[.806][Gameplay][Suggestion] essence

I like the idea of inserting essence into objects. You bring up many good points and ideas. Have you ever considered going into the video game industry?

Thanks

i agree with most of what you'd said i propose this.

Essence is a resource. Handled like food ..... doesn't add up  

Once a certain spell or structure has been made The sovereign can add his essence to the essence pool 

Hero's can take from this pool once they are made casters (by spell or whatever) 

Hero's can increase their max essence by lvl'ing up 

when citys get fragments and/or special resources they can add to the pool. 

In addition much in spirit of the story of the game i think that if you can use essence to cure the land you should be able to use a small amount of the essence of the land.

Spells or structures can be cast/built to use the land

Ex.

Magic of the Land - For every empty piece of land within a city's influence it could add x amount of essence (very small amount like .025 so that for every 40 undeveloped squares you get one essence)

And there could be spells to take the magic from the forests and the mountains, water...ect. 

Maybe even stronger spells that ruin the land for more essence.

And i love the idea of putting essence into items i have been wondering if they where going to do any MoM style weapon enchantments.

you know like flaming swords of chaotic vamparism.    .........Gota love MoM

Make essence more like magic skill points in Master of Magic. That was a very good system. Perhaps even consider that slider system between the mana, essence, and research.

I proposed something similar in this thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/386611

Basically you gain a little essence at each level depending on your Intelligence stat

I have to disagree, well only partially but still, Essence IS available on a decent level or at least can be with a bit more tweaking of numbers. There are Essence potions or whatever those are called they add .5 essence to sovereign. I've had +2 essence in 10 to 20 turns simply from errand quests. THAT means 2 fertile grounds for example. Heck, that's worth something. Think about adding that to a city with 2 more food sources, food enhancing buildings and food specialization. It's hutfest time!

Maybe I got lucky, maybe I my estimations are off, but the potential to work is there, and the idea itself works.

Keep in mind I haven't dug deep enough into mysteries of the arcane, as a matter of fact that's what I was planning for todays playthrough.

Miracles aren't something to be throwing down the wind.

Essence is meant to be a mechanism that limits the use of very powerful spells. Those can range from sovereignoforming to Frog knows what.

The Idea is to allow something very powerful but to prevent its overuse, and essence does that perfectly. (What we need, i believe, is some mana regeneration tweaking, but that's not a very qualified opinion). Spells that use essence are meant to be used with merit and care. I have my doubts that summoning for essence is right, but I don't give it a second thought that revive land is worth something permanent.

It's not the first suggestion to suck out the energy from land. Think about it. You notice a fertile ground... nah, I don't want an outpost here, but my metropolis needs a lawn...  You notice your opponent building a city in a strategic environment, haha! I'll eat his fertile ground! He should have known better not to leave it around.

I think some spells that allow to remove unclaimed resources would fit high level magic, but they shouldn't reward player with anything other than their direct sabotaging effect.

Land is not meant to revive sovereigns, sovereigns are meant to revive the land.

And, just to remind you, there are already spells to turn water and mountains into land (dunno how else you plan to get essence from them) and back and it already costs mana, and does so for a reason... Landscape is a powerful gameplay element already. Whenever from consuming it or simply holding it turning it into essence harvest would result in havoc.

We may, need/get more spells to cast than we currently can with a given level of effort dedicated to building essence, but that's just number tweaking, concept itself works.

Bottom line - Essence is meant to be as scarce as it is.

P.S. Oh, and spell power (where applicable) is already based on int, although there might be better ways to scale spell power.

Yes but now take into account the fact that you are losing casters due to loss from wars with other factions.  Now how plentiful is essence?

I fully support using essence to imbue land, objects, and heroes.  I also like the slider idea.  I believe if you utilize wisdom to determine the maximum spell power (as it is implied), this would fix the spellcasting problem.  I agree that if you want to cast, say summon minor earth elemental at a cost of 16 mana, then spending your essence to imbue things makes it nearly impossible to obtain enough mana to do so.

no don't get me wrong i agree that it should be very scarce. Think of it as just a different way to gain it I kinda think the random potions are kinda a weak way to gain it. It was more of a way to let your hero's be casters a little easier. while still limiting it. hell you would'nt notice much of a defference from the way it is now and this way intell you start to recover alot of land.

You would not keep gaining it....thats what i meant by it ...like food.

I also thought of it more of a permanent thing as to where you allocated it. at least for the hero's once you give them essence then they are channeling it and its not usable. maybe let the lord give and take a little.

And i did'nt mean anything about sucking up the land more of gaining a very very small amount (as stated) for land (not fertile land just ....green land) that you have recovered mybe more for forests if thats what kinda enchantment you cast...ect... . Like a large city might give like +3. static not per turn or anything 

I took my time to play around with magic.

That completely messed-up my head...

I was sure we can use essence to create fertile grounds... turns out we can't... BUT, we can use it to make the ground green, now that's something... or nothing... since cities can do the same at the cost of 1 pioneer.

Imbue champion looks like another waste... a separate from your own mana pool isn't worth splitting a consolidated mana pool...

Ok, I admit it, essence system is in a mess... not so much because of availability, but rather because of useless expenses.

But one CAN be a caster without putting every point into essence, that is if you don't waste it on things that aren't worth it.

Anyway, I think I have enough on my mind for a big [sug] on magic...

And I have to ask. What does that have to do with Essence? Keep your Casters safe, they have RANGED attacks for a reason.

You have Champions and Hero's to do the grunt work.

You put your currently super rare essence points into a caster, caster dies for one reason or another.  You now have to spend the rest of the game only casting low level spells.... = Not Fun.  Perhaps you may enjoy beating stuff with non magical/ casting units but i'm playing this game for the magic part.  It is after all Elemental War of magic is it not?

Now this of course is assuming that Essence is the rarity that it currently is.  I also cannot fathom the thought that the process of imbuing your essence into a character takes 1 cast for each essence.

Assuming Sovereign has 20 essence, Hero has 0.

Step 1 Cast imbue essence into Hero. Soverign -1 essence Heror +1 essence.

Step 2 wait for mana a few turns.

Rinse wash repeat to get desired essence transfer..  = Not fun

In order to cast medium level spells it takes 10 mana and you cant transfer below 10 essence or else you would no longer be able to cast the imbue essence spell which requires.....10 mana.

I think I'm in agreement with Recnelis2 here.  The essence cap (plus requiring other resources for good spells) keeps the power-level of magic horribly low, and the penalty for character-death equally horribly high.  As mentioned a few times, the death of one character will ruin your magical potential for the entire game.  I hate to compare this to Civ, but that mechanic just doesn't fit into this genre.  The only way I want to find myself suddenly powerless is if someone overwhelms my armies and conquers my cities (possibly with some superior technology or magic). 

Again, I know Essence is/seems precious in the lore, but in the game, the power-level of magic just needs to be significantly higher than it is.  Right now the cost is immense, the return is small, and the risk is huge.  For this game to really fit the idea of "War of Magic", all 3 of those factors would need to be rebalanced.  Maybe if anyone who gets essence could manifest essence increases (making the 1-essence cost bearable)?  It's just too rare/precious as it is that you're picking an expendable *anything* over truly bettering your hero character, never mind that a few extra points in strength and constitution seem like objectively superior ideas.  It takes at least 5-10 essence to get a character able to cast even the weakest spells of worth right now.

In MoM, even in FFH2, I prefer playing a reasonably strong defensive army with a purely magical offense.  In this game, I almost find myself ignoring the magical aspect because I cannot make it worth even half as much in the long-term as a good sword and a high strength/constitution.  Grab a few books to pick up some cheap enchants, then ignore magic entirely for martial.

Same way i play and i 100% agree with this statement.

Talking about hero's dying and losing their essence. In my above mentioned idea if a hero died within your boarders the essence could return to the pool. and maybe there could be an enchantment that you could cast on hero casters (could even cost a little essence) that would allow them to die outside your boarders and still retain their essence. 

Am I the only one who thinks that supplemental spells are the best around atm? I don't know about them all, but simple "enchant this, enhance that..." spells are well worth whatever effort they require. With battles being auto-resolved I focus on strategic magic and it gives more than it takes. And then there are stronger manipulations... Yum ...

1->1 essence transfer to focus fireballs just seems a bad idea atm... That part isn't balanced, but that can't be properly done without tactic battles anyway... BTW as I reckon people in general (and myself included) seem to think that it shouldn't be 1->1 mana transfer. I personally came to think that mana and essence need to be kept separately.

Agree with the 1 to 1 mana to essence ratio.  This seems off and needs reworked.

Essence NEEDS to be detached from mana. Period.  There are enough other things that Essence can do(volcanoes, imbues, super specials) that it will never be diminished in importance.

The ONLY thing that essence = mana does is make it so you have 1 and only 1 caster per side.

That is not a 'War of Magic' at all.

Recommendation: Wisdomx2 = max mana, Int = spell intensity, Essence = number of super specials your sovereign can do.  Just make is so that ONLY the sovereign can have more than 1 essence, so when you imbue a hero, they just gain the ability to cast strat/tactical spells, and NOT specials.

• Essence SHOULD be the measure of a spellcaster's casting POTENTIAL.
• Mana SHOULD be totally seperate. (MANA=GASOLINE; ESSENCE=SIZE OF ENGINE)
• A caster's essence level should never get lower, only higher (unless a stat such as int is decreased), or in the case of the Light, land is corrupted (see below).
  
• The dark side should gain essence through death (population/retainer sacrifice, absorb souls during battles, etc), while the light side gains it through life (cultivating the earth/special nature points of strong magic; size of population in a city and the healthiness of the city; etc).
• It should be easier and faster for the dark side to gain essence through these means, but the repercussions should be noticable (i.e.: population loss in a city upon sacrifice; retainer death; sovereign character becomes more and more corrupt, losing humanity the higher their essence)

• The light side should gain essence slowly and steadily from the richness of life. This would fit in well with how magic has faded since the wasting of the planet. We can imagine that the energy of life was not lost, but trapped inside the crystals. Unleashing magic taps into that energy. Using it to enrich the earth--that spell that costs essence--would be an investment. It would cost initially to invest in the revival of the land, but as the land continues to get greener and more vibrant on its own, it begins paying off small dividends of essence for the Light-side sovereign, thus slowly increasing their essence over time.

• Since this dark vs. light is a big part of the game, we need to really feel these differences through the magic system!
• As far as imbuing a retainer with the power to cast spells, this should be a sustained spell that costs the sovereign essence points as long as the spell is active (function similar to an enchantment): Also, depending on whether or not the sovereign is a light or dark magic-user, the retainer should also gain these characteristics.
• ALL LOSS OF ESSENCE should be TEMPORARY as long as the spell is active. Simple solution.

I agree with Chizz.

Its alot like what i was trying to say. Just i was only talking about the light side of things.

The light side should gain essence slowly and steadily from the richness of life. This would fit in well with how magic has faded since the wasting of the planet. We can imagine that the energy of life was not lost, but trapped inside the crystals

this is pretty much what i was trying to say about gaining essence from the land

I agree with Chizz especially with the first 2 points.

A lot more ideas presented in this post related to Essence:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/385950

-and-

https://forums.elementalgame.com/385572

Clearly there is some sentiment that Essence has yet to find its niche.  From my POV, it is a distinguishing game mechanic that has yet to be worked out well. I'll be self-indulgant  and cc: here my views on Essence:

...given the thoughts in this post, and the original theme of Essence is Life Force, why not have Essence be primarily used as a "booster shot" for the primary statistics of Strength, Intelligence, etc?  

This temporary boost would last a minimal amount of turns, but could be "dialed in" to enhance Strength from EX: 18 to 36 (18 ST + 18 Essence), etc. etc. etc.  In this fashion, the Soverign could become particularly "bad ass" in one or more Statistics, gaining the respective benefits, over a short period of time.  This Essence usage would be recharged slowly-- perhaps 1 point every 5 or so turns.

Such a mechanic would allow Essence to benefit ANY kind of Sovereign, is a relatively simple implemenation, yet preserves the whole "Life Force" concept whereby the Soverign has a "special ability" far beyond most Mortals.  Further, as desired, special situations could still permanently drain a portion of Essence (to be gained back through experience, etc.). but in general Essence would become a re-chargeable resource.

Irrespective of the above, Essence = Mana is just not good.

That would be cool actually.  Having the ability to siphon/leach the life essence out of a creature/object.  There could be a whole race designed just for that purpose...harvesting essence.

They are called humans.

Well, currently imbuing a Hero w/ ur essence "magically" gives them essence equal to half your intelligence, and it only costs you 1 essence.