[Suggestion] New Magic system and unit customisation

from Elemental Forums

With mana being changed to a global resource for your Kingdom rather than a per unit resource I see this as creating a new opportunity for unit customisation.

 Certain Magical techs could unlock direct unit modifications that would cost mana as a resource and grant special abilities sometimes with an associated visual effect on the unit. These modifications could be on armour (rock like skin), Weapons (claws), Other (Regeneration). The point is that as Mana is now a kingdom resource it could be spent just as gold or materials could.

 Likewise stardock could add a weapon forge and have magical technologies that also allow the player to design magical effects into weapons giving them a mana cost when added to a unit.

 This leads me on to another point now Mana is going to be a kingdom resource pool, crystals (for making magical items) are redundant and should be removed, they exist just to give a resource needed to forge magical weapons and objects and that can now be mana, which is more interesting because you have to balance your spell casting with enchantment and imbuing. It also means you don’t need to find a rare resource to exploit any sort of objects build able form the magic tech path.

 As far as flavour and story is concerned I think Empires should get more and better Magic unit mutation techs since direct mutations of their people is more in keeping with the very ethos that created the fallen to start with and kingdoms would tend away from it. Magical forging e.g. creating magical items should there for be stronger for the Kingdoms.

 What do you think?

4,139 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I disagree with removing crystals. Nothing wrong with using exotic materials to craft magical items.

 

"built in" spell buffs are an interesting idea, though.

The units would cost a mana upkeep every turn just as if the actual spell was cast on the unit.
Of course you might run OOM if you overdo it with the upkeep but that's not the game's fault.

The only downside: you'd have access to all the buffing magic without the need for any magicians at all. That could get rather silly...
Magic in WOM is not as abundant as in MOM, where every second unit is magical.
The WOM world is a barren wasteland with only a handful of channelers surviving. Mass production of magical units simply doesn't fit the setting.

This would fit better into a total conversion mod with "abundant magic".

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

As far as keeping crystals is concerned I don't have an issue with it but it just seems redundant once mana becomes a global resource.

I disagree with upkeep costs for magicly mutated units or forged weapons, the costs of creation should just be high enough to reflect a perminant effect. You would always have at least one magic user in a kingdom your soverign.

I think you miss understand me such units would be very mana instensive to build and require a high tech level in the magical tree, so would require a lot of investment in mana and a long time to research up too. Even once you could produce them you would have had to build a very powerful empire to build them in large numbers.

Effectivley such units would become more like home brew champions.

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