Wishlist: Why magic paths are like mod Nations.

[HoneyBadger]

I honestly can't see equating expanding the magic screen with "divine intervention". For all we know, it's as simple as adding a few lines of code and a sprite at the end. Not necessarily major at all. It's a computer, after all, and one could potentially just scroll the page down = All the room in the world!

Now the "themes" you're talking about sound a lot more like wishful thinking than anything I'm suggesting. Plus, it would require the Devs going backwards to Dom2.

You do realize that your idea would require entirely new mechanics not currently present in any way, shape, or form, to the current game, while mine only ask that we be able to more robustly mod what's already present, and already atleast semi-moddable?

[MaxWilson]

Much as I like the idea of adding mod nations with access to warrens like Kurald Galain, Kurald Thyrllan, Ruse, Serc, Tellann, etc. (done up as paths), the idea of moddable magic paths seems to me as fundamentally difficult as moddable stats. By this I don't mean altering the stats a unit has (Strength -> 30) but adding the concept of a new stat (Initiative) and semantics for it (Initiative affects how likely a unit and its army are to 'win' if it's trying to move straight at an enemy army; high Initiative means you almost always move first and thus wind up in the territory you were trying to move to). You'd need a whole new metasystem.

It's much easier to envision moddable blessings for the existing magic paths, but even that would be a lot of work to design and implement.

-Max

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I honestly can't see equating expanding the magic screen with "divine intervention". For all we know, it's as simple as adding a few lines of code and a sprite at the end. Not necessarily major at all. It's a computer, after all, and one could potentially just scroll the page down = All the room in the world!

You do realize that your idea would require entirely new mechanics not currently present in any way, shape, or form, to the current game, while mine only ask that we be able to more robustly mod what's already present, and already atleast semi-moddable?

It COULD be as easy as you think, or it could be that all pages and references to magic paths would have to be updated. Commander handling, empowerment handling, gem income/storage handling, pretender creation, calculating bless effects, creating magic sites and putting them into maps, searching for magic sites, Acashic Record and perhaps some other spells, checking for innate magical bonuses of commanders... Magic paths affect pretty much everyhing. If it's not been designed mod-friendly, adding your request would change everything. If it HAS been designed that way, it would be rather simple, or at least not as complicated as we disbelievers think, and you'd have been right the whole time.


Implementing either suggestion would require adding new choices to the pretender design screen, and adding to the basic gameplay interface. "For all we know, it's as simple as enabling the parts of code that were used for themes and adding a few lines of code. Not necessarily major at all." It might be easier re-implementing something from earlier iterations than adding something drastically different. Of course, we'd still not have a modding interface for adding any/all effects that already exist in the game in new ways and in new instances, like dominion effects or magic path bonuses to leadership.


I'll grant you something, though: there's at least one currently unused magic path, Unholy. Modding that probably could be implemented without too much hassle, as long as you don't want it to have gems, give a mage innate bonus (Fire - attack, Air - precision etc) or grant bless effects. Bless effects and innate bonuses would have to be able to read unit modding commands in some way, because that's the only way to have enough choices to make them matter, and that's something else that I think would be really complicated. Of course, "for all we know it could be just a matter of adding a few lines of code" as well.