Magic Scale
 

I wonder whether it is possible to have the magic scale influence summoned creatures.

High magic scales could make those creatures stronger, while drain scales would, as the name sais, drain their power and lower their abilities.

This would allow new strategies, e.g. a nations that you need to conquer with normal troops because of their drain scale.

What do you think about this?

Re: Magic Scale
 

Sooo... anyone here take drain with any nation other than Ulm?

Re: Magic Scale
 

Theorically, a nation with easy access to Death and/or Fire (especially Death since its research boosting artefact comes earlier) might get away with some Drain. A Rainbow Mage would help as well, since Drain would be almost irrelevant for her.

In actual practice, I would be hard put to find a situation where 40 points (or even 80) would be good enough to justify the trouble of taking Drain. Perhaps with a special game where you have fewer than 500 points, but that would be an experimental situation, so.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I like the idea of the drain scale affecting summoned creatures. Say, something like loss of 25% HP, and maybe 2 attack and 2 defense and 2 strength per drain level It might actually make a drain scale worth getting!

Probably not, though, since it would affect the owning nation too.

Re: Magic Scale
 

Ulm would be the one to benefit most from the rule.
However, making the drain scale would actually allow for new strategies.
You could try to play a nation relying on normal troops that woild be competitive even later in the game, because they would still have a chance against enemy creatures (at least in their own territory)

Re: Magic Scale
 

Except that, as proposed, the other players would all have even more of a reason to take Magic-3, and would use the 'feature' that would let the critter keep its extra HPs when coming straight from a magic province into a drain one. (Just like pretenders and prophets going from high dominion to negative, where the HPs stay around a while.)

So, Ulm's troops would actually tend to be fighting summoned creatures that were even nastier than usual, wouldn't you think?

Re: Magic Scale
 

The best candidate for a drain scale other than Ulm is in my opinion Jotumheim - and I have used such a strategy with them, but not in quite some time. My reasoning is this: Jotun has, well, giants... and this means a couple things. First, they don't need to rely on battlefield magic for early expansion. Second, giants are hard to deal with without a lot of magical aid, so hurting an enemies' ability to use magic makes some sense. Jotun also has easy access to skull mentors to overcome the research penalty. The reason I stopped using the strat is that I'd much prefer my death gems be going into Wraith Swords...

Re: Magic Scale
 

yah, i tried that in SP as well. But the loss of death summons/forging is just too dear. As well default Jot at least is one of the nations which most benefits from some positive magic scale (since 55gp for 3 research becomes the luscious 55gp for 5 research under magic 2).

I have no idea what zen might be trying out in his scales mod in order to make drain a plausible choice for nations other than ulm.

Re: Magic Scale
 

But that has nothing to do with the generell idea. Besides, there would be certain ways to counter it: Building castles at the border, and Attacking the enemy forces after they entered your dominion.

Another proposal: Drain works like diseased. As long as the summon stays inside the drain territory, it will loose HP and might get afflictions (because its dissolving).

Re: Magic Scale
 

The drain scale is supposed to be bad, that's why it gives you points. I don't think we need to come up with ways to change it so that it is actualy an advantage to choose it. Now maybe Drain is less attractive than the other negative scales. But I think that has more to do with Misfortune, Heat/Cold, and Death being relatively mild than with Drain being relatively harsh.