Mana points

from Elemental Forums

Ive been thinking about how, among all the ideas, there are two basic ways to spend mana. (talking about mana specifically, not essence)

First there is in-battle mana, which either can regenerate in-between battles.

Secondly there is mana used for everything else under the rainbow, outside of battle, which lowers your battle-mana for the duration of that turn...

basically they are the same mana, but the more mana you invest into the world map, the less you have available in battles.

the key difference is that investing mana in the worldmap, as opposed to essence, is a temporary loss to battle mana, for the rest of the turn. while essence is gone forever.

 

One possible alternative is to have essence to be used for everything outside of battle, and for mana to be everything inside of battle. However, I would like for essence spending to only be significantly important creations. Therefore, I would like for mana to be able to be spent outside of the battlefield.

Each turn your mana is completely regenerated. This mana when outside of the battle is "mana points" which has no aesthetic difference. However, mana you use outside of battle, for various things, spend your mana points (which is determined by your essence). In battle, your max-mana is manapoints - spent manapoints.

A simple diagram would be that each turn you get X mana. if you spend Y mana outside of battle, every battle during that turn you can use X-Y mana. This is the system I prefer, as its simpler, and each battle refills your mana up to the X-Y mark. However if you wanted no mana recharge between battles, or partial mana recharge between battles, the maximum possible is X-Y.

Lets say you have 200 mana at the start of each turn, due to your essence. Every battle during that turn you would have 200 mana to spend, however you wanted. However, if you used mana to create some special units, or bless the crops, or do a global ritual, or something, then u have lets say 150 mana left for the turn. Then during battles you could only use 150 mana. This assumes a complete regeneration of battle mana after the completion of a battle. While perhaps not the current trend of thought, I think it would be better able to separate mana used inside of battle and mana used outside of battle ... and make mana used outside of battle more significant.

and in this way actual essence used would be far, far more significant than any mana-burning spell.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I might have an RTS-aversion problem here, but it makes no sense to me to consider mana spent in a tactical fight as fundamentally different from mana spent on an overland spell. But then I'm a TBS snapping turtle by nature, so I don't remember ever having a conflict between deciding I had a fat enough mana pool to go for a big overland spell in MoM and being able to keep doing what I wanted by way of intervening in combat.

If I try to forget about MoM, I still strongly dislike the idea of making essence primarily about overland magic. Unless essence becomes too easily available to be seriously distinguished from mana, it means overland magic will be too rare to be much fun. I want my sovereign's essence to determine how quickly she can turn the lands around an enemy's capital into hostile terrain, not whether it's even possible.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm with the hand here. This seems like a good way to overinflate tactical battle. Also agree with everybody that essence sghould only be used for big things: permanent things (unless the essence mechanic changes drastically to make it a renewable resource).

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

so then mana will be permentenly used up, wether overland or in-battle, until the next turn?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

so then mana will be permentenly used up, wether overland or in-battle, until the next turn?
End of quote
Not sure what you mean. Mana should deplete, and you shouldn't be able to "deficit spend" on it (or maybe you could, if you sacrifice something else important like HP or attack power, but generally no). It should regenrate at a set rate every turn depending on the number of shards you control, stats, and other factors (well, maybe if your regeneration rate is really low you won't get a mana point every turn, but pretty much.)

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

ok ... cause I was thinking that say, you have essense x 10 mana, spells are mana costly, and you regain mana after every turn. As in ... gain 100% of your mana back every turn.

Although ... I suppose if 1 point of mana turns out to be Rather powerful, and the mana recharge rate per turn is rather low, then it fixes its own problems without needing an investment system + a battle mana system.

The mana points Idea I got from that Legends of Dragons Pass game, where each year you had a certain number of mana points, and the points u didn't invest in the gods you had for your battles (even though it was a vague concept and battle was very simplistic)

My assumption that u simply got full mana on a regular basis led me to the "Duel" idea, where two generals/channelers could duel over who won a particular battle, or diplomatic negotiation ... although since Dueling is kind of separate from the rest of the game (in that there is no death, only defeat) I suppose there both combatants could start with full mana and full health/stats, and then after the duel, both are returned to their previous state.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm not certain that there is a cap to the amount of mana you can have, at least not as it's being presented here.  You get X mana each turn from your shards and can store far more than X mana, so it won't be a matter of restoring 100% of your mana every turn, you just gain X.  Battle mana will probably draw from this, but my guess is that unless you keep a high essence and sling lots of spells you will generally have plenty of mana for fighting and it will only slightly delay your mana accumulation, but you might be storing it up for a big overland spell.  I could be completely off here though, but this is the vibe I'm getting.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

for some reason I thought that you had a maximum amount of mana based on the amount of essence that you possesed. And that crystals, other than possibly helping in magical research, only determine what kind of spells you can use.

I do not recall a consensus where the amount of mana crystals owned increased mana generation, only availability of spells.

Therefore I was quite certain that the only factor determining your amount of mana was essence.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

You may be right.  I believe the only thing that has been said for sure is that you current Essence limits how much mana you can use in battle.  It sounds like it functions somewhat similar to magic skill in MoM. 

It may also be the limit on how much mana you can have, but my impression is that it's not the case.  I know that originally we were going to have separate mana pools coming from each type of shard.  We could see them in the first few betas as bars at the top of the screen until they decided to scrap that idea.  Perhaps those were intended to each be limited to our Essence, but with scrapping that idea they would probably need to re-balance the overall mana pool.

I can say I'd overall prefer the method that I think they are using.  I'd like the sov to generate a small amount of mana by himself, but not much.  Depending on how the numbers work out current Essence might actually be how much he generates without shards.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

well, in any case I would like for my theory to be implemented in any "gandalf" mode. So that someone who leaves their nation behind is not gimped in mana.