Well, magic and spells is definately the most important part of the game to me, so I'm going to have a lot of strong opinions.

I strongly agree with the general idea that spell research should be channeller-centric, not city-centric.  Like MrDelightful and pigeonpigeon I really want it to be possible to be smaller than most other empires and still be the strongest magical power.  This is an absolutely core concern of mine and I don't mind seeing lots of things sacrificed to acheive it.  At this point the only ways I see to be able to do that are through Sov Essence based research and Sov perks.  I don't mind a very small boost from buildings, and I could see a large boost coming from research in the city the Sov is in.  Building a wizard tower for the Sov seems like a logical way to boost it, but that will still be easier for large civs to accomplish, although they might have the Sov away from the Tower more.  The ability to invest Essence into your tower in some way might be useful.

One thing I don't like about the current system is that it takes some spell choice away from the player because what spells you can use are still largely controlled by what nodes you find.  I'd like to be able to decide at the start that I want to be an Earth Mage and focus in that direction.  I see 2 main possiblities for that: One is a spell that allows you to convert a node to your favored type but slightly reduce the mana it generates (say -10%), another would be a perk that allows the Sov to count himself as 1 of a particular node type.  I think I like the perk best.

I'm generally okay with the spending research points at will mechanic, but I don't think it should be totally instant.  A limit of one spell researched per round is probably adequate, perhaps slightly slower.

Demiansky has an interesting idea on altering crystals for different uses.  I'm concerned that this will still favor the huge empires with more crystals to play with, but it's still an idea worth exploring.  These could be via spells cast or via additional city structures from the Magic technology branch.  Here are a few I came up with, all numbers being my best guess and subject to testing and tweaking:

• Change node type to your favored element for -10% mana.  Mentioned earlier.
• Allow the crystal to count as 2 crystals of it's type for -25% mana generation (or even less).  This provides good flexibility for smaller nations.
• Allow the crystal to count as 0 crystals of it's type for +10% mana generation.  This is very abusable by the big nations, so I'm keeping the bonus small.
  
• Allow the crystal to support an enchantment on a city or all units in that city for a mana reduction proportional to the cost of the spell, probably between 50% and 75% of the spells cost.  I kinda like this because it themes the city to go with the crystal.
• Portal to X Realm.  Rather similar to what Demiansky posted.  If the Sov summons a critter of the appropriate type in this city it costs less, arrives faster, or gets some other kind of boost.  Depending on the power probably about -10% mana.
• Combat Crystal: for -x mana generation you get 2x mana every round in combat to use toward elemental appropriate spells when defending this city.
• +1 Sov Essence for all mana generation.  Majorly abusable by big nations.  I don't think I actually like this one, but I thought I'd throw it in.

One thing that we might want to look at is something similar to MoM's magic skill mechanic.  That was a very unique way to control how much mana you could use at once.  I'm not sure how it fits in, but I liked it.

I believe it's been said that Sov Essence will limit how much mana you can spend in combat.  In addition to or instead of this I think it might be useful to have essence increase spell power.  Perhaps you could adjust how this is assigned when at the appropriate building (Wizard Tower!).

When researching magic techs through the mundane research tree a slight boost from the Magic side would be appropriate.  I'm once again looking at strengthening small magic-centered nations here.  Actually, buildings giving bonuses when researching each of the tech types might be an interesting idea on it's own.  Inn's could give a small bonus when research Adventuring techs, Barracks could give a small bonus when researching Military techs.

Questions for Devs:

Will enchantments or other long-term spells have a maintenance cost similar to MoM?

Can we get more information on what we will be able to invest essence into?  I think this is getting more pressing.

Will all essense expenditures be permanent or will we be able to temporarily invest essence in certain ways?

Will heroes cast spells?  If so how will they compare to Sov spellcasting?  I'm assuming they'll be combat spells only.  They did give you a slight boost if they were in your Tower in MoM, although I see Sov magic as being far above that of regular heroes in this world.  I may be mistaken.

Lot's of good posts in this thread.

I have a question. Do games involving magical spells always have to have 'mana'? Why not just have each spell have some more or less hard to find/create ingredients?

I think your talking about "Reagents" Cep.  Like in WoW, some spells may only be cast if you have the proper Reagents (herbs/crystals/powders) regaurdless of mana.

Master of magic handled this well.  You could accumulate mana for casting spells but you also had "casting skill" which represented how much you could cast in a given round.  In master of magic, you could use inflow of spell power toward any combination of research, mana accumulation, and increasing casting skill.

I do not like the idea of spell point.

I think spell learning should be like tech developement.

If you need something you can't just have access to it because you need it. You have to study and try and then gain access to it.

As for shards I hope that once you aquire one it's not yours forever. I hope we can do battle to gain access to a shard held by an ennemy.

Another voice here for small magical empires to be viable. I must admit i do not like the idea at all to be forced to expand to get another shard i need to cast certain spell - especially since it is different from resources which only cut the building time and are not required to build something as far as i know. If i wanted to play a pyromancer and all i would find were water shards i would not be happy.

I think a metamagic spell to change the node type would go a long way to address the issue, but i would also like to suggest something new - being able to build wonders which give us the benefit of a shard. For example a gigantic essence imbued temple of fire counts as a fire shard. This wonder would be not overly useful for large Empires but would give a small empire a fighting chance to become Dalaaran.

The current setup in the beta is that Shards are claimed by building a city near them.  You build a Shrine on the Shard and it's a part of the city.  If you conquer the city, you get the shard.  Keep in mind that at this point all resources are claimed by building some sort of building on them and making them part of a city.

Personally, I don't have a problem with accumulating spell points and then spending them.  The benefit of doing so should be counterbalanced by not having access to a bunch of lower-level spells (if it isn't, then IMO the "lesser" spells aren't good enough).  i,e, maybe you *can* pick the high-level spell that's best for the immediate situation -- but the Bless City enchantment has been boosting my economy for the whole game.

I'd like small empires to be viable as well.  It seems to me that if you are a small, magic-focused country, then it makes sense that you'd develop spells that let you find and control shards from a distance -- magic scouts, guardians, and barriers, for instance.  If they're effective enough (and presumably they scale with your overall skill in magic), that could ameliorate the issue of not being able to control shards because you don't have an army.

I'm going to but my oversized head in here and agree with the general direction people have been heading in (smaller channeler-centric empires should be more magical), but I also want to avoid mechaincs that make magic scarce: this game is called war of magic after all..... even for big lumbering civilizations.

I was trying to think of something funny and witty to write about kittens but ended up LOL to the point my wife asked "what was so funny?"

I tried explaining my sovereign is standing outside an enemy city trying to cast Rain of Fire but can't 

It is not because the arrows falling around him nore the screaming hordes of footmen not even the charging war horses can distract him it is as simple as he thinks kittens are cute and cuddly.

Well it sounded a lot funnier in my head here i will think it really hard again let me know if that helps.

Having read the various trains of thought and pondered for a while; several fundamental questions come to mind:

1) How is mana generated? A mixed approach of crystals nodes, the SOV channeler (at some base level) buildings or population (but not both) and augmented by relics and or spell effects seems to me a managable approach allowing for small high magic nations and large geographic empires to both be viable options though actuall game play may turn out to favor one option over the other.

2) Once mana is aquired is it in several pots or one large pot? I strongly opt for the single well of mana option, that elemental crystals are a component (perhaps not the only one...) of spells particularly large spells is also good.

3) Should there be a limit to the size of the mana pool? No, capping it would disadvantage several styles of play.

4) How is the mana used? This is the real core of much of the discusion. I have several uses but lets begin with spells.
I propose the following basic effects based spells broken into two broad catagories non-combat and combat:

Global: Said spell impacts the entire world in some way altering an aspect of game mechanics (but not by much); such a spell would have a permanent effect (that perhaps could be countered or further augmented by another SOV?). High initial casting cost and may or may not have a maintenance drain.

Nation: Said spell impacts your nation or some aspect of your nation only or another nation or some aspect of another nation only (this should be obvious and a hostile act!); such a spell should have a high initial cost and a maintenance cost (that would be a steady drain on your mana pool).

Local: Said spell impacts a particluar area (like a city, or an army) or an enemy city or army and have a mixed bag of high to medium casting cost, some spells will have a mana maintenance cost as well.

Specific individual or unit: Could be benificial or detrimental to the unit, some of this type will be combat (tactical) spells, some will be non-combat, some will be both. The mana cost will be effects (balanced) based and some may have a maintenance drain.

Tactical spells: This would include a lot of small and large AoE, and single target spells that heroes, summoned creatures, or the SOV caster could unleash.

5) Will there be limits on how the SOV can unleash mana? Yes. I propose the following limits. The SOV (when his avatar is not actually in the tactical combat) is limited to X mana per engagement. The X can be adjusted through experience and/or research, there may be additional limits imposed during balancing feedback. 5B) The heroes (unique persons in service to the SOV) should have some ability to tap the SOV's mana pool to cast additional spells. A heroes abilty to do so is based on experience, magic items created by the SOV for that purpose, and augmentation spells.

6) Will it matter if the SOV is holed up in a community (tower?) or going Gandalf? Yes, the SOV should research faster in a settlement and there may be structures (library/museum) that can augment that research, doing so however deprives you of a VERY powerful tactical unit.

7) Aside from spell casting what else is mana used for? Mana should have several uses, the first and most obvious is casting spells and maintaining spells already cast. The second is magic item creation. The third is modifying research time. Let me explain. A spells research time should be based on the power of the spell as determined by its duration, AoE, and what it does and is largely determined by its casting cost. Once considered this will determine the base time to research. Mana (from the pool) can be expended to reduce the time to research which will enable a spell to be available sooner.

8) Are spells available in serial fashion or in parallel? I prefer parrallel, the SOV can expend mana to influence when a desired spell is available. The SOV should be able to research/study/decipher a number of spells at once the draw back is this will adjust the time to aquire by that percentage. So if it would have taken 6 turns to aquire the tactical spell lightning bolt (assuming the final build is still turn based on the global scale) it will take 12 turns if a second spell is being researched as well. Mana can be expended to reduce the research time of either or both spells.

9) Should there be precurser spells? Yes, while not a spell tech tree per se, some spell knowledge should build on others. For example: the tactical spell lightning bolt could be a precurser to the non-tactical spell lightning bolt that targets a city or an army. The difference is the scale. That said, such precurser spells or even a string of related precurser spells should be used where they make sense and sparingly. I for one would rather not research a spell I don't intend to use just because it is a precurser to one I want badly.

10) Are spells instantanious or near instantanious? Yes and no. Some spells should be cast very quickly, esp tactical combat spells, that said even some tactical spells should have a non-instantious casting time. This assumes tactical combat is not turn based. The big spells (perhaps called ritual spells mentioned in numerous earlier threads) would take time and preparation to cast and would effectively trap the SOV to some local while the spell is being cast. Of course if the SOV has a hero who has aquired the abilty to tap enough mana to cast (some) ritual spells then that hero could do so as a proxy to the SOV, freeing the SOV to do other things.

11) What happens if the SOV avatar dies? Game over!!!!! Now there could be precase spells that could revive a weakened version of the SOV.......

12) Using the above guidelines there is immense potential to populate the world with spells, I even envision a spell generator where by the player punches in a desired outcome with a set of variables (within limits) and the game engine produces a custom spell with appropriate research time. The player could choose the spell animation as one of the variables. The game designers could of course not opt for this tool in game (cough modders), but I imagine most spells (from the designer point of view) to be little more than a spread sheet of stats linked to an or a series of animation sequences.

Darvroth

This part of the game is incredibly important and as such, MUST be done right!

I don't know the right way to do it but I got some suggestions.

• Spells can be cast in an area around the shard as is it were casted in your capitol and costing more the farther away it is (just like in Master of Magic which I dearly hope and assume you've already considered.)
• The perk "Channeler" (just like in good'ol Master of Magic) could make spellcasting cheaper outside the shard
  

To continue the line of viable small magical kingdom:

what do you think about the possibility of  moving/combining shards?

To clarify:

if the channeler takes at character creation an expensive trait, he is henceforth able after conquering the territory around a shard and infusing it/the land under it with his essence and casting a lengthy ritual to teleport the shard to his domain. If he has taken yet another expensive trait and casted a ritual it is possible to meld multiple shards together to form a combined shard. This would allow compact magical empires with considerable magical might since only a few cities could control multiple shards. On the other hand it should not be too unbalancing since to do this the channeler would have to take expensive traits, spend essence and mana and still would have to claim/conquer the shards and held them at their original position for considerable amount of time in which they could be reconquered.

your opinions?

Also agree with main point of cast one spell to deaht but Heroes of Might and Magic I actually have abit different magic system...you learn spell in town,but they will be added in your spell book in number that is equal to you hero knowledge.No mana or anything similar.So if your hero have knowledge of 3,you will get 3 fireballs and 3 of all other spells available in that town.So if you fighting somebody,you can cast only 3 fireballs,not only in that battle,but alltogether in all future battles,until you visit THAT town again.If you dont have fireball in the nearest town,well no fireballs for you,even if that spell is already writen in your spellbook.That force you to use all spells available and not cast same spell again and again.So its interesting concept worth considering in some form.

Ages ago, I suggested that basic map setup should include options to make shards scale from their current status as geographical features all the way down to easily portable major magic items like the One Ring. (If AIs could cope with that, it would definiitely expand the 'replayability' space.)

Combining shards seems odd in general, except possibly as a specific quest to Reassemble the Original Big Thing that was broken to make the shards.

I also second the "small, magic empires" line of thought. Some reflection on it:

- I'm not against chaneller-centric magic rather than depending on buildings, but I think bildings are needed too. This could maybe help with a small magic kingdom, e.g. if it's very expensive to expand your civ and keep it connected you will not have enough money/resources to build certain buildings that a smaller kingdom could invest everything in. Also, these buildings could have radius defenses and bonuses which could be much more useful if your kingdom is small and not spread out. If some special buildings are developed with this in mind it could help.  

- I liked the idea in AoWSM that your Wizard Tower gives you a radius for your magic. This concept could be tweaked to help protect smaller, magic-centric empires better. For example, if the shards give a radius where your magic is much stronger and the shards can be combined in one area then it would be very difficult to invade a small magic kingdom. A large kingdom would to the contrary either have its magic defenses spread out and much thinner or would need to centre them around a.g. the capital, leaving the rest open for grabs.  

On a general note, I feel a bit skeptical towards the shard idea in the first place after thinking about it. I think the types of magic you can use should be based on your chaneller's type and background as well as the faction. Even if this is the case now it would be horribly booring to play the Inquisition of Fire and then only have some low-level fire spells throughout the game just becuase you didn't get to landgrab the fire shard early in the game ... Also, these shard systems make it more difficult to get a good overview of the spells available to you. In that sense a tech tree is much better. The worst is when you hardly know what you can buy/learn because there are so many prerequisites of 2 earth 3 fire and 1 air etc for every spell. Please not such a system.

Concerning spells, research and your focus... how about combining elements from every area.

You research spell areas slowly (based on mana diverted to research or whatever), unlocking higher tier spells and giving you spell points to spend on which spells you want. So after 5 rounds/tiers of fire research you have 500 points and access to spells that require 2 shards, so you can buy cheap cantrips requiring no shards, level 2 and 3 requiring 1 shard and 4 and 5 requiring 2 shards.

About the use of spells. Perhaps with an essence investment you can reduce the requirements of a spell (3 down to 2 shards), increase it's strength or give it a unique aspect. (a chaining shield spell for example if you also know lightning spells).

Picture an air mage, sat in her tower. With just 3 spells, chain lightning, heal and protect. Used essence on each so she can throw down bolts that chain hit enemy units and chain heal and protect her own units (to repair the damage if they don't kill them outright with the initial shock)

Pure builds with a large empire would go for the higher tier spells and boost the damage, hybrid mages could get unique effects and small empires could still cast the higher tier spells. (just fewer of them)

I'd like to have a random choice of spells and have higher tiers be unknown until you research them. Runes/symbols or something else to have a little unknown.

One idea I had for master of magic in order to replace the "mana, research, skill" investement was the notion of time. What you split between various elements would not be your mana but rather the time you spend doing these things. I thought of the following place where you could spend time:

Research: You spend some time to research new spells

Casting: You spend some time on casting your ritual spell (non combat spells).

Construction: You could be building some special monuments or artifacts in your tower that requires parts of your time.

For skill level, I thought that wizard could get more experienced with time making the time spent more efficient. How would they gain experience, don't know. Maybe all players evolve at the same rythm.

The other thing I was not sure, if your wizard is stuck to support a battle by casting spells, it remove some time invested in research/casting/construction for this turn. So attacking a player keeps him busy and consume his time if he interfere in battles.

Be afraid of the kitty... Be very afraid!

But who hates kittens?!

I disagree.  Analogy: channeling ability is like athletic ability.  One is born with a certain amount of athletic ability.  That athletic ability has to be directed/trained to a certain sport, and Olympic/Pro level athletes take years of training, skilled coaching, etc.

Same with Channeling ability.  Spell research is necessary, as is athletic training.

One way to possibly handle the size issue is to consider that running a large empire takes considerable attention by the Channelers.  Channelers shouldn't have virtually infinite capabilities -- time/effort invested in one field should influence how much time/effort they'd have for other pursuits.  Large empires require time/effort to run smoothly which takes time away from spell research/etc.  Running a small empire allows more time to devote to spells/etc. 

Each channeler would have a certain 'potential' (increases over time), and that would be divided up amongst her/his chosen pursuits -- magic, empire size, quests, etc.  Channelers could choose to specialize in one or two, or to be more a generalist.  Soft caps, not hard caps are preferable.

How to enact this?  I dunno.  Perhaps allow folks to amass a large empire and if they also spend a lot of time on other pursuits their empire efficiency drops (similar to Civ4 where if you expand too quickly your economy crashes), and/or revolts increase, heroes leave, etc.  These penalties could be decreased by certain actions (research bureaucracy skills/etc., in lieu of researching spell skills/etc.).

Games should present many choices, and some choices should be hard ones -- if I do X then Y will suffer.  Being able to do both X and Y is not a hard choice, it's a no-brainer and thus not good game design.

This could allow a channeler with a small empire but powerful magic arsenal to compete with large empires with necessarily lesser magical abilities.

Yet another possibility would being able to really heavily invest magical energy in a city to enhance it. It would work especially well if the source of magical energy would lie with the channeler and not the city buildings. In this case there would be a lot more magical "juice" per city to go around in small empires than in big ones.

How powerful are we talking for late game spells? Dominions level magic that changes global environment and summons unique legendary beasts?

Of course you should be able to summon mighty demons and such by the time the game draws to an end and you have focussed and worked towards that very goal for the entire game. By the time that will be possible you should have to summon those beasts because the other players will be very close to winning by other means such as the 'spell of creation' or the Elemental equivalent of it, or by whatever means will be available.

I find it hard to see the fun if those spells will be available anyway. The player focussing on it should be able to grab them but they should not become available each and every game.

We are talking very powerful, Populous powerful. Raising volcanoes under enemy cities powerful.