Strategic spells that "steal" resources?

from Elemental Forums

Hi all,

I've got a couple of ideas for strategic spells that you cast on an enemy city... where the effect would be you get X resources.  For example a "Thieves Infiltration" spell that you cast on an enemy city that gives the casting faction +10 gildar per city level (of the enemy city).  It could conceivably be maintained on an ongoing basis so the effect is per turn.

I'm not sure if this is possible, can't think of a way.  The modifier I've started out playing with is something like this... 

<GameModifier>
  <ModType>Resource</ModType>
  <Attribute>Gold</Attribute>
  <Value>10</Value>
  <PerLevel>1</PerLevel>
  <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
  <Provides>+10 Gildar per turn</Provides>
</GameModifier>

But this would give gold to the enemy if the target is <SpellTargetType>EnemyCity</SpellTargetType>  :-(

What do you think.. is it possible somehow?

BTW (bonus question!)... anyone know if it's possible to get the city level in a <calculate> tag in a similar way to Unit_GetLevel because that <PerLevel> tag above doesn't seem to work in any case?

Cheers.

 

 

1,551 views 1 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

First, try and see if <Value>-10</Value> works. I suspect that, assuming you can have negative values for this modifier, this money loss will be affected by the AI tax rate, since it will be applied to city income.

Next, for a one-time bonus per spell cast, you might be able to use the code from Alchemy, or you might be able to set a negative resource cost (e.g., casting the spell "costs" -10 gold). I don't know if spell costs can be negative, though, and I don't know that a spell can have multiple target types.

For a multi-turn spell, you could try setting a negative upkeep value for the spell and see what happens.

I don't know if any of this will work, however.