[0.915] Rant: City Debuff Spells

from Elemental Forums

Is there any way we can make city debuff spells:

  1. Not Stack - Once an AI decides it needs to debuff your cities, it spends all its mana repeating the same debuff on one city, FAR past any additional effect (19 antipathy on one city? Really?). They should be one per. Period.
  2. Have Significant effects with one casting - The 10% drops in things is pretty crappy, but if they are going to be a single-shot effect, I think a 25% kick is plenty.
  3. Have Upkeep Commensurate with their Impact - City debuff spells are brutal in a game where all your empire's value comes from the cities. Upkeeps of 1 do not accurately represent the impact on the game that these spells have. Along with significant effects for one cast, they need to have significant costs for the caster.
  4. Notify you EVERY time that you are the recipient of one - As the sovereign of an empire, you would think that some peon, somewhere would think it was important to let you know that there was a swirling firestorm raining death down on the populace of your capital, but no. You get engrossed in a border skirmish and come home to find that people have been making asbestos umbrellas for 4 years because of the lava rain.
  5. Not Be castable through FoW - No enemy units in sight, city still gets debuffs. Players don't get to, so neither should AI. Period.

 

It is seriously irritating having one faction spend thousands of mana piling the same stupid spell on to your city. From a gameplay standpoint, considering that if you want them dispelled, you have to click 3 times through menus for EVERY ONE of those spells (waste of time), it signifies a hole in AI logic that they cannot recognize when their actions are increasing their costs for absolutely no benefit, marginal or otherwise.

 

Please, please, PLEASE let this be addressed in Beta 4.

8,417 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I think those would all be positive changes. Right now the city enchantments don't feel very effective on just one cast. It's probably made worse by the silly amounts of mana that the AI can get. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but in the post-game review, Oracle Ceresa was shown as having mana that would literally spike up into the hundreds of millions (I was playing on Easy).

 

It would also be cool to have some defensive or passively offensive enchantment spells for cities.

 

By defensive I mean: An enchantment that prevents your city from being targeted by hostile enchantments, but perhaps has a high upkeep cost.

 

By passively offensive I mean: An enchantment that prevents the enchantment from sticking to your city, and does something bad to the caster, but gets expended in the process. Like a hostile contingent dispel, or spell mine.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Worse is, that compared to not doing it, to be competetive you have to buff your cities out to hell, since buffing cities > buffing units.
Well do I want to upkeep my enchantment on my unit that gives 20% resistance to fire, cold and lightning, or do I want to upkeep the spell that gives my city +6 production each turn? boosting it with 20%... Hmmmm

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kongdej, reply 2
Worse is, that compared to not doing it, to be competetive you have to buff your cities out to hell, since buffing cities > buffing units.
End of Kongdej's quote

 

Yeah.. I despise the "Everything built here is more awesome" enchantments. No good way to track them once units are built, VERY cheap upkeep for significant bonuses to units.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Dhuran, reply 1
By defensive I mean: An enchantment that prevents your city from being targeted by hostile enchantments, but perhaps has a high upkeep cost.
End of Dhuran's quote

I want this & maybe one for units

my one big city had like 10 of the same enchant that took my units initiative down to under 5, monsters were getting at least 4 to 1 ratio on turns, very difficult to defend against unless you leave the city to attack them first (and this was with no other faction known)

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Grizzyloins, reply 4

Quoting Dhuran, reply 1By defensive I mean: An enchantment that prevents your city from being targeted by hostile enchantments, but perhaps has a high upkeep cost.

I want this & maybe one for units

my one big city had like 10 of the same enchant that took my units initiative down to under 5, monsters were getting at least 4 to 1 ratio on turns, very difficult to defend against unless you leave the city to attack them first (and this was with no other faction known)
End of Grizzyloins's quote

Shame they got rid of the negative initiative bug xD
(In an earlier beta, with enough of these debuffs you would go to negative initiative, and because you had negative initiative you would somehow have infinite turns).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I would appreciate a very high tech building that cost crystal for upkeep and removed 1 hostile enchantment a turn. Or something to that effect. We have a lot of tools available to us-I do like the "Mages waging war" style of gameplay though. City buffing/debuffing makes me feel all wizardy but it could use some tuning. There needs to be something available so you don't  have to rush disenchant. I think spending crystal to get rid of bad enchantments would be a cool low-tech.

Lore-wise.. A ritual is used to pull the offending enchantment into a specially designed crystal, which is then destroyed. Maybe higher crystal cost for stronger enchantments.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Also noteworthy...

It does not appear that city debuffs go away when the faction who cast them does. Who is paying that 19 mana per turn upkeep?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top


A spell that removes multiple enchantments instead of just one. Could also go with a version that will dispel one or all buffs as well.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Malsqueek, reply 7
Also noteworthy...

It does not appear that city debuffs go away when the faction who cast them does. Who is paying that 19 mana per turn upkeep?
End of Malsqueek's quote

The mana of the world is... =)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kongdej, reply 9

Quoting Malsqueek, reply 7Also noteworthy...

It does not appear that city debuffs go away when the faction who cast them does. Who is paying that 19 mana per turn upkeep?

The mana of the world is...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej
End of Kongdej's quote

 

Ha! :D

 

I suppose, considering that the AI pretty regularly spikes up to the hundred-and-fifty-googol mana stockpile, and then somehow blows it all in an afternoon, they could have worked out some sort of mana trust-fund to help keep their enchantments going after they were gone.