The game is inherently favored towards strong realm support in more ways than information gathering.

I completely understand your concern. If you study my draft closely, you'll see I left Farsight without a MS cost, so you are not limited by MS%, only by the amount of magic dust you produce. Also, scouting will become much more economical with this version, since you can spend MS% on Lesser Farsights instead of dust to find kingdoms stocking. If need be as well, every 10 hours, you can Power Farsight someone "for free".

_________________
The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

Someone proposed that each spell cast would make the next harder to cast. I liked that idea, this is my rough idea of how it would work.

Mage Power = Mage power * e^(-Mana Burn/1000)

Mana Burn Decreases by 10 every hr (to a minimum of 0)

Mana Burn per spell
Lesser Farsight: +1
Farsight: +2
Revelation: +3
Power Farsight: +13
Flame Burst: +10
Land Warp: +10
Abrasion: +12
Cripple: +8
Blizzard: +2.5 per hr (rounded up)
Anarchy: +2.5 per hr (rounded up)

With this system, a mage whore can cast as long as they still have mana... but with each spell, they will have less of a chance to succeed.

Thought of a new spell...

Transferring of Strength (could use a new name)
INSTANT - Converts 10% Mage Strength into 10% Spy Strength.

Im not sure how balanced a spell like this would be. Or a spell that did the vis verse of it.

@ Fergy
Could you please give an example of your math? Like, how would this work in a realistic game situation.

_________________
The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

From Excel

0 | 100.00%
10 | 99.00%
20 | 98.02%
30 | 97.04%
40 | 96.08%
50 | 95.12%
60 | 94.18%
70 | 93.24%
80 | 92.31%
90 | 91.39%
100 | 90.48%
110 | 89.58%
120 | 88.69%
130 | 87.81%
140 | 86.94%
150 | 86.07%
160 | 85.21%
170 | 84.37%
180 | 83.53%
190 | 82.70%
200 | 81.87%
210 | 81.06%
220 | 80.25%
230 | 79.45%
240 | 78.66%
250 | 77.88%
260 | 77.11%
270 | 76.34%
280 | 75.58%
290 | 74.83%
300 | 74.08%
310 | 73.34%
320 | 72.61%
330 | 71.89%
340 | 71.18%
350 | 70.47%
360 | 69.77%
370 | 69.07%
380 | 68.39%
390 | 67.71%
400 | 67.03%
410 | 66.37%
420 | 65.70%
430 | 65.05%
440 | 64.40%
450 | 63.76%
460 | 63.13%
470 | 62.50%
480 | 61.88%
490 | 61.26%
500 | 60.65%
510 | 60.05%
520 | 59.45%
530 | 58.86%
540 | 58.27%
550 | 57.69%
560 | 57.12%
570 | 56.55%
580 | 55.99%
590 | 55.43%
600 | 54.88%
610 | 54.34%
620 | 53.79%
630 | 53.26%
640 | 52.73%
650 | 52.20%
660 | 51.69%
670 | 51.17%
680 | 50.66%
690 | 50.16%
700 | 49.66%
710 | 49.16%
720 | 48.68%
730 | 48.19%
740 | 47.71%
750 | 47.24%
760 | 46.77%
770 | 46.30%
780 | 45.84%
790 | 45.38%
800 | 44.93%
810 | 44.49%
820 | 44.04%
830 | 43.60%
840 | 43.17%
850 | 42.74%
860 | 42.32%
870 | 41.90%
880 | 41.48%
890 | 41.07%
900 | 40.66%
910 | 40.25%
920 | 39.85%
930 | 39.46%
940 | 39.06%
950 | 38.67%
960 | 38.29%
970 | 37.91%
980 | 37.53%
990 | 37.16%
1000 | 36.79%

Okay, I see. I think you made a typo in your Formula though? Or wrote it wrong? haha

_________________
The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

Basically it would give a soft limit of 1 FB per hr. However, a dedicated bopper could cast more spells per hr if they want (but if they do, the mana burn will keep going up, decreasing their chance of casting successfully).

Once their overall Mana Burn gets to 700, this would effectively give them a 50% reduction in mage power, after 1400 they would be down to 25% mage power. The only way it would get this high, is if they were a dedicated bopper that casted on average more than 1 FB per hr.

An easier way to think of it is: Every casting of FB decreases your current mage power by 1%. Every hr you don't cast anything, your mage power would go up by 1% (until mana burn is 0)

I didn't support the initial idea in the op for some reasons one of which was because it felt like a semi-rework of the whole system just to fix a problem in it. I won't post the other reasons because i don't think my opinion (or post) will be considered that much anyways.

Coming to the point which i came to post, the idea presented by Fergy seems much more simple and suitable. It won't affect the rest of players very drastically but only the kingdoms who overuse spells. It would still allow a complete realm to harm another kingdom to their max potential but it won't require just one mage-whore it will instead require the whole realm doing their fair share of part if they want to get the kingdom down. Thus actually demanding team-work in return to harming a kingdom.
(I will skip the other points due to which i support the idea due to the same reason as before.)

So, in summary, I would completely support the idea of mana burn(or whatever else it is named).

Really like the idea of "Mana burn".

If you don't want to rework the entire system, i think that's definately the way to go about it. Imo your suggested formula is a bit too kind but it is a very good starting point, and its a number easily tweaked.

dude your taking away choice like

Hourchange 100% MS INSTANT

so without running rediculous amount of towers its gone from

"can only cast once every 3 hours"
to once every 20!

your limiting what people can do. instead of fixing one spell
right now i am using HC a lot - i get my tavs faster

with the new system - i CANNOT

as far as mage blops is concerned i would use MORE on this system.
i would blizzard someone just to use the mage strength

same way if your on 100% spy strength you steal something....


if fb is the only problem that many people are bitching about - just removed the god damn spell - or fix it.
mana burn... increased spires... even can only cast 1 fb per hour (a bit like HC)
so to drop a kingdom - 3 or 4 people will have to fb making it a team effort and not a dedicated strategy

there are lots of options that have been given to you... please dont limit mine.


on a side note - awesome structure to your pic was very cool, im just against a fair usage policy on all spells

i hate it on my internet too.....


edit: destroy farms - i know it was discussed but a realm can now kill a player in their sleep..... thats worse than 1% of resources in my book

imagine player 1 steals all surplus food
player 2 and player 3 kill their farms

are your trying to force everyone to make more surplus farms or increase the spy/land ratio of all land players?

please small litlle changes at a time - not new system new spells and we will see what happens.... i love your enthusiasm, but i can barely thing about next round what race to pick...

_________________
What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

I just had time to look over your draft post Quaffle and I do like the general picture of it alot. Think it would be a lot of fun:)

And in response to your concern m80, don't you think it would be much easier for a sole contender to gather intel with all the mage power being used for free power farsights/lesser farsights? To me it looks that way atleast.


There is one thing however, i have to agree with Zxetok about. Its the change to hourchange. It kinda removes its tactical use, and you don't have the option to buy dust in order to get that HC in to save your ass. I just feel like putting HC on the mage strength table would be very limiting

With the tower change to increase MS refresh rate, if it were increased a bit, you would still would be able to solo magewhore for a realm. But it would take a lot more effort and be really difficult to keep up, and you would more easily be able to shut them down. But with 0.2% per tower %, the mage strength is still too low so if you get, say 30% tower. You have no way to spend all that dust, since you can still only FB like twice an hour change.
In fact if you FB twice per hour with 30% towers, you'd have half your dust/hour production left with nothing to spend it on.

aaaah sorry for my rambling.

If you could balance that out then the option to be mage support would still be there but it would take a lot more effort and be less destructive aswell as being far more vulnerable for take outs.

Other then that. I applaud you for your work. Looks really solid!

yeah I didn't see it closely enough. it is definitely an improvement.

sorry i just don't like this. It is too much of a change though it has good elements. I do like the new spells and spy ops you suggested with this. I also like the idea of free spells to a degree but the rest feels really limiting.

I know it is supposed to be limiting in some ways but frankly i have used more than 25 cripples in an hour during a war. I have warred pretty stong xp packs with it costing about 7500 md and burned through 250k md like it was nothing and the heroes were far weaker yeah but they were still there.

How about taking poison and drug traffcking and make them based off of land size difference so you have a defensive spell against mage whores. thus if you are near the same size you have a good chance of success and can cut their power against you? just a thought. It won't stop them completely but it would make it harder.

Also why not introduce
Silence reduces targets mage power by 50% while active and increases spells difficulty by 50% as well.

it is just a suggestion and will need balanced but that is what the development team does right?

I support this as long as we are not gonna try to get it implemented for next round. Worth to discuss later tho!

I like a casual discussion on it though, B. No pressure to rush it, we can discuss all pluses and minuses of it still.

First off, I am most happy about the layout of it. I think many new players struggle figuring out how to work the game in general, so having a popup that says "Gather Information on Kingdom" instead of "Cast Spell" is much more noob-friendly. And I know there are a lot of people/players that love the aspect destroying someone. If you cannot hit them, "Black OP" them! It will keep new players interested and feeling like they are doing something other than playing another "Farmville" game.


@ Mage strength and Mana Burn
I agree with the responses, Mana Burn is a very cool concept, Fergy. Mage Strength and Mana Burn both have the same concept in mind -- Limit the amount of Black Ops one kingdom can do within a period of time. Adding both seems like a lot, so perhaps we should stick to one or the other.

Mana Burn is very effective at limiting Black Ops, but can be limiting to scouting spells. I do not agree with having a negative effect to trying to scout players. In a fantasy sense, it does make sense that mages "burn" their ability to cast spells and tend to need rest at times, haha. Personally, I believe Mage Strength is more flexible with all spells. From a balance stand point, I see more potential strategical developing with Mage Strength.

That said, I would prefer Mage Strength, but am very interested to hearing creative ideas to make Mana Burn more flexible with developing.


@ Hourchange
Haha, good point guys. Perhaps Hourchange can cost ~20% MS and a lesser amount of magic dust than it currently does. That way it's still possible to prepare for an Hourchange instead of waiting 10+ hours for your MS to refresh.

@ quartognome's Silence spell
I was actually trying to think of a spell that effect's a kingdom's mage power only. I decided just reducing mage power wasn't creative enough and would just be kind of a dull spell to cast. However, your idea of increasing the victims difficulty rating of successful casts is very interesting. I love it.

@ Not being able to spend dust with high towers
Yes, this is a problem. :/ Perhaps we could add a few "flamebursty" spells, where you cast a crap-ton.o. or rather, only does mention worthy damage when casted a whole bunch.

_________________
The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

If flameburst and other black op's are so powerfully, why not increase the costs of those. Especially when you look at flameburst it is a very cheap spell and at right time it does alot of damage to kindgom. Have a good look at cost of power farsight compare to flameburst. Really if a player wants to be a mager, they you should pay the price to cast these spells.