Rethink on essence: delinking the mana cap & making essence central to the game

from Elemental Forums

The big problem with being able to access spells at all is that it requires you to have essence. If you want to cast spells at all, you'll basically be giving up additional cities. (see Frogboy's thread). The game requires you to fight in order to gain more essence, as you need to level your sovereign in risky combats (and this need to level your sovereign has also meant our soverigns almost always teleport back to their base if they lose a fight, rewarding suicide behaviour.)

I think we can all agree that these are problems in the game, or perhaps just annoyances.

 

Here's my suggestions for Essence:

  • Delink it from the mana cap. Mana is separate from Essence and your cap is determined by other stats.
  • Spell power is determined by the spell cast * (1 + Essence/20). Every five points of essence could increase damage by 25% (adjust as necessary). Casters without essence obviously can still cast spells, but they are weak spells. Do this with duration and other factors as necessary.
  • Add non-level sources of essence to the world map on world generation: random chances of one-off Legendary Beasts/foes that award essence on being slain for example. A couple scattered artifacts that contain essence the caster can absorb. etc
  • Add a couple end-game wonders that give a one-time boost to caster's essence.
  • Tick the Soverign 1 XP a turn, or give them XP for accomplishing tasks.
  • Consider, if keeping the "teleport the sovereign" mechanism in, to have it deplete essence.

Make the distinction between "spells," which are powered by the mana nodes, and Essence, much bigger.

Give the "spells" that require Essence a different name. Maybe "Ritual." These should be clearly set apart from the normal day-to-day spells that casters can do, and the awe-inspiring, earth-shattering, world-shaping power of a Sovereign.

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In order to really communicate to the player that They Are Awesome, I think it would really help to divide the magic between the Elemental magic and the Essence magic quite clearly, so they see that their Sovereign isn't just another caster with slightly buffed spells.

In order for Essence to be "awesome," it must be sharply limited. The ways to acquire it must be difficult, because otherwise the spells can't really be all that great. A spell that can be cast again and again (even over the space of a hundred turns) has to be nerfed in power. A spell that can be cast only once or twice with severe reprecussions can be made *much* stronger in the game, and alter the world in truly meaningful ways.

I still feel a player should be able to take the Sauron approach: horde all their Essence and grow their personal power to the point where they could individually lay waste to a thousand soldiers. The only way it's reasonable to do this is if they paid a big price for having this kind of power (economically or otherwise).

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

i like your idea, but what about this.  what if instead of spending level up points on magic related stuff, you spent essence.  say for instance.

you have 10 essence.  you could spend it on

max mana - every essence point you spend increase your max mana by .1 Permanently.

Mana regen - every essence point you spend increases your regen rate by .05 permanently

power amplification - every essence point you spend increases your damage, range, duration(only one of those at a time individually) by .1 permanently

mana boost - every essence point you spend adds 10 mana points to your pool immediately.

there are many things beside this that you may want to spend essence on as well, such as saving the ember wolf pups, so you also need to conserve some as well.

of course you get essence through gaining levels, but you can gain experience through hopefully many ways, and not just combat.

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Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Stmorpheus, reply 1
i like your idea, but what about this.  what if instead of spending level up points on magic related stuff, you spent essence.  say for instance.

you have 10 essence.  you could spend it on

max mana - every essence point you spend increase your max mana by .1 Permanently.

Mana regen - every essence point you spend increases your regen rate by .05 permanently

power amplification - every essence point you spend increases your damage, range, duration(only one of those at a time individually) by .1 permanently

mana boost - every essence point you spend adds 10 mana points to your pool immediately.

there are many things beside this that you may want to spend essence on as well, such as saving the ember wolf pups, so you also need to conserve some as well.

of course you get essence through gaining levels, but you can gain experience through hopefully many ways, and not just combat.

I like this idea, actually. Using Essence to increase the power of your Sovereign beyond the mortal mean. Plus karma to you. k1

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I like both the system that TCors has outlined for Essence, and the possible uses of Essence  by Stormopheus.  The ideas actually look like they are getting at what the devs originally hade planned for Essence.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Well...I don't know. The current system is not that bad, but it should be tweaked. IE. If the only way to gain essence won't be changed [IE. gain essence @ lvl up], the XP system should be tweaked. Give XP for completing quests. Add some special sites or buildings like Arenas. The Sovereigns can participate in arena battles / turn in order to get XP. You got the picture. 

PS. I don't like the "get X number of XP / turn while the Sov is sitting in his tower and doing nothing" idea.

 

"Add non-level sources of essence to the world map on world generation: random chances of one-off Legendary Beasts/foes that award essence on being slain for example. A couple scattered artifacts that contain essence the caster can absorb. etc
Add a couple end-game wonders that give a one-time boost to caster's essence.
Make the distinction between "spells," which are powered by the mana nodes, and Essence, much bigger.

Give the "spells" that require Essence a different name. Maybe "Ritual." These should be clearly set apart from the normal day-to-day spells that casters can do, and the awe-inspiring, earth-shattering, world-shaping power of a Sovereign."

&

"i like your idea, but what about this.  what if instead of spending level up points on magic related stuff, you spent essence.  say for instance.

you have 10 essence.  you could spend it on

max mana - every essence point you spend increase your max mana by .1 Permanently.

Mana regen - every essence point you spend increases your regen rate by .05 permanently

power amplification - every essence point you spend increases your damage, range, duration(only one of those at a time individually) by .1 permanently

mana boost - every essence point you spend adds 10 mana points to your pool immediately."

I like these ideas. [The quote system is bugged, which is why I used "".]

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

From the "other thread" :)

I would like to suggest that the Mana Pool, if left somehow linked to the current Essence level, be changed such that whatever I have managed to push my Essence Pool up to (max. at any point) be the new and persistent Mana Pool level, despite having used up Essence after the fact.

That way Mana (important for Magic) stays in relation to Essence, but not based on a direct +/- sliding correlation.

How Essence is then generated could be more flexible and not so detrimental to your current Essence Pool.

So early on, you could put points in Essence, when your Magic use is limited, to raise your Mana Pool, for later Magic use, and then your Mana Pool would be dictated more about the Mana Re-gen rate, and how many point you put into that.




Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I think it would be cool if essence could be redistributed through your channeler... You could use it to greatly increase your strength OR Defense OR Magic Casting ability etc. And every turn you could re-distribute a couple points...

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Another option is to use essence to form a link to each and every mana node, "opening" it for your usage despite being far away. This means your access to magic is still essence controlled, but has nothing to do with your mana reserve - mana magic being the realm of the magicians and not channelers.

 

In fact I really like this idea as well.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

A "small" amount of essence obviously, not the crippling amount that a city costs.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Should essence be gainable in ways that dont involve adventuring, but instead might require civilisation?

Eg:

Trade - buying valuable objects that have magical essence?

Sacrifice - blood of 1000 virgins, or legions of sheep?

Nature - get to the volcano for the eruption, or the eye of the huricane, or the epicentre of an earthquake.

Biology - increase the sise of ones family.

Science or engineering - build huge engines of magic, or pyramids, or construct your own shards

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I think that to make the game fair, you would have to make essence spending permanent.  That is, you can't just redistribute your points (kind of like stats) when you want it...that would make decisions meaningless, whereas if they cannot be taken back, players have to carefully think whether this is how they want to spend their essence.


Very nice idea overall, and I think people should be able to go EITHER the huge empire building way OR the godly hero way and somehow the two can hopefully be balanced (that is, one style of gameplay shouldn't be made overpowered over the rest).

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

As far as exp goes, unless it was changed stealthily, then any units fighting should give XP to your sovereign, even if he isn't in battle. I used to see this all the time when I'd hire a bunch of champions and leave some for city defense, and they'd get leveled up as I fought around the map. I haven't gotten much playtime with 2A yet, though.

As far as mana goes, I agree that having your mana capacity linked to essence is a bit odd. My preference would actually be to link mana to shards. Each shard radiates a certain amount of magic that your Sovereign can tap into. The more shards in possession, the more magic is available to use - represented by mana.

I think overall, Essence has become a crutch for a lot of things that shouldn't have anything to do with essence. At first it was going to be this super stat that would make you extremely powerful individually if you hoarded it for your Sovereign, but would leave you weak in other areas (lack of cities, etc). But none of that is actually happening. Hoarding essence has no effect other than amount of mana, which doesn't make you more powerful and just allows you to cast more per turn. Essence gain is easy through leveling up. Only the first city really costs essence, provided you can wait for the green land to expand with your zone of influence and then just build the next city. It's also used in silly ways. Spending essence to help a wolf give birth? Why? Spending essence to teleport to city when you lose combat? Again, why? There are much better ways to handle that.

Essence is getting thrown around a bit too much, and it currently doesn't have any kind of effect that it was meant to. Maybe when the magic system is finalized it will improve, but it needs a lot of work.

- Essence should definitely be taken into account for personal stats. Otherwise it just doesn't work as a valuable statistic. You spend essence on your first city and.. your Sovereign is pretty much exactly the same as he was before short a few points of max mana.

- Essence should only be required for the most important things. Birthing wolves and teleporting after battle are not these things. Creating livable land is one. Giving a champion the gift of magic use is another. Casting extremely powerful world-altering spells is a third. These things matter.

- All changes in essense should have a noticeable and long term effect. Gaining or losing even 1 point of essense should matter both because it should have some effect on the Sovereign and because gaining essence should happen rarely. Founding your city, then killing a handful of silly spiders to get your essence back doesn't really work like that.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Completely agree with Annatar here.  The essence system needs considerable work to make essence more important and more useful.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd like to see the Intelligence stat removed and replaced by Essence alone. Your essence score would determine the power of ALL the spells you cast so creating another city would really weaken you.

If you want your Sovereign to be the ultimate badass himself, you only build one city. Sauron only had one city, didn't he? :)

edit: I didn't realize you could expand the "green zone" by chain-building cities next to eachother. That's lame. A set amount of Essence should only create so much Revived Land and it should not spread on its own. Perhaps you should even keep spending more Essence on the same city if you want it to grow? One Essence = village or fortress, two Essence = town, 3 Essence = city.

I'd also like the option of building Fortresses without spending Essence if I have surplus food from my Capital.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 11
As far as exp goes, unless it was changed stealthily, then any units fighting should give XP to your sovereign, even if he isn't in battle. ...

I haven't gotten to play enough games past a few tens of turns to be confident about it, but my scraps of playing and lots of reading around here make me suspect that the stealthy change has happened, at least by accident if not By Design.

Things are definitely in large flux, though, because Beta 2 saw city-founding costs apparently drop from 5 to 1. If I'd had more time for this site, I'd have tried to write a strong post decrying that apparent 'devaluation' of essence even though we are admittedly almost completely ignorant of how the magic system will work in the full game with imbued champions and possibly custom-made magic items.

I agree with most of your reply, with an exception for still hating the idea of essence as a determining factor for the sovereign's mana pool. (I could accept it working like that for spell-casting champions, if they need to generate their own mana, but sovereigns need to be distinct in a proto-demi-godly way.)

We have no idea if the game will include the sort of ritual/high-cost/multi-turn spells that MoM had. I hope it does, and the derived stat I want to see depend on essence would be about how much mana per turn a sovereign can put into a ritual/overland/non-combat spell.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like the idea of changing essence using spells into rituals. There needs to be a clear demarcation between stuff you can throw around casually and that which is of paramount power or game altering.

 

Ceremonial Magic could be as GW Swicord mentions with rituals that require time without necessarily an essence cost but a limitation of let's say a hundred accumulated essence pts to finish so if you have an essence score of 10 it would finish in ten turns in which the spellcaster wouldn't be able to move or take other actions. Thus, a Spell of Mastery that took 20 turns and the sovereign would win upon completion could have the effect of taking the sovereign out of commission...this would give the other sovereigns the chance to wail on his territory in order to try to either force the sovereign to stop the ceremony/ritual or take him out before completion.

 

You could even have buildings which speed up ceremonial magic.

 

In conclusion, Ritual magic would require essence but be of fantastic power, ceremonial magic could be just spells that take a long time to complete and ceremonial rituals would be the kind of spells like the World Spells in MoM such as Armageddon which I believe caused the creation of random volcanoes outside of the sovereign's territory. If your spies tell you another sovereign is attempting such High Magic or your clairvoyance towers or pools reveal mana fluctuations from a territory it would give the player the opportunity to make a sneak attack while the sovereign is busy. If it is a ritual and the sovereign stops the essence would still be spent making for difficult choices.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree that multi turn casting spells with a chance for other Sovereigns to interrupt them should be in the game. In MoM, playing a Sorcery specialist and spell blasting other Wizards' spells in casting was awesome.

But I don't think transferring your essence should necessarily take a ritual. Essence lowering spells should just have flashier visuals with part of your life force departing your body.

There should be a distinction between combat spells and global spells though. Combat spells would be instant cast powers while global spells would be incantations with longer casting times, gestures and chanting.

Chanting would be awesome. Since it's War of Magic, global spells should be something amazing instead of just point, click -> effect. Stuff like Saruman bringing the mountain down on the Fellowship. Some sort of cinematic touch wouldn't hurt, but I guess its too late at this stage.