With a global mana system, we gain the ability to have strategic spells be caster independent.

It also opens up a lot of very important game elements for the AI as well as the player in terms of making spells have more "interesting choices" such as:

• Spell cool down (N turns before being able to cast again)
• Turns to cast a spell (a spell that takes N turns to cast)

The reason these two things become possible is because in Elemental v1.0x, your maximum mana was tied to the caster's essence.

In v1.1, magical essence is a boolean (you got it or you don't).  Anyone who has magical essence can thus draw magic from the global pool.

Children of sovereigns become crucial because unlike imbued heroes, they naturally have essence (so there is no imbue cost associated).  It also opens up the possibility of being able to use stored mana for enchanting items or forging tools and such in the future.

Now, while you humans may find this stuff "fun" it's the AI that benefits the most from it because I can write the AI with a system where there's a specific goal -- maximizing mana production.  Plus, if a channeler can cast strategic spells into a tactical battle even if he's not present, it justifies putting lots of time into intelligently choosing which spells to cast.

I.e. if I, as a developer, KNOW that magic can be part of every battle, then it justifies the time to create and use more interesting spells.

Now, someone might/should ask, why didn't we have this from the outset? I'm sure some beta testers suggested something like this (MOM had this).  I really don't have a good explanation other than to say that we fell too far towards the RPG line of thinking -- treating each unit as if it were an RPG character rather than thinking of your kingdom strategically. In short, we really wanted to find a way to have our cake and eat it too but you know what they say -- even when you don't make a choice, you're making a choice. In this case, not biting the bullet and being decisive in making magic a strategic game mechanic rather than an individual quasi-RPG with some strategic mechanic has been crippling across the board to the game's overall design. 

There is no "magic bullet" of course but nearly all mechanics, balance, etc. flowed from the decision of having mana tied to individual magic casters rather than having them make use of a global pool that is derived from a single source (the channeler sovereign).  With everything revolving around a mana limiter that can only be raised individually by going up levels, you cripple the scope of magic and in turn the combat and the variance in the world (i.e. things get boring).

Worse yet, the per unit mana limit in Elemental v1.0x also limits modding because modders too are stuck with the same problems I run into -- all spells have to be between 1 and 15 or so mana.  Look at the change to teleport -- 15 mana. Not that big of a deal if you're using a global mana pool but it's a big deal if you max at say 12 mana because of an essence block.  

Do  you mean any battle with a Sov or an imbued Champion in it?  Or any battle at all?  If I have nothing but a Peasant defending my capitol can I still fire off tactical spells during the battle??

So "before 1.1" would be a good time for specific suggestions on making spells more interesting?

Such as the Teleport that came up.
While some insist that it must be removed altogether, that does not make it any more balanced or in any way interesting.

Many real balancing attempts mean a change to the scripted spell behaviour anyway.
Cost is okay for damage spells but for unique and strategy changing abilities like Organised or Teleport, that doesn't always work.
Once you're "over the hump" and the cost becomes reasonable, cost-based balance goes straight out the window.

Frogboy, thanks for taking the time to give us some details.

I like some of where this is going, I really do...

But...

Maybe I'm slow / tired / dumb...but does this mean that a magic user on one side of my empire can cast some spells and use up all the mana, and then a 'fresh' magic user on the other side of my empire will be rendered helpless and unable to cast until the global pool regenerates? If so, then I really won't like this system....I like the current system, where a magic user can exhaust them self and need to rest and receive protection. I hate the idea of a 'fresh' magic user losing their ability to cast spells because some other wizard used up all the mana.

Am I understanding the new system?

If global mana is the future, I hope we can at least use the Wisdom stat or something to give each magic user their own personal pool that can be used on top of the global  pool, or something.... I just loathe the idea of a 'fresh' caster not being able to cast. It won't feel like using magic is a personally difficult and strenuous act, it will just make it feel like  one guy ate all the donuts and didn't leave any for the others...

This might actually make more sense. The global pool could be for those big strategic spells, while the personal pool could be used for tactical battles.

Hmmm... that's an interesting point, when I think about what changes the game needs to implement the new system, the only thing I see from what you guys are saying, is that you add a new resource (mana), add generators and then have a way to "cost" this new resource when you use spells. Maintenance can just be a negative generator. If I understand this correctly, the current system could still stay, right? Perhaps wisdom/essence can just be hidden away in the main game with a tag like so many other things, and thus can be brought back with a mod to use the current mechanic to do things like individual spell caster like it is now if we want... Is this too much to ask for? Or am I misunderstanding the implementation completely?

I like the sound of this change. Makes it seem more like your Sovereign is an actual channeler, redirecting magic from the shards. One or two things I'm not sure about, but I guess I'll have to see it in action first.

Also, if an imbued champion levels up & chooses essense, how does this work? does it just increase the size of the global mana pool? Is there any extra regeneraton for having multiple imbued characters (i.e. curently 5 guys regenerate 5 mana, 1 guy regenerates one .. in the new system if regeneration is tied to shards then there is only "N" mana regernation regardless of how many imbued champions. So, if you have 10 imbued champions for example that have leveled up the global mana pool to say 1200, but the shards are only raising by 5 the amount of man regeneration, say N=5, then we'll be regenerating only 5 mana a turn. That's not much better than the currents system cuz the mana pool will be next to empty every friggin turn).

I can see some kind of advantage in having a global pool in that if your sovereign has completely drained his mana, he'll at least have something to work with next turn, but it still doesnt cover the larger picture of empty mana pools. If N=5 then the old system with 6 channellers generating 6 mana per turn is still better. Unless there is some way of "recharging the mana pool" at a higher rate the old system is still better, also the shard locations might as well become the victory conditons because all the human players will just be doing the "getgo shard-blitz" for shard locations from turn 1. Everyone will ramp their movement up to 5 or 6 and all scouts will have travelling boots and scout cloaks. The game will become "shard-search-and-conquer" instead of "elemental war of magic".

A side-effect is going to force players to do "manual" on every battle becuause you don't want a spellcaster to be casting that 6-mana firestorm spell on a 2hp wolf.

Imbued champions, per the current preposal, reduce mana income.

True. Then provide a checkbox to prevent the caster from using ANY spells in the autoresolve at all.

It is a restrictive solution though. Ah well maybe you guys are right after all, it's just that the original proposal got me interested as mana suddenly became another important thing to factor into your overall strategy, influencing decisions about unit production and so on. The double pool is simpler and more forgiving.

Essense will not increase per current info. You will have it or not. And giving units essense via imbue will have an upkeep cost.

I'm wholly behind the Global Mana pool. It's a good system, it will help modders because it is flexible, and it will require choices to be made in all aspects of the game.

What I'm genuinely curious about is the impact of shards. I agree with several of the previous posters that simply having shards poop out 1 mana per turn if you control them is pretty lame. There is limited strategic value in that, and really devalues what they seem to BE according to the Mythos of Elemental.

Perhaps another option would be to have a finite number of shards of each flavor spawn on each new map, based upon the size of map and number of players, and distributed evenly, but a distance away from all the cities. Now, I'm going to toss some numbers around here, but they can and should all be variables. On a medium sized map with 6 factions, there would be lets say 12 shards in play (a multiple of four, evenly split between the elements).

Each and every one of these shards kicks off 12 mana per turn (2 per faction at the start of game). At turn one, each sovereign draws one mana per shard in play. As soon as a sovereign locates a shard, they begin to draw 2 mana from it. They know where it is, and can focus their near-godly attentions upon extracting more mana. Upon capturing a shard, the controlling player begins to draw 50% of the total output of the shard (6 for this example), and all other sovereigns lose access to the mana generated as it is being mechanically focused to one sovereign. THEN, tech improvements allow the sovereign to draw more and more essence from each of their controlled crystals until they reach the maximum 12 points/turn (or whatever)

This system is likely to make shards incredibly valuable and highly contested for magic-oriented players and factions, and also a great target for militarily oriented factions, as breaking shrines at shards will free mana for all casters, and cripple the impacted sovereign's magic income.

You are still  'punished' for having a character 'spam' spells. That character will exhaust their mana and need time to rest, during which time they will be vulnerable. Basically the system as it is now. You just don't 'punish' every mage in the empire for the actions of one mage. It would make sense for a big strategic spell that has a huge impact to maybe suck up mana that others might want to tap into...but it doesn't make sense to limit someone from casting a level 1 spells. In some ways, the current system is harder...one mage can't just keep firing spells, using the empire wide mana pool. That mage has to rely on their own mana.

I'm all for forcing hard decisions on players, but I think we already have that with the current system.

This. Also, we could potentially introduce high-level spells that you could only cast if you controlled at least one (or maybe a given amount the more powerful the spell is) shard of the spell's school of magic. Maybe there could be even lower-level spells that would depend on shard control.

Wow, that would really bring the magic into the game. On a side note, more fantasy creatures with unique abilities, please! (Unlocking via adventuring tech is quite a good idea.)