Guys something i'm trying to get working at the moment is a reduction in mana maintenance based on an ability.  That in itself is not difficult, the problem is i'm trying to use fractions / decimals.

ie. most summon spells cost 1 mana maintenance by default.

Champion takes the "Channeling" ability, it should provide 50% mana maintenance reduction.  The way i'm trying to do this is by giving back half the mana maintenance via resource production.  Not ideal but not really any other way.  Problem is that makes the maintenance 0.5 per turn.  That's what I want.  The idea being that you can now run 2 summons for 1 mana maintenance.

<GameModifier>
   <ModType>Resource</ModType>
   <Attribute>Mana</Attribute>
   <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
   <Value>0.5</Value>
</GameModifier>

This doesn't seem to work though... seems to round up the value to 1.  If I have 2 summons running with this 0.5 it still seems to cost 2 mana maintenance (rather than 1).

Does anyone know for sure how a decimal value is handled in a situation?  I was hoping the "rounding" would happen after all the maintenenace was added together, but seems it might happen individually for each GameModifier?

Oh so after further testing seems the problem is not the decimal Value.... rather, as far as I can tell spells can't produce a resource over time (unless it is a city enhancement).

So a one off modifier when casting a spell (such as a summoning spell) like this works fine:

<GameModifier>
   <ModType>Resource</ModType>
   <Attribute>Mana</Attribute>
   <Value>10</Value>
</GameModifier>

But this doesn't:

<GameModifier>
   <ModType>Resource</ModType>
   <Attribute>Mana</Attribute>
   <Duration>-1</Duration>
   <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
   <Value>10</Value>
</GameModifier>

You mean this bit from the SpellDef?

<SpellResourceCost>
   <Resource>Mana</Resource>
   <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
   <Amount>1</Amount>
</SpellResourceCost>

Yeah, you can't put a Calculate in there, that's the problem - it's fixed.  Bummer what be great to be able to put an expression in sections like this.

I think i'm just going to go for a flat rate of 0.5 mana per turn for maintaining a summons for now.

Yeah it's a real bummer, you spend half your time stuffing around trying to figure out ways to workaround things.  It's one of those things where the basic stuff is real easy to do with the xml, which is great... but once you want to do something a little bit beyond the framework it gets difficult and in some cases impossible.  Oh well.

Anyways back on track... your suggestion is brilliant!  I'm biased because that's how i'm already doing it for other stuff

I've actually got heaps of copies of the same summons spell... and they are blocked/unblocked by abilities.  For example one of the things I have done is set all the tactical summons to have a default range of 3.  Then there is an ability to change them all to unlimited range.  You get the appropriate spell based by just restricting/requiring the ability as appropriate.  This works *great* in tactical... because you only every see the version of the spell relevant to the caster, because you have to click on the caster first... then then you see the list of spells they can cast.

The problem with this technique in strategic mode... is that you get 2 of every spell showing in the spellbook (if you have more than 1 summoner champion).... because the strategic spellbook lists all spells that anyone can cast.  So it gets real ugly.  I'm avoiding it for the casting mana cost, by using a GameModifer that refunds the mana at the completion of the spell... not ideal but it means I can have several levels of mana discount with the same SpellDef.  Abilities give you points in Unitstat_Summon_Mana_Discount (or whatever I called it), then this is used in an expression to give some mana back.  Works great as a one off when cast cost but as mentioned doens't seem to work for ongoing maintenance :-/

So your suggestion will work... and possibly I will end up going that way.  But i'm trying to avoid the duplicate spell listing thing if possible.  Actually something I did try.... was to add different tabs to the spellbook.  Those bookmarks on the left, where it says "Enchantments", "Summon", "City" or whatever they are.  I tried to create 3 different Summon tabs, "Summon", "Expert Summons" and "Master Summons".... the plan was to have 3 different mana maintenance versions of the spells, one of each for each level and unlocked in a similar way to your suggestion.  I figured that would have been neat, because they would not have all been listed together, they'd have all been neatly organised in the spellbook.  It kinda worked.... you can create new Spellbook Categories for spells... the spells show up on a new tab, but it is has no icon and tehe tooltip says "string not found".  I tried to get it working but gave up on that, seems to be hardcoded to only expect to disaply the default ones.

Oh actually, back to your suggestion.... to avoid having the spell listed twice in the spellbook, the other idea I had was to make it so that once a champion picks the "cheaper summon maintenance" ability... make it is a global effect that applies to all summoner champions.  So the description would be like "All your factions summons have a a reduced mana maintenance".   That would actually be fine and I tried to get it working using exactly the technique you described.  I wanted 3 levels of mana maintenance reduction abiltiies.  So I basically tried this....

I had 3 UnitStats, something like:

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount1 (default 1)

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount2 (default 0)

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount3 (default 0)

Then 3 copies of each summon spell.  The idea was to have:

- Summon Shrill copy 1 (1 mana maintenance) requires unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount1 value 1

- Summon Shrill copy 2 (0.75 mana maintenance) requires unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount2 value 1

- Summon Shrill copy 3 (0.5 mana maintenance) requires unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount3 value 1

Then what I tried to do was create abilities to effect the Unitstats.... but the key thing is... I want it to effect ALL champions.  So I wanted an ability to do this:

1) Expert Summons (All your factions summons now cost 0.75 mana per turn). This should somehow set all champions to have 

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount1 = 0

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount2 = 1

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount3 = 0

2) Master Summons (All your factions summons now cost 0.5 mana per turn). This should somehow set all champions to have 

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount1 = 0

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount2 = 0

- unitstat_summonmaintenancediscount3 = 1

This last bit, I couldn't get working.  I couldn't figure out a way to have a unit ability, that sets some unitstats for all champions in your faction....

If anyone knows how to do that i'm all ears!  

(wow, long post.... hope there is some sense in amongst that).

@OliverFA_306 - thanks for the suggestions by the way.

I don't *want* to do it that way...  just thinking of different options.  I can do it with multiple spells (as per your suggestion), but i'm rather hesitant to go for that option as then there would be duplicates showing up in the spellbook for a lot of spells.  Haven't completely ruled it out but i'm trying to avoid it if possible.  Actually now that I think of it I did it for casting times so maybe i've already broken my rule...hmmm i'll have to think about it.

Regarding the improvement idea, yeah that's an option.  In fact i've already got something like that in my personal mod that i'm thinking of cleaning up and releasing in conjunction with this down the track.

What about this (similar concept)....

I haven't tried this idea but I'm 90% sure would work.... is to use a city spell to "refund" some of the mana maintenance from summons.  The idea was to have a hidden resource that keeps track of the number of summons spells that are active... then, have a "Summoning Mana Bonus" spell (not sure what the heck it would be called) that when cast on a city, would provide +X mana per active summons.

You'd just probably make it a spell that can only be cast once at a time (like tireless march).

So for example, maybe the Path of the Summoner would unlock this spell:

"Summoners Gift I" - City Spell - +0.25 mana per active summons (can only be cast on 1 city at a time)

Then have an ability half way along the Summoners Path:

"Summoners Gift II" - City Spell - +0.5 mana per active summons (can only be cast on 1 city at a time)

Kind of a back to front way of achieving a discount to mana maintenance for each summons.  But desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures!  

Yeah thinking about that one, that's definitely an option.

I've pretty much got it all done now, other than I need to create about a dozen more monsters/units to fill in the gaps so that there is at least 5 types of summons per element.  Then i'll provide an alpha to those who want to try it.

Oh I like that idea too don't get me wrong.  Will almost certainly put something like that in there.  

I built a magma elemental awhile back by re-skinning a sand golem with fire elemental texture.  Feel free to use anything you like:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/440185/page/1/#3319443

I am too busy to fiddle with code for the foreseeable future, but am following your work here and the druid mod with great interest!

p.s. dsraider made a fun mud shrill with a knock-back ranged attack that was cool in his Secrets of the Past FE Scenario:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/440136/page/1/#3328469

Of course I would check with dsraider before borrowing his pet

A blink dog for life level 1?  Give it blink, high dodge and +2  tactical regen but low attack (8).  An annoying distraction for the enemy...

Air 3: Storm Giant?  Ranged lightning bolt every 5 turns, + 3 electrical elemental damage in melee.  Possibly armed with a Thunder Hammer that can be looted (lightning hammer with modded in splash damage or knockback effect?). 

I found getting all of the xml ducks in a row... challenging.  Especially if you mislabel a spell icon pic and got a blank space in the spell book or in the army info window.  Still confused about names as well... some of my units were named correctly others had _ between two words or other oddities.  And I only did strategic summons, must be twice as much work to do tactical as well!!  Look forward to trying them out, keep on plugging!

Looks great! I am a bit busy with RL at the moment but will try to make some room for it.

Cool that's great thanks, glad it works ok!

The Archon needs a lot of polish, it was pretty much the last unit I put together and I couldn't quite get it looking how I envisaged it.  Will revisit that at some point.  I envisage tweaking the new unit types gradually now... to balance them a bit better, and to add/modify abilities... so any feedback much appreciated.

Cheers.

Edit -> Oh yeah, that string not found.... it's the descriptor for the resource, it's an annoying mod restriction thing.. it can be fixed but requires editing a file in the core directory.  Not sure if I want to do that or not yet.  Will think about packaged a file that can be copied to the core folder to resolve it.  Thanks.

Yeah... and even I provide a fix file, Steam will override it whenever it does it's thing too.   Not to worry.

Edit - deleted.  One of a couple of double posts.  Partly crap forums and partly my fault for being stupid.