Some areas I feel could benefit from some spicing up in Endless Legend are:

• Heroic Items
• Certain Minor Factions
• Support Units
• Ardent Mages

In EL2, Spells could bring all this together, and bring out the magical themes of EL more. 

Spells come from (at least) two sources: support units and heroic (magic) items (the ones found in ruins that easily become out-tech'ed).

The capacity on the item or unit is what provides the spell.

Spells work the same way as Ardent Magic (a button at the top of the screen that is controlled by the player).  

Having multiple support units with the same capacity increases the spell's power/effect when it is cast (and perhaps also its dust cost).  

When a spell provided by support units is cast, the units together play a spell-casting animation.  The same goes for a hero possessing an item that provides a spell.

Support units also have capacities with abilities like they already have now (heals, etc).  It it a question in my mind whether they should be able to act on a turn when a spell is cast. I see benefits both ways. It seems more strategic if they cannot.

In this manner, some factions will have a 1-3 of their own unique spells simply due to having support units. This is good!

Ardent Mages should have many more faction-specific spells available to them (probably through pillars in addition to having the most support units).

Perhaps some powerful spells have a strategic resource cost?

Would some support units or items provide strategy map spells?

It would be awesome to see an order of magnitude more spells in EL2 over EL.

I guess this could also be done in an expansion.

This sounds like a lovely idea! I hope they do an EL2 in the next few years!

I'd be willing to work on a mod to implement this, but I'm going to bet that linking battlefield spells to capacities would require source code.  Probably spell creation at all.

Think it would mess with the lore though. There is no actual magic in the Endless universe...just advanced tech.

The Ardent Mages are unique in that they combine Dust with agony to create spell-like effects. While all races use Dust in some way, not all races are Dust-entwined. 

So while this idea would fit with a more magical world like Age of Wonders, I think it is a bit of a clash with EL. Having said that, don't let me stop you from modding the game however you see fit. That was just my lore violation detector going off :-P

Most of the changes you can make are strictly xml adjustments. 

You can create new text, technologies, unit designs, heros, quests, etc. 

Slashman wrote:

So while this idea would fit with a more magical world like Age of Wonders, I think it is a bit of a clash with EL. Having said that, don't let me stop you from modding the game however you see fit. That was just my lore violation detector going off :-P

No problems, thanks for the info; I assume you are right abuot the lore.  It might be my background here, but I do sometimes feel like there is a tiny hole EL compared to games like AoW or HoMM.  I think it's the lack of castable spells.  Even the Ardent Mages don't get very many. There is something satisfying about being able to manipulate the battlefield or strategic map with a range of abilities.

But as you said, there is a in-lore explanation for the Ardent Mage Spell Effects.  To alter my idea above a bit, the minor factions might not cast spells per-se, but they might have their own inherent affinities for dust; like the Ardent Mages do but each through some different mechanism (in the lore, anyway).  In other words I think the gameplay idea and the purposes it would serve might still be valuable even with lore changes to make it work.

I think it would be wonderful to add in as a feature. I think those are neat ideas, and I think if they had the time/resources, they definitely would do it if it seemed like it would be a fun and interesting mechanic.

If you could get something like this working, I know tons of people would enjoy it.

However, I don't think that it's possible given the limitations of modding in Endless Legend.

I would like to see them open up modding a bit more, but that may just be wishful thinking at this point with EL. 

I think there are a lot of limitations because of how they build their games, but there has been a lot of talk of trying to open more up over time. 

I think EL is at the end of it's development cycle, so it's kind of stuck where it is, I believe. There's a lot of room to play, though. Simpler things.

Heroic items with "magical" abilities fits lore quite well: who knows how many pieces of Endless machinery was left on Auriga and what are their capabilities? (think about Numenera universe)

And all support units do perform "magic" even now, but in form of a specific effect that triggers if unit targets an ally/enemy. Not to mention Broken Lords and Allayi. And Guardians...

I think the lore explaination can be found. The small amount of classical magic is a devs' decision linked with setting. But who knows what could happen if EL2 becomes reality...