Essence Should Be Really Essential

I see there being a finite amount of essence in the world. At the game start, it is all in the channelers [EDIT: Not all in the channelers. There is a significant amount in the dungeons, beasts, etc as well], who can then invest it in various things like land or heroes. However, they can get it back at any time, as well as stealing some from enemies or getting it from allies, maybe even finding some lying around in the environment. But the uoltimate point is that it would work on a system similar to the laws of conservation of energy/matter: you can change its form and stash/get it in odd, hard-to-find places, but in the end, the total amount of essence in the game never changes. Well... except in exceptional and very rare events.

This also brings up the idea of Essence Victory: gain x% of the total essence in the world.

My name is pigeonpigeon and I approve of this message.

Although I'm not sure that I approve of your last bullet point, especially the part about the channeler who lost territory regaining their essence. I'd much rather see all essence spent as a sunk cost that can never be recovered, no exceptions whatsoever (could still gain essence in the ways you mentioned, but no spent essence should ever be returned to you).

Edit:

That's exactly the sort of discussion I'm looking for. At some unconcsious level, I was about 1/3 in agreement with you on "no spent essence should ever be returned to you" while I drafted the OP. but you and Scoutdog have immediately pointed more directly than I did to a global question about essence: is it a zero-sum thing or not?

I'm pretty sure it will be more fun if the general answer is "No," but maybe it could be even more fun if there are some cases, like using essence to restore Cataclysm-blasted lands, where the answer is effectively "Yes." At the moment, my narrator side still thinks you should pay a lot of one thing or another to convert a conquered territory to a functioning part of 'your realm,' but maybe it is too much to expect essence to be part of the accounting here.

Yeah, I'd vote either no, or make it a game type. Another issue is if the ratio of total essence to map size is off you could literally end up almost forced to a stalemate due to insufficient essence to go around. And, quite frankly, I feel much happier when I know I can always get more of something even if it's supremely difficult to do so. 

Yeah I'm not so sure about that. I'm actually torn on it. Because if imbuing land with essence to make it habitable makes it conducive to your own spells and provides unending LoS, then it would be odd for a different channeler to gain all those nice new things just because his army conquered the city. Oh, I just thought of a potential resolution: If you conquer another channeler's imbued territory, then while you occupy it the channeler loses his connection to it, but you don't gain a connection. The land remains habitable, but the conquering channeler has no special connection as if he had imbued the land in the first place. This way the conquering channeler isn't forced to spend essence, but doesn't get the bonuses of doing so either. One question is: if the original channeler re-conquers the land, is his connection restored?

Hmmm. I would say yes, as I posted above. It might be nice to sometimes see essence disappear into the firmament for a while if you use a spell or something, only to "fall out" onto the square you used the spell on X number of turns later for collection by whoever can get there first. It also might be nice to see essence evaporate back into nature if you hold too much for too long w/o using it, to prevent excessive hoarding. Maybe essence capacity limits+upgrades and external stores to keep a lot more than you can normally hold, and keep it safe if your central city/whatever falls.... unless "they" get to the storage first

My view on essence is completely different. There should be no ways to gain essence. There should be no way to recover essence. Certainly if you imbue land with essence and then lose that land to an enemy there should be no "Here is your essence back". My opinion.

I do agree with bullet points 3,4 and 5. I agree with the first part of point 1, but again on the "hope to recover essence" aspect, I believe there shouldn't be any.

To Pigeonpigeon, regarding your last paragraph: I want all channelers to start with all of their essence and all channelers start with equal essence (with a possible option equally available to all at setup to have extra essence - VERY costly). How you spend this incredibly vital, unique and limited resource should be what this game revolves around. Your point is valid, If channelers have all of the essence at the get go, how to keep them from being overpowered rather than growing into their power? Actually that is the answer - the essence is there but much of it is either untappable (they have to research in order to use essence that they already have) or like in MoM you limit how much they can channel per turn. Initially this would be a very tiny trickle. Again with research, the amount they can channel per turn goes up.

It may seem to be a subtle difference, but it is there. With the latter, ALL of the essence is available from the get go, but you start with a very small "hose" to drain your essence tank thru. With the former, the essence hose may be larger to start, but the essence is partitioned. In other words you might reach a point where you were temporarily out of essence until you completed the research to access the next portion. That may be confusing and I will explain in more depth if anyone would like.

I’m a bit torn in this debate on the one had I believe essence should be a nonrenewable resources but having something be completely nonrenewable would be hard to balance late game. You would potentially end up with situations where decisions made in the first 10 turns determine if you won the game. I would propose a simple fix to this problem; have regular essences and core essence. Regular essences would be completely nonrenewable in addition to accounting for 95% of your total essences and core essence would be renewable in that it slowly regenerates per turn. I think something to this effect would be a reasonable system to use for essence

I would also added investing essence in artifacts as an option of GW’s list. 

If they do make essence totally and irrevocably non-renewable, then that's the way I'd want it to be done. And I would be satisfied with it, I think. However, it might be harder to balance for different size maps and different length matches. And ultimately, I think essence would be just as important if you start out with a little with the ability to gain more little by little.

The major difference that I see is that with your method, people could down-right run out of essence and if things change to their disadvantage they'd be hosed. For example, people who invest their essence in other things could easily end up disadvantaged compared to people who hoard it (people who hoard it keep their options open and their channelers godlike). Late game could end up with a bunch of lame channelers who can't really do much anymore (no more essence to invest in anything, and due to said lack of essence their combat and probably spell abilities would be significantly reduced), and other channelers who are at the peak of their power. Yeah, the former would probably have more settlements or heroes or have some nifty spells going, but the channelers themselves would no longer be able to add or do anything. And if a game drags on, the situation would just degenerate.

Whereas if you can still get ahold of essence, it allows things to continue progressing even if the game does drag on. It allows channelers to continue to impact the state of affairs. It could also help alleviate the mopping up process when you know you've already won; once you've reached that point all that matters really is how annoying it is to finish things up, and being able to get and use more essence would make things significantly more interesting/fun, I think.

Another thing is, these are not completely mutually exclusive ideas. I like the idea that channelers start out with more essence than they can use until they put effort in utilize it, but that can be the case even if it is possible to get some more of it.

There's already Mana and Essence, doing pretty much what you're describing. Why would there be a need for both 'Core Essence' and Mana when they could easily be interchangable (if not applied directly as you suggest, i.e. "95% of total essence").

I'd say that the amount of Essence you have will exponentially grow (but not 'grow back') during the course of the game, making whatever amount of Essence you had at the beginning trivial in the grand scheme of things. Thus, your actions in the beginning may matter much less than whatever decisions you have at your disposal late game - world-changing spells, greater expenditure of essence, etc.

Thus avoiding the aformentioned "10 turns in"-foretellings.

I don't like the idea of a finite "essence tank" that never comes back.  The problem I see is that hoarding your essence is not particularly fun. You don't get to see the settlements, cast the spells, fight the battles, etc. But you pretty much have to do it, because hoarding confwers a massive advantage late in the game. Thus, in order to win, you have to take a strategy that makes 75% of the game boring. This does not seem like a good idea to me.

I don't think that late gmae essence hoarders will be a huge problem, they liekly will have very few cities and armies, and consequentially their research and production and everything like that would be extremely curtailed.  A large empire with multitudes of armies could probably just continually throw men at essence hoarding channellers until they die from attrition.  Additionally, there seem to be enough victory conditions in the game to make one dominant strategy appear.

I think that the main issue with how essence is balanced would be to try and balance the things you can affect with essence.  Is a hero imbued with 100 essence just as good as land imbued with 100 essence, or is that 100 essence even better when put into a spell or invested in your channeller?  The way to solve problems with essence balance is to make sure that an essence investment is of equal worth.

Additionally, I think that adding in very rare events/quests that would allow you to get a little more essence would add a lot to the game, as long as the AI is able to also take advantage of them as well.  However, there should be no other way to gather essence I think, besides taking over something that has already been imbued with essence (taking someone else's land, a former enemy hero joins your cause), would be too defeat another player and collect all the univested essence.

TO stop the early game super powerful soveriegn, the way I imainged it is that the all the essence that the channeller holds would be a separate pool from what is invested in the channaller.  There is an initial cap on how much the essence the channeller can have which can be raised with technology, abilities, and maybe spells.

Essence should not be an easily renewable resource (if at all renewable), and it is not a problem if channelers are incredibly powerful early-game (that just makes it more interesting than the usual grab-resources, avoid-fights, found-cities standard start to TBS games).

The vibe I'm getting now is vaguely like Larry Niven's Warlock series, and that's an awesome thing to remind me of. The balancing act between keeping yourself strong, keeping your empire strong, and preventing yourself from being magically weak enough that a smaller, more magically-inclined empire can just walk all over you sounds good to me.

An early expenditure of essence increases the effect of the decision exponentially. Maybe the total effect early-game is less, since you gain more essence as the game continues, but that decision was made earlier, reaping the benefits every consecutive turn. A little money becomes more money which you use to get more money, so to say.

That's my view. Actually I think there should be a balance between hoarding and early investment - the ideal would be if both could be viable strategies. It is silly to worry that hoarders will be at the advantage though, since that aspect of the game is still in the design phase, and as Luckmann points out, it is just as likely that hoarders could be gimped by having no armies, no followers, and no infrastructure. How can you research those late world changing spells that you are hoarding essence for if you don't have the facilities to do the research?

To my knowledge mana != essence and they don't do "pretty much" the same thing. As I understand it mana is the fabric of magic which is easily renewable and the resource used to cast spells. Essence is a portion of the channeler's will, spirit, or whatever that is nonrenewable but can be used in conjunction with mana to increase spell powers. It can also be used to imbue heroes, items, or land whether this cost is purely based on essence or some combination of mana / essence remains to be seen.

I think it only makes sense your channeler starts out with a fixed amount of essence based on some stat with no way of increasing it during the course of the game. In such a situation I'm assuming you don't start playing the game as an old man who has mastered everything but rather a young man who is still developing his powers. So it would only make sense as you level up or whatnot, more of your total available essence is "unlocked" so to speak.  

It also makes sense to have a small portion of essence renewable since it seems to represent the Channeler's will or spirit. Every nonrenewable resources is actually renewable just not within a reasonable time frame. Hence altering this equation slightly for essence would make sense. Instead of needing 1000 years to regenerate 1% of your total essence have a set percentage of essence that always slowly regenerates. This system would require core essence to be at the back of a LIFO stack to avoid abuse. 

I then suggested that 'Core Essence' would basicly become Mana. Why create the concept of 'Core Essence' when Mana will or could potentially fill that role already. Mana grows back. Mana is a (possibly rare) commodity that (possibly) grows back on an individual basis or as a civ-wide resource.

Just because something could fill the role of core essence doesn't mean it will. I'm assuming mana and essence will only interact for spells. To me mana can't be used as essence and vice versa. I could be wrong, no one really knows but I fail to see how you think core essence would basically become mana if it isn't used for the same purpose as mana. What you're describing would only be applicable if mana and essence were somewhat interchangeable. 

I couldn't agree with myself more  but I will agree to fervently disagree with you. 

I'm sure that the devs are already working to make both essence hoarding and heavy essence investment equally viable strategies, and I imagine they could do an equally good job whether a channeler's essence never increases during the game or can increase through quests, vampirism, whatever.

My only 'good reason' for seriously wanting ways for channelers to gain essence is that I think it would be more fun. It could add variety to quests, diplomacy, evil spell design, and more. And it's also great fun to be able to recover in mid-game from what you only belatedly understood was a bad mistake in the early game.

That is my hope for Essence as well.

I am in complete argreement here.

I disagree here.  I would like to be able to see and control all my units at all times.

I LOVE the idea of getting Essence back when someone takes over your lands.  This will give the smaller defensive player a chance.  A small, down on it's luck kingdome will be able to switch stratagy and still have a change to at least impact the outcome of the game if not win it.

Sammual

@ GW I like the idea of everyone having an exactly set finite amount of a primary resource. Mana fills the role of a renewable source of energy. However, if you really think having ways to get essence during the game is a fun option, it seems like that could be easy to add as an option at setup. (Allow essence as quest reward/some other way). It is weird that I see some people wanting essence recouped after someone takes over your land though - what is the point to taking land if it then requires essence from "the winner" and returns essence to "the loser". I would much rather that there be a reason to defend land once you have invested essence in it. It seems like this is just a mechanic toextend the game out and "keep everyone in balance" as far as power goes. To me that is not a game, and it even makes a poor sandbox simulation. There needs to be the ability to make poor choices and the ability to lose - as I am understanding it this whole concept is to protect players from consequences of unwise choices, and I am not seeing the attraction. Is there something I am not getting, or is it just a difference of opinion?

Denryu is spot on in reply #20.

I don't see essence invested in fixing land as something you should expect to get back from a thematic perspective, either. You've put that essence into restoring the land, and the land is (presumably) permanently restored until something else blows it up. The essence you invested is gone, and that adds yet another layer of strategic choices--do you fight over the land that escaped mostly unscathed, or do you spend part of your power on making new land that might well get taken from you?

I'm not that fixated on any particular detail in the 'essence reconciliation' part of my list and my impulse is most certainly not to undermine "the ability to lose." I'm just very fond of the idea that a channeler establishes some sort of lasting connection with any form of 'imbuing' essence, whether be in lands, a champion, or an artifact.

For land transfers, I'd be just as happy to see the conqueror have to use a lot of mana to 'seize' the land's imbued essence after establishing military control. Even better if a military victor can choose to accept the idea that the occupied land is dutifully providing info to the channeler who restored it but lost the meat-fight, and that spells from that defeated channeler still get some bonuses in the occupied land.

But if starting essence=all your essence ever, I might not be "just as happy," but happy enough.

Like maybe a late-game superspell that lets you drain the essence and return the lands to their blasted, post-cataclysm state?

I am very attracted to being able to take the role of "the spider" aka Moghedien in the Wheel of Time series. This would be essentially "the hoarder" spoken of in previous posts. How cool to spend a small amount of essence to besically remain hidden, be a hermit, not go the "heal the land and be loved by the people" but rather go hermit, live in a cave, maybe make friends with a dragon or build an army of stone golems or maybe just research by your lonesome - waiting for the proper moment to expose yourself and strike. I hope that kind of option is available and viable. Not the way I would play most games, but one that I would LOVE to see. Maybe remaining completely in the background until the late game...that would be so cool imho!

That's certainly a possibility, and one of the few I'm willing to concede--I'd considered mentioning it in my post, in fact, but figured that someone else would say it.

That aside, there are two rules that describe basically the entirety of my view of a good essence system:

1. Spending essence should be, in a significant majority of cases, permanent. For that reason I oppose anything ever having a recurring essence cost.
   
2. The total amount of spendable essence in the game should never go up (while one channeler might gain from casting Re-Cataclysm, he'd gain less than, or at best as much as, the one who restored the land).

One of the problems with Civ / MoM type games is once there is a clear leader anyone not in the lead has almost no chance of winning.  The idea behind re-gaining some of the essence you put into the land when you loose control of the land is to give players not in the top spot a chance.  My reason for liking this concept is that it would lengthen the conflict part of the game while reducing the mopup part of the game (I HATE the mopup part).

There has to be a reason to imbue the land with essence in the first place so you want to defend that reason.  I also think you shouldn't get 100% of your essence back, 75% would be good for my purpose.  The new owner of the land would only have to pay 75% of what it costs to imbue 'wilderness'.

Sammual