Frogboy:
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With Magic, originally players had 5 different types of mana – life/death, earth, fire, water, air. Controlling a shard would, each turn, put mana of the appropriate type into a sort of mana bank.
So what’s the problem with that? Plenty. First, it means that the guy who sits on the shards is going to win the game. It really aggravates our biggest pet peeve in these kinds of games – the game being won in the first 10 minutes and then spending the next 2 hours going through the motions.
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So instead, your academies generate spell knowledge (spell points) which you can then spend, at any time, to learn a particular spell. Much much more fun.
The title of this post might as well be EWOM: The AVARTAR, or EWOM: Might vs Magic
Imagine the Sov is walking around the barren land after the cataclysm. He see a spider cave far far away, there is a choice for him to make now. Should him slaughter every living creature to gain experience and goodies, or should him try to improve the well-being of those spiders by introducing civilization to them AND live together in harmony? When he decide to do the latter, the spirits of this world appreciate it more; the world will try to reward him with giving him inspiration on spell research or helping him defending his domain is under siege.
This is my another attempt to bring the 'Magical empire" to EWOM. In the case above, when the SOV choose to Co-habitat with the native (still need to imbue the land with essence), the "Magic/Might gauge" is increased by 1. When a SOV choose to establish a new city the traditional TBS way, the gauge is deceased by 1.
How much Spell knowledge (Spell points) academies generate is hugely affect by this gauge. Each acadamies'output is increased by say 20% for every "
Magic/Might gauge" point you have. The more natural dwelling you've, the better spell research ability you have. The Spell point generated by academy is further increased (say by 200%) by a second gauge, a % based gauge. This % based gauge is calculated under the same principal, cohabitated native dwelling divided by settlement you currently own.
Academy is just one of the
buildings affected by both the point based and the % based Magic/Might gauge. Other buildings like a normal barrack will be able to churn out more mundane units like spearman, when the gauge is has a -ve value, and/or low % value.
If you want to build a 100% might-oriented empire, the only rational action you engage a native dwelling like a minotaur dungeon is to explore & raze it for the reward. If you want to build a 100% magical-oriented empire, you will try co-habitat by migrating some of your Fallen/human to live in the dwelling; and never build new settlement. Once you've got your first minotaur dwelling, the map will likely spawn another dungeon for you to co-habitat nearby some time later. Natural dwellings do have some limitation. For example, you can only build a maximum of 5 city improvements, while a normal city can build much more.
Both gauges are used to differentiate a magical-oriented and a might-oriented empire. The % based gauge is used to give a bonus to small but purely might or purely magic empire. The point based gauge is used to award/punish a large might/magic empire.