Gemless Spells

Makinus · #1 October 5th, 2009, 08:18 AM

I´m thinking about a mod that would exclude the gem requirement of the spells that need gems, but i want to balance these spells with the others that are already gemless... The idea is to eliminate one of the causes of micromanagement...

So, i want to see some ideas of how this balance could be achieved, i was thinking in increasing the fatigue of the spell and/or the research requirements... What about if a 1 gem spell converted to a gemless one gets double the standard fatigue? Would this be enough? A 2 gem spell would get triple the fatigue and so on...

Increasing research would be another way of balancing, but my preference would be working with fatigue only as research is a one time difficulty, once researched the spell would be unbalanced with the similar ones....

What do you think?

BTW: the spells i´m thinking about are combat spells only. Rituals, summoning, etc. would remain unchanged...

Sombre · #2 October 5th, 2009, 08:53 AM

Gemcost is tied directly to fatigue in modding commands.

Each 100 fatigue = 1 gem.

Makinus · #3 October 5th, 2009, 09:01 AM

So what i want to do is not possible?

LDiCesare · #4 October 5th, 2009, 09:04 AM

I think that 100 fatigue = 1 gem so you can't get costs higher than 99, but I may be mistaken.
The only thing you can do is have fatigue of 99 at most, which makes some powerful spells really uber powerful (Master Enslave anyone?)

Jack_Trowell · #5 October 5th, 2009, 09:50 AM

At best, you could increase the level needed to cast those spells (as well as reducing the fatigue level to 99)

It would restrict those powerful spells to high magic pretenders, or specialist mages with several path boosters

If master enslave has a base fatigue cost of 99 and need 9 or even 10 in astral, you won't have more that one unit being able to cast it, and with such a base level, the fatigue cost would be hard to lessen (you would need to use gems again, or to have a base 10 in the path plus boosters), so the spell could not be easily spammed (in fact, it would be harder to do that now)

Be aware however that the AI love to cast some spells that could be counter-productive, such as summoning fire elementals intead of firing large AOE, or casting berserking spells (such as touch of madness) on your archers and/or mages.

For such spells, leaving the gem cost could be justified (touch of madness), or you could mod them, such as having the elemental summoning spells summon several elementals at once, but needing a mage with a really high level (6+ with a base 99 or 90 fatigue would again prevent the spells from being easily spammed, while having several elementals at once would still make them really useful)

Makinus · #6 October 5th, 2009, 10:01 AM

What are the worse spells that the AI normally use? So i can mod them accordingly.... I liked the idead to mod the level... that probably is the way to go....

LDiCesare · #7 October 5th, 2009, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack_Trowell

If master enslave has a base fatigue cost of 99 and need 9 or even 10 in astral, you won't have more that one unit being able to cast it, and with such a base level, the fatigue cost would be hard to lessen (you would need to use gems again, or to have a base 10 in the path plus boosters), so the spell could not be easily spammed (in fact, it would be harder to do that now)

With a required level of 10 and 99 fatigue cost, Master enslave would be about 10 times cheaper than what it currently is.
Right now, in order to cast it, you need an S8 mage with 8 gems. He can't cast it because the fatigue is 800, so he must divide the cost by about 8 to get it cast. which means boosters (+2 to reach 10) and additional gems (since he's level 10 now, he can only spend 2 beyond the base cost). Total = +4 levels. In vanilla, he still can't cast it much. If the spell is 10 with 99 fatigue, with 2 gems, the caster only pays about 25 fatigue and can cast it 4 times for 8 mana all by himself.
In vanilla, the caster needs a communion to cast the spell, and the fatigue is likely to kill the slaves. I don't think one would cast it with less than 8 slaves to soak up the fatigue. With a 99 cost and level 10 requirement, a level 5 astral mage
can cast it for 5 mana. This spell can now be spammed by all arch theurgs with a measly pair of theurg communicants.

So it's totally broken and overpowered if you remove the gem cost, even if you raise the level requirement. Unless you can put the requirement to be level 16, which means a level 8 wizard can cast it with 8 gems and you're back to the gems problem you wanted to solve in the first place.

HoneyBadger · #8 October 6th, 2009, 06:34 AM

The problem with gems isn't the micromanagement factor. It's the fact that there's only the 8 common gem types. If there was the ability to make new types of gems, some rarer than others, many of the spells that the AI shouldn't be casting/wasting gems on, could easily be made inaccessible to the AI, while retaining the good aspects of gems in the game, and at the same time opening up new thematic opportunities, and brand new strategies and spells.

LDiCesare · #9 October 6th, 2009, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

The problem with gems isn't the micromanagement factor. It's the fact that there's only the 8 common gem types. If there was the ability to make new types of gems, some rarer than others, many of the spells that the AI shouldn't be casting/wasting gems on, could easily be made inaccessible to the AI, while retaining the good aspects of gems in the game, and at the same time opening up new thematic opportunities, and brand new strategies and spells.

I disagree. I've had a S9 caster scripted to magic duel * 3 + returning (whatever the spell name is). Instead of using 1 gem per magic duel, it wasted 3 gems, for a total of 11 instead of 5 gems. You have to take that into account when giving gems to your commander, which is a real pain.

HoneyBadger · #10 October 6th, 2009, 09:07 PM

It's a pain, but that's an issue with how the game itself operates, rather than a balancing issue. It would be wonderful to see that problem solved, but until Illwinter gets around to producing Dom 4, I'd rather what we have be better balanced (something we can work on) than see large portions of the game amputated.

All that said, adding the ability for us to mod gems seems like it could be done with the current game, rather than requiring a complete rewrite. Considering the modding depth present, it seems anomalous that gems, in particular (and magic in general, outside of spell creation/manipulation itself) is so lacking. It's-to me-a bit like being able to play around with the recruitable units in a Nation, but not being able to make new Nations.