Myriad Magic

One focus I have in my game is allowing for a ton of different magical options and systems. Ideally by harnessing different granular aspects of magic and combining them in weird ways, nearly every society in a single game or potentially across many games will have quite differently functioning magic systems. In this post I am going to lay out all the potential aspects of magic.

One of the major systems of magic is trait channeling. You can have a character or populace give away part of their power, or you can steal someone's power, and gift those powers to others. For instant you may gift a unit in your army with the stolen essence of an imprisoned dragon. You can also perform actions essentially similar to communions in Dominions4. You could also steal the knowledge or strength of slaves to give to your people. Stealing the traits of your citizens can incur a political cost, assuming you don't utilize propaganda to make it culturally acceptable. You can also drain the life of an entity to increase the life of another. The way that systems interact in my game the possibilities are limitless. Trading the weight of a spy but gifting them strength or something. Giving your pikemen or shield using troops strength and weight to defeat charges. All sorts of fun stuff.

You also have the more conventional magic systems. Elemental magic, killing spells, etc. Not much to explain.

Another powerful tool is environmental magic. You can alter the traits of a province like the temperature or the rain and so forth. You can also combine this with physical terraforming. There are options like creating a storm or snowfall in a pass, freezing rivers, and various spells like locust swarms and crap.

One of the rather unique systems of magic besides trait exchange is the mental arts. You have the ability of farsight and more interestingly, a sort of foresight. Foresight is more about discovering secrets than actual future vision since the game has no actual future state. Perhaps you get a vision of betrayal in war or of your death, which signifies various plots against you.

Magic in this game can affect economics as well. Magical vs technical automation for instance. Magic powered machines. Doing things like creating roads with magic. Transmutation, conjuring power from magic. Creating fridges using magic to transport or store food. Some sort of time proof field could provide similar effects.