If nothing breaks in how buildings work, it should still work, except that you might get the original tower's model. So it might break anyway...

I have a feeling that this mod will not give the extra tower structures to the Vampire Lord castle on release... do you think you are going to do anything special for the Vampire Lord branch towers, or are you just going to leave them as is? on the note of the branch towers, they should require the tier 2 town hall to be built before they can be built to bring them in line with the main tower.

ah, I see now

I know that one. It gives in-battle buffs, not casting strategic spells.

I saw you couldn't get the lightning rod thing to work. I don't know if it'll help, but there is a mod that does something similar on a smaller scale (adjacent provinces). I'll link it below

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3222661971

I am not surprised to see this, but certain features like getting to build a vanilla building after a culture building does not work with Schnitzel's custom cultures.

Is there anything, on your end, that can be done, or is this essentially he/someone has to add a submod doing that work?

@Fenrisúlfr I went to check but I'm actually not sure how the Umbral Malady immunity works. It's the same as Sanctuary Outpost though.

Quick update: removed extra spell slot from branch channeling chamber

I can say from experience that the branch tower structure that says it adds a extra spell slot does add an extra spell slot.

And having been an AoW3 child, you could builds towers everywhere in the old games? Huh!! I would have assumed that just like 4, they were the capital only, given I understand they were even more central to the whole "world-wide magic" shtick!!!

I do. It doesn't matter, the game has a bad fault in knowledge's supremacy uber alles. I'd buy those same buildings for a measly 5 knowledge and 10 mana costed, and construction costs, if I am able to get to them early enough to still be worth it. Don't forget that knowledge has a very real special timer in helping you push along towards magic victory, too, and if you could get that fast enough... anywho. In general, getting more of the resource you do need is going to almost always be worth giving up more of what you don't, I think you just have plenty of room to make it sting.

@Daverin2112 - The "cost" of the post-guild buildings is not just in the mana cost. Yes, of course, converting mana into knowledge is always a good idea; but you have to factor in the gold and production cost.

In fact, all of the post-guild buildings are actually less efficient than the base game buildings (especially when counting the mana upkeep). The repeatables are even worse.

I actually wanted the SPIs to do more than just give generic damage and status effect buffs. I had envisioned strategic locations where the SPIs would let you cast strategic spells (eg. Lightning Rod having -20 mana upkeep but has a 4 CD Lightning Torrent within 20 hex range), but I couldn't get it to work.


Branch Towers were an attempt to bring back gameplay from the earlier Age of Wonders series where Towers could be built everywhere. I should probably reduce or remove the Imperium cost though (+ good catch on the branch channeling chamber)...

I think as far as balance goes, the most obvious is the cost/benefit ratio of most of these is very skewed. 4 times the knowledge for each unit of mana, for example, is just powerplay, it may literally need flipped 180. If the mana cost was inefficient, it'd probably become an actual choice while still eventually being overcome-able and still doing as intended.

The actual ideas themselves are incredible, however. The SPIs for Materials literally feels like it is just how the base game should be. However... maybe branch buildings should be weaker? No imperium from towers, and do the branch channels actually grant an extra spell slot?

do the umbral malady immunity buildings effect all units or just friendly?

@Fii That doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. This mod is fun, and I can see some players really liking the shifted focus onto the city building strategies. But splitting this into smaller, more focused, mods would benefit players like myself.

Many thanks for responding to me, and best of luck on your future projects.

Yeah, the point was to give cities a massive build tree so that they would remain actively "growing" for more than just 1/3 of the game, and also give Masonic Hall some use. The result of scaling everything in the late game is just the natural consequence of that.

Perhaps what could be done is to split off the magical material SPIs and Branch Towers + additional Tower buildings into their own pair of mods.

Gave this a good proper test in my latest campaign and as it stands... well it's real fun but too strong. Continent spanning stacks of armies in the late game. A true stalemate since no side could outproduce the other. Also half the tomes researched by everyone. :D

I feel the problem is the sheer scope of the project. Each single building tree is fairly well balanced in cost, production time and drawbacks, but with so many, so powerful, economy buildings you can easily offset any negatives by just building more cities, and then grow and grow, faster and faster.

I don't have any good suggestions since this is clearly the whole point of the mod, but can't help but think that maybe only the throne city should have these advanced buildings? And the drawbacks could be even grimmer, making it feel like you're really putting your eggs in one basket. The barrier right now is really just mana, which a single mana specialized city can offset for the entire empire.

Good catch. Updated.

I appreciate this mod, it adds more variety to the way I build my cities. Thanks for making it.

I think I've found a bug: the Essence Forge Upgrade can be built even without the Essence Forge.

Updated

Updated

Removing the embark penalties was what I was trying to get to with the +1 to Defense and Resistance but I misremembered it. the penalty is actually -2.

Never mind on Fast Embark, that's in general Empire tree... Maybe removing embarked penalties or something like that.

Well, the mana buildings "cost" is supposed to be inefficiency. They give less resource per building.

And yes, I think your idea for having their unit bonus be specific to that terrain is a good one. I'm thinking fast embark and lava walk.

also sorry for taking a few days to get back to you.

(1/3) I can see three options for the seafarer’s gild and volcanologist’s gild. The first is likely the easiest and that is to make it so that the two gilds can be built even if there is another gild already in the city. The downside of this option is that it makes the two guilds no brainers if you have access to the terrain for them.
The second option is to give the two gilds access to the building lines of all the resources their line produces and make the first structure in each capstone branch mutually exclusive. The downside of this option is that it reduces the options of people like me that use this mod with a multiple guild mod.

(2/3) The final option and the one I have been giving the most thought to is the one where you make them their own capstones. For the seafarer's guild I would make the repeatable building grant 6 Food, Gold, and Production* with the normal Mana cost. For the per province building I would go with 2 Food, Gold, and Production* with the normal Mana cost.** Lastly for the third building I would go with 12 Draft, Food, Gold, and Production* and it would grant all units produced in the city a +1 to defence and resistance when embarked.

(3/3) And finally the Volcanologist’s Guild, the way I would handle this is to make the first building determine whether you gain Gold or Mana and whether the buildings will cost Gold or Mana***. The repeatable one would grant 6 Draft, Gold/Mana, and Production* with the normal cost. For the per province building I would have it grant 2 Gold/Mana, Draft and Production with the normal cost.** And for the third building I would have it grant 12 Gold/Mana, Draft, Production and Knowledge* and all units produced in the city gain Lava walk.
*the net value of these buildings is higher than their pure resource counterparts but I don’t think that is all that bad due to the fact that most of the resources are local ones.
**you could make these buildings count associated provinces as double but that could be unbalanced.
***I think Mana buildings should cost Gold equal to the Mana cost of other buildings.

Binding fragments building added to level 2 of Wizard's Tower.

I have a plan for the binding fragments one, which just needs some testing before I can publish, but the water and lava guilds I have no idea what to do with.

Greetings, I hope you are doing well. do you have any plans to add on to / deconflict the other gilds with the volcanologist's/seafarer's gilds? also would you be willing to unify the starting building after the gild?

Would you be willing to add a new building into the wizard's tower that grants binding fragments?

Updated

Fixed, must have accidentally turned it off...

Hi. Shouldn't phasing grid be per provonce, rather flat -1 mana +5 production?

Good point! I've fixed it.

Second tier SPIs ably their upgrades to support abilities, so you end up poisoning or burning your units when healing or buffing them. (Used necromancers strengthen undeath buff and poisoned my unit.) Thanks for the amazing mod.

Focus Crystal and Tranquility Pool upgraded visit buff is changed to defence and resistance penetration.

More updates.

Found a way to add visit buffs to SPIs without causing compatibility issues. Removed the magic circle mechanic.

SPIs can be upgraded now, allowing a second visit buff. These ones focus more on status effects. Focus crystal's one is physical resistance, which is experimental...

Updated

A good point, I did have that feeling myself but I had only played one very long running game with this (which got killed by Ways of War ) so I wasn't sure.

I'll reduce it tomorrow.

Amazing mod. However, after playing 2 games with it, I think the "+Resource per Province" buildings are extremely overpowered. Any chance you could cut them in half? -1 mana and +5 instead of -2 and +10? I'd also argue knowledge shouldn't be as high as food/draft/gold etc either, being as a resource that's supposed to be more challenging to get and the snowball potential from getting a lot. -1 mana for +3 for knowledge? Hope you are able to rebalance this mod a bit, because it is really good and I'd like to continue using it