Summer Update - 025

[Spot]

Thanks to those who pointed out that rulers control production. I still think the dwagon only took one turn to pop though. The city was destroyed and rebuilt, I doubt production continues once a city is destroyed. Also, the city is the capital, so that might explain why it can pop units quickly.

Technically, the city was never destroyed. To understand what I mean, you have to separate the idea of a city as a physical artifact, from the idea of a city as a concept that transcends artifacts.

The first idea involves things like buildings, and streets, and towers, and walls... the physical artifacts aspect of a city. The second idea involves things like the city treasury from which maintenance costs are automatically subtracted, and things like the ability to pop units.

So, the city as a physical artifact was destroyed by the volcanic eruption, by the city as a conceptual production center and capital was never destroyed. The dwagon popped after multiple turns in the production queue, and... in fact... it popped at a time when the city as a physical artifact no longer existed. That's not a problem, because units don't pop from the physical city, they pop from the conceptual city. The same way that maintenance costs aren't subtracted from any physical treasury, but from a conceptual treasury that is not bound up in any one physical artifact or location.

[Spot]

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F144.jpg

On that page, Stanley says the city didn't fall, so I'd guess there was enough left for it to still count as a level 1 city and not interfere with production.

The city didn't fall, because in order for it to fall, enemy units would need to exist unopposed within the hex (ie: after having killed all defending units).

Even if every single pice of the physical city was completely obliterated, and there remained nothing but a flat, featureless plain of fused glass throughout the hex... as long as friendly units were the last units to occupy the hex, then the city (as a conceptual capital and production center) would still exist.

Those are pretty standard war game rules.

[moose o death]

If Wanda can or could healing spells, they'd probably be from another school and not necessarily croakamancy.

there is no healing style spells necessity as all wounds heal at the start of a turn, so if healing were to be any kind of magic then it would come with undeadening units. essentially raising their health until they can function again. from a functional physics point of view that would be a similar mechanic to raising the health of a non-dead unit. so if the magic kingdom had no overlord and needed to survive outside of standard turn order then they would need healing if they were hurt. it would make sense for something like croakamncy to be able to heal living units.

it's far less abstract than dollamancy making enchanted armour, and dirtamancy making city construction upgrades cheaper and faster. dollamancy has some level of logic behind it, but the dirtamancy one is servicing the story. sizemore is completely over powered.

so far he can make hard rock golems, soft rock golems, acid rock golems, crap golems, he makes city upgrades cheaper, he speeds up city upgrades, he designs lvl5 cities with natural land formation defnces to get a few extra defencive levels, two weeks into book 2 we'll find out sizemore is the heir after stanley got drunk one night....

[random_guy]

@Spot
Fair enough, I'll take the "conceptual city" explanation. Plenty of games, usually turn based strategy, have pre-established cities on the world map that cannot be destroyed, only upgraded or sacked.

@moose o death
Didn't altruistic elves have healing abilities?

[HandofShadows]

there is no healing style spells necessity as all wounds heal at the start of a turn, so if healing were to be any kind of magic then it would come with undeadening units. essentially raising their health until they can function again. from a functional physics point of view that would be a similar mechanic to raising the health of a non-dead unit. so if the magic kingdom had no overlord and needed to survive outside of standard turn order then they would need healing if they were hurt. it would make sense for something like croakamncy to be able to heal living units.

Umm. No. We have actually seen healers in Ansomes forces. (sorry can't find the page) Auf they look like nurses. Croakamancy is about animating things that are dead, healing is repairing somehting that is still alive. Two different things.

[moose o death]

@Spot
Fair enough, I'll take the "conceptual city" explanation. Plenty of games, usually turn based strategy, have pre-established cities on the world map that cannot be destroyed, only upgraded or sacked.

@moose o death
Didn't altruistic elves have healing abilities?

you mean the nurses outfit? did they heal anything?

and i'm not saying the ability doesn't exist...i was the one saying it did. i mentioned croakmancy might include healing magic...which wanda would never have bothered with as patching up her soon to be corpses would be counter productive in her mind.she can't cure a headache. but that doesn't exclude all croakamncers from doing so

[moose o death]

Croakamancy is about animating things that are dead, healing is repairing somehting that is still alive. Two different things.

no they aren't one is magically reviving a corpse and the other is magically reviving a still breathing unit. the only difference is one would be far harder to succeed at. read the volcano page, wanda looks for parts of the anatomy she needs to move to uncroak the volcano. if that's how she see's uncroaking...what kind of a stretch is healing a broken bone? conditionally we see necromancy style effects as evil. but it's just healing someone who did die. if modern science could restart a stalled body it would still be medicine. as of now we dump em in an incinerator or a hole in the gound.

but as far as the elements table works croakamancers: motion to matter, i'd also assume dissasembling erfworlders is within that skillset as well.

[Welf von Ehrwald]

and i'm not saying the ability doesn't exist...i was the one saying it did. i mentioned croakmancy might include healing magic...which wanda would never have bothered with as patching up her soon to be corpses would be counter productive in her mind.she can't cure a headache. but that doesn't exclude all croakamncers from doing so

There is a branch for healing, and that is healomany. This is not proven, but the name is a sign. I will not deny that two different magic branches could have the same effect, but this hasn't been indicated so far.

[Simons Mith]

Another point that no-one else has mentioned yet, I think it's interesting that Stanley, who has consistently gone without livery, 'couldn't handle' Parson's name and wasn't really happy till Parson came up with his 'Lord Hamster' title.

[Infidel]

Why do people assume the Titans actually exist? I'd say the first page pretty specifically identifies them as a concrete entity and not an abstraction. It's the assumption of goodness that bothers me though.

Well, as far as I can tell they set fate. They have to be good, because they control what is good. If they are not good, they would probably just be the wielders of fate and above morals altogether.

Fate has nothing to do with good or evil. Fate is about results, good/evil is a matter of intent. Cutting a person's arm off because you don't like him is bad. Cutting a person's arm off to stop the spread of gangrene and save the person's life is good.

Fate just says, "That guy is going to lose an arm." fate doesn't care why or how it happens, just that it's going to happen somehow, and the harder that guy attempts his fate, the more certain it is.

It might also be the old Unreliable Narrator though. I mean no one in Erfworld has actually seen the Titans, have they? And as I said, I think it highly possiable that the Titans themselves are units, and thus not the real creators of Erfworld. Oh, and I totaly agree about the "good" part. For someone to create a world like Erfwold it would not be considered a "good" act I think. We going into OOTS style morality there?

I can't help but think it's a symptom of religious naivete or perhaps ignorance. Most religions throughout history have portrayed the gods only being concerned with humanity as playthings, if at all.

I'm not sure about OOTS morality. If we're just going to say, "It's a god therefore by definition good." Well I disagree rather strongly. A different definition: Obeying a god's will, is not a matter of being good or evil since it is perceived to have rewards or consequences. So it's just a matter of personal gratification. A god may order to give to the needy, so a worshiper finds some needy person and gives away stuff, not because he gives a crap about the poor, but because he expects some kind of karmic reward in this life or some spiritual reward in the afterlife.

Morality is supposed to go beyond personal benefits and consequences and actually be concerned with how it affects others, and be willing to accept personal consequences in the persuit of their morality. So, for example, if someone believed that giving to the needy was the right thing to do, in a given context, and that it was against the will of god because of a scripture somewhere, or because God came down and issued the order directly, therefore the act would have negative consequences for the believer, but the person accepts the negative consequences for himself for the benefit of another, that is morality to me.

[DevilDan]

there is no healing style spells necessity as all wounds heal at the start of a turn, so if healing were to be any kind of magic then it would come with undeadening units. essentially raising their health until they can function again. from a functional physics point of view that would be a similar mechanic to raising the health of a non-dead unit. so if the magic kingdom had no overlord and needed to survive outside of standard turn order then they would need healing if they were hurt. it would make sense for something like croakamncy to be able to heal living units.

You can see here that two types of elves can "throw heals." You can actually see one "nurse" healing a unit.
http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F022.jpg
Here's the wiki healomancy entry: http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/Healomancy

it's far less abstract than dollamancy making enchanted armour, and dirtamancy making city construction upgrades cheaper and faster. dollamancy has some level of logic behind it, but the dirtamancy one is servicing the story. sizemore is completely over powered.

so far he can make hard rock golems, soft rock golems, acid rock golems, crap golems, he makes city upgrades cheaper, he speeds up city upgrades, he designs lvl5 cities with natural land formation defnces to get a few extra defencive levels, two weeks into book 2 we'll find out sizemore is the heir after stanley got drunk one night....

He's overpowered because of his bonuses to construction? I don't think the story needed all those bonuses; I just think the writer thought that they made sense. Last time this sort of talk started, it was Wanda who was ridiculously overpowered. He can make golems, and he gives bonuses to construction. I'm not sure that he speeds up city upgrades: they all just happen in the blink of an eye, right? The reduction of upgrade costs is probably quite valuable, but it's not as if upgrades occur every turn. It's a neat bonus, but hardly a game-changer.

[OneHugeTuck]

Yeah, he's not overpowered, he's a Dirtamancer. A relatively rare and powerful caster, which is the point of having casters....power.

Yes he is more powerful than a piker. That's why there's one of him and thousands of them.

Every caster unit is very powerful in certain ways.

[SteveMB]

there is no healing style spells necessity as all wounds heal at the start of a turn

A couple other people provided pointers to the healers in the RCC column. As for why it's useful to have them, the ability to cast heals in mid-turn gives your units increased flexibility (withdraw units that are getting low on hits, heal them, and send them back into the battle).

[DevilDan]

Healing will also prevent you from losing units, possibly valuable ones, who are so injured that they won't make it to the next day. Look at Wanda's example here:
http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F122.jpg

Edit: I hadn't noticed the new illustration was up. Excellent!

[kreszantas]

there is no healing style spells necessity as all wounds heal at the start of a turn

A couple other people provided pointers to the healers in the RCC column. As for why it's useful to have them, the ability to cast heals in mid-turn gives your units increased flexibility (withdraw units that are getting low on hits, heal them, and send them back into the battle).

Haha. Looks like it's my week for being misquoted.

Healing will also prevent you from losing units, possibly valuable ones, who are so injured that they won't make it to the next day. Look at Wanda's example here:
http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F122.jpg

Edit: I hadn't noticed the new illustration was up. Excellent![/quote]
^^ agree excellent albeit late addition

Now for the healing aspect I personally don't know how you were misquoted. I understood what you placed in text. Guess not everyone is able to disern intentions of them as well as others. Due to the fact that English is not everyones first language, we should take some responsibility and simplify it when possible.

[cservant]

Edit: I hadn't noticed the new illustration was up. Excellent!

Alisa posted a message awhile back. No one noticed? *grasp*

I had fun reading 25... I was giggling after reading the forum spec about dollamancers were before this update. But of course, they're dollzmakers!
I think if I were in erfworld, I'd be a dollamancer. ^__^

I've emailed the artwork in... sorry about the Miscommunication! I hope you all enjoy it, and I look forward to seeing more artworks from everybody else!

TImestamp was:
Postby Alisa » Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:20 pm

[moose o death]

well i was proven overwhelmingly wrong about healing, didn't notice the healomancy thing. i have to admit i've never liked the idea that necromancy and restoration were different skillsets. but moving right along.

[Oberon]

My point of view is that anyone who is willing to betray her loyalties once, will most certainly betray them again.

Who says that Wanda ever betrayed a loyalty? Remember, she thought Stanley would lose when he attacked FAQ. She could be completely wracked with guilt over the fall of FAQ, and her chat with Parson about all the horrible things she's done do get a Tool could easily be read that way by someone looking to give her the best benefit of the doubt.

[moose o death]

no-ones buying that

if it was guilt over causing faq's fall why is she tagging along with him? why has she convinced jack to do so as well. jack wouldn't betray stanley for jillian either. two casters from FAQ, both joined GK, both more loyal to stanley than their original kingdom's heir.

the FAQ story is not complete, wanda is almost a known quantity, but jacks loyalty is unknown, whatever happened at faq i doubt is what wanda told parson.

[DevilDan]

If I were romantically minded, I'd suggest that Jack would play along with Stanley just for the chance of seeing Jill again.

It's possible that Jack is simply a "turned" unit: when Jill told Ansom that she'd seen a Faq caster in Stanley's employ, he found it a compelling reason to believe that Stanley had conquered Faq and thus might be fleeing in that direction. (Yes, I know that Jill was describing Wanda rather than Jack, but the principle stands.)