Esoteric Arcana In Axioms Series: Divination
Lots of old 4x games had wizards with crystal balls. Now they actually work!
General Series Information
This is the first post in a series of probably 10 posts I’ll be making about unique magic options in Axioms that other games don’t support. Illwinter’s Dominions games have divination in theory but not really in practice. Which makes sense because they are multiplayer products first and foremost.
Magic in Axioms is much more extensive than even iconic magic strategy properties including the aforementioned deity warfare sim and also including classes like Master Of Magic. A bit of an arrogant title considering the limitations of magic. Although the terraforming stuff is awesome.
Consciouness
Axioms has a variety of systems where information on the plans of AI run characters can be stored. Each Character has a Consciouness which handles a lot of the stuff you don’t typically see in strategy games.
A complex personality, their political and religous ideology, their Secrets, which other games have used as a system between when I came up with it and now, and their Desires, which is a Secrets-adjacent mechanic mostly unique to Axioms.
Consciousness also contains personal magical and technological research as well as a personality which is just a slightly more detailed version of what many other games do.
Conspiracies
Conspiracies have their own associated Secrets data storage. Each action related to the conspiracy is a secret, the identity of the conspirators, and so forth. The ultimate and proximate goals are also discoverable through the Intelligence Network mechanic just as regular Secrets are.
Non-Conspiracy secret agreements are also available for discovery as well as a variety of other factors. Additionally the game stores data on emergent rebellions through the opinion and happiness mechanics. You always know the information regarding your own characters and populations but you might not know that a neighboring nation is close to rebellion.
Divination
The most basic Divination Magic spell searches into the future for “threats” to your interests. You can also cast targeted spells focused on particular characters or countries or look at threats to *other* countries or characters.
How this works mechanically is that the game checks through various Secret and Desire information for entities relevant to the Divination question and through game data that perhaps your mundane Intelligence Network can’t access. Depending on various details about the Ritual you’ll get a variety of info that can range from vague hints to Characters of interest to full on “visions” providing explicit details or awarding you knowledge of particular Secrets.
You basically “predict possible futures” by looking at the goals and desires and the efforts made to reach them by other characters. You can get results as broad as “a threat arises to the north” or something like that.
Exploration
Divination Magic also functions in the classic Illwinter sense of finding hidden locations in provinces. It can target a province for just low level info, as if you had a tier 1 or 2 or 3 Intelligence Network there temporarily. You can uncover locations in any province with the proper Ritual and you can even gain access to the knowledge of other Characters as far as Hidden Locations. You can even search out buildings or populations or w/e that were player built and hidden by magic or subterfuge.
Diplomacy
Divination can tell you basic info about characters as well. It includes not only Foresight and farsight but also Hindsight. Perhaps a character has made a Vow and have broken it. So Divination in Diplomacy can go beyond the public Trust measure to look at private dealings. Additionally if a character is saying things to you that they contradict in private Divination can sometimes detect that.
Essentially Divination is “magical espionage and exploration”. Divination can also modify RNG elements of the game. So if you are just searching for hidden locations it can increase your chances of finding them. It can also help in stuff like magical or technological research.
Adjacent to Divination type magic, maybe a combination with “Alteration” or something, is stuff like translation magic. Axioms has a language system that impacts diplomacy and exploration and a few other areas.