Difference between revisions of "Mystics"

Revision as of 14:13, 19 June 2009

Unlike your fabled land of Earth, the citizens of Utopia truly believe in and have witnessed the powers of magic. From the deadly plagues to the amazingly fertile land, so much has happened on this planet that cannot be explained away by science or nature. As ruler of your lands, you have access to some of the most amazing magical spells ever known. Below, I will try to explain to the best of my ability the powers of these spells and how to make magic your friend.

Spells require Runes, Wizards, and Guilds to be cast. Towers produce runes every hour, which are consumed with each spell. Wizards are naturally trained by your Guilds. Like all of the other individuals across your lands, they come from your peasantry and reduce your number of available workers. Be careful not to hold too many Wizards or you may be sacrificing your peasantry, thieves, or military. At any time, you can release Wizards back into the Peasantry or simply shut down additional training. Your Wizards maintain a Mana Rating which determines when they can be cast spells. This rating rises automatically each day and drops each time you cast a spell. Your wizards will not cast spells without at least a 10% Mana Rating.

To cast a spell, you must have both wizards and mystic runes. The runes cost formula for all spells is available in the Formula section. For spells cast upon yourself, success is based on your Guild percentage and your Building Effectiveness - the more guilds you have, the better you will do. For spells cast upon others, the success is based on your relative wizard population, measured as Wizards Per Acre (WPA), modified by the racial bonuses or penalties. The higher your WPA compared to an enemy, the better your success. However, there is always a great deal of luck in every spell. Furthermore, the duration of all spells is greatly impacted by your Guild percentage.

Spells are divided in three categories, as listed below:

   * Self spells
   * Espionage spells
   * Offensive spells

The Spell Book: the self spells

Listed here is a short reference guide to each of the spells available that can be cast upon yourself. These spells are used to improve and protect your own province.

Minor Protection

Casting a sphere of protection over your province, this spell helps protect your province from invasion from others. This spell lasts for a few weeks.

Effect: Increases defensive military efficiency by 5%.

===Greater Protection=== (Race#Humans)

A more powerful version of the Minor Protection spell, this spell functions similarly but lasts potentially a great deal longer.

Effect: Increases defensive military efficiency by 5%.

Fog (Dwarves)

Casting a sphere of protection over your province, this spell helps protect your province from invasion from others. This spell lasts for a few weeks.

Effect: Increases enemy attack times by 3 days.

Magic Shield

While the natural aura of your Wizards will help protect from enemy spells, a little additional protection can never hurt. Casting this spell offers you a shield of magical protection for your province for about half a month.

Effect: Increases your defensive magic efficiency by 20%.

Mystic Aura (Elves)

A defense spell, creating a Mystic Aura around your lands will repel the next evil spell cast upon you from abroad. Unforunately, the effect focuses only on the first spell cast upon you.

Effect: Repels the next offensive spell cast upon you to its sender.

Fertile Lands

By magically fertilizing your lands, you can ensure excellent food production for the duration of the spell. Whether a lack of farms, deadly storms, or just wanting to stockpile extra food, this spell offers a definite increase to your food sources.

Effect: Increases food production by 25%.

Nature's Blessing

Nature's Blessing will protect your lands from any droughts and storms the world may see fit to place on you. This spell also has a chance of curing the Plague if your lands are affected by it.

Effect: Protects your land against Storms and Drought. Effect: Has a 20% chance of curing Plague (per cast).

Love & Peace

Love & Peace creates an aura of calm and happiness across your peasantry for several days. This leads to increased natural birth rates which will quickly replenish your population. This is especially useful when your peasantry has suffered greatly.

Effect: Increases birth rates by 75%.

Tree of Gold (Elves, Dark Elves)

If you're ever in need of extra cash, casting a Tree of Gold may be a potential solution. While it won't give you a great deal of gold, every little bit can help.

Effect: Magically creates a small amount of gold (from 40 to 80% of your daily income).

Quick Feet (Gnomes)

By giving your men magical speed, they can go to battle and return more quickly than usual, leaving your land without defense for a shorter period. This spell affects only your next battle.

Effect: Decreases your attack times by 10% (applied after the attack modifiers).

Builders' Boon

The Builders' Boon spell makes your workers build faster and harder than otherwise. All buildings constructed while the spell is active will be completed more quickly than normal.

Effect: Decreases your construction times by 10%.

Inspire Army

Inspire Army helps make your military train harder on their own, thus reducing the daily wages you pay your military for several days. This is especially useful in times of limited cash. This spell also increases the intensity of training, allowing your troops to be ready more quickly.

Effect: Decreases your military wages by 15%. Effect: Decreases your military training time by 20%.

Anonymity

War is at the heart of the world of Utopia, but the fear of retaliation makes many leaders cringe. This spell casts an aura of mystery around your army. After a successful cast, your forces will remain anonymous during your next attack -- while your kingdom will be revealed, your enemy will not know your province's name.

Effect: Hides your province name during your next attack at the cost of no honor gains. Effect: Increases your attach times by 15% for your next attack.

Invisibility (Dark Elves)

Thieves rely on stealth to master their craft, but a little bit of invisibility never hurts. Through the duration of this spell, your thieves have a 10% bonus to any offensive thievery operations.

Effect: Increases your offensive thievery efficiency by 10%.

Clear Sight (Elves)

By granting your police the ability to see through the obvious and into the depths, you give them the ability to catch thieves who may wander into the lands. The spell, lasting potentially for weeks, gives you a base chance to catch opposing thieves, regardless of the strength of the guilds involved.

Effect: Automatically catches 25% of the thieves' operations conducted against your province.

War Spoils (Undead)

Ordinarily, any land captured in attacks require time to take control of and become available for your own use. War Spoils gives you the opportunity to get this land from combat immediately. The spell lasts just a few Utopian Days, but is more than enough to use on a couple of attacks. This allows you to begin the process of expanding much more quickly than otherwise.

Effect: Makes the land gained from Traditional March immediately available.

Fanaticism (Orcs)

Fanaticism focuses your army on combat and war, increasing their offensive efficiency for several days. Unfortunately, a side effect of this desire for blood is that they will not be as capable of capturing land and resources, and your armies remaining at home -- bored and frustrated for not being at war -- will fight less effectively on defense.

Effect: Increases your offensive military effienciency by 5%. Effect: Decreases your defensive military effienciency by 3%.

Fountain of Knowledge (Elves)

Science is a fundamental building block for any and all of the other parts of your province. While a Fountain of Knowledge spell is active, your students work harder and will learn more than they would otherwise.

Effect: Increases your science research by 10%.

Town Watch (Gnomes)

Town Watch will create a peasant watch upon your town for several days. While the Town Watch is active, all of your peasants will help defend your province in combat. Unfortunately, this also means your peasants will be killed during war - and since they are not well-armed, they will suffer heavy losses.

Effect: Every 4 of your peasants will defend your land with the strength of 1 soldier.

Aggression (Humans, Orcs)

This spell refocuses your soldiers from versatile fighting units into an offensive machine. Giving them a lust for attacking, Soldiers will gain 1 offensive point in all combat for the duration of the spell. During this period, though, they will lose 1 defensive point as well.

Effect: Turns all your soldiers into 2/0 troops before modifiers.

Animate Dead (Dwarves, Undead)

The power to raise the dead gives you the power to protect your people. By casting this spell, you can protect your people from the death and destruction of defending your lands. During your next defensive battle, half of your dead army will be restored into basic soldiers to help repopulate your army.

Effect: Raises 50% of your dead troops into basic soldiers during your next defensive battle.

Reflect Magic (Undead)

Reflect magic places a magical barrier around your lands for several days. During this period, successfuls spell cast upon your province may randomly be reflected upon the caster, doing unto them as they would have done to you.

Effect: Has a 25% chance of reflecting offensive spells cast upon your province.

Shadowlight

Shadowlight places a face upon a shadow, revealing the province associated with the next thievery operation against your lands. It does not, however, prevent them from being successful.

Effect: Reveals the name of the next province performing a thievery operation upon your province.

Patriotism

Giving your population life and an innate desire to defend your lands, this spell increases the rate that you can draft peasants for several weeks, and offers partial protection against the Propaganda thievery operation. Excellent in emergencies and other strategic situations, this spell is difficult to cast and will more quickly weaken your economy.

Effect: Increases military draft speed by 30%.

Paradise

Arguably one of the most powerful -- and difficult -- spells known, Paradise simply creates several acres of new land for your people to populate. Similar in concept to exploring, this Spells gives you instant access to new lands to build upon and grow your province. Lands created by Paradise are treated just as lands from exploration.

Effect: Creates a small amount of land per cast.

The Spell Book: the espionage spells

The espionage spells will simply gather information regarding the enemy province. Information gathered using these spells is perfectly accurate and includes all the relevant modifiers, excluding Monarchy bonuses.

Crystal Ball

Knowing more about your friends and opponents is vital to your success as a leader. This spell gives you insight into the workings of any province of your choice.

Effect: Gives you an overview of the Throne page of the enemy province.

Crystal Eye

Cast on a kingdom instead of an individual province, this option gives a Bird's Eye view of all that has happened across the kingdom of the current and previous months.

Effect: Gives you an overview of the Daily Papers of the enemy province.

The Spell Book: the offensive spells

Listed here is a short reference guide to each of the spells available that can be cast upon your enemies. Certain spells are designated Unfriendly, Hostile or War Only spells -- Because of the destructive nature of these spells , they can be cast only against provinces which have at least a certain level of relations with your kingdom. In addition, you will find that many of these spells are more effective during heightened relations conditions.

Storms

The power of mother nature is amongst the powerful in existence. Sending storms over another province will cause destruction and death across the lands for days. The Storm Spell will cancel any Droughts affecting the target province.

Effect: Decreases birth rates by 1.5%.

Droughts

Opposite the storms, droughts can do significant damage as well. Without the rains necessary for fertile land, food production will be lower than usual, possibly resulting starvation throughout the lands. In addition, the harsh conditions slow interest in the military and interferes with the soldier draft. Horses across the province may die as well due to lack of water and food. Droughts negate any Storms currently ravishing the target's land.

Effect: Decreases food production by 25%. Effect: Decreases military draft speed by 15%. Effect: Decreases horses production by 50%.

Vermin (Gnomes)

Sending vermin scurrying into the food supplies of an opponent forces the destruction of a great deal of their reserves. For several weeks, vermin will eat away food at a pace far exceeding standard decay rates.

Effect: Increases food decay rate up to 6% instead of 1%.

Expose Thieves

Thieves rely on stealth and surprise to be effective at their jobs. Casting this spell will expose an enemy's guild, leaving them less effective until they can recover.

Effect: Decreases stealth by a random percentage rangeing from 2% to 10%.

Greed

People are, by their very nature, greedy individuals. Soldiers have been trained to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. However, this spell reverts the natural greed back into soldiers for several days, causing your opponent to have to pay more in wages and to draft new troops.

Effect: Increases military wages by 25%.

Fool's Gold (Dark Elves)

The art of turning lead into gold has always been a confusing mystery. Is it possible? No one knows. However, turning gold into lead can be done! This spell will convert a portion of your opponent's gold into worthless lead.

Effect: Destroys a small and random portion of gold.

Pitfalls (Humans, Elves)

Placing magical pitfalls throughout an enemy's lands will cause them to suffer higher losses in any and all combat for several days. This is an effective way to frustrate attackers and strengthen your own position in the midst of war.

Effect: Increases defensive military losses by 25%.

Fireball - Unfriendly only

If you want to directly go after an enemy, launching a fireball at their peasantry is an effective weapon. The fireball, if successful, will splash directly into the heart of your opponent's lands, exploding on impact, and killing instantly.

Effect: Kills a small and random (3% average) portion of peasants.

Lightning Strike - Unfriendly only

The power of a direct Lightning Strike is arguably the most deadly force on the planet. Your Lightning Strikes will go directly at opponents rune stores and destroy everything in sight. This strike is the most effective way to cripple an opponent's ability to cast spells.

Effect: Destroys a small and random portion of runes.

Explosions

Provinces work together by assisting each other in times of need. By casting Explosions, you can interrupt the flow of goods between provinces, creating explosions that destroy portions of shipments to and from a province at random.

Effect: Destroys 33% of the aid shipments received by the province (no impact on shipments sent out).

Amnesia (Elves) - Unfriendly only

Knowledge is vital to the longterm survival of a province. The unique powers of magic allow you to strip a province of some of its long-sought science. While most of its effects are temporarily, a small portion of science is lost forever. By casting Amnesia, you can cause an enemy province to lose a portion of their arts & sciences knowledge, opening a window to attack or further damage the enemy.

Effect: Unlearns science books and destroys 15% of the unlearnt book.

Nightmares (Dark Elves) - Unfriendly only

The effects fear can have on an individual are amazing. By causing nightmares within the soldiers of an opposing army, you may be able to cause them to quiver in fear. Troops having nightmares have to be rehabilitated and are unavailable for a period of time.

Effect: Returns around 1% of the military troops under training for 6 days (Thieves are affected too).

Mystic Vortex - Unfriendly only

The Mystic Vortex is one of the more powerful spells in the Utopian World. A successful cast will cause approximately half of the spells currently active over a province to vanish. However, this spell does not discriminate and will nullify both positive and negative spells affecting their lands.

Effect: Nullifies spells on the enemy province (50% chance per spell).

Meteor Showers - Unfriendly only

This spell will rain Meteors across the lands of an opponent for several days, killing peasants, troops and more. Deadly and enduring, casting this spell is both difficult and costly. The damage done, however, can be just as great.

Effect: Kills peasants (4% average) and troops at home (2.5% average) day after day.

Tornadoes - Unfriendly only

One of the most dangerous and destructive offensive spells, casting this will rain a terror of tornadoes across an opponent's lands, laying waste to acres of buildings across the province.

Effect: Destroys a small and random portion of buildings.

Land Lust - Unfriendly only

Land is the defining strength of any province, and this spell is the Mage's way of simply stealing an opponent's land. Available only in hostilities and war, this spell is a difficult alternative to attacking.

Effect: Captures a small and random (up to 1%) of the enemy land.