Well you could do this currently e.g. have multiple effects on one spell.

I'm still puzzled on why most spells are now non-scaling. The few damage spells left that scale with INT will be the only ones anyone uses in the later game when they'll out-pace the static damage spells at high int, leaving those to rot in the spellbook never to be cast. 

Can't agree more. 

Great that's what I was hoping for wasn't sure it would mak it into 1.1 but great that it has.

Thanks.

boogiebac the definition of marketing departments is the first against the wall when a revolution happens, and the definition for PR departments is to BE the wall when a revolution comes ( the first is a quote from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, the second is an extrapolation of the first)

harpo

just wanted to point out that we agree with this assessment of spell resist...  our magic resist stat isn't a blanket "resist to all spells" stat, its intended only to be applied to specific spells that state they 'can be resisted'.  We are doing this so in the future we can introduce more granular forms of spell reduction/resist/avoidance. 

I don't get why in a game called elemental you do not use elemental resistances?

Any chance that an "ignore Normal Weapons" spell is being considered?

Lycanthropy is a very underrated talent.

Also, you guys are doing very well at anticipating needs, such as spell thwarting, it is already apparent how much more organized and clear things must be on the dev side of things.

Are more exotic spell effects going to be introduced?

• Tying a caster's health to other units in order to mitigate received damage, but if one of bound units dies, caster dies.
• Frozen units can be shattered (killed instantly) if hit by critical damage.
• Raising dead units, to form zombie armies.
• Resurrecting fallen units as health living beings again.
• Destroying enemy equipment.
• Adding fire / electrical damage to unit weapons (buff).
• Siphoning mana / health from a unit.
• Sacrificing friendly units for health replenishment.
• Wind spells that cause arrows to veer off course.
• Curses that damage unit attributes.
• Curses that cause enemy units to lose health or mana over time.
• Curses that cause enemy units to attack their friends.
• Curses that make enemy units blind (significant reduction to hit chances).
• Curses that make enemy units unable to speak (unable to cast spells).
• Attacks that damage enemies based on the amount of mana they have.
• Counter curses for removing the effects of curses from friendly units.
• Counter spells for deflecting incoming magical attacks.
• Spells for causing darkness.
• Spells for allowing units to see in darkness.
• Spells for dismissing summoned units.
• Spells for destroying magical items.
• Spells for creating magical items.
• Spells for disarming enemies.
• Spells for confusing enemies (wander aimlessly, unable to be controlled).
• Cold based offensive spells with the side effect of reducing initiative of hit units.
• Electrical based offensive spells with side effect of reducing dexterity of hit units.
• Wind based offensive spells that do bonus piercing damage.
• Earth based offensive spells that do bonus blunt damage.
• Fire based offensive spells that weaken armor.
• Creating stone shields / walls with earth magic.

I could go on and on.

One thing that concerns me with the new philosophy regarding spells is that it looks many are being thrown out due to similarities rather than being improved to be made more unique.

For example, two existing offensive (tactical) spells that come from unique books. One from earth doing INT damage (just for example), while the other from fire doing INT damage. Instead of throwing one away, make the spell from the earth book do bonus blunt damage and have the fire spell reduce the targets armor rating for a time.

Maybe because the project has been, consciously or not, about making v1 of an engine for GalCiv 3 and magic has never been taken seriously as an aesthetic, much less as the core of the game mechanics. I'm still a tad hopeful that magic will become adequately magical by the 1st or 2nd expansion, but I remain sorely disappointed that it has been an ugly stepchild so far despite several years of talk about and work on the 'spiritual successor' to MoM.

I have to agree with this post. A spell book named 'combat' feels a little generic, unoriginal and I dare add boring. Be careful about making each book too rigid. MoM did this well each school favoring a different strategy but also allowing a bit of variety (every school could summon and all had damage spells except life, but some schools were better than others at summoning)  I think the air book is on the right track it has a mix of interesting spells that fit the theme. Enchanting feels a bit generic though. Personally I think the +1 food enchant would belong in the earth book for example.

That's good news. Some hardcoded resist routine would certainly be quicker to write but it would severely limit the spell design.
If every spell includes it's complete resist calculation, what it checks against and to what degree, that's more to write overall (each spell...) but maximum freedom.

My distinction between "magic resist" and "vulnerability.fire" can of course be expressed as just a magic resistance vs fire.
However, there are advantages to having a separate "baseline resist".
On level-up, the base resist of a creature could improve. Generic resist buffs or debuffs are easy to code because only one value needs to be altered.
It would be more mod-safe because all the fiddly bits - like maybe separate blunt and piercing damages - are working as
a property of the base resist (or base Defense) and don't break any mods where units don't have a "piercing resist".

Weapon attacks are a spell... technically.

If the resist system is expanded beyond the basic placeholder we'll see in the near future, it would be a no brainer to let lycanthropes have a "magic resistance" against physical attacks.
Magical / silver weapons would simply be another resist type that lycanthropes don't have a special resist against.

With the "vulnerability" system I outlined above, units can have selected resist tweaks added while any unlisted value defaults to a vulnerability of 1.0 or normal.
(this increases compatibility with newly added spells or units because worst case, they default to "normal damage" and nothing breaks)
In this case, Vulnerability.Physical might be 0.1 (10 %). Lycanthropy implemented with adding one entire value.

I'll have to agree with the agreer... in principle. =P
However, this was only referring to starting spells, not the organisation in-game.

Effectively they are giving the player a simplified interface for picking starting spells without having to know exactly what each spell does.
That's not such a bad idea if you consider accessability.

Then lets move to Mobility:
Spatial Distortion Spellbook? Way of the Fleeting Feet Spellbook? The Running Man Spellbook?

And don't get me started on the Life Spellbook or the Death Spellboook. Talk about generic!!!

(not that I would mind having all the spellbooks named after Lore stuff but only complaining about the name of a spellbook when none are original... and really, it's not like the name has influence about how magical the game is, the spells do)

That's the best news I've seen about this game since yesterday!