2. You can create a basal golem from your forge for 40 mana.
3. An idle basal golem will slowly generate mana. For this to occur, the golem cannot be moving. It can be located anywhere, as long as it's idle.
4. To create a building, you move 4 basal golems onto a site and select the building you want.
5. To create a unit, you move the appropriate number of basal golems next to the right kind of building, pay the mana cost, and select the unit you want.
Doesn't this just shift having to protect the gathering unit to having to protect the resource itself? How does this result in a different player experience? Honest question, have not played the game and I am curious, since I am a bit bored with traditional RTS games.
> Doesn't this just shift having to protect the gathering unit to having to protect the resource itself?
I'm not really sure what this means; you still need to protect the unit, but you can put it anywhere you want. Mana exists in your inventory and doesn't need to be protected. Golems will fight back while under attack and therefore don't generate mana during that time, but they become productive again immediately when the attack is over.
This strikes me as fairly different from, say, Starcraft, where workers can only function within particular small areas and having them outside those areas deals severe economic damage in the form of opportunity costs. The fact that everything you ever build is made of golems mirrors the Zerg mechanics, though.
But I am not a big RTS person and I find the overall conceit of the genre pretty annoying. There's no such thing as a battle where technology levels change mid-battle. In an actual battle, if you have infantry and you want artillery, what you want doesn't matter because you have infantry and that's not going to change. In an actual military campaign, if you have infantry and you want artillery, you do that by getting artillery shipped to you. You can't make your own.
Civilization focuses on technological development and includes military engagements that can't stand up to even the friendliest critical analysis. RTSes go the other way; they focus on battles and include a rump technology mechanic that can't stand up to analysis. The problem here is that technological development is measured in decades, or longer, and battles are measured in hours. You can't have a working game that does both things.
Never played Blood and Magic, but it sounds like map control would be a lot less important. Most RTS games are all about expanding and controlling resources as fast as possible, so you can out produce your opponent.
1. There's one resource, mana.
2. You can create a basal golem from your forge for 40 mana.
3. An idle basal golem will slowly generate mana. For this to occur, the golem cannot be moving. It can be located anywhere, as long as it's idle.
4. To create a building, you move 4 basal golems onto a site and select the building you want.
5. To create a unit, you move the appropriate number of basal golems next to the right kind of building, pay the mana cost, and select the unit you want.