So, I'm not sure exactly why, but I had assumed that, when Mana went global, that each shard would produce the appropriate mana type. Fire mana, air mana, etc. I've been disabused of this silly notion in the past couple days, which leaves me with two questions.
1) Why would I care about shards at all, given that my soveriegn and a variety of buildings generate mana, and only a couple spells are affected by them?
2) Does anyone with modding knowledge have any idea of the feasibility of creating new resource types? I know it was mentioned that spells would support resource costs, so... it shouldn't be a big deal to just implement multiple mana types myself if resources can be created.
1) A sovereign generates 3 mana per turn. A shard generates 1 mana, and gives you the ability to build an improvement that produces another 1 mana per turn in the nearest city if it is above level 3. Effectively, each shard allows you access to 2 more mana per turn. In addition, some shards boost the output of some spells (mostly unknown at this point).
2) It is entirely possible, and quite easy, to add additional resource production to shard buildings, and require them when casting spells. In 1.09e, there were two major obstacles to this. First, the SpellResourceCost the modder used to define custom resource cost for spells acted differently in strategical and tactical mode - in essence, it didn't check your current supply in tactical mode, which allowed for infinite casting in tactical despite requiring the resource. I requested that this be changed, but I haven't heard anything about that being done.
Secondly, the other major obstacle is - how is the AI going to use it? Will it "break" the AI for the spells, or will the AI fail to take into account this new cost balance of spells? Most likely the AI will use the system poorly.
