Rites are Realmstate's magic. Adepts work them with aether: on your own house to strengthen it, or on another house to learn about it or harm it. Every rite this age is on Rites and Hexes.
Adepts and aether
- Shrines (a building) draw adepts from your peasants slowly: 25% of their listed adept output each tick, with part-adepts carried to the next tick, up to what your shrines can hold. You can set a lower limit of your own, in adepts per acre to one decimal place (0 stops gathering), and release adepts back to the fields as peasants; releasing brings your limit down to what's left, so they aren't drawn again.
- Shrines also gather aether every tick, up to what they can hold. Every rite spends aether.
- Both scale with your building efficiency. The Production science adds aether too.
- Hexes also burn resin as incense. Resin is refined from pine, so magic depends on the pine realms.
Kinds of rite
- On yourself. They always work if you have the aether, and last a while (see How long rites last). Casting one again renews it; the same rite never stacks. Veil hides your name from the houses you attack. Mirror Ward turns some hexes back on whoever cast them.
- Divinations read another house without risking thieves: a quick look at its wealth and troops, the rites in force on it, or its armies on the road (and whose land they carry). What you learn is shared with your state, like a spy report.
- Hexes harm another house. Most act at once: spoil its food, take its gold, kill its peasants, drain its aether, wreck its buildings, or unravel one of its rites. Blight takes from its share of the realm's material for a while. A curse weakens it while the curse lasts: more food eaten, more defenders killed, troops fighting weaker, buildings working worse, and so on. Most hexes are stronger when your states are at war.
- Strong hexes need bad relations first (see below). Siphon captures part of the target's land at once; it arrives as barren land and their buildings on it are lost. Like an attack, a smaller target yields less (the size curve). A bigger target yields more, but one cast never takes more than a set share of your own land (see Siphon), so a small house can't strip a giant. Hellfire kills part of the target's peasants and troops at home every tick while it lasts. The target's news says what each tick killed.
When strong hexes are allowed
Some hexes list a relation they need on Rites and Hexes: unfriendly, hostile or war. Your state must feel at least that way toward the target's state on the hostility meter, or the two states must be at war. Your state's meter rises when the other state attacks, spies on or hexes yours. So you earn the right to a strong hex when they have wronged you, not by hexing them yourself.
A strong hex can cost more while relations are only unfriendly: Siphon's list shows both costs. Once your state is hostile toward theirs, or at war, it costs the usual amount.
What a rite costs
A rite's aether cost grows with your land. The listed cost is for a house of 400 acres. Any other size pays the listed cost × (land + 333) ÷ (400 + 333). For example: 400 acres: ×1; 1,000 acres: ×1.8; 2,000 acres: ×3.2; 4,000 acres: ×5.9. Modifiers to aether_cost then apply. Hexes also burn resin. For most it is a fixed amount, whatever your size; a few (Siphon) burn a little more for each 1,000 acres beyond 400, as listed.
How long rites last
A lasting rite (a rite on yourself, a curse, Blight, Hellfire) runs its full length once shrines are 15% of your land. With no shrines it runs 50% of that length, rising in a straight line in between. It always lasts at least one tick. For a hex, the caster's shrines count, not the target's.
State vigils
A state's leader can open a vigil; every member may give aether and resin to it. Once it's fully funded, every house in the state gains its effect for a while. One vigil at a time. The vigils this age are on Rites and Hexes.
Chance of a divination or hex
- Start from adepts per acre: yours against theirs, each times its
adept_strength(the Channeling science, some races). Equal adepts per acre gives 50%; formally 50% × 2 × yours ÷ (yours + theirs), kept within 5%-95%. You need at least one adept. - Multiply by the rite's own chance.
- Take off their ward. Ward comes only from watchstones. Their cap is set before building efficiency, so efficiency above 100% can push ward past it. However high, at most 80% counts.
- Hexes only: take off the target's Spell Resilience, then add your Countercast Vengeance. Both are shares of the chance so far.
The result is kept between 1% and 95%.
Spell Resilience
A house hexed often grows harder to hex. Each hex that lands adds its resilience (listed on Rites and Hexes) to the house it lands on, up to 75%. A hex turned back by a Mirror Ward hardens its caster instead. Resilience fades by 2.5 percentage points a tick.
Countercast Vengeance
Every hex tried on a house, landed or not, adds 50% of that hex's resilience to the house's vengeance against the caster's state, up to 50%. Vengeance lifts the chance of that house's own hexes on houses of that state only. A friendly state hexing you can't charge it up for you to use on someone else. It does show you which state hexed you, though not which house. Casting a hex on a state's house spends 50% of your vengeance against that state. It fades by 1 percentage points a tick.
How much a hex takes
A hex that takes a share (food, gold, peasants, aether, buildings, land, or what hellfire kills) is changed by the caster's hex_damage (the Sorcery science) and then by the target's hex_damage_taken (the Shielding science). Storm spreads its share across every building type, rounding so that even a small house loses some. Ward cuts the chance of a hex, not what it takes.
What the target learns
- A divination that works: nothing.
- A hex that works: what it did, but not who cast it.
- Anything that fails: which house tried it.
- Every divination and hex raises the target state's hostility meter toward yours; hexes raise it more. Neither works inside your own state, across a ceasefire, or while either house is under protection.