One last appeal for changing shards

from Elemental Forums

I know it's too late.  I know when release is.  I know the gameplay that is in is all the gameplay that will go in.  I know the most recent (unreleased) changes make it so that the initial spellbook choice matter more, and the number of shards you have matters less.

But this business of shards needs one last appeal.

Right now, any shard's a good shard, because of the mana.  But I don't change my map taking strategy because a fire shard is located in the opposite direction of a good chokepoint, or better essence/food spots, or better crystal/iron supplies.  If people do, if they actually change their land grab strategy based upon whether there's a fire shard over that way and they're playing a fire mage, or a perfectly good water shard with wheat next to it over the other way, that they actually move toward the fire shard, then I'll shut up.

Please, then, let us change what a shard is.  Let us tailor our magical output to our style of play.  And make it not terribly difficult to do; no more than 2-3 up the magic tree.

A less palatable alternative (and one that fails the Paxton Rules) is to remove shard influence altogether on spell output, and tie it to the level of caster.  A rank IV fire mage should hit with fireball for 8+3/level, say, rather than 3/shard.  As I said, this is less palatable.  I would way, WAY prefer to go after the nice water shard with the wheat, turn it into a fire shard, and keep building up my power.

I get to become ultrapowerful in fire if I do it right.

I also become incredibly susceptible to someone who has fire resistance items, buffs, or traits.

13,349 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I rather like the system as it currently stands. The ability to change the output of a shard goes against what constitutes a shard. The change between life and death shard is that they are the same shard, using two different sides of the shard.

I understand your pain and the request you ask is by my understanding of the xml in the game is not that hard to make a mod to do exactly what you are suggesting.

The reason I wouldn't change the current system is because this forces a player like yourself to make a strategic choice. Do you want more power in fire, or do you want to have more saftey around your main area (the choke point). These are the choices that a strategy game should pose to you and I understand the desire to have them all be viable options. Plus, it also fits into the lore of the game not to change these other shards.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


I am one of the people (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) who changes their land-grabbing strategy based on the type of shard :)

Specifically, I play a custom faction with enchanter capability, and I will definately make an effort to grab all the fire shards that I see, so I can use flame dart to its full potential and be able to defeat some of the strong monsters out there with my fire mage sovereign...

At least in the beginning, I may very well ignore a well-placed water shard to try and get a more difficult or poorly placed fire shard...

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I have to agree with the OP and disagree with Parrot here.  It's shooting yourself in the foot if you don't get a majority of shards that are useful to you.  Cause there is at least 1 faction out there who will.  (Ceresa of the Resoln/Wraiths )

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top


I know it's too late.  I know when release is.  I know the gameplay that is in is all the gameplay that will go in.  I know the most recent (unreleased) changes make it so that the initial spellbook choice matter more, and the number of shards you have matters less.

But this business of shards needs one last appeal.

Right now, any shard's a good shard, because of the mana.  But I don't change my map taking strategy because a fire shard is located in the opposite direction of a good chokepoint, or better essence/food spots, or better crystal/iron supplies.  If people do, if they actually change their land grab strategy based upon whether there's a fire shard over that way and they're playing a fire mage, or a perfectly good water shard with wheat next to it over the other way, that they actually move toward the fire shard, then I'll shut up.

Please, then, let us change what a shard is.  Let us tailor our magical output to our style of play.  And make it not terribly difficult to do; no more than 2-3 up the magic tree.

A less palatable alternative (and one that fails the Paxton Rules) is to remove shard influence altogether on spell output, and tie it to the level of caster.  A rank IV fire mage should hit with fireball for 8+3/level, say, rather than 3/shard.  As I said, this is less palatable.  I would way, WAY prefer to go after the nice water shard with the wheat, turn it into a fire shard, and keep building up my power.

I get to become ultrapowerful in fire if I do it right.

I also become incredibly susceptible to someone who has fire resistance items, buffs, or traits.

 

i like your view of this thing

but its not possible

it would require a ton of balance changes, and also to teach ai to play like that, its not viable at few days from release

 

all this is easy to mod anyway, apart from ai unfortunately

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I have to disagree with the logic of 'Let modders fix it for you'  .  Anyways Stardock always had good, no - excellent support for every game, well after release.

It's too late to get it in for release, but not later on down the road. 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

It's a poor design mechanic that would lead to players always choosing one type of shard for all shards. Since power would stack to extreme levels, there would be no reason to do anything else. Since fire magic is the best damage element, all players would need to choose this to compete. Thus all shards would be fire and all players would be fire mages. 

Now, you could rebalance the entire game so that each element has about the same number and power in spells, with some slight variation, but then each element would be too similar. You would also have to make elemental resistance common and easy to find. You would need to have two balances to magic. One before the spell is researched and one after. Since the additive effects would be so powerful, a massive nerf either the per shard bonus or the base damage of each identical damage spell would need to happen. Nerfing the base damage would ruin pre-shard changing spell balance. Nerfing per shard damage would make the whole thing seem pointless. 

I don't see a situation where this would be a positive change to the game. You would have to make a very convincing mod to prove this idea can work. Please do. 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 7
It's a poor design mechanic that would lead to players always choosing one type of shard for all shards. Since power would stack to extreme levels, there would be no reason to do anything else. Since fire magic is the best damage element, all players would need to choose this to compete. Thus all shards would be fire and all players would be fire mages. 

Now, you could rebalance the entire game so that each element has about the same number and power in spells, with some slight variation, but then each element would be too similar. You would also have to make elemental resistance common and easy to find. You would need to have two balances to magic. One before the spell is researched and one after. Since the additive effects would be so powerful, a massive nerf either the per shard bonus or the base damage of each identical damage spell would need to happen. Nerfing the base damage would ruin pre-shard changing spell balance. Nerfing per shard damage would make the whole thing seem pointless. 

I don't see a situation where this would be a positive change to the game. You would have to make a very convincing mod to prove this idea can work. Please do. 

I also think the change proposed by the OP would homogenise the game and reduce its fun and interest...

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting ins2, reply 8


I also think the change proposed by the OP would homogenise the game and reduce its fun and interest...

I don't know what homogenise means, but I agree 100%.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting ins2, reply 8
I also think the change proposed by the OP would homogenise the game and reduce its fun and interest...

Agreed.   There might be some tweaking done to make sure the shards aren't all in bunches (I quit one game mid-game when my explorations told me the only way my Fire/Life Mage sovereign was going to see a fire or Life shard would be to conquer about 75% of the map) but otherwise, most games I enjoy the struggle.  Conquering shrines is basically the point of the game.

Maybe the OP should play with Magic set to powerful - that way there are more shrines in the world and less chance of getting screwed out of the ones you want?

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Agree absolutely with Seanw3 in reply #7, glad he said it all so nicely so i didn't have to bring up the point.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I prefer to have it the way it is.  Just because I choose Air and Life, does not mean that should be the only or majority of shards I will find.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 7
It's a poor design mechanic that would lead to players always choosing one type of shard for all shards. Since power would stack to extreme levels, there would be no reason to do anything else. Since fire magic is the best damage element, all players would need to choose this to compete. Thus all shards would be fire and all players would be fire mages. 

Now, you could rebalance the entire game so that each element has about the same number and power in spells, with some slight variation, but then each element would be too similar. You would also have to make elemental resistance common and easy to find. You would need to have two balances to magic. One before the spell is researched and one after. Since the additive effects would be so powerful, a massive nerf either the per shard bonus or the base damage of each identical damage spell would need to happen. Nerfing the base damage would ruin pre-shard changing spell balance. Nerfing per shard damage would make the whole thing seem pointless. 

I don't see a situation where this would be a positive change to the game. You would have to make a very convincing mod to prove this idea can work. Please do. 

I think your dismissing many 'scope' issues when you make comments like these.  If you go all fire, for instance, then I can be smart and go all fire resist on your ass.  All fire with a lot of shards is not a pwnz button.

The problem really lies more in the implementation of these powerful spells than in the end result of the spell. 

Corruption, for example, is way too cheap and happy for a death shard transformation spell.  It should cost more mana (100+ ish seems right) and should have a range of 1, and a short casting time, only castable by sov (which it may already be), and it should require some virgin sacrifice (maybe 50 population from the attached city.)  Another idea I've tooled around with is needing to destroy a shard in order to change a shard. 

I think shard transformation should be possible, but it should really, really hurt.  And it should hurt in different ways depending on the element.

 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

The harder you make the spell to cast, the more you gimp the AI. It doesn't work well as a balance factor. You could try to get all your units to use the ring and cloak for 75% resistance, but then your units are severely limited by crystal production. Mages with fire attacks will do massive damage, making even a high resist unit take serious damage. Any way you stack it, the fire mage comes out on top because he can instakill any troop that is not 75% immune to fire and can still do reasonable damage to one that is. What we are talking about is the problematic results of being able to specialize in one shard. The additive effects spell exponential power. 

Let's do some math:

Your solid fire mage at midgame generally will have +150% spell damage and enough spell mastery to prevent resist. Using Focus+Flamedart, you do a base of 20 damage. Add to that +4 per level and assume the mage is level 10. That is 80 damage. Now add +4 per fireshard and assume we have 4. That is 16 damage. Add all those together for 116 damage. Now let's increase it by the spell damage bonus for 290 fire damage. This is a midgame mage and only 1 of them. 4 shards is a low estimate on normal distribution, medium map. That means an automatic kill for any one unit that doesn't spend 40 crystal on fire defense. Even then, it's still 73 damage on a fully geared unit. This is too much power and loads more than any other element can give you. That proves my first point without any balance changes.

Balancing this would be nightmare that I am sure Derek has had many a nights. Adding comparable damage to the other elements results in lack of differentiation. Nerfing the bonus to mages results in a pointless path that is already on life support. Deleting Focus helps, but means most players will resort to fireballs for equal damage overall. The impetus to kill a mage on turn one will be the main focus of all tactical battles. The AI can never compete in this environment or defend against more than one element. It all goes to crap pretty quick. It ruins months of careful balance. It has a severe disconnect with weapon balance. 

 

The basic idea is seems nice on the surface, but breaks down when you add in all the factors. If you really think it's a great idea, make a proof of concept mod. If you can actually show me some numbers that make this seem like a necessity, I try to keep an open mind. I just don't see a solution for the core game.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah once you get 4+ of ANY shard the game basically breaks down because your spells become so powerful. This isn't just about fire shards, earth water and air have really strong options as well.

100 mana to re-make a shard sounds like a lot but for the bonus you get over the rest of the game it is nothing at all. Realistically, given the mana values we have now, I'd say you're either looking at around 700+ mana for one shard, or 100 mana and your new shard doesn't make any mana ever again.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I wish the shards were stronger as they seem pretty central to the plot and all. A warrior can wield a sword and the sword will always do a set amount of damage, but a mage must rely on shards for the strength of their spells (relevant traits/stats for both roles aside). Magic seems to be where the game breaks down, I am curious to see how things stand after this massive balance pass. It seems that weapons/armor are fairly balanced but magic is either always super weak or super OP.

Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 15
Yeah once you get 4+ of ANY shard the game basically breaks down because your spells become so powerful. This isn't just about fire shards, earth water and air have really strong options as well.

100 mana to re-make a shard sounds like a lot but for the bonus you get over the rest of the game it is nothing at all. Realistically, given the mana values we have now, I'd say you're either looking at around 700+ mana for one shard, or 100 mana and your new shard doesn't make any mana ever again.

 

I did end up creating a spell that could create shards of whatever type you wanted, I am not sure how you could make it so that it never produced mana, unless perhaps the amount of mana it would normally produce is taken up because it is a sustained spell, somehow. Otherwise, I am not sure how that would be accomplished with what we have access to in terms of modding capability.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 7
It's a poor design mechanic that would lead to players always choosing one type of shard for all shards. Since power would stack to extreme levels, there would be no reason to do anything else. Since fire magic is the best damage element, all players would need to choose this to compete. Thus all shards would be fire and all players would be fire mages. 

Now, you could rebalance the entire game so that each element has about the same number and power in spells, with some slight variation, but then each element would be too similar. You would also have to make elemental resistance common and easy to find. You would need to have two balances to magic. One before the spell is researched and one after. Since the additive effects would be so powerful, a massive nerf either the per shard bonus or the base damage of each identical damage spell would need to happen. Nerfing the base damage would ruin pre-shard changing spell balance. Nerfing per shard damage would make the whole thing seem pointless. 

I don't see a situation where this would be a positive change to the game. You would have to make a very convincing mod to prove this idea can work. Please do. 

 

I also think that its poor to have one 'flavor' so clearly better than all the others as well.  I've always felt magic needed a second look based on its unevenness as well as some spells could scale better.  I still think summons are clearly all over the place in terms of usefulness but even the ones that come at 5th rank pretty much pale out late game.  I am disappointed with release when it comes to this one aspect - magic.   Anyhoo, I ramble. I also think that magic protection is too easy and too strong.  I can buy two items easy and get -75% to fire or cold.  No one else think this is too strong?   Path of Defender lets you get 100% immunity too.  WTF.  Moving on.. 

Also, will be making a "PathOfTheGeomancer" in my path mod just to try it out.  I'll probably look at returning raise/lower land cost, but letting these geomancer get a cheap mana cost version.