Mana Regeneration

For now it's a simple 1 mana point / turn, but SD intends to link that to wisdom (aka essence) in a future patch (it's somewhere in one of their master todo list). 

At that time I expect you'll have somewhere to see your mana regen.

BTW it would be an interesting idea to increase mana regen in your influence zone (after all it's powerful enough to change a barren land in green fields, you'd expect your magic to change a bit in it  ) - maybe with some building improving mana regen even further?

PS: why isn't there any magician smiley on this forum? we need one!

The only way to increase mana regen is to build the city level 5 tower of eredrok (or something) for kingdom players.

What!?

Link more stuff to essence? It's going to become this uberstat.

Not only does it define how many simultaneous enchantments you can have, it dicdates how much mana you have and now it will also dictate it's regen rate?

You can't have the same stat dictate Mana pool and regen, those should be linked to sepreate values so  you need to choose whether to have a small mana pool and higher regen, and vice versa.

I hope you are wrong and that it will be linked to intelligence or something.

Cheers,

V

I thought that to be the case, but I could have sworn I read somewhere someone mentioning checking the mana regen rate.

Thanks

I thought that to be the case, but I could have sworn I read somewhere someone mentioning checking the mana regen rate.

Thanks

Yeah, I think that the different aspects of essence/mana should be tied to different attributes.

Please, say it isn't so. I've been vexed by the random UI & doc references to "wisdom" and assumed they were just more editorial sloppiness. Now you're telling me that I've got yet another vain wish to add to my list...

If it is indeed a randomly used synonym for essence, that would mark the death of essence as a potential major differentiator for Elemental's magic system. Not to mention serious damage on the role-playing side. If essence=wisdom, that means it will be technically impossible to have something like a mighty channeller with a bad megalomania problem. He or she would be too sensible to declare immediate blood feud because a rival got to the dragon egg first or whatever.

I think you are taking the RP element a step further than others.

Yeah, I think it's just that the game isn't properly updated yet (in terms of getting rid of legacy features/terminology). There is no "wisdom" it's "essence".

If you guys want, I have a thread discussing potential changes to mana, casting system & spells.

Feel free to contribute

https://forums.elementalgame.com/394869

Cheers,

V

Tying Mana regen to INT would not be too good either. Since it's the same stat that increases the power of the spells it would mean more powerful spells, more often, and power multiplied by Shards, if they ever work.

I'd tie it into Charisma, Using the idea that it is ones force of persona that will allow more mana to accrue faster.

I'd go for an independant stat for mana regen, i.e. how it is now.

If you look in your custom ruler's Xml file you can see that the mana regen is always set to 1.  Change that to whatever you want and start a new game.  Enjoy!

I'm at work so I can't remember the location but it's under something similar to "\My Documents\My Games\Elemental\Units".

Don't get me wrong, I said "intelligence... or something".

Ideally, the only way to not end up putting it on somethign would inevitably cause that stat to suddenly double in purpose, would be to have a seperate stat for that.

Buuuut I think it's probably too late for that in terms of a patch.

Saddies.

V

That stat is "backend", currently it's not displayed in your stats or at character creation. Which is problematic for, unless you edit it like you said, it wont' change at all.

And your suggestion is a semi 'cheat' if anything.

A cheat and a game mod are only separated by perspective.

Edit:

I do prefer the MoM method but Elemental's is cool too.  It just needs quite a few more updates.

Perhaps mana regeneration could be improved by shards controlled instead of essence or intelligence.

Saying it was a cheat didn't wrap up exactly what I meant.

Basically, you can't level it up, or do anything for it to go up through gameplay means. You will have to go and edit it yourself.

There we go.

And as far as Mana & Spell Casting goes, there are quite a few inherant problems with the current approach to magic in elemental. The whole lack of mana as a ressource, removes the possibilities of having Mane/turn upkeep or having these huge spells to cast.

Someone recently posted all the spells and their costs, and I saw that 'Spell of Making' costs 20 MP. The spell that ends the game costs 4 times that of a chain lightning spell... I mean really.

With a mana pool (let's say only for the sovereign) you could have/allow for major spells, and paliate their usefullness with a heavy cost or mana / turn upkeep. Currently I don't know how they could model that in Elemental.

Unlike MOM you can't start casting a spell (overland/strategic) unless you have all the mana needed to cast it. So you wouldnt' be able to see something like 1000 spellpoints to cast something. It's not adaptable to the system.

There are so many things that worry me about the magic system and it's current implementation. I feel like we painted ourselves in a corner, and only concessions can be made in order to enjoy the game. A lot of people will pull out the "but this is elemental" card. And if a game strays away from a game concept that was proven effective, effiiciant and fun, for the sole purpose of being different it's doing it wrong. If you want to implement a new system make sure it works before investing full steam in it, and then having to kick yourself into accepting it as is... because "it's different".

For a game that was supposed to be centered entirely on magic, I find many elements (har har) of the game seem to point in a totally different direction.

With a mana spell cost between 1 and 20, there isn't that much space for scaling is there?

Ahhh, le sighs.

I sorely wish they would reevaluate the current mana/regen system.

They should just add a new statistic for mana regen. Willpower would be nice. Let Willpower serve a dual function, mana regen rates, and spell resistance.

There needs to be some sort of equipment limitation imo to balance being able to achieve high mana regen. If you have a character decked out in gear giving them massive movement/speed/defense and they can cast spells left and right, you have the 'uber unit' problem.

If a player chooses to build a Sov or hero into a spellcaster, it should come with some sort of melee/defense penalties or caps.

Sigh, current system is just.. not good enough!

I suggested the Xml trick simply because it's available now as a quick fix.

As for long-term fixes, it's hard to make suggestions without knowing engine and development limitations.  With the current design it seems like the mana regen could be modified by a number of things: new tech upgrades for all of your units; city buildings for the occupants; city 'wonders' for all of your units as well; temporary enchantments; and maybe equipment that can be found on quests or researched.

I would avoid associating mana regen with charisma because they are two different gameplay elements right now and putting them together would be a significant change.  It'd be better if diplomacy, heroes, and questing all had more to do with charisma.  When there is a clear distinction between the stats it's easier to design your sovereign and heroes.

Off topic, the thing I miss most from MoM are all the M:tG inspired spells.

The Current magic system has many flaws.  This is one.

Isupport tying mana regen to a stat.  While it doesn't make sense to me Charisma could sure use some love.

I would also support an inherit ability in some soverigns to have +1 mana regeneration.  How about we call it Magical Attunment.  It would be an ability that you could choose at Soverign Design, similar to Brilliant, Meditative etc. 

As an aside heros should really get to chose an ability at levelup and not just a stat increase.  Similar to feats in DnD or Specialization points in WoW, or traits in Heros of Might and Magic.  Things to specialize characteers more. 

There should also be magical items which increase mana regen.

In General I think the MOM magic system is far superior to Elementals.

But what is the Elemental motto?  It will be GREAT....someday.

Absolutely!  See https://forums.elementalgame.com/394019  Also, I think Brad mentioned that a change to a global mana pool is in the works.  Woohoo!

i think i read ina recent journal or post that they are considering having a shared mana pool for all your faction's channellers (sorry i can't find the source). i think this is a really good idea, so long as the regen is sufficient, as it makes the choice of who to imbue more one of logistics than simply multiplying your mana regen.

if this is the case then i would tie the shared mana pool to buildings (that are built, through the sorcery tree). this keeps shards doing what they do best (improving magic) and saves the dilemma of making one stat to rule them all. you could also then use this opportunity to move spellbook research into the spell research mechanic instead of technologies. that would make more sense to me.

EDIT: damn, someone dropped the bomb before me. oh well.

The role-playing bit was a verbose coda. My main vexation is that this wisdom=essence kerfuffle strongly indicates that essence has taken several large steps down from what it sounded like it would be back when the boards opened.

Even during the early betas with no magic system other than using essence to restore lands, dev talk and forum buzz combined to strongly suggest that essence was going to be something unique that reflected how magic in Elemental worked very differently from other magic systems. I still don't like that the Restore Lands spell is gone or that Pioneers can settle on blasted land and make it habitable with zero magic of any sort. With the elements themselves having no serious flavor, I have had perhaps too much hope that essence would help add interesting variety to the magic.

I've found one shred of consolation so far. It finally noticed that my spellcasting champions can build their own retinues of summoned creatures that my sovereign has already summoned. With the Tower of Eregog still well out of my reach, mana regeneration is 'slow,' but with a little patience I think I can build a pretty serious set of giants, elementals, and whatnot.

Speaking to an inherent mana regen ability for your sovereign, does anyone else get children with a large amount of essence to start off with (like the 70-90 essence range)  I'm not complaining in the least seeing as each child that comes of age that has that much mana can summon their own armies (have about 5 offspring rollin around with a fully summoned army all with more then 70 essence available).  They also come with inherent mana regeneration. 

My sovereign or wife didn't have that ability so its new to them and ultimately  makes them stronger and more prominent then my Sovereign because of the huge amout of essence + the mana regeneration both in combat and on the strategic map.   I could see how arguing that the children's natural ability surpasses that of their parents but when my Sovereign has less then 25 mana and my first born starts with 72 mana + mana regen well... I want to use them as my main... this should not be.

I think old Vhorthex is making too long posts.

Anyone feels the same ?

(my 2 cp )

Not me. The whole problem with the magic system is that not enough thought and creativity went into it before RTM. I might not like every point Vhorthex makes, but at least he/she is trying to offer some constructive critique. One of the main things keeping me from Wintersong-worthy walls-o-text is that the story is kind of 'old' for those of us who were spending time here long before the beta even started.

doesn't anyone know that children regenerate mana every turn in tactical combat. You can use this to get mana back for them pretty easily.

In saved character files there is an entry

<UnitStat_ManaRegen>1.0000</UnitStat_ManaRegen>

Does this do anything?

Also, in coreRaceConfig.xml there is

<A_CoreManaRegeneration>50</A_CoreManaRegeneration>

Is it used?

This is for patch 1.09