Kobracan

Join Date 10/2005

Is Spell of Making Victory Too Easy?

Last night, I won a game (v1.1, Resoln / Ceresa, large map, 8 players, challenging AI) in around 330 turns using the Spell of Making victory condition (my first such win). I thought it was a bit too easy. My first reaction was: the Spell of Making tech is too early and it should be an end of game tech. After thinking about it for a while though I actually agreed that it is probably better it's not the very last tech as it gives another different way of victory for the players that want to pursue it. However as it stands, the spell of making victory condition a bit too easy because of the following:

The AI players don't realize you're about to win the game. Every time you build one of the towers required for the spell of making, your opponents should get a notification (I don't know if they do) and you should get bad and progressively worse diplomatic penalties from every opponent you already met. By the time you complete all 4 towers, it should pretty much be instant war declaration from everyone you met with no possibility of making peace. Also, I didn't check if this is in the game or not but any time you lose one of the towers required for the spell of making, the spell of making you are casting should be interrupted so one way to stop a player from casting the spell should be capturing/razing a tower city she owns.

Now even with all this, stopping spell of making may still not be possible. You can rush build the towers very easily in a few turns if you have a lot money and 10 turns is a very short amount of time to cast the spell. No one may be able to stop you in time even they are vastly more powerful than you. So, I also think a combination of increasing costs of towers, casting cost and time of spell of making may be necessary.

In my game last night, before I started casting the spell of making I was at war with Magnar and Yithril. After I started casting the spell of making, I actually paid them off to make peace (95 gold and 114 gold or something) even though they hated me. That shouldn't be possible at all when I am less than 10 turns of winning the game.

What do you all think?

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Suntechnique

Yes, way too easy. Most people just avoid it, or turn it off entirely.

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I think if it took you 300+ turns to win, then the Spell of Making is not too easy.

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The point is not that it took 300 turns. The point is once you set your mind to winning by spell of making and start building towers / casting the spell, there isn't much the opponents do to stop it (or maybe there isn't much they CAN do to stop it).

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The towers can be pretty heavy resource sinks if you don't have the strategic to support a proper army and build up. Typically going for this victory makes you the 'little kid' and you'll get picked on. If playing on normal, then it probably is OP.

I once won with 2 cities, no strategic resources, via spell of making. The kicker is that when I won, research complete triggered and I couldn't end the game . I used volcano to block off my two cities, and destroy enemy cities that I had revealed before Tarth decided to genocide the world. +1 crystal per turn from city level up. And one last friendly race who I bargained with to take all their iron. I would have lost should SoM not be in the game. Doesn't matter about volcano nerf. I cast it so many times I'd easily have been able to surround myself.

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Yes. Way too easy.

Imo, there should be a casting time to the Spell of Making, and as soon as you begin to cast it, the ENTIRE world turns against you. The goal than becomes "SURVIVE UNTIL ITS FINALLY CAST" and I think it's a very plausible goal. (Reminds me of protoss plot in starcraft)

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Kantok

Join Date 10/2007

+67

The problem with it, and with the quest victory, has always been that the rest of the world is completely apathetic once you start down those roads.

Hard to believe that the rest of the Sovereigns of the world are your equals when they clearly don't care that you're about to sap their control of their kingdoms in a very direct and personal way.

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Quoting GFireflyE,

reply 6

Yes. Way too easy.

Imo, there should be a casting time to the Spell of Making, and as soon as you begin to cast it, the ENTIRE world turns against you. The goal than becomes "SURVIVE UNTIL ITS FINALLY CAST" and I think it's a very plausible goal. (Reminds me of protoss plot in starcraft)

Ummm... there is a 10 turn casting time to cast it.

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Quoting Kantok,

reply 7

The problem with it, and with the quest victory, has always been that the rest of the world is completely apathetic once you start down those roads.

Hard to believe that the rest of the Sovereigns of the world are your equals when they clearly don't care that you're about to sap their control of their kingdoms in a very direct and personal way.

The problem is not the spell itself, but that the AI cannot see you starting this road, it does take a loooooong bloody time to being able to cast the spell, and a decent amount of resources.

The AI should be able to foresee this tactic

If the spell itself is a problem, as my brother just suggested, it would be a fun idea if any player had the ability to use X amount of to stop the spell from casting (so he uses vast amounts of mana, to stop your spell, to buy him a few more turns to hit you in the face).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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I think this topic has already been treated some time before, but I'm happy to have a discussion about it again.

The Spell Of Making (SOM) is a victory condition that presents two issues:

- AIs seems not interested in doing it. I've seen a post of 2 people that said that the AI started it in their game, but I've never seen that in my games. Maybe it is necessary long games (>300 turns) to trigger the AIs, idk.

- AIs shows no interest when the player is trying to get it.

Exactly the same that happens with the Master Quest. Although the MQ is out of the game (I don't want the AI to go for it, and they seem to do nothing if player tries it), but I find it could be interesting if the AIs tried the SOM.

With the current situation, reaching it is very easy. The only problem is that you need 100 crystal (maybe 100 more for the other tower, I'm not sure), and 100 metal, wich is easier to gather. And a lot of money for rushing the towers. So, in about in 2-3 turns, if you have all that, you can start casting it. In 12-13 turns, since the tech is reached, the game is finished, and no one will move a finger to avoid it.

Imagine the opposite: the AIs start casting the SOM. The player would probably have little chances to prevent it.

My suggestion was simple: each tower constructed added a -25 to diplomacy. That is war for sure...But some more turns for the casting, and making AIs attack the cities with the towers is necessary too, if you want to give challenge to the SOM.

Now, SOM is just an easy way to get victory if you don't want a long campaing full of battles with enemies that can't face your elite units and champs, and the MQ is far away to decide going for it (or it will just take more turns).

One more thing: if AIs can cast it, what would happen if, let's say, the player and another AI cast it in the same turn? Who wins?

EDIT: I tried MQ and later saveloaded to go for SOM with the same game (I wanted to check both of them), and I found that the MQ gives you a higher final score than the SOM.

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Quest and Spell of Making. The AI do not try and stop you. Conquest, they are actively trying to stop you. But these three they just let you run around and complete them.

The Spell of Making, once you start building the towers, there should be a world notice, and you should have a pretty substantial drop in foreign relations. It should get worse with each one that is completed. By the time you start building the Forge, all remaining races should be at war with you no matter how friendly they were with you.

Quest---needs to scale better. Unfortunately the only times I have done it, my sovereign alone could defeat the quest. There also needs to be more locations, and the locations need to be farther apart. Increase the chances that one of the locations is in enemy territory. The last time I completed the quest none of the locations was more than two turns away. Scatter them all over the world.

****Edit*****was typing my message as Solosol posted.

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Quoting Trojasmic,

reply 8

Quoting GFireflyE,
reply 6

Yes. Way too easy.

Imo, there should be a casting time to the Spell of Making, and as soon as you begin to cast it, the ENTIRE world turns against you. The goal than becomes "SURVIVE UNTIL ITS FINALLY CAST" and I think it's a very plausible goal. (Reminds me of protoss plot in starcraft)

Ummm... there is a 10 turn casting time to cast it.

Should be at minimum 25 turns. Enough time for all other factions to mount an attempt to thwart you.

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Humility

Join Date 09/2007

Sound good to me...

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Yep, I raised the topic during beta, but sadly nothing has changed thusfar. Some good suggestions there, hope the devs take notice of both topics.

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Yeah, we need a difficulty check for those victories. They are far too easy on all difficulties. They should be balanced with the final weapons in mind (MQ), and spell of making should be at the end of the magic tree, or give them some more prereqs. At the very least scale them with difficulty settings, that would help a lot.

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Quoting Trojasmic,

reply 8

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 6
Yes. Way too easy.

Imo, there should be a casting time to the Spell of Making, and as soon as you begin to cast it, the ENTIRE world turns against you. The goal than becomes "SURVIVE UNTIL ITS FINALLY CAST" and I think it's a very plausible goal. (Reminds me of protoss plot in starcraft)

Ummm... there is a 10 turn casting time to cast it.

10 turns of hitting "End Turn", because the AI is utterly oblivious to the fact that you're about to win the game.

In Kael's FFH Civ IV mod, one victory condition was to construct the "Tower of Mastery", an incredibly expensive wonder which required the player to first build four cheaper towers. Because it was so expensive, the Tower of Mastery's construction time was generally at least as long as the Spell of Making's casting period. Once the player began work on the Tower of Mastery, each AI would declare permanent war (friendly AI giving a couple turns grace period)- this made the last several turns of the game much more interesting, and punished players who tried to steal a win while neglecting their military.

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DsRaider

Join Date 11/2008

+70

The issue is much more complex then it simply being too easy. I have never won using the Spell of Making in any game that I couldn't have stomped the AI by conquest instead, it just was less tedious.

In no way is the problem that you can get it too early. That's simply an artificial constraint. You can win by conquest from turn 1 but mostly people don't say it's too easy. Rather the problem is that the spell is not competitive in nature. There is no real race between players to achieve it and the requirements are mostly simple build time. You can't block it shy of conquering the other player. As others have said having other players declare war on you would help make it competitive, but then it would basically become a slight variant on conquest victory. You would only ever win if you could take on all the opponents. Rather I would like for the Spell of Mastery to be more unique, and present a real alternative play style that is completely separate from conquest.

To do this I would suggest adding a global non-additive resource called Shard Mastery. Instead of requiring one of each type of shard the Spell of Mastery would require the casting player to have the most Shard Mastery output of all the players. Shard Mastery would be granted by various magical buildings, the Forge of the Overlord towers, and shards depending on their upgrade level.

The Forge towers could be made world achievements and scattered among the magic tech tree. Thus players going for a magic victory would have to plan it from the start and compete amongst each other to amass the most shards, magic tech, and unique buildings. This would be much more organic and interesting then the current system. Like military conquest it would be organic, challenging, exciting, and require dedicated planning.

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I agree with most of the discussion here, and I think that the time to cast the spell should be increased, or more aggression should start once the towers are constructed. (Also it should be really expensive to buy them...)

I don't think you should have to have a huge military force in order to defend yourself while casting the spell, and have your whole empire collapse around you until its one final battle at your capital (especially if you are building the towers in parallel in multiple cities).

While that is kind of cool, if you are that strong you might as well win by conquest. A magical victory should instead use things like city buffs, freeze/tremor, and perhaps newly added spells to help you delay your enemies.

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so far, I've just used it as a win button if i didn't feel like mopping up but have to see the victory screen. i don't try to rush it or use it if i'm in the middle of a war.

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DsRaider / UmbralAngel,

While I agree with you that ideally Spell of Making should be a completely alternate way of winning not effectively equivalent to conquest victory (as you have to have to military might to stand up to the assault that will come from opponents when you start casting the spell), the fact of the matter is there is no way to completely decouple the military might from the spell of making because when you lose all your cities and all your units you lose the game and there is no way around that.

So since you can't completely decouple military might from Spell of Making, the next best thing to do is to try to make it so that Spell of Making is both stoppable AND a viable way to win at the same time. I admit it's not an easy to thing to balance.

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Since I never cast the Spell of Making, I'm not aware of all of the requirements. It seems to require four buildings and casting the Spell of Making

Tower of the Padars: 200 Gold; Gives +1 Air, +1 Fire
Tower of the Sword: 100 Metal, 200 Gold; Gives +1 Earth, +1 Water
Tower of the Witch: 100 Crystal, 200 Gold; Gives +1 Air, +1 Water
Forge of the Overlord: 50 Crystal, 200 Gold; Gives +1 Earth, +1 Fire

Why not (pick any combo of the below):
1) Require each building be built in a separate city
2) Require each building be built on an appropriate shard as an upgrade to the shard (e.g. Tower of the Padars must be built atop an Air or Fire node)
3) Remove the Fog of War around that shard/city for all factions once it is built because each tower is now a a shining beacon for all to see.
4) Have the AI focus not merely on attacking the player, but rather, capturing/destroying the towers.
5) While the spell is cast, have the sovereign be "out of commission", unable to cast any other spells while casting the Spell of Making (perhaps this is already the case). I know I'd have a harder time defending myself if my sovereign was unable to cast anything.
6) In the alternative, have all spells from the sovereign either cost twice as much mana or be reduced in effectiveness while it. Surely trying to "master magic itself" takes a fair bit of concentration
7) As a 2nd alternative, increase the effectiveness of enemy spells within your borders due to your attempts at taking control of magic. Or, make all magic more effective.
8) Allow the other sovereigns to stall the Spell of Making by casting a spell costing, say, N mana points that requires you cast a counter-spell for 2N mana points (or perhaps make it a function of each sovereign's spell mastery level).
9) Have random magical-y "mishaps" occur against your kingdom while the Spell of Making is being cast. Surely trying to master magic itself isn't a smooth process. (in tonight's news, "Reports of random lightning strikes smiting Amarian citizens. A spokesman for Pariden denies any link between the strikes and the Spell of Making")

The problems:
a. Having the AI blindly focus on attacking the towers would be a great way of creating a "killing field" of enemy units: since you now know where the AI will attack, you can mass your forces there and focus your area-effect spells on the units as they all approach. Thus, instead of building the towers deep within your land, you may create it near the edges of your empire to lure them all in. This could be mitigated by only having the AI attack when a player has at least 2 towers.
b. As DsRaider/UmbralAngel have said, changes that make everyone just attack you does make the Spell of Making a sort of "defensive military victory". That may or may not be desirable.
c. The amount of coding required for some of these ideas may not be trivial.
d. Suggestions might not fit with the lore behind the game.

This isn't to say the other ideas suggested aren't better or that some of these ideas haven't been stated above already in some fashion; I'm just throwing out a bunch of things.

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BlackKrim laying out the Towers like that gave me an idea. What if the spell of making requirements were completely changed around.

Rather than waiting for ten turns, you need to get X of each 'element' of mana. You get 2 Air/Fire/Earth/Water shard power from doing the towers. If that counts, then X in the standard game would be 20. In 10 turns you get '20' of each element. So the win condition rewards claiming the most amount of shards, as opposed to simply dumping some mana and waiting. Which can still reward conquest play, but usually you need to take out a few pests in a standard game.

So for example you need to spend however much mana (500?), then wait until you have acquired 50 of each element. So a minimum of 25 turns should you possess no shards at all.

Shard bonus only really speeds up the win con when you have at least 1 of each element. So 4 Fire shards might destroy enemy units, but not help at all for SoM. So with 'X = 50' at worse this is a nerf in turns to win, but a buff in the right (but rare, 5+ shards) situation.

Maybe just any shard at all would be more fair.

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The problem with the SOM is that I think it is not clear what kind of victory it represents.

It is not a research victory, as it do not requiere a special amount of research.

It is not a magical victory: the only relation with magic is that it is a magic tech, and that you need some mana to cast a spell. No need any special knowledge or skills in magic.

For now, it seems a variation of a Wonder Victory, where you need to build X structures (and to do so you need X requeriments). Wich are not very big, as said above. The "10 turns casting" is just a way to "justify" a magical victory, but I think it is not enough for that.

And as it has been said too, the closest solution (diplomacy penalties: all at war with the caster) converts it in a variation of a conquest victory.

I would encourage the Devs to clarify this point at first, and once we know what kind of victory it goals, then we can suggest more properly.

If SOM really wants to target a "Magical Victory", magic should be more represented, to the point to be the main actor in the scene. For example, one of the towers should give a spell to abort or at least delay the casting time, as a way to counter it. Another tower might show all the rest of towers in the map, without FOW. Problem: Curgen volcano should not be used in this case. And finally, casting the SOM would requiere a BIG amount of mana EACH turn.

Maybe things like that would encourage to pursuit a magical victory since the begining/mid game (upgrade cities and shards to give the more mana possible and things like that to get mana enough).

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If it was me, the tech for SOM should unlock a new spell book instead of the spell, one that you have to level up like other books (think of it as learning the ropes of ultima magic), but with a really high rarity (so that it always appears when you level). Then, once you get to say... the third tier of that book, you can then finally cast the final spell. That would at least require you to gain 3 levels after getting the book and choosing to devote yourself to researching that path. This would, at the very least, extend the requirements, make you put some effort into it, and tying it more to the existing "magical" system...

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I also think each of the Towers should be World Wonders, and you need to control the first three to start building the 4th. If you you lose control of one of the three, then construction is stopped.

In addition, in the current game I built a Tower of the Witch, I think, and Resoln built one as well, I took over the city that had the her Tower of the Witch. So now I have two of them. That seems silly.

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Some good ideas here to improve this victory condition. As it stands now, I just disable it as well as the quest victory. Domination is the only way.

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