Thoughts on aggression and resources

[Slingers]

I definitely wouldn't want my Volcano to have a chance to create a new resource for an enemy and then have no way to cast it again on that tile, that's why it's allowed to cast it on a tile that's already a Volcano.

Well, thats Chaos.) You would have a way to destroy a resource on a volcano with a volcano by casting "Change Terrain" inbetween.

[jhsidi]

I definitely wouldn't want my Volcano to have a chance to create a new resource for an enemy and then have no way to cast it again on that tile, that's why it's allowed to cast it on a tile that's already a Volcano.

Well, thats Chaos.) You would have a way to destroy a resource on a volcano with a volcano by casting "Change Terrain" inbetween.

Agreed with Slingers. Chaos has several battle effects (Mystic Surge, Apocalypse) that can backfire on the caster, so why not in the world, too? And again, you can easily just cast corruption on that same tile.

I see Seravy's point on not having any proposed protective spell be Arcane. In that case, it would make most sense for me to put it in Life or Sorcery, for obvious thematic reasons. The problem here is that the common and uncommon tiers are pretty jam packed.

Side question here, but have you considered expanding the common / uncommon tiers to 12 spells? I find the expanded spell selection for rare / very rare to be pretty neat.

Aside from that -- I thought my original proposal to have a city unit (like engineers or priests) that can protect a tile was decent, since those kinds of units are race limited. If 2-3 races had a specific unit with a Bless action I'd be motivated to seek out that race to conquer.

[Seravy]

Yes, we did consider expanding common and uncommon but the conclusion was pretty much that most of the realms didn't need any new spells at those tiers.
Even this protection spell would be too situational to work on its own without additional effects I think. You need to already have Mithril or better and have a Chaos enemy that's hostile towards you for the spell to be of any use.

[Slingers]

Life is certainly sort of protective. And sure, Sorcery “counters, dispels or manipulates other wizard's spells.” But so far the only realms dealing with geology are Nature and Chaos.  Units on a tile such as a City or a Node do not protect it from incoming spells. I don’t think a game mechanic like this is suddenly needed. Fight fire with fire or Chaos with Chaos! Resources are randomly distributed during map generation. They can appear and deplete randomly. Why not making the chance to protect them random as well? Lets say Fate Mastery gives a 50% chance of protection from resource destruction. A chance of less than 100% only works if it is impossible to cast volcano on volcano. The random generation of resources by volcanoes also makes little sense atm, as these are always automatically destroyed in the same or next turn by the same wizard. Chaos wizards would look a lot nicer, if you know they can completely ruin your territory, but they might give you some accidental gifts. I can agree that Chaos/Nature wizards are the true Masters of Terraforming.)

[drake178]

Why not making the chance to protect them random as well?

How about making the chance to destroy them random instead?

[jhsidi]

I don't think adding various % modifications to chances really help with the frustration. The spells would continue to be spammed like crazy, and the human player would continue to have no way to do anything about it.

For example, in the game I was playing by the time I posted, my empire had already lost every single resource, both major (gold, nightshade, etc) and minor (silver, coal, etc). After I posted, the Chaos wizard who was aggressive with me moved on to casting a volcano on every single grassland and forest tile around my capitol and on some other cities. Based on that, if there were any sort of % based protective measure or randomization, it would make no difference. The wizard was casting the spell 3-4 times per turn -- which I really don't understand, because again, she was actually at war with 4 other wizards, so why was I getting targeted with her entire skill pool? There's just some really screwy weighting being given to raise volcano; the wizard would have been better off building a new doomstack of golems or something.

I think the best suggestions so far have been:

• No more using raise volcano on a volcano (this is fair enough, they can cast corruption if they have it)
  
• Lower priority for casting raise volcano / corruption for non-adjacent aggressive wizards
  
• Lower priority to cast them if you aren't actually at war
  

Those changes would help tone it down and we could see how it feels from there.

[Beorn]

What if Raise Volcano simply did not affect resources on the tile, or, perhaps, had a very low chance of doing so?

Corruption would still allow chaos wizards to be total dicks, and give good reason for wiping them out.  Counters exist, but they are shaky enough so that you'd still have a good level of hostility towards chaos wizards.

[Slingers]

Why not making the chance to protect them random as well?

How about making the chance to destroy them random instead?

That would be too much of a change, imho. Everyone would benefit, not just those investing something.

[MrBiscuits]

Would anyone miss it if destruction of resources was taken out of the game completely?

[Seravy]

Maybe not but then Transmute would need to be Rare instead of Uncommon, as it's a major indirect buff. It also means Rich land setting becomes less balanced, as there is no way to counter a player taking advantage of that setting, and playing Chaos on rich to monopolize the resources disappears as a strategy. So instead of the current case where Chaos and Nature equally benefit from playing Rich and can mutually counter each other, we'd have the case where Nature benefits alone and there is no counter.