I think this system can work. I think there are going to have to be magic traits and skills at soverign creation so that people who want to play a magic heavy game can have bonuses that allow this. Without this games will always be restricted to the same amount of magic, with no options to play a more/less magic based game (With only diffrences based on finding a luck shard or two).

MOM had many powerful bonuses for magic using players: Bonuses from taking 11 spell books, runemaster trait, archmage trait, nodemaster and a ton of others. As things currently stand there is only arcane (magic research) bonus.

I like the idea of global pools, but I'm concerned about 2 things. Concern one is that starting locations are getting kinda full what with the gold in .8 and now shards. Secondly, whats the point of imbuing champions if your main dude has unlimited range and can effect battles he is not in?

Will imbued champions start using the intelligence of the sovereign as well? Can you unimbue someone?

Oh, there will certainly be advantages to having a caster "on site".

MoM had a Channeling rate where you would pay up to 3x the cost when tossing tactical spells from the outside.

Yes, shard (resources in general) distribution is a delicate thing. I don't like the idea of all the resources that get auto-spawned near your starting location, and adding one shard to the list only makes things worse.

However, if they implement a way to tie the number/distribution of shards to N° Players/territory , that would be cool!

Thank you for the info mr Bradwell, it's really awesome to read about gameplay before seing it implemented. Lots of good ideas on these boards.

I would also encourage scouting more for a good location to build your capital instead of having the essential resources right next to you when you start the game. Because then founding your capital really becomes a matter of one click in the beginning of the game instead of searching for a suitable location. But I trust Brad on finding the best solution.

On the point of imbuing champions - your sovereign would not be able to cast spells into tactical combat if he was not in it, and characters would still have an intelligence statistic, which affects the power of tactical spells (global spells would possibly be affected by the sovereign only).

In general the preposal fits with the back story, with the exception of the sovereign generating mana. Where does the mana they are generating come from? And why do your offspring (also able to use magic naturally) not generate mana?

I do not disagree that having the sovereign produce mana is needed, but I would like to know how it fits into the setting.

Yeah, if the initial location is going to have all these goodies, there's not real decision to be made. May as well just start the player with the city already placed. Perhaps sprinkle goodies nearby and give the player a 5-turn 'wait' period where nothing happens (AI doesn't start cities, mostly) or whenever they build their city.  Or something at any rate where scouting around a few turns doesn't hurt you.

THANK YOU FROGBOY!

I am very excited about the new magic system.

I do concur with some others though that the GMP should be just for the Channelers to draw from as they please, and perhaps they should be limited to how much they can draw from the GMP per turn, based on their stats, abilities, and equipment. Whereas imbued champions and offspring need to have a mana limit per turn that is based on their stats, abilities and equipment as well, but doesn't draw from the GMP. This daily limit should completely regenerate each turn. I say this only because I'm greedy, and I don't like to share my mana with anyone.

Presumably, since the AI does not have knowledge of uncovered places on the map, it would have to scout in the first few turns as well, which would even it up.

Still holding out hope that you learned enough from the disastrous launch to start caring about us, the customers who paid for your product.

and since I answered your question, I'd like to ask WHO you are making games for?

Well that's funny since you wrote you don't have any.

Goontrooper, I share some of your concerns. But the proposed system does make sense if you look at it another way; Sovereigns are the only people who can naturally use magic, everyone else just doesn't have the required 'link', whatever that may be. When a sovereign imbues a hero, he gives that hero access to his(the sovereign's) magic. How much mana the hero can use and how well he uses it depends on his stats, but the actual 'juice' for the spells is coming from the sovereign. So the 'global' mana would really just be the sovereigns mana.

For other settings this system makes less sense, I agree, but for this particular setting it fits quite well IMO.

I do agree however that there needs to be a way to determine how much mana a hero can use each turn, otherwise all imbued heroes would feel the same. The wisdom stat could be used for this, with the intelligence stat determining how well the mana is used (how much damage it can do, for instance).

I have a question though; are there still different mana pools for each element, or is it all put in a single pool? Because it would feel a bit silly to me if, for instance, you have a lot of water nodes and then you use all the mana they produce to cast fire spells...

Frankly, Imbued heroes should be given the capacity to toss around a single spell (or small selection thereof), as determined by the sovereign . Kinda like some of the units with magical abilities can now. The difference being that they should draw from the global pool, and have their total expenditure per combat be limited by some stat; wisdom or some such.

In no way and for no reason should they ever be as powerful as our Sovereign in terms of casting.

I really don't understand the perception that one lonely little champion running around would be capable of burning through several thousand stored mana that seems to be prevalent among the detractors of this method. My understanding of what is being proposed in the Global mana pool is that you generate mana every turn just like gold and materials, and use it as you need it. Running low? Don't cast for a few turns.

Yeah, sure looks like they haven't cared at all....jesus man.

They seem to think there will be no limit to how much each caster can use (and there is no offical word on that yet). The only time it would matter would be if it burns mana in auto combat (which if it wasted mana it would be bad). The solution is not give champions there own mana pool (as some want), but rather to limit how much they can use and give a setting for how auto combat should use mana (e.g. none, conservative, scaled, overkill).

It seems such a system will make summons virtually useless. You simply can't afford the mana upkeep if you want to use mana in your battles, at least until you get a lot of shards under your control. Likewise, mana upkeep for imbued champions means that no champions will be imbued, at least until late in the game. These changes weaken magic. I don't think magic needs to be nerfed. Military squads alread rule.

You people saying the current system is fine are bleeding crazy...

Having extensively whored the current system, and I mean extensively, no it isn't.

What we have now is a horrific, broken system.  You move four(or three) essence and gain another caster with just as much essence.  No loss.

In the case of a stack of newly created channelers and your sovereign, you're multiplying your short term damage output, end of story.  There is no trade off, your long term damage output over the course of that single encounter is exactly the same.  If you had twenty mana, and you now have eight, four, four and four, you still have twenty mana.  You still get to cast your ten flame darts and do around 50-60 damage, but you get to cast eight plus on the first round, instead of two or three.

They rapidly level through experience, far faster than you can gain access to higher level spells.  Your sovereign can burn their entire starting essence pool creating mini-me nukes and still get 16 essence in time for the nice summons without any trouble at all.  Each caster independently regenerates mana, changing your initial regeneration rate of one into four.

Four casters is basically four times as good as one more powerful caster without even taking logistical advantages and other niceties into effect.  Your imbued champions will level faster because they can more rapidly combat powerful enemies, spend less down time healing, the list goes on.

The current system is bad, really bad.  If you don't basically imbue every champion you get your hands on, you're playing stupid.  Monumentally stupid.  Which would be a good thing to do since it's a free win that the ai absolutely cannot handle even a little.

I myself was hoping for a vastly different solution than what we're getting, but this is just plain shitty as it is.  Personally I was hoping for individual spell sets and a significantly slower power curve on champions leveling bonuses, but that system is not to be as it would require a major rework across multiple mechanics, tech trees would have to change, the spell research system would have to change, the spell book would need to be an individualized item, etcetera etcetera.

I'm a fan.  I have hope.  I have faith.

With that said, why not just change "shard" to "node" and be done with it.   Call whoever owns the microprose MoM license and buy the rights to it.  It worked.  It would work with this system, and if all other changes flowed into that path it would see success.  It may/may not become a classic at that point, but its easier working from an established baseline.

Alternatively (and I'm repeating myself like a broken record) - make the sovereign, essence and shards the unique aspects to your game.  There are a ton of games around with resources, champions, buildable cities/units, etc...  stand out like I thought you were going to initially.

Have a global mana pool, it makes sense from a design and strategic perspective.   Take sov, shards, essence out of the equation.

The sovereign is your customizable ruler.   Done in other games, a fixture here, and a good design base.

Shards are essentially just another resource, and can be abstracted as needed but unique usage to the game:

• Mana focus (i.e. more mana)
• Unique mana (separate mana pool)
• Spell modifier (pure damage = boring, add affects)
• Spell requirements (x spell requires y shard, hopefully adding in more mana and affects)

Essence is another resource, but by making it a unique stat to the sov it can be a unique parameter to the game - making the sov unique, and thus the game unique.

• Make essence be a finite resource, only available to the sov and his children
• Game setting to see how much essence is assigned to each sov at the beginning of game (0, 5, 10, 20, etc)
• Essence is your "godlike" ability and can be used strategically, but once used is gone
• Essence is lost upon death, at 0 essence your sov is gone for good (essence bearing children can inherit).  Say 1/4 total essence lost. Possibly a game setting as well.
• Essence can not be regenerated, although high level quests may have a special way of gifting limited amts of essence.  Possibly allow the absorbing of unused sov essence if sov kills sov in a special way.
• Passive/unused essence gives some bonus to the sovereign (heightened stats, combat ability, administrative ability or magic ability, customizable with sov creation)
• Essence can be used in many strategic ways - using essence permanently
  • Creating fertile land for starting a city (allow pioneers to build un-expandable outposts for influence, but need fertile land for initial city, food for growth)
  • Creating items, possibly artifact level items compared to normal magic items created with just mana.
  • Casting big spells (Big summons, entire map spells, tile changing spells, etc.  Possibly add an essence cost to teleport, i.e. something like .5 essence.  Limited, but still useful).  Possibly have a separate essence spellbook.
  • Enhancing cities (possibly also calling resources into being)
  • Imbuing champions to allow them to draw from the global pool.  Initially at X rate (maybe wis/2 for tactical mana pool) or X initial amount.
  • Possibly have essence be needed to "win" a shard.   Using above example, maybe you get 1 function when you just get a shard, but with essence you can increase that function or gain new functions.   Again, investing in your infrastructure.
  • Other ideas I can't recall at the moment

Essentially make essence a key strategic feature, everyone has it but how they use it can change the course of their game.

I'd buy that game. 

My apologies, I did a cardinal sin and created a new topic with above. 

I am glad to see recent comments from Frogboy, looks like re-design is heading in the correct direction (that is making Elemental a Strategy Game with RPG elements).  Overall, very very positive.

I also liked the casting range design of AoW2

In my last game I was getting kids with 400+ essence.  With all the temple of essences and such it was nuts.  If it wasn't for the bug that reset mana to zero i'd have a gargantuan mana supply.   As it is I had 6 kids running around with 10/400 mana available.  Plus my 10-15 normal champions had leveled up to ~100 mana and 20 int each.  Somewhat silly

I admit I haven't read the whole thread, so I don't know if this has been discussed:

I really like the idea of implemeting the Global Mana Pool (GMP).  It allows for a lot of options, tactical and strategic choices.

The Role of Essence:

Suggstions / Comments

#1:

A caster's essence controls the amount of mana that caster can channel.  This opens the option for Caster-based use of tactical spells (like MoM), and allso allows for controlling the power of spells by mana cost.  All mana is drawn from the GMP.

Options to consider:

A.  The caster can cast any spell with a mana cost less than or equal to the caster's total essence.  There is no cap on how much that caster can cast per strategic turn  - all mana is drawn from the GMP.

        e.g. Urrumi the Sovereign has 15 essence.  In each tactical combat turn he can cast a spell of up to 15 essence, as long as the global mana pool can support it. 

B.  The caster can cast any spell with a mana cost less than or equal to the caster's total essence.   The caster can channel mana per strategic turn in an amount equal to his essence.  Mana is drawn from the GMP.

        e.g.  Urrumi the Sovereign has 15 essence.  In a single tactical combat, he can cast any combination of spells whose total mana cost does not exceed 15.  These spells can only be cast as long as the global mana pool can support it.

C.  Consumables that currently restore caster mana instead add to the GMP either as a one-time boost, or as a per-turn resource.

#2

The caster has an personal mana pool equal to his essence.  The caster can cast any spell with a mana cost less than or equal to the caster's total essence.     The amount of mana channelled in combat  is based on his personal mana pool.  

The GMP under this option is primarily for global spells, or for global spells castable in tactical combat (as in MoM). 

Essence under this scenario serves both to restrict the potency of the casters spell (cannot cast a spell with a mana cost higher than the caster's essence), and to restrict the total amount a caster can channel over a number of turns, based on his mana regen rate / implementation.

Options:

A.  The personal mana pool regenerates independtly of the global mana pool, at a rate determined by the developers. (e.g +1 per turn). 

i.  The caster cannot cast if his personal mana pool is empty.  OR

ii. The caster can cast if his personal mana pool is empty, drawing instead from the GMP (likely at higher cost).

B.  The personal mana pool recharges fully between turns, drawing from the GMP The caster can cast an amount in combat equal to his remaining mana pool.  A couple of possible implementations depending on how much casting the developers desire:

i. Caster mana recharges slowly in combat (e.g. 1/turn), drawing from the GMP. OR

ii.  Caster mana only regenerated out of combat, between turns, drawing from the GMP.

iii. (OPTION) Caster can cast when out of mana, drawing from the GMP at higher cost.

C.  The personal mana pool can be recharged on demand, drawing from the global mana pool. 

i. Caster mana recharge is possible on both the strategic map and (potentially at higher cost) from within combat.

ii. Caster mana recharge limited to the strategic map.

iii.  As (ii), but allowing the caster to channel from the GMP once his own mana is depleted, at higher cost.

D.  A combination.  Each caster independently regenerates their personal mana pool, but can also tap the global mana pool to recharge at a faster rate, either between combat or just on the strategic map.

E.  Consumables such as currently exist can still be used to restore caster mana. 

#3:  Strategic Spells

A.  All strategic level spells are caster-independent and draw from the global mana pool.  Imbues and the like are either limited by the casters essence or alternatively, lower the casters essence by a set amount.

B.  Some strategic spells are caster dependent.  They still draw from the global mana pool, but require a caster to cast them.

C.  Some strategic spells are caster dependent and draw from the caster's personal mana pool.

Well, these were my thoughts this far.  The developers really have a lot of possible directions to go with this  - spell costs, mana sources and regen can all be balanced based on the implementation chosen.

At first I thought the small and VERY VOCAL handful who think this game is the best thing EVAR (no names, but you'll know as soon as you see 'em post) were simply sycophants or worse, plants.  Their glowing recommendations of everything the game has to offer and pretty serious anger at those expressing anything but love for it was pretty disturbing.

But as I see more of their respective posts, I've come to realize they just expect little to nothing from Stardock.  "Indie" means you get a free pass and anyone questioning Stardock is a Bad Man™.  The great irony is that many of those commenting the post and/or complaining the loudest are most likely Stardock's biggest allies.  People who've been here since the alpha and are still posting despite the disastrous state of the game.  They WANT the game to work and WANT Stardock to fix it.

That said, I have this one piece of advice for people who are completely satisfied with the game as it stands now.  Expect more!  Don't be satisfied with a broken game that has the potential to be at the top of it's very narrow but very rewarding genre.  Fantasy TBS games come along far too infrequently to simply accept one that's as busted as Elemental without holding the developers' feet to the proverbial fire.

Stardock has made some great strides in the right direction, but it's going to be a huge uphill battle from here.  And telling them "No, don't fix it, it's great" does NOTHING to help Brad, Stardock or us.

For number one to work, a per turn limit on mana use is the only meaningful option. If it just sets the largest spell that can be cast it will either be too easy to get to the point all spells can easily be cast and make it meaningless or will make it too hard to get many casters that can cast more than the smallest spells. And essence will just be the ability to cast spells, period. Another stat (e.g. wisdom) would be used instead.

Personal mana pool contradicts the back story.

So, with this new system, are Channellers really not that special anymore?  Because now, when you Imbue a Champion, the Champion starts with a really small mana pool and has to work up to being as strong as the Channeller.  But with the new system, the Champion can be immediately as strong or stronger than the Channeller if they have a higher Intelligence (which is common with the more Adventuring types).  So if I was in this world, I would try to get a Channeller to imbue me and then stage a revolt since I was the stronger.

Also, with mana being a shared resource, will we be able to fluoridate our enemies' essence?

The diffrence is your sovereign generates mana (no explanation as to how), your offspring do not cost mana, and Imbued champions require mana upkeep.