Put a cap on resources (mostly for mana)

At first, I hated this idea. Then I loved it.

Now I'm lukewarm. On the upside, it creates more building opportunities and an additional use for population. On the downside, once you hit storage capacity, you can enchant until your maintanence equals your production for "free" until you dip into your stores. I'm sure there are other positive and negative aspects to a mechanic like this that don't immediately come to mind.

So... I think it's interesting and potentially promising, but I'm not 100% sold on it.

Well, I guess that roller coaster of emotions could be a good sign.  I'll take it that way. 

I guess you could enchant a lot for free, but that would assume you are not casting any other spells.  It seems like an interesting trade off.

You could either max out your enchant slots, but not cast many spells (since recovery would be slow or nil).

-- or --

You could cast a lot of spells during combat, and maximize your refresh time.

I could see either strategy working, and both of them being enjoyable.  I'm guessing the best strat would be a combination of the two.

The other interesting choice would be whether to increase your generation or your storage.

No, don't get me wrong, like I said, I think it's intriguing. And I'm all about trade-offs.

I'm more keen on it when you phrased it this way:

I wonder if this can be implemented on our side as a mod...

I agree whole heartedly on this and needs needs to be done as part of a parcel to help balance magic. They did say there was going to be a major update on magic coming up and i think this choice of enchant slots versus refresh/ mana regen time/storage is an excellent idea.

Oooohhhh, I missed this. Do you remember where they said this?

rwemack,

Absolutely LOVE this idea!!! perfect easily implementable fix for the fact the Resources often simply become a non-issue in late game. After around turn 150 or so and I have 3-4 level three cities I just really don't care about materials, gildar, or mana for that matter. The numbers just skyrocket up into the hundreds and then the thousands. Resource use can just never keep up with resource production.

I actually like the fact that once you hit mana storage capacity you would have an incentive to use enchantments. Right now I have a tendency to hoard mana for that epic battle that just never comes. This would actually make me want to use some of the lower level enchantments.

GREAT IDEA!

Agreed - Adding a max limit on your mana pending on how many shards you have - special buildings - and children!!! - the bigger the family line the better your mana pool increases - now if you loose a child your mana is cut! - oh the horror!!


i like the idea - the child idea might not work - but shards / special buildings yes!

Yeah, I agree, Redwind. Right now, there's just not enough to build, because there's just not enough for buildings to "do."

I see resources becoming pointless as an issue in costing and production, not an issue of "not having a cap".

If you are building up way too much mana, it is because you don't have enough options encouraging you to use it. Same With materials. Once you get your first and second cities built and defended, you still generate 4-12 materials per turn, and only use 4-12 every time a model dies. What you have is rampant generation.

Same thing with Mana. Early game we have, what... Heal and Arcane Arrow eating up our mana? And late game we have.... Heal and Arcane Arrow eating up our mana. Whoopee. How is putting cap on that resource going to make it more meaningful? Will you cast more often when it fills up just because it is full or will you just forget about it and lose the mana generation (and therefore all the tech time and build time you put into setting that generation up)?

Give us good, compelling reasons to spend our mana at every stage of the game, and I guarantee that you will never feel like you have "too much" just "sitting around". It may also be helpful to have a mechanism by which really big, potent spells get cast using huge amounts of mana over several turns.

City walls could be something that would cost lots of materials and give a defensive bonuse to city (loong buildtime too). That is one way of giving use to the excess materials.

City level upgrades could have a cost too. You do need materials to make your city larger and better suited for your people.

Back on topic:

Storage buildings would add an extra layer of choices, which I like if its done elegantly. They can also be robbed when you capture a city :o) But the resources are global you say?? Doesnt matter. If you take a city with 23% of the empires total storage capasity, you get 23% of the resources of the empire you take the city from. 

problem is that materials arent stored equally all around the cities - "logically" - but i would let that slip and endorse that storage facilities hold % of the total global stored and that can be captured.


- but what if you have a storage of 1000 max on materials for instance- but you only have 2 currently - and a city is lost cuttign away 200 storage ? what then ?



things could be implemented that if you take a city that has a metal mine / and the majority of Material production that those things will be looted more than others.


- hey just give workshops - mines - etc a storage and keep track of the storage in them - and then make caravans try to even out the storage as best as they can

might get to complicated then

@RedWind

You misunderstand my example. In your example the city has 20% of total storage cap. 20% of 2 materials will be rounded to nothing. Not 200

yes but what if the 2 materials are in that city - or not in that city - the materials would have to be stored (somewhere)

Yeah, I see the problem you guys are getting about with where the materials and mana are stored.  And, if you lose X storage, how many materials are lost as well.

I think the best decision would be to leave it as abstract.  The game designers have chosen global resources, so storage remains global as well.  The only time you would lose materials/mana is if your maximum storage dips below your total.

"Give us good, compelling reasons to spend our mana at every stage of the game, and I guarantee that you will never feel like you have "too much" just "sitting around". It may also be helpful to have a mechanism by which really big, potent spells get cast using huge amounts of mana over several turns."

I think jpmcconnell put it eloquently:

"I actually like the fact that once you hit mana storage capacity you would have an incentive to use enchantments. Right now I have a tendency to hoard mana for that epic battle that just never comes. This would actually make me want to use some of the lower level enchantments."

This is how I see the current system playing out:

During times of peace, you hoard all your magic and gain a huge surplus. Maybe you would like to use some minor enchantments, or to imbue another channeler.  But, you skip that to work on your rainy day fund.  This is a time of very little magic use.

Then you go to war with another faction.  On the first few fights, you are mana rich.   Spells are raging, and you don't have enough action points to use it all.  This is a time of intense magic use. 

After some battles, your reserves are exhausted.  Now it takes many turns just to generate enough mana for high level spells.  You again in a time of very little maigc use.

Alternatively, there is a max supply but higher generation rates :

You start the game out with little use of magic, you build up your reserve.  Once that is maxed out, you either deplete your generation with enchantments or you continuously cast spells to avoid capping out.  You might try out some spells that normally you would skip.  The important part is that magic use is plentiful.

When war comes, you make hard decisions over generation vs enchantments.  During combat, you have access to a reasonable amounts of mana. Gone are the battles that are completely one sided magical eruptions.

When mana is used, it is replenished at a reasonable clip, depending on your gen. vs ench. tradeoffs.  Magic use is still plentiful. 

The second one sound better to me, but I am open to be persuaded otherwise. 

We're looking up the edits for this post...

Adding maintenance costs to high-level buildings and such (beyond mana for enchantments and gildar for buildings) should suffice to mitigate mid to late game hoarding of resources, especially materials. Proper balance would need to be worked out but I personally think the concept is sound. Every action, building, etc. should be measured and balanced for initial cost and ongoing maintenance.

I mean, in real-life it does take gildar to upkeep your home and if your a do-it-yourselfer, less gildar and more materials. Thanks for listening.