Magical Mishaps

[Khenti-ImentiuSU]

The current penalties for magic gone wrong is obvious enough - you waste your mana/runes/lives of your magicians...but as everyone knows there are different levels of wrong that can occur. I'd love to see secondary effects for spells that could randomly occur as a result of failed magic - something entertaining :)

I mean..couldn't a failed invisibility spell read "Your wizards gather their runes and begin casting...something has gone horribly wrong! All of your villager's clothes have been rendered invisible! It will be 14 days before this effect wears off..."

which of course would prompt the message "Your villagers are too embarassed to go to work. (14 Days)"

lol, I know it's not a completely practical thing...but I think it'd be kinda cool :) And it'd give another way to balance magic use in the game.

[VT2]

Just awful.
Magic is already balanced as it is.

[agesdg]

How about an attack mishap? You fail an attack and a portion of your army is angry at your incompetence and leaves your army

[Dolgil]

These ideas are sort of "chrome" items. It's kind of funny the first time around but gets old very fast.

[clawzzz]

yeah it wont work unless theres a a change or 2 in the mishaps part every few days to keep it intersting.

[Grassroots]

Your wizards begin casting and... They destroy your province because they felt you deserved it, you self-righteous bum!

That would suck...

[Godfather]

I don't think this is such a bad idea. It would have to be extremely rare and have a large base of random events. And they should not have serious consequences.

[Someone]

Agree with Godfather. Fun idea! But as already stated, it would either require LOADS of different mishappenings or mishappen very seldom.

I vote for the latter.

[Magn]

>require LOADS of different mishappenings or mishappen very seldom.<

I vote for both as rarer occurances and a large pool of events (making individual events even rarer) would ensure that individual events stay rare and don't grow old.

I also think the handicaps should be minor as previously stated. for play balance reasons.

And I think the idea has merit.

Definitely would add some life to the game.

[Nemo]

I mean..couldn't a failed invisibility spell read "Your wizards gather their runes and begin casting...something has gone horribly wrong! All of your villager's clothes have been rendered invisible! It will be 14 days before this effect wears off..."

which of course would prompt the message "Your villagers are too embarassed to go to work. (14 Days)"

I'd actually expect the birthrate to go up...

[quinnteh]

BE goes down, birth rate goes up

[Someone]

The more i think of it, the better it becomes :P As long as its only minor effects, that doesnt affect you in any great way (like turning a war), its a great idea :D

[Azz]

Civ IV manages to have random events which achieve both balance (relatively minor effects) and a mildly humorous mode of delivery, and as yet they haven't grown old imo. They do help break some monotony.

That said, generally randomness is just a source of much frustration, and there's a real possibility this could be the same. Provided the effects were minor I guess this could be negated - but if the effects were minor, it does seem rather chromey. And there are certainly other things which could be attracting OMAC's attention in the short term.