Expansion Dev Journal – Seals of Power Victory Condition

Interesting. I do look forward to trying it. Though,

Periodically a Seal will spawn a new army of elemental guardians to attack the player occupying it. So players will need to keep strong armies on the Seals in order to keep control over them.

It seems unlikely that anyone is going to dedicate a full stack of units to just sitting on the seal. More likely, they’ll sit on it with one irregular unit and come in with a stack if it gets taken, unless these spawns are extremely frequent.

demonic spoon wrote:

Interesting. I do look forward to trying it. Though,

Periodically a Seal will spawn a new army of elemental guardians to attack the player occupying it. So players will need to keep strong armies on the Seals in order to keep control over them.

It seems unlikely that anyone is going to dedicate a full stack of units to just sitting on the seal. More likely, they’ll sit on it with one irregular unit and come in with a stack if it gets taken, unless these spawns are extremely frequent.

Yep, this sounds very interesting, and since I suspect that this will tie into the campaign they’ve said they have in the works, I’m fairly sure we’re building up to the opening of the Shadow Gates.

Lore (and future direction of the game) aside. The mechanic sounds interesting, King of the Hill-like, and with the potential to produce some real, interesting flashpoints of conflict. There are two methods to counter the worry about how people will hold them though – Adjustable frequency of respawning of elemental guardian stacks, or, and this is just a thought, having the recapture of a Seal by the Elemental Guardians reduce the number of charges acquired by the player, so they have an incentive to hold them in force against the respawning guardians. (Handwave it as the Elemental Guardians beginning to repair the seal and siphon back the charges stolen by the Empire through the Artes Arcane)

/u/Ravenholme has it figured out. AoW-team, listen to this guy! It would help to make seals more of a late-game thing, which it definitely should be.

Also, i can’t wait to hear what happens if you have a captured seal within the domain of a city.

Nice feature!! … apart from the lore explanation :p

I thought Merlin’s smashing of the Wizard’s Circle in Evermore knocked out the last Shadow Gate and made it close to impossible to go between worlds. So now we have these seals that are easily captured by Shadowborn agents, which would help them reopen the Shadow Gates? So why then did Merlin sacrifice most of his power?

But otherwise it seems like a very nice addition!

Hey all, was going to reply, but I see Marcia has ninja’d me about most things 😛

@rhaeg: They aren’t actually easy to find, nor that easy to break. This was the best option available to Merlin. We’ll reveal more later, but let’s just say there are reasons for it all and we do think about it all 🙂

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by  President.

This is a cool territories type gametype, and I love to see strategy games experimenting with gametypes that were used before only in shooter games.

The new elemental units sound awesome! Because 2 units per element sounded a bit dissapointing to me at first (which was largy made up by the already insane amount of units present). Will these units also come when a player choses the Expert level of that element as a perk?

Narvek wrote:

@rhaeg: They aren’t actually easy to find, nor that easy to break. This was the best option available to Merlin. We’ll reveal more later, but let’s just say there are reasons for it all and we do think about it all

Thanks for the reply, I am glad to hear you ARE taking lore stuff into consideration 🙂 The lore/story of this very nice setting suffered a bit at times in AOW3 and the campaign was weaker then the previous ones, IMO. I should make a separate thread on this soon, going into it here would derail the “Seals” discussion.

As a game mechanic it can only add to the tactical depth of the game, so I’m happy it is in. Suggestion: in a game with set alliances, it would be nice to have a joined “charge” pool, in stead of players in the same alliance accumulating separate charges. Ofc, the amount of charges needed for victory would need to be NumberOfPlayersInAlliance times higher as well.

JPoll wrote:

And by the way, wouldn’t this be the perfect time to reintroduce chaos lords? =D

+1 🙂

This just made me think of Warlock Master of the Arcane’s armageddon mode.

Draxynnic wrote:

I’m all but convinced we’re going to see the Shadow Gate blown open at some stage. This looks like our first hint as to how.

On the question of why it’s worthwhile if the seals are breakable – if nothing else, I’d say it bought time. Reading between the lines, Meandor took the biggest army that he and his allies could reasonably put together and departed through the Gate, but the impression given is that this was not expected to hold the enemy at bay for long. Despite the Shadowborn’s interference, however, Athla in what I think is the canon ending is in a much better state to fight off such an invasion. If anything, that very interference has catalysed things.

MarciaVB wrote:

-We’re still testing out the amount of turns between spawns, but there will always be a little bit of randomness in there, like a turn or 2.

offer:
Summons to be strong against a specific enemy (ice elementals against draconians, fire elementals against frostling) – if at all possible.
Increase the quantity and quality of units with each turn.. I hope – can surpass the limit of the stack? Well, that is to call for the purification of the “parasitic players” 12 or more elemental units in battle.

Rhaeg wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Draxynnic wrote:</div>
I’m all but convinced we’re going to see the Shadow Gate blown open at some stage. This looks like our first hint as to how.<br>
On the question of why it’s worthwhile if the seals are breakable – if nothing else, I’d say it bought time. Reading between the lines, Meandor took the biggest army that he and his allies could reasonably put together and departed through the Gate, but the impression given is that this was not expected to hold the enemy at bay for long. Despite the Shadowborn’s interference, however, Athla in what I think is the canon ending is in a much better state to fight off such an invasion. If anything, that very interference has catalysed things.

I understand what Meandor did and it makes for some interesting story possibilities. To me, it just doesn’t make any sense at all for the leader of the Wizard’s Circle to give up most of his power to destroy shadow gates, if there are still alternatives to these shadowgates at some places in the world. Shattering Evermore was an ultimate (look at the consequences mentioned in the timeline!) sacrifice: understandable if it allows you to shut all doors between worlds, but not so if there’s a very concrete and attainable backdoor mechanism.

I think it does, because by robbing the power of the Wizard Kings, he removed their ability to use magics which can flip between the two planes at will (Shadow Shift).

Or, look at this way. Destruction of the Shadow Gates and Wizard’s Circles was closing the door, planting the Seals of Power was barring and bolting that door.

Ravenholme wrote:

Or, look at this way. Destruction of the Shadow Gates and Wizard’s Circles was closing the door, planting the Seals of Power was barring and bolting that door.

I know it’s hard for a storywriter to come up with explanations for all these game mechanisms and missing races. In the end I’ll always accept explanations such as given by Ravenholme, but I can’t help but think that this barring and bolting is very shaky and not worth giving up all of your power and killing hordes of people. I don’t see much difference in having to capture a shadow gate or having to capture a seal.

Rhaeg wrote:

should make a separate thread on this soon, going into it here would derail the “Seals” discussion.

I’ll shut up about this now or I’ll still be derailing the discussion :p

sounds a lot like capture the flag except you sit on the flag and try and hold it.

ForeVision wrote:

Personally, i’m very interrested in the challenges holding these seals (assuming heavy sieging will take place). Think of it, you’ll need to resupply troops, probably some will build towns close by, multiple players could have multiple towns close to a seal, it’ll be lots of battle for sure. On the case, will these elementals behave like the scoundrels do that come from a brigand’s hideout, or be focused purely on seal occupation?

I imagine the latter, but it’d be nice if they became more pro-active around seals that are being challenged. Peaceful occupation until someone takes the seal, and then if/when they retake it they start sending out raiding bands of elementals.

Nice feature. New units are very welcome.
And it is great to have some new information at last!

Something that wasn’t mentioned much (or at all?) was the fact that the Shadow D’s are attracted to magical energy. I think that’s why the Syrons were taken down before the races of Athla as they overall seem to be less magically inclined.

Yes the events of evermore shattered and fractured Athla. However that catastrophe locked the realm up against dimensional incursion – i personally think of it like a force field around the continent, but sure we can go with the door analogy for now lol.

Those seals don’t only lock the door and bolt it closed, oh no. The key thing to note here is that they are bolted shut from the inside, to keep the stupid kids from trying to get back outside (if only they did that in movies, eh?). More seriously, i’m sure Merlin and company knew that other Wizard kings wouldn’t agree with their plan on delaying/stopping the shadow demon threat and that they would try to get the gates open again somehow.

Combine all this with the loss of magic in Athla which effectively removed the shadow demon bait sitting right behind the door … ok now this is reaaally starting to sound like a good plan!

Sure it may of been hard on Athla but lets not forget that the shadow demons have devoured entire realms, many many realms and that Meandor came home scared of something coming. As was said, he rose an army to slow down whatever it was to give Merlin time to pull this plan off.

Though i must say that i am a little iffy on how he is now just playing out “God” watching his machinations unfold instead of continuing the good fight. Its not as though he did a whole lot in the campaign.

However I actually think this is a really really nice way to add extra lore to the evermore incident as i felt that it was a bit lacking in merit. I still want to see the consequence of “You took away our magic kings and all that power … it may of helped our forefathers, but now we have to fight this menace without that power” be brought up in a scenario or mini campaign 🙂

Btw, i reckon that even though that kind of power isnt in Athla any more, once all these seals are broken it will flood back! Evermore will rise and the good fight will return. Then
JULIA GOES GOD MODE !!! … and all the rest of the ex wizards who remain do too i guess.
*Yaka returns from the void with a horde of Tigrans” nom nom nom (because Tigrans have been hiding in the void …. or something … >.>)