I'm all for that! Might be a bit visually heavy, with oceans slowly seeping into the bottomless pit like the Niagara Falls, but hell yeah.

"River of Blood"-- turns water into blood (take THAT Moses!) it starts at one point on the river and spreads downstream at a decent rate, following all forks in the river.  Lowers moral of enemy towns relying on the river.  Kills fishes and other aquatic life in the river.  Upsets wildlife along the river, making them more aggressive (keep caravans and limbs away).  Keep away from merpeople.  They don't take kindly to it.

I think this could be HUGELY effective if you landed the spell right at the top of a major river.  Think.  If Canada got pissed and pulled that spell on one of the mississipi's tributaries, the US would have a HUGE problem.

I was apart of the other thread and it took me to realize Kitkun said "from another thread"  so I was like "did I make up my posting about this?   I need to lay off the drugs"

But seriously, yes.  I would (if I were creating the spell) create a pit in the terrain, and have waterfall effects on the edges.  Small fall for parts that intersect rivers, and large ones for parts that intersect ocean tiles.  

That also being said, I wouldn't mind if the water was stopped by some barriar like the one created by the American Rabbit at the end of the movie to stop the Niagara Falls.  (it made no sense)

wait, what?

Parting of the Sea: Create a land bridge and stop water-borne units from crossing.

Poisoned Apples: Spawns caravans/food resources/etc. (Spawn occurs as if by normal discovery to other players, cannot be distinguished from normal resources) that can be grabbed by other players. It rapidly kills off their populations if they do.

Quoting Kitkun, reply 6

Poisoned Apples: Spawns caravans/food resources/etc. (Spawn occurs as if by normal discovery to other players, cannot be distinguished from normal resources) that can be grabbed by other players. It rapidly kills off their populations if they do.

Oh, look, an apple! *noms*

I like this idea a lot, but by late game I wouldn't want to see an entire map filled with rivers of blood.. So maybe an Armageddon Counter is in order? Oh wait thats already been used..  I wonder how counter acting spells will be handled? Were spells able to be counter acted in MoM?? I think i need a refresher..

I like the idea too! But im kinda concerned considering i just had an apple for breakfast and it seemed unaturally sweet... How long before this spell takes effect? Hurry counter act it, cuz i can't seem to remember how!! *acki*

Hm, since there is going to be an emphasis on quests, what about world altering mayhem spells that are cast by non-opponents? 

Let me illustrate a scenario:

A channeler's hero finds an ancient tomb in a dungeon and is driven mad by it.  He disappears into the wilderness and 5 years later, is found in the company of nether-demons in an ancient citidel. 

He begins casting a spell that, once identified, is said to bring ruin to worlds.  If he is not stopped, he summons the "Blood Moon," which spends a year passing through the sky of Elemental, spewing down meteorites, dislodging stars, and casting down legions of nether-demons unto the world.  If he and his demons are stopped before the spell is complete, the channeler who is victorious gains broad renown and an abundance of treasure.  Unknown to the other channelers, however, the tomb (which was, itself, the true caster whom attempted to call the Blood Moon) has entered the hands of the victorious channeler under their control, at which point, they have the choice of destroying it, using it as an evil aligned artifact in the hands of the channeler, or stashing it away in the event that they wish to finish the spell themselves.

I like this as an idea in its own right--could spawn follow-up quests, create a new independent power, or both.

Back on topic, I wouldn't mind seeing a whole set of Moon spells, both destructive and constructive. Seems like they should last for just a month, though. (Not that I expect to be entirely happy with however the calendar/turn system works out.)

I could see this too, but what element of magic would this fall under? Earth perhaps?

Has "Locust" been mentioned yet? Like in the Bible but an even bigger locust of ravenous insects pours forth from a tile on the map and starts advancing on the map into enemy territory, consuming everything in its path. The terrain would get transformed back into its "ruin" state like just after the Cataclysm. The locust would be so powerful that only a dragon or the like would have any chance of stopping it - any normal troops would be eaten along with the farms and plantations ... The locust would not last forever of course, but maybe you could pay a heavy price of mana for each turn it continues to advance, but as caster you can only choose where it starts and the direction, not exactly where it will go (so not possible to just get rid of a particular city). It could only start e.g. from some types of tiles (desert ..., ruins ...), or even only from your own territory and then move out of it into the enemy's lands.

Great idea with the Moon spells, lasting only one month. There could also be the Full Moon and the New Moon version: each time the Moon is full something terrible happens to your opponents, e.g. lycantrophy transforms more and more people into ravenous werewolves out of control, huge flocks of blood-drinking bats appear in the wilderness, people go crazy, morale  drops considerbly etc. These effects would be repeated at every Full Moon until countered with powerful magic.  New Moon spells could be e.g: darkness falls so heavily that the enemy is treated as blind/impaired vision,  magic (or some types of magic) is sucked from the land (and the channeler),  some magical resources linked to the Moon (depending what will be in the game) lose all their effects during the New Moon, etc ...

Goodmorning all,

On the topic of counter magics, i was thinking you should at least have to know the spell, to counter it, 

So to counter a spell you would have to;
1 identify that it is a spell *weather might change something to ice temperarrally, is that natural or spell enhanced?* 
2 invest in finding out what spell it is,  If you have that spell to cast very easy fast, if you cast that element but don't have that spell researched slower, if you cant cast the element slower still.
3. invest almost as much in the counter spell as the spell, or define a protection area, smaller, that you use magic to make immune from the spell.  (example ice age spell,  defining a wall between two lakes, or oceans that hold back the spell, oceans too big to freeze, thin area between them pinches off, so you build a magical wall, the spell stops there.)

what do we think?


Also once you've managed one of thses awesome spells, it's late to end game, if the enemy can't counter, they should be exponetial game enders, ridding across the land on your unstoppable wall of glacial ice. . . type thing.

hmm?

Best wishes

http://xkcd.com/86/
sorry forgot to inclue the link, WALL OF ICE!!

Overall I like your ideas, except for the part about having to know know a spell in order to counter it. If there are enough spells and enough magic limitations that any channeler is unlikely to learn more than a fraction of them in any one game, it would seriously underpower counter magic and would be frustrating. If someone casts pestilence on my fields and I don't know the pestilence spell and am not able to research it, then there's nothing at all I can do? Sounds bad. Also, countering a spell like pestilence seems like it'd require something very different from the pestilence spell itself. Rather than summoning a horde of insects or plague, I'd want to kill or otherwise remove said nasties - and that could be done in many different ways. I could directly kill them all, I could redirect or send them away, I could make my crops immune, or even make them magically fertile to counteract, but not remove, the pestilence.

I'd love to see some sort of contextual counter magic system, but I don't know how or even if such a thing could be done. In the absence of contextual counter magic, though, I'd rather see a more general counter magic system like the following: countering a spell could have a base cost (which would depend on the magical power of the channeler who casted it, his proficiency in that school/spell, how much mana/essence he put into it, and the spell itself), which would be higher than the cost of the spell itself. However, the cost of countering the spell would go down based on your proficiency in that particular school (or schools) of magic, and maybe even more if you know the spell yourself.

And there should also be preventative protection spells that guard against hostile spells, with a chance of blocking them completely or reducing their effectiveness/duration.

Edit: WHY is quoting so broken?! Usually I only have trouble with multiple quotes from different posts or combining attributed/non-attributed quotes... This time there's just one!  

I like the general idea of 'contextual counter magic,' but if I had to choose, I'd probably go for a traditional pratice similar to countermagic in MoM. I especially like the idea of making both the total mana invested in a spell and the caster's skill part of the equation for determining the costs and success chance of a generic counterspell.

On the other hand, if the Elemental spell mechanics are based on some form of 'integrated metaphysics,' then perhaps contextual countermagic isn't something the UI would need to call out but rather strategies that players need to figure out when they don't have or don't want to use a generic counterspell.

Goodmorning all,

My bad, I didn't mean you Needed to be able to cast the spell to dispell it,  I ment you need to be able to IDENTIFY the spell to dispell it. 

In MOM you see spells be cast against you, and you can go into the town and SEE the name of the spell and it's effects. you can go to the diplomacy screen (i think it's diplomacy) and SEE what global enchantments various wizards have cast.

I think in elemental Many of those elements should be hidden (to various degrees) Bad things happen, not all of them are caused by spell attacks.  To dispell a spell you need to first prove that it is there, then identify the spell, then destroy or pervert/work around/protect yourself from it. 

how long and how much energy it would take to do the second step, identify, woulld depend on many factors, one of which would be if you can cast the spell yourself. If you know a spell enough to cast it, you can identify the spell easily when it's cast against you.

If you cast that element,(but don't have the spell) you still will have the books, libary resourses, intuition, to guide you.

If you don't cast the element, and don't have the spell, and it's the first time you are trying to counter it. . . well identifing the spell by name and working up a counter plan's going to take time and energy. maybe even research points.

In short I don't want blanket spell disjunction spells, that undo any badness cast against you, if you pump enough energy into them. Does that make more sence??

Best wishes all

Robbie Price.

Oh. Well that changes things for the better, for sure. And, whatever they do for counter magic, I really hope that information like other players' current enchantments and the like should be hidden, and only visible with espionage/magic or maybe if you're allied.

Edit: WHY DOES QUOTING NOT WORK IN THIS THREAD?

That's an interesting idea, but I suspect a large crowd might howl if the game has no generic counterspells.

Global Disjunctions and the like aside, I'd be really impressed with mechanics that meant some spells could work undetected unless the target made a sort of 'spell awareness' skill roll or used more magic (spell or item) to deliberately search for the covert magic.

Edit: OK, no more quotes with attribution for now. 

Well if the crowd wants generic counterspells, they can have them, a generic counter spell is a Detect magic spell, combined with a High level identify magic spell, combined with a regular counter magic spell. . . .  It just costs a lot more to cast, and isn't as effecient. . . . No?

Take care all
Robbie Price.