Suggestion: Revising Bloom of Twilight

from Elemental Forums

The biggest issue I have with this spell is that with such a large mana investment you have no idea if the area you're targeting actually has any actual potential resources for city placement/development.

I would LOVE some kind of visual indicator, even if it's just basic colors (Red, Yellow, Green) and not the actual tile yields so that if I'm going to cast the spell there's some actual ROI.  Casting the spell, finding nothing, then reloading a save point to try fishing again is really unfun.

9,227 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I agree. In it's current form, BOT is a useless waste of manna. I tried it twice with no beneficial effect, never used it again.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Use it near magic shards, rivers, prestigious locations and dragon lairs (3 essence baby!).

Also count squares depending on your map size. I think it's 4-7 or something. It's easy to find good spots if you know what to look for ;)

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting sjaminei, reply 2
Use it near magic shards, rivers, prestigious locations and dragon lairs (3 essence baby!).

Also count squares depending on your map size. I think it's 4-7 or something. It's easy to find good spots if you know what to look for
End of sjaminei's quote

Thanks for the info! I'll give it another try.

Although IMO, for such a high manna cost, it should create settleable land in a larger variety of locations.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting sjaminei, reply 2
Use it near magic shards, rivers, prestigious locations and dragon lairs (3 essence baby!).

Also count squares depending on your map size. I think it's 4-7 or something. It's easy to find good spots if you know what to look for
End of sjaminei's quote

"I" know all that, but the spell shouldn't be counter-intuitive to the game play.  New players will be like; I just dropped 300 mana on a spell that doesn't do jack.  That's a design problem that needs to be addressed.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Actually, I disagree. Seeing how few city spots there are in some games, getting a 'sure thing' city spot for a mere 300 mana would be too cheap. Perhaps the only thing that needs to change is that the explanation of the spell gives a little more insight as to where you have the best chance of  finding new city spots.  It may be frustrating to drop 300 mana on a dud spellcast, and the first time I tried it, I think it cost me at least 5-7 tries to get a citylocation where I could settle, but the alternative would make it too easy IMO.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Again, this just leads to;

Step 1: Cast Bloom of Twilight

Step 2: Swear

Step 3: Load Save Point

Step 4: Go back to Step 1

 

A simpler, more realistic option would probably be to expand its field of effect by 1 such that the area of impact actually has value

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Malachon, reply 6
Actually, I disagree. Seeing how few city spots there are in some games, getting a 'sure thing' city spot for a mere 300 mana would be too cheap.
End of Malachon's quote

Perhaps.  But, even if that is the case, it definitely needs to provide a visual indication (either red squares in the affected area display or simply refuse to be cast) if you're targeting an area which is too close to an existing city, so that some/all of the affected tiles have no chance whatsoever of becoming usable.  Requiring the player to first figure out what the minimum city spacing for your current map size is and then manually count the squares adds nothing to the game.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Excellent suggestions running the range of no work at all for the devs (edit a text description for clarity, and/or increase number of tiles affected) to a small bit of work (spell can't be cast within X tiles determined by mapsize variable of a city) to lots of work (a precast red/green indicator cursor highlight to show underlying fertile land available).

 

Crowdsourcing at its best!

 

I think for my personal modded version I'm going to go with description clarification and see if I can bump up the number of affected tiles. Should be a quick fix that will help balance the spell. Great ideas all around though.

 

Update: CoreSpells.xml description edited to "Revive the land. Works best near rivers, shards, prestigious locations and dragon statues.", radius changed from 1 to 3. Total time elapsed... 1 minute.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks TBS.  You could probably include a cooldown on the spell if you think it would be appropriate to do so.  Or are you proposing that the caster is locked down for a turn while casting the spell?