Hijacked Thread: Its now All About Essence, Magic Systems and Grandma's Frog Soup

Seconded... As a matter of fact I had already asked for that about 15-30 minutes before just not in a new thread (all my threads tend to slide down to page 2 with less than 5 replies within a daytime anyway...).

All of the above.

The more the better. Some things we won't be able to do, others we may disagree and still others we can implement.

Umm... The question was WHAT you won't be able to do, WHAT you like the way it is and won't agree to change? WHAT can you implement?

Which direction should we follow and which is better to be left alone?

Let me give a couple of examples.

Let's say someone is proposing to remove food requirement and arguments that with idea that every city has to be able to level to level 5.

That was a design decision aimed to limit city growth in the first place. So this kind of suggestion is useless.

Someone may be suggesting to make research 100% selectable, that's another thing that contradicts a made decision rather than improves something.

And then someone suggests to improve AI, but that's out of scope because feature lock isn't there.

By keeping an UP-TO-DATE thread with such knowledge you can make this forum a better place.

Would you do that? PLEASE?

I would like to hear other ideas on essence btw.  

I can either do that or finish the game.

I've got at least 50 dollars reasons for why I'd like to see the game finished.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/387522

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Seriously... I understand the rush but for future betas you might consider keeping extra personnel in charge exclusively of organizing beta forum and feedback.

This ups efficiency of feedback about as much as organized player feedback ups efficiency of debugging.

You wouldn't want to get your head worked up over a "new" bug that was fixed a couple of builds ago would you? Or a feature that was mistaken for bug?

Well same with feedback. Unneeded feedback is a waste of effort that could have been used for needed feedback.

This forum is currently bustling with unneeded feedback.

Edited. Found a bug...

1.  Have it be a steady stream for all sovereigns (debated at length in numerous other threads... no clear conclusion, other than the community is divided)

2.  Use it to enhance abilities of sovereign or champions (magical casting, stats, special abilities, ect).

3.  Use it to enhance the stats of your units.

4.  Use it to create resources or buildings that provide significant benefit (the empire enhancing aspect of essence use)

5.  Use it to create magical items to perform certain tasks (this could be a points system, much like character creation... really a lot of ways you could go with this... I envision a system with Dominion 3's style of variety, except player created inside an ingame workshop... ie not necessarily a mod, but something you can go to during your turn and design, and save and use)

6.  Infusing or altering some superpowerful creatures

7.  World destroying spells (which wouldn't ruin your ability to use magic, if mana cap and essence were separated, but would deprive you of use of your essence pool for the game).

Namely, the thing all of these have in common is that until you choose to use it, your essence is part of you.  It is a pool of strength, from which you the channeller make concious decisions about where you want to allocate it to make your nation stronger.  You only get a steady trickle of it, and when you use it, it is gone.  But it is different from your ability to cast learned spells (minus a few earth shattering ones... wisdom would be a good determiner of spell level with mana pool a separate stat entirely).

I think you should attach a facelive feed on the main website. You might also want a close by toggle on/off button. This is actually a really good idea....

Essence needs to be easier to acquire. I think Shards should generate small amounts of essence for your sovereign. I'd also like to see Wisdom used as an Essence cap (can't get more essence than your wisdom score). Of course, there are a lot of posts about essence, but I'll just link you to mine

https://forums.elementalgame.com/387561

Meh, I doubt it, most of us are here for the game, not for observing someone.

Well, of cause we could also forget about the whole thing, let them focus entirely on working and come back after release. I mean why do we need that beta-feedback-patches hustle anyway? Its only a distraction from work...

Thanks for reading the post.

My suggestion:

1- For every point of essence, the sovereign (or any hero) get a 10% bonus to all is stats. Having at least one point of essence allows heroes to cast magic.

2- The sovereign essence increases slowly over time, but quicker at the beginning of the game. It takes 5 turns to get your first extra point, then 6 turns for the next, 7 for the following, etc. Essence can not be increased on level-up, but some quests could increase it.

3- You can imbue your heroes with essence to make them stronger, and some powerful spells with permanent effects need it too (like the current fertile land spell).

I believe such a system would lead to an interesting balance between hording all the essence on the sovereign (making him very powerful both in combat and in spellcasting), or spreading the essence to your heroes and your cities to make them more useful. And it would also avoid the tedium of having to level up your sovereign just to get essence.

Once upon a time Frogboy wrote:

Here's a take on Essence, Wisdom, and Magic that I probably pilfered in some form from some other more original forum member(s):

I propose the following:

• In theory, I was originally a proponent of spending arcane knowledge to get to the next level of spell study... in practice (3A) I don't much care for the implementation. Make it harder to reach a new spell level. The Arcane knowledge requirement should be progressively higher for each level, or make the knowledge itself harder to come by (see WISDOM below).

EDIT: fixed a mis-statement.

• Have Essence
  
  1. represent the level of spell that a caster is able to cast... or the probability that a spell will cast successfully.
  2. increased by the number of shards under your control...especially when caster is in your territory (I think you are already doing this to some extent)
  3. represent the number of simultaneous enchantments a caster can maintain (again I believe you are already doing this)

• Make WISDOM a character stat again and let it represent the main source of arcane knowledge, but only when a caster is stationed in a city where a Monastery or Wizard's Tower are built. Additional structures/upgrades provide a small bonus to this arcane research...these structures need to be nerfed IMO. 

• Spells:
  1. I like the spellbooks idea from this thread 
  2. Some higher level spells should have requirements for more than one shard of a given type... or greater effect if multiple are controlled.
  3. Higher Level Spells should also be found on scrolls or given as quest rewards... some not even available from researching the standard books.

Essences was originally supposed to be what separated the plebs from the power brokers, go for broke make it a major part of the game.

The amount of essence should be a measure of your power, it is what separates the Sovereigns from the adventure.

Some adventures *may* start with 1 point, Sovereigns will start with 10. When customising it would be the highest cost stat, 10-20 points a level.

Essence should regenerate, 1 point  per 5 turns.

Medium level spells should start costing one Essence, and higher level ones costing up to 5 or more.

Essence should increase 1 point per level regardless. You may also spend your earned point on it for 0.5

The only permanent loss of Essence should be your ''death'' and imbuing it into another.

You must have one point of Essence to be able to cast spells, spend your last point of essence and it will take 5 turns until you can cast again.

Controlled Shards should increase your essence, but only within your own controlled land (the home field advantage)

Essence should be your cap on number of ''on'' spells/enchantments

You can not control more summoned units then Essence. (no home field increase hear)

So many men so many minds...

Anyway I find it strange that people want to gain spells slower. The amount we get now pretty much allows to have the spells we need based on situation. Making it it slower will result in a guessing game. Hmm... will I need to lower some ground or to raise it? I can't afford both... Will I find an air shard or fire shard? Which one should i prepare for?

I believe learning a spell should not be such a big decision, considering the random environment of Elemental. We do run out of spells rather fast, but I believe that we simply need more spells on higher levels, not slower progression.

You're using Essence in the way we use mana.

Any unit is going to have some sort of mana cap. We use Essence as that cap. The player is deciding whether to invest their essence into their minions (ala Morgoth) or keep it for themselves (Manos).

But if you're playing a melee sovereign, you can give half of it away and it doesn't really matter. You don't get weaker for doing it the same way a caster sovereign does (since your spells won't be that good anyway due to a lack of investment in INT).

I'd rather see essence divorced from mana and used instead as the imbue people/land, really big spell, and resurrection stat (since you take an essence hit if you die and need to come back). Having a stat where you should spend it and the goal is to figure out the best things to spend it on is more fun then the current implementation, which is a stat you can spend but if you're a caster you really don't want to. I guess that's the fundamental part of what I don't find fun about this system: I've got goodies that I can spend but I get punished for doing so. Unless I'm melee, in which case I can go to town and have more fun.

Give me a bunch of stuff to spend it on so I've got decisions to make, but hoarding is not a fun decision.

(Wisdom can act as the mana cap/regen stat, with Intellect acting as the spell effectiveness stat. Then casters have two primary effective stats, the same as melee folks do with Str/Agi.)

Hey Frogboy,

I see your point.  I actually don't have as big an issue with the current Essence scheme, but something still seems to be missing to make it feel right. 

I am actually having more of an issue with arcane knowledge. Spell levels come much too quickly as do most spells IMO.

I obviously disagree with Reianor on this point, spell learning should exactly be a big decision. Some core staple spells should be already known (i.e. arcane bolt, lesser heal, etc.) or easy to research out of the gate, but beyond them... I would much prefer this be a major investment in what you focus on.

By making spells harder to learn after these staples, the ones you queue up become a very thought out decision. I think Reianor's construct really detracts from the strategic value of spells in the game. There is little investment from the player in what spells will be necessary, what kind of sovereign/caster do I want to become?

On his guessing point, I believe the following:

• Instead of guessing whether you'll need to raise or lower land, you'll have to do some exploring, take stock of the territory, and make a determination which one you would like to use first.
• The spellbook construct I referenced in my original post would solve the shard proximity issue.

I feel this change would really force the player to think about what they need. Right now, I just pick the few that I want to cast immediately (e.g. summon familiar, enchant farm) then queue up nearly every other one and forget about them. I like the queue mechanism, I just would prefer to have the order or which spells I choose matter more.

I do agree with Reianor that there should be more spells at higher levels... I just would rather my spell portfolio vary widely from game to game and rarely be the same.

EDIT: fixed typo

Can't some quests reward essence? A virtuous deed...

Or maybe the number of people under out influence and rule could factor in in our essence (the more populated our cities are, the more devotees, the more essence).

I'm completely ignorant about the lore of the game, so I don't know if these suggestions make sense in the world of Elemental.

We aren't playing a D&D sorcerer ...

Elemental has RANDOM environment, and that needs fast adaptation.

"Oh shit, If i just new how that spell research matches environment 100+ turns ago the game would have gone differently" isn't a good element for strategy.

Preparing a spell includes:

1. Shard (if any) - random.
2. Spellbook (unless you take it at creation) - random.
3. Researched spell (unless previously prepared) - Currently isn't a problem.

Can't see how making spell research a serious choice helps anything. Do you want to have to find 1 and 2 after choosing 3? Or do you want to choose 3 after getting 1 and 2? Is that actually a choice?

Since essence is what seperates the rulers from the pleebs, what if every point of essence imbued to a champion/soverign family member extends their lifespan by 100 years.  So non imbued champions would retire at age 50 unless granted a boon by someone with a point to spare or having gained essence through questing.

Not that there's anything wrong with going adventuring with your great great great grandmother, it would make the lineages be a bit more important.

Also the eventual death / funeral of the various soverigns' family members could be important diplomatic events.

Funny that you  ask, because they already do...

"Alchemist lab" can get you .5 essence from potion and that's an errand quest.

Not saying that this is a solution, just pointing out that it exists already.

This is a sound basis for the system, with a couple of considerations:

1. Mana=gasoline; Essence=the size of your engine

2. Spells that require a bit of the caster in order to be cast should be spells that have lasting effects (artifacts, powerful enchantments, etc).

3. These lasting effects are maintained by the essence, but as soon as the spell is removed (either by the caster or death, dispel, etc.), the essence returns to the caster, or is "freed up."

4. The Light gains essence through life and humanity (slowly and steadily), while the Dark gains essence through death and destruction (quickly and in single shots). A Light spellcaster might gain 10 essence over 20 turns as their revived land thrives, as well as from city buildings. A Dark spellcaster might gain 5 essence in 1 turn for razing all of that lush land and slaying all of the inhabitants.

@Reianor - we clearly just have a difference of opinion on this.

By your logic, why even bother having to learn spells at all? We could just spend all arcane knowledge "leveling up" the spell books. Then get all the known spells for each level of each respective book we choose/find.

The only limiting factor on use would be by shard/essence/mana requirements. That's certainly an mechanic I've seen implemented before, and I'd be willing to see how it plays, but I think it cheapens the magic experience.

I don't find it as compelling for the following reasons:

1. There's no mystery involved... and by extension not as much fun (at least for me). You'll know exactly what spells you will get by researching the next level of a spellbook.
2. It won't differentiate sovereign's as much... (read: boring). Also, when you face off with another sovereign in tactical combat, it won't be about using the spells deftly that you've wisely chosen to study/learn... it will simply be about who has the most mana and shards... It gives lower level sovereign's a better fighting chance.
3. There's no investment/reward mechanism at work. No interesting choice to be had. It doesn't force you to think if you want to increase your food production in a city to start an army, or make your sovereign an all-powerful master of fire.

Just my $0.02

My suggestions are:

Spell casters in cities with certain improvements like a sorceror's tower, a shard or even a bigger bonus of the shard shrine, can give a boost to the essense/mana cap

magic users in the same tile can combine their essense into a major spell. Essentially letting a main spell caster combine all their essense into one big spell.

perhaps a way to syphon magic from a shard to produce a magic item. You could only syphon off so much to imbue the item and the shard has a max essense it can imbue over all so you cannot spam it. Lose the object, lose the power.