Spell of making alternative

That is a great idea to implement in any fashion, whether as a victory condition or just a neat quest. It could be pick a champion (non-sovereign) for just a winner takes all tournament one-on-one with the other factions as a quest, with some cool prize for winning. I have seen lots of good ideas like this, not much effort to implement, and I hope these neat ideas get swept up somewhere and not fall as dead-weight in to someone's post history.

(Envisioning Lo Pan and Egg Shin's spell battle at the moment, thanks to this thread).

Once a caster starts Spell Of Making, really the only way to stop it that I can see right now is taking out/attacking the Sovereign casting it.  Of course, you could add the requirement that you retain control of the four towers during casting, or else the spell gets disrupted.

Another thought would be to have a 'counter spell' to Spell of Making, where you could sap Mana from the caster attempting this (thus increasing his casting cost).  This would have to be a steep ratio - I'm thinking 4-5 mana per mana sapped from Spell of Making, or higher based on the total number of opponents - otherwise it would be too easy to disrupt.  I'm thinking that you would have to have a significant lead in Mana to attempt a Spell Of Making victory with the counter ability in play. 

Or, a variant of this would be to increase the cost of the Spell Of Making based on the number of shards NOT under your control.  So, say you controlled half of the shards, the cost would be 500, but if you only controlled 25%, the cost might be 1000 or 1500... This would strongly encourage a player to take over enemy shards, assuming the mana cost was more appropriate. 

The base cost for Spell of Making should be based on the total amount of mana (per turn) available on the map.  I usually play with abundant magic, so the shard frequency should affect the spell cost.  I'd suggest scaling The Spell Of Making mana cost to the total number of shards on the map: less shards = lower cost, more shards = higher cost.

The 250 cost in my last E:LH game seemed quite low.  For some reason I was thinking it was 500, but then I remembered that was for that plague event I've seen a few times now.  Also, we've had the 'moving it down the tech tree a bit' discussion in another thread already.

Your idea is definitely interesting, and I like the tie in with the Legendary concept.

Defender Sov + Warrior Champ + Paragon make me think hero fights ftw would be even more anti-climatic...

Of course, maybe that broken combo needs to change.

Just tossing this out there, but what if upon casting the spell of making to win the game, you first open a rift in which the essence of each shard must be defeated in battle? Kinda like a 'spirtual warefare'  You're sovereign must pit his magical potential against the shards themselves and when he is successful, he wins the game. If he fails, the entire spell crumbles and he has to try again after he recovers in city.

What about increasing the casting time of SoM? It doesn't make it more dramatic, but it's an easy way to counter how early SoM is possible. It would also give the player more of an opportunity to get to the AI.

GFireflyE, are you talking about only shards in the players territory or everywhere? If everywhere, that kind of goes against SoM as the peaceful builder's victory option. The spawning from shards idea is cool though. What if we flipped it and the shards spawned aggressive armies of elementals that went for your sovereign?

I was kinda thinking just within your territory.

Something like "you need 10 shards" to begin casting as an added prereq.

Then, upon successful cast you're sovereign enters into a final battle to defeat the essence of the shards. Depending on what shards were under your control change the outcome of who you end up fighting. Regardless, all are designed to be magic focused and oriented and you're sovereign needs to be diverse enough in order to defeat the essence of shard.

If he wins, the game is one for now he controls all shard essence.

If he loses, the game continues. Sovereign spends his time recovering and then must recast Spell of Making when the player wants to try again.

What about this? Just create a multiply step quest (like the Arena) that triggers at the completion of casting wherein the sovereign fights a demi-boss representative for each shard type (regardless of the kinds of shards he has, or the number of shards he has).

IIRC, the SoM does not actually trigger a victory on the part of the AI (unless that has been fixed?). If we assume that has been fixed, what will such a quest do for the AI? I don't think it would be an issue. It seems to me like they just complete quests automatically, but I could be wrong. If that's the case, there would no chance that the AI would lose these battles, but it would be a very fun and dramatic ending for the player.

Some good ideas here.  I like this demi-boss shard idea as well.  Maybe the more shards you have, the less hp the bosses will have in the battle.  That would be a much cooler ending.

I love this idea, or some variant of it.  Rename the Spell of Making to Ragnarok or something, have it force the strongest armies in the world into combat directly, with no turn breaks!

The Spell of Making, as it exists in the game, is very disappointing, easy to complete, and frankly, poorly conceptualized.