal magical resources, then my channeler should be able to negate the effects of your world-wrecking spell in my territory and perhaps even on my troops abroad. You would still get your cake, because most people would be worked over by your spell; only the few, if any, sovereigns who focus on defensive magic would remain largely untouched by your spell's effects (besides the considerable magical resources and possibly time required to actually protect against it).

I love the idea of world-wrecking spells, but I do not love the idea of there being nothing whatsoever you can do to protect yourself from them besides conquer the world before anyone manages to cast one. Also, being able to defend against world-wrecking spells would give smaller nations an advantage over larger ones - a much smaller area would be easier and cheaper to protect against such a spell than an empire covering half the world. In this manner, world-wrecking spells would actually be able to set back someone nearly on the verge of winning by conquest to such an extent that the end is no longer in sight. Basically, it would contribute to achieving the wonderful goal of never being entirely sure what's going to happen up until the very, very end.

I much prefer the direction of counter magic/ wards and so forth than simply raising the cost of s spell because it crosses a border - even if that border is created by essence infused land. I just think most aggressive spells like volcano, although you might cast it on your own land for defensive reasons, certainly there are such spells that are intended to be cast mostly on enemy lands. So to me it doesn't make sense to increase the cost.

Logic vs gameplay - well I don't really agree with the gameplay argument as either direction they go it is always going to be a glass half empty half full dichotomy in regards to gaemplay. If they raise the price for casting on enemy lands yes you get the benefit of some protection but you also pay the cost when YOU do it. I fanything I feel that it is to much of a gift to turtlers - and I am a "snapping turtle" as GW Swicord coined the term. I just think it is a much better gameplay option to provide the ability to research spells that enhance turtling rather than a broad stroke of making the game favor the strategy.

I'm mainly hoping we'll get at least part of the magic system in before beta 2. These sorts of discussions deserve a long time to work themselves out.

Early on, I had a strong interest in seeing essence investment form meaningful connections like map awareness for imbued lands and instant communication with imbued champions. Learning that restored lands are sort of 'infectious' makes me think the devs are not interested in anything along those lines (yet?). It doesn't seem too far a leap to guess that whatever the game has by way of borders will not provide some sort of automatic defense against enemy magic.

IIRC, the magic system will be added around november, and beta 2 will start in january. (empasis on the IIRC)

I recall reading that too, although IIRC it was more like the magic system might be added around november

I'm feeling it more as an 'it will be done when it's done' kinda thing. November's not a bad shot though. Hopefully pre-Black Friday so I can get a chance to fiddle before work consumes my life, my being, and my soul.

I like the idea of a full and detailed countermagic system, with a battle of wills and magics sometimes resulting in a null result. I wouldn't want a simple 'spend X essence to counter this spell' setup, however. Although sometimes effective, it's not all that much fun. I much prefer the idea of 'weaving' spells, perhaps a mix of elements to the creation of each spell, a mix which isn't static for the spell, but unique to the caster. To counter a volcano spell, against caster A you might need to dampen the winds of essence flowing around them, but for caster B it might actually increase the potency.

It would require knowledge of your opponent and their tendencies to properly counteract their abilities in such a case. It'd be far more dangerous to try and counter an unknown in this case, giving increased credibility to something I saw elsewhere - questions about spies/scouts, and therefore intelligence.