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The 1.1 Spellbook Overhaul Cometh!

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The 1.1 Spellbook Overhaul Cometh!

Spells That Pack a Punch

from Elemental Forums

Since launch, one of the major complaints about Elemental: War of Magic was that the last bit of our title (the "Magic" part) was found to be...lacking (to put it gently). Global mana addresses areas of cheese, but without a significant overhaul to the Spellbooks and Spells you’re casting, that side of the game would still feel weak.  We’ve taken the following steps to rectify this in 1.1....

1. Spellbook Re-evaluation: There were several problems with the way spells have been organized in Elemental thus far, the most damning being the selection of Elemental based spells when designing your Sovereign. We’ve now moved these out of customization and into the tech tree, so you can make the choice to grab those books as shards are discovered. In their place, players can select books specific to a given strategy. The “Mobility” book has movement and teleportation spells, “Enchantment” gives the players city buffs, “Combat” does damage and protects friendly units relative to the caster’s INT, and “Terraforming” gives players the ability to sculpt the landscape in interesting ways.

2. No two spells should feel the same: Spellbooks in v1.0 through v1.09  were filled with tons of spells that all felt the same: Lightning, Fireball, Hurl Boulder, etc.  They were various tweaks on the formula, but the end result was a magic system that lacked interesting (and cool) choices.  Our motto going into 1.1 was that each and every spell (and each spellbook, for that matter) should feel unique and tempting over the use of another.

3. Bigger, badder, more ballsy high level spells: When I get a level 5 spell, it better not be a ‘slightly stronger version’ of a level 1-4 spell, ‘cause that would be lame.  Instead, I demand serious L5 muscle to my magical might - uniquely awesome options as I conquer the world.  For example...

L5 Mobility - Call of the Titans
A unstoppable spell that gathers ALL friendly unstationed troops and lets you target them directly into enemy territory.

L5 Air - Tornado
Cast upon the army of your foe, this spell will scatter all units in the stack, making them easy targets to pick off.

L5 Life - Death Ward
Taking 250 mp and 1mp/turn maint., Death Ward will allow any champion unit to escape death at the end of a losing battle (even if the battle is fought on enemy soil).

At the end of every spellbook the player will be greeted by a spell that was worth the effort to learn it.

Most of the old spells have been stripped out, and the v1.1 beta will have 68 new and improved spells. While the final 1.1 build will have around 75 spells to help your rise to power, we’ll continue taking suggestions on how to best make the ‘Magic’ half of our subtitle really shine!

Enjoy!

 


 

235,237 views 110 replies
Reply #76 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting SmilingSpectre, reply 74




quoting post

2. No two spells should feel the same: Spellbooks in v1.0 through v1.09  were filled with tons of spells that all felt the same: Lightning, Fireball, Hurl Boulder, etc.  They were various tweaks on the formula, but the end result was a magic system that lacked interesting (and cool) choices.  Our motto going into 1.1 was that each and every spell (and each spellbook, for that matter) should feel unique and tempting over the use of another.



Hmm... Now it looks somewhat... poor for me? Well, unique is good, but if it limit diverse...  I am not sure... 80 looks too small choice for spells...

Wait (I already peeked next, changelog, post) - is it possible to have "shaped" spell? I.e. now we have Fire Bolt - and it is single Bolt in game. It is good, but not enough. Can it be "Force bolt", and add elemental power from owned shards? I.e. if you have nothing, it is basic "Force bolt", if you have Fire shard, it can become Fire Bolt, Ice Shard - Ice Bolt, etc? The same could be true for Elementals, and so on. Can it be?

Well you could do this currently e.g. have multiple effects on one spell.

Reply #77 from Elemental Forums Top

The question I have for them is how will special abilities work in 1.1?
All abilities now have cooldown times instead of mana costs (I never liked the fact that spiders had to have 'Essence' to use their spiderweb).

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #78 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm still puzzled on why most spells are now non-scaling. The few damage spells left that scale with INT will be the only ones anyone uses in the later game when they'll out-pace the static damage spells at high int, leaving those to rot in the spellbook never to be cast. 

Reply #79 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 59


Just because there is a "magic resistance" stat... that doesn't mean that every spell has to use it.
With a Throw Rock spell the projectile itself could be entirely unmagical and the whole spell could "resist" on the unit's dodge and defense stats.
Illusions might take the target's INT into account. Blood magic spells the total HP...

That would in turn allow adding vulnerabilities to certain creatures.

7 hidden "vulnerability" unit properties that default to decimal 1.0  if not assigned to the unit. (Fire, water... life, physical)

A fire spell would always factor in the Vulnerability.Fire in it's damage and/or resist calculations so a plywood golem would have a harder time to resist fire spells.
A glass golem would have maybe  0.7 Vulnerability.Fire but 1.3 Vulnerability.physical.

These vulnerabilities would not need to be displayed with the unit data. The generic "magic resistance" stat is enough information.

 

Can't agree more. 

Reply #80 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 77

The question I have for them is how will special abilities work in 1.1?All abilities now have cooldown times instead of mana costs (I never liked the fact that spiders had to have 'Essence' to use their spiderweb).

Great that's what I was hoping for wasn't sure it would mak it into 1.1 but great that it has.

Thanks.

Reply #81 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 70
Gazz_: We'll be consistently taking suggestions from you guys while solidifying the future designs internally. Once a vision is solidified and agreed upon, we present that vision in some official manner (and the cycle continues).

At no part will we break the comminucation cycle, but as future design/vision decisions are agreed upon and finalized, us mortals in the bullpen have to be careful not to step on the toes of the almighty marketing and PR departments, lest their wrath descend
,

boogiebac the definition of marketing departments is the first against the wall when a revolution happens, and the definition for PR departments is to BE the wall when a revolution comes ( the first is a quote from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the second is an extrapolation of the first)

harpo

Reply #82 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 59
One important point on spell design:

Please keep the resist calculation in the Spell.xml instead of making it a hardcoded black box system.

The spells calculate their damage therre, they can also calculate their resist chance.

That ensures some desperately needed flexibility like...

Other resists:  Just because there is a "magic resistance" stat... that doesn't mean that every spell has to use it.
With a Throw Rock spell the projectile itself could be entirely unmagical and the whole spell could "resist" on the unit's dodge and defense stats.
Illusions might take the target's INT into account. Blood magic spells the total HP...

That would in turn allow adding vulnerabilities to certain creatures.

7 hidden "vulnerability" unit properties that default to decimal 1.0  if not assigned to the unit. (Fire, water... life, physical)

A fire spell would always factor in the Vulnerability.Fire in it's damage and/or resist calculations so a plywood golem would have a harder time to resist fire spells.
A glass golem would have maybe  0.7 Vulnerability.Fire but 1.3 Vulnerability.physical.

These vulnerabilities would not need to be displayed with the unit data. The generic "magic resistance" stat is enough information.

just wanted to point out that we agree with this assessment of spell resist...  our magic resist stat isn't a blanket "resist to all spells" stat, its intended only to be applied to specific spells that state they 'can be resisted'.  We are doing this so in the future we can introduce more granular forms of spell reduction/resist/avoidance. 

Reply #83 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't get why in a game called elemental you do not use elemental resistances?

Reply #84 from Elemental Forums Top

Any chance that an "ignore Normal Weapons" spell is being considered?

Lycanthropy is a very underrated talent. :hugme:

 

Also, you guys are doing very well at anticipating needs, such as spell thwarting, it is already apparent how much more organized and clear things must be on the dev side of things.

Reply #85 from Elemental Forums Top

Are more exotic spell effects going to be introduced?

  • Tying a caster's health to other units in order to mitigate received damage, but if one of bound units dies, caster dies.
  • Frozen units can be shattered (killed instantly) if hit by critical damage.
  • Raising dead units, to form zombie armies.
  • Resurrecting fallen units as health living beings again.
  • Destroying enemy equipment.
  • Adding fire / electrical damage to unit weapons (buff).
  • Siphoning mana / health from a unit.
  • Sacrificing friendly units for health replenishment.
  • Wind spells that cause arrows to veer off course.
  • Curses that damage unit attributes.
  • Curses that cause enemy units to lose health or mana over time.
  • Curses that cause enemy units to attack their friends.
  • Curses that make enemy units blind (significant reduction to hit chances).
  • Curses that make enemy units unable to speak (unable to cast spells).
  • Attacks that damage enemies based on the amount of mana they have.
  • Counter curses for removing the effects of curses from friendly units.
  • Counter spells for deflecting incoming magical attacks.
  • Spells for causing darkness.
  • Spells for allowing units to see in darkness.
  • Spells for dismissing summoned units.
  • Spells for destroying magical items.
  • Spells for creating magical items.
  • Spells for disarming enemies.
  • Spells for confusing enemies (wander aimlessly, unable to be controlled).
  • Cold based offensive spells with the side effect of reducing initiative of hit units.
  • Electrical based offensive spells with side effect of reducing dexterity of hit units.
  • Wind based offensive spells that do bonus piercing damage.
  • Earth based offensive spells that do bonus blunt damage.
  • Fire based offensive spells that weaken armor.
  • Creating stone shields / walls with earth magic.

I could go on and on.

One thing that concerns me with the new philosophy regarding spells is that it looks many are being thrown out due to similarities rather than being improved to be made more unique.

For example, two existing offensive (tactical) spells that come from unique books. One from earth doing INT damage (just for example), while the other from fire doing INT damage. Instead of throwing one away, make the spell from the earth book do bonus blunt damage and have the fire spell reduce the targets armor rating for a time.

Reply #86 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Rune_74, reply 83
I don't get why in a game called elemental you do not use elemental resistances?

Maybe because the project has been, consciously or not, about making v1 of an engine for GalCiv 3 and magic has never been taken seriously as an aesthetic, much less as the core of the game mechanics. I'm still a tad hopeful that magic will become adequately magical by the 1st or 2nd expansion, but I remain sorely disappointed that it has been an ugly stepchild so far despite several years of talk about and work on the 'spiritual successor' to MoM.

Reply #87 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting onomastikon, reply 18
I like what I see a lot -- great! Thank you! -- with the exception of this





quoting post

1. Spellbook Re-evaluation: There were several problems with the way spells have been organized in Elemental thus far, the most damning being the selection of Elemental based spells when designing your Sovereign. We’ve now moved these out of customization and into the tech tree, so you can make the choice to grab those books as shards are discovered. In their place, players can select books specific to a given strategy. The “Mobility” book has movement and teleportation spells, “Enchantment” gives the players city buffs, “Combat” does damage and protects friendly units relative to the caster’s INT, and “Terraforming” gives players the ability to sculpt the landscape in interesting ways.


 



I strongly dislike the way that Stardock games tend to have large units of knowledge based around functionality; a prime example of this is "Lasers" or "Engines" in GalCiv2, or your suggestion above. It always feels refreshing and exciting to have a large base of knowledge and being able to pick and use areas of it according to circumstance. Dominions is a good example of this: You research something like "Evocation", but that gives you the possibility of casting such various things as fireballs to divination spells -- depending on in-game circumstances. I'd much prefer Elemental to have books like "Life" and "Earth" or whatever, and have various functionalities within these split up; "Combat" feels like lasers, feels one-dimensional, and, much like lasers in GC2 was, could run the risk of being functional yet boring. I do mean this constructively, and will of course wait to see the results...

I have to agree with this post. A spell book named 'combat' feels a little generic, unoriginal and I dare add boring. Be careful about making each book too rigid. MoM did this well each school favoring a different strategy but also allowing a bit of variety (every school could summon and all had damage spells except life, but some schools were better than others at summoning)  I think the air book is on the right track it has a mix of interesting spells that fit the theme. Enchanting feels a bit generic though. Personally I think the +1 food enchant would belong in the earth book for example.

Reply #88 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kestral2040,
just wanted to point out that we agree with this assessment of spell resist... our magic resist stat isn't a blanket "resist to all spells" stat, its intended only to be applied to specific spells that state they 'can be resisted'. We are doing this so in the future we can introduce more granular forms of spell reduction/resist/avoidance.

That's good news. Some hardcoded resist routine would certainly be quicker to write but it would severely limit the spell design.
If every spell includes it's complete resist calculation, what it checks against and to what degree, that's more to write overall (each spell...) but maximum freedom.

My distinction between "magic resist" and "vulnerability.fire" can of course be expressed as just a magic resistance vs fire.
However, there are advantages to having a separate "baseline resist".
On level-up, the base resist of a creature could improve. Generic resist buffs or debuffs are easy to code because only one value needs to be altered.
It would be more mod-safe because all the fiddly bits - like maybe separate blunt and piercing damages - are working as
a property of the base resist (or base Defense) and don't break any mods where units don't have a "piercing resist".


Quoting seanw3,
Any chance that an "ignore Normal Weapons" spell is being considered?
Lycanthropy is a very underrated talent.

Weapon attacks are a spell... technically.

If the resist system is expanded beyond the basic placeholder we'll see in the near future, it would be a no brainer to let lycanthropes have a "magic resistance" against physical attacks.
Magical / silver weapons would simply be another resist type that lycanthropes don't have a special resist against.

With the "vulnerability" system I outlined above, units can have selected resist tweaks added while any unlisted value defaults to a vulnerability of 1.0 or normal.
(this increases compatibility with newly added spells or units because worst case, they default to "normal damage" and nothing breaks)
In this case, Vulnerability.Physical might be 0.1 (10 %). Lycanthropy implemented with adding one entire value.


Quoting Redaxe,
I have to agree with this post. A spell book named 'combat' feels a little generic, unoriginal and I dare add boring.

I'll have to agree with the agreer... in principle. =P
However, this was only referring to starting spells, not the organisation in-game.

Effectively they are giving the player a simplified interface for picking starting spells without having to know exactly what each spell does.
That's not such a bad idea if you consider accessability.

Reply #89 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Redaxe, reply 87

I have to agree with this post. A spell book named 'combat' feels a little generic, unoriginal and I dare add boring.
Total War Spellbook? Way of War Spellbook? Tao of Slaughter Spellbook? Strife Spellbook? Mahochambara Spellbook? Way of the Closed Hand Spellbook? Tactical Spellbook? Tabmoc Spellbook? Martial Spellbook? Arcane Spellbook?

Then lets move to Mobility:
Spatial Distortion Spellbook? Way of the Fleeting Feet Spellbook? The Running Man Spellbook?

And don't get me started on the Life Spellbook or the Death Spellboook. Talk about generic!!!

(not that I would mind having all the spellbooks named after Lore stuff but only complaining about the name of a spellbook when none are original... and really, it's not like the name has influence about how magical the game is, the spells do)

Reply #90 from Stardock Forums Top

:D  

Quoting Kestral2040, reply 82

We are doing this so in the future we can introduce more granular forms of spell reduction/resist/avoidance. 

That's the best news I've seen about this game since yesterday!   :D

Reply #91 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 89
... and really, it's not like the name has influence about how magical the game is, the spells do)

That's definitely an eye-of-the-player thing, not an objective fact. Immersion is a big part of why I got hooked on games like MoM and the early Civs.

Clumsy wording in UIs makes it harder to maintain immersion, so I put a high value on 'minor' things like spell or spell book names. You see them all the time as you play, and I'd rather see names that fit smoothly into an aesthetic whole and not random-seeming or bluntly generic labels. (Gods above, below, and sideways I hope Stab of Ice has joined the great piles on the cutting room floor.)

Reply #92 from Elemental Forums Top

Stab of Ice 1, 2, and 3 are now the first three water spells...with Ultimate Stab of Ice 1 & 2 the last two.

Sorry, GW ;)

Reply #93 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 92
Stab of Ice 1, 2, and 3 are now the first three water spells...with Ultimate Stab of Ice 1 & 2 the last two.

Sorry, GW

The crack-head smiley has me confused. Are you offering a reassuring joke, or are those actual spell names in the latest internal builds?

Reply #94 from Elemental Forums Top

Why not go into floats? Stab of Ice 1.238 has a nice ring to it...

 

Reply #95 from Elemental Forums Top

reassuring joke
  :)

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Reply #96 from Elemental Forums Top

Nah, numbers really sound a bit lame. It should be something like

Watery Stab of Ice
Minor Stab of Ice
Lesser Stab of Ice
Stab of Ice
Major Stab of Ice
Greater Stab of Ice
Massive Stab of Ice
Ultra Stab of Ice
EPIC STAB OF ICE
EPIC STAB OF ICE 2 (sorry, couldn't find a good name for the lvl 10 spell)

Reply #97 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 95

reassuring joke 

A smile is worth at least a few hundred words? :P

Reply #98 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gazz_, reply 96
Nah, numbers really sound a bit lame. It should be something like

Watery Stab of Ice
Minor Stab of Ice
Lesser Stab of Ice
Stab of Ice
Major Stab of Ice
Greater Stab of Ice
Massive Stab of Ice
Ultra Stab of Ice
EPIC STAB OF ICE
EPIC STAB OF ICE 2 (sorry, couldn't find a good name for the lvl 10 spell)

  • Stab of Ice
  • Stab of Ice Reloaded
  • Stab of Ice Revolutions

Hopefully better than some movies...

Reply #99 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Wintersong, reply 98
...
Stab of Ice
Stab of Ice Reloaded
Stab of Ice Revolutions

Hopefully better than some movies...

That hurts like too big a slurp from a very cold slushy on a very hot day.

Not least because I wish Elemental had been mostly about an art project and not at all about starting a new franchise...

Reply #100 from Stardock Forums Top

Stab of Ice
Lance of Winter
Frost Giant's Fist
Artic Wyrm's Claw
Dire Penquin's Peck of 0 K Doom

... From what I have read, there are only 5 spell levels.