Council Of Esus was one of the religion that was introduced in "Shadow", but I have never really get to play CoE properly. So, at last, in one of my game two or three weeks ago, I decided to give it the attention it deserved and played a full game using CoE exclusively. In that game, I choose the Sidar for its synergy with CoE.

So, here is some of the issue I found and feedback that I would like to give. The main star here is CoE, and the civ, Sidar has no bearing with the gameplay except that I will use their unique unit name and hero name in the feedback. Note that this is about sp only. Suggestion/solution is put under spoiler.

Firstly, let's us have a look on the minor aspect of the religion.

1. The spread religion mechanic. Currently, it cost 25 gold to spread the CoE religion. And when we have less than 25 gold, the spread religion button will be gone. For me, it is quite confusing why my CoE unit can spread the religion at times and at some other times cannot.

Suggestion: Can this be changed so that instead of the spread religion button disappearing if we have less than 25 gold, just grey out the button and put a tooltip there stating "You need 25 gold to cast this spell".

Sidenote: This also happens to the Aeron's Chosen as it uses the same spreading mechanic as CoE.


2. Secondly, this is also about the spreading religion mechanic, but on a higher/macro level. To spread the religion, we must have the CoE as a state religion. But, this also means that we have to had the CoE religion in one of our cities first. To do so, we have to research the Deception technology first to enable the CoE religion.

Spread CoE --> Requires state religion --> Requires CoE in city --> Requires Deception.

If we are the first to research the Deception technology, then all is fine and well, as we will found the shrine and have CoE in one of our cities. But a problem occurred when we are not the first to found the Deception technology, as none of our cities will have the CoE religion. This means that we cannot adopt the CoE as state religion and therefore, we cannot spread the CoE religion.

Not first civ to research Deception = No CoE in any city = No CoE state religion = No religion spreading.

Normally, not being the first to found a religion will not be a big problem as the AI will diligently spread their religion using their missionary. But in the case of CoE, these missionary are "hidden national" unit, making them unable to enter other civ cities, and they are most likely to be killed instead. This compounded the problem above, making CoE hard to be spread, or cannot be spread to other civ at all. This is also the reason why in most cases, CoE is not widespread, only 1 civ will adopt no state religion (as who does adopt CoE will be seen as no state religion by others).

So, in order for us to adopt the CoE, the only other options left for us is to,
i. use trade route;
For this, the only thing that I wanna say is, Good Luck. This is a passive way to get CoE and since CoE is quite limited to just 1 civ as explained above, we need to open our border to the specific AI that found the CoE or the shrine owner, and wait for it to spread to our cities. This is something that we have no control over, and no one knows if it takes 50 turns or 100 turns. And cut the chances down to 1/7 too since there are another 6 religions in the game that has more probability of spreading through the trade route via their higher cities numbers count and being the earlier religion.

So, pray. Pray hard. Pray that CoE is not being founded over another continent/island. Otherwise, add another ~100 turns before u can hope to play as CoE, as we cannot trade over the ocean/sea before we have "Astronomy".

ii. declare war;
As absurd as it sounds, this is the easiest way for us to play as the CoE if we are not the first civ to found CoE. Declare war on the AI that found the religion, and captured their cities. Then hope that CoE has already spread in that city, or else captured their religious capital/shrine. (the city that own the shrine can be seen by going to the religion advisor screen, hotkey F7). Declaring war just so that we can have CoE religion, what a great test from Esus.

Obviously, it was quite a hassle before we can play as the CoE. In fact, it is a chicken-and-egg situation if we are not the first to found the religion. This is the same regardless of whether it is the AI or human player as long as they are not the first to found Deception.

There is two issues here, so there will be two suggestions. (Actually three, since the shrine owner can be seen through religion advisor screen, which is supposed to be a issue in itself)

Issue 1: non-first civ to research Deception will "never" able to adopt CoE issue.

Suggestion:

a) The simplest way is to take away the "requires state religion" requirement to spread the religion.

Or,

b) Make it so that at least one of the human/AI cities will have the CoE religion whenever the Deception tech are completed, so that we can adopt the CoE state religion and promptly spread the religion.

Issue 2: The "hidden national" missionary issue, cannot enter city to spread religion.

Suggestion: Changed the way the religion spread into how spells like charm, etc works. Give them +1 range, so that when the spell is cast, the spell will check whether a city exist in one of the 8 tiles, and if the city has no CoE religion, it will spread the religion into the city.

Balance/Adjustment: (This part detailed how if any of the changes above if implemented, will impact the gameplay or what new bugs could occur, and what balance should be done)

Since there is a minimum of two tiles between any two cities, I don't think this is in any case overpowering since we can still only spread to 1 city per unit per turn. The only issue I can see is a mechanic one, that is how the spell will check whether there is a city in the 8 tiles, and whether that city has CoE or not, so that the spread religion button will not be available when that city already has CoE. Otherwise, we could keep spreading and spreading CoE even though the city already has CoE.

But in case if u all think that it is overpowering, then maybe we can increase the cost of spreading the religion. 50 gc perhaps?

By adopting the changes above, it means that CoE will become the only religion that can spread their religion without open border. I have no issue with this and in fact, we can make this a unique ability/selling point for the CoE. After all, CoE is a hidden and secretive religion, so it makes sense for them to be able spread their religion undetected and under the hood.

At least, it will make more sense when comparing them to the current practice.

*Knock**knock*
*Open border* Can u open the door?
*Declare nationality* I'm from the Sidar civ.
*Walk into city* I would like to spread the hidden and secretive religion of CoE to ur peoples.
*Cast spell* Spread religion.

What's so hidden and secretive?:mischief:



3. Steal. This is not a mechanic but mainly a lore/roleplay issue. For introduction, Steal is an ability for CoE unit to steal an equipment from a rival civ. In order to cast this,

i. An rival unit must have a item promotion, or a city must have a item-type-wonder (I never tested the latter one),
ii. Our recon CoE unit must be on the same tile as the rival unit or city with item, which means that our unit must not be a hidden national (we have to declare our nationality),
iii. in order to be on the same tile with the rival unit or city, we also need to have open border with the rival civ.

So, do anyone see any problem here? My thieves/assassin are not professional:mad:!!! Why must my CoE unit play the *knock**knock* game before I can steal?

*Knock**knock*
*Open border* Can u open the door? --->ask for permission
*Declare nationality* I'm from the Sidar civ. --->tell them who I am
*Walk into city/unit* I would like to steal an item from u --->tell them what I want to do
*Cast spell* Steal.

For me, I imagined the CoE as a hidden and secretive religion. It is a religion full of distrust and deception is the norm. So, why must I ask for permission, and tell them who I am before I can steal?

Besides, this also means that if we are not on good terms with the rival civ (no open border), then we cannot steal from him/her. While for those that are on good terms with us (can open border), it means we can steal from him/her. See Note 1 at the end of the post.

*Yeah, u on good terms with me, I can steal from u:woohoo:*

Suggestion: So, I would like to suggest that steal be given a +1 range (again?).

Balance/Adjustment: An issue that occur here is, what if there are two or more items on the eight tiles? My answer would be, so be it, allow me to steal both. Since a professional thief/assassin should not really take more than 10 seconds to steal an item, so why not allows me to steal both?

But, if this is considered as OP, then we can limit it to 1 item per steal. And if this is still considered as too strong, especially against item-type-wonder, we can use the new Spell Delay feature in 0.32. We can make it so that i need, say maybe 7 turns(?) in order to steal the item-type-wonder. And make it cost gold to steal (100 gc?).

If this change is adopted, this would allow a "Hidden National" unit to steal item. So, the declaration of war when steal fail should be change too, since the enemy will not know which civ the unit belongs too. For minimal further changes, I propose that the declaration of war stays, but that they will be slap with a diplomatic penalty of "-2 u accuse other of stealing". Or a diplomatic bonus of "+2 u accuse other of stealing" with an Evil civ.

I expect this to generate more debate though, since for example, it will reduced the advantage of barbarian/CoE combination (I never tested this though). And I'm not sure what do u all thinks about losing an item. But my take is losing an item is not game-breaking at all. If my item were to be stolen, yes, I would be really angry:mad:. But I will swear that I will hunt that unit down to Hell itself and sweep that unit's civ off the face of Erebus (well, if I know who did it).

This way, I can steal with a hidden national unit without compromising my identity. This would make role play more viable.

20. Added a Spell Delay feature (delays make the caster immobile and unable to cast for the delay time period, the spell triggers when the delay time is over).


4. Religion tagging. This is an issue about micro-management, caused by how the religion mechanic works. Currently, units that does not comes with any religion will have a chance (it is said to be 20% in the xienwolf's manual) to adopt a religion when they were being built. This is dependant on the religion that is present in that city itself.

This is actually quite harsh for CoE as the benefit of CoE (for recon unit) is very dependant on the religion present in that unit. I've actually built over a dozen ghost only to end up with just one or two unit usable for anonymous proxy warfare. So, in order to make sure that my ghost have 100% success rate of having CoE, I have to built a nightwatch and subsequently upgrade him into a ghost (cost the same amount of hammer, waste my money, and why the hassle?).

This is for ghost only, so, other recon unit such as hunter, ranger and worst of all, beastmaster (national unit) are out of luck. Try building a dozen of those units only to have one or two unit usable, then u will find it to be not funny at all. Unless I've misunderstood what CoE is all about, that CoE is only about Nightwatch, (Nightwatch-->Ghost), Shadow and Shadowrider, then the above observation of course would be irrelevant (which I hope it's not).

I was actually hoping that more recon unit can join in the fun too. This would also make other civ unique recon unit such as harlequin or myconid available to join in the fun too (although that would be a dead giveaway of the owner identity). Besides, what would u do if u get a non-CoE beastmaster? Delete it?:(

This issue is reported by loffenx in another thread too.

Suggestion: I would like to suggest that if CoE is adopted as a state religion, then all the recon unit will have CoE as religion (which of course, provided CoE is present in that city that build the unit).

Balance/Adjustment: The only issue that I can think of is that this might tilt the scale into overpowering Hyborem, since the religion for all the recon unit is no longer random.

To balance it out, perhaps we can make it so that if CoE is adopted as state religion, for non-recon unit, only good/neutral religion can be present in that unit regardless of whether other evil religion such as AV or OO or CoE exist in that city.

5. No priest = no inquisition = no religious victory:mad:

This is the hidden disadvantages that I finds hardest to stomach. In my game, I managed to spread CoE to all the cities in the game, using a combination of ghost in Trojan Horse and a declared nationality Rathus Denmora. And all the AI in the game uses CoE as state religion except Hyborem. But it tops up only at ~60% religious influences and without a priest, I cannot remove other religion at all. Thus, religious victory become out of reach.

The only way that I've found to be able to remove other religion is by using the special ability of CoE unique hero, Gibbon Goetia. I cast the spell Impersonate Leader, and then use an AI civ to build the ritual "Purge The Unfaithful". Still, it's not enough to reach 80%, not even close. And, then again, I only have one Gibbon Goetia, I don't know about u.

Suggestion: Give CoE a priest. Nah. Just joking.

a) The simplest way is to enable CoE recon unit to take the promotion "Inquisitor". This would allow them to cast "Inquisition" and remove other non-state religion, and allow them to win Religious Victory.

Or,

b) Give them a new spell, "Burn Temple", essentially a modified version of "Inquisition" spell with a +1 range (again). To further distinguish it from "Inquisition", I suggest that the spell "Burn Temple" will cause temporary unhappiness in the cities equal to the number of non-state religion in the city for say 10 turn.

Balance/Adjustment: The temporary unhappiness will not stack by itself, so that it will not cause infinite unhappiness.

To illustrate,
For example, a city have 3 non-state religion.
i. After the spell is cast, there will be 3 temporary unhappiness in that city for 10 turns.
ii. Then, the rival civ (presume AI) manage to send a disciple to spread other non-state religion into that city within the ten turns before the 3 unhappiness expire.
iii. If the spell "Burn Temple" is cast again, then the unhappiness will become 1 for a fresh length of next ten turns. (Not stack to unhappiness 4 for the next ten turns. Otherwise, if step ii. and iii. keep on repeated, then it will become a infinite unhappiness bug)

As for balance, for those of u who feels that this spell is too strong compared to "Inquisition", then it should not as the "Inquisition" spell do remove non-state religion AND temple as well(tested). The only thing different is the +1 range and the temporary unhappiness effect. I propose that this spell cost 100 gc(?) as well to balance those new effect.

And on a macro level balance, I also propose that it cost 6 turns to cast and have a 50% chance to fail. This is to balance the fact that CoE can spread religion without open border while still leaving them enough room and challenge to attain religious victory.

And if any of u are unconvinced that it is not overpowered, then imagine casting it on urself. It should be painful.

Of the option a) and b), I prefer option b) add new spell "Burn Temple", as there are three advantages there.

i. It solve the "hidden national" unit problem (again).
ii. The "Inquisitor" promotion can stay exclusive to disciple unit class.
iii. By giving CoE a new spell, we can add some effect that is thematic to CoE, which in this case is the sabotage element. While the gc balance will aligned it with the paying for miracle theme.

Albeit the name "Burn Temple" is a bit misleading actually, as it can be cast on cities without any temple building. But, it is quite thematic for CoE. Any other name will be fine.

Notes: 1. For those of u that have noticed, I have conveniently ignores unit that can explore rival territory in issue 3 and to a lesser degree, issue 2. This is because there is only a handful of units that can explore rival territory. They are Gibbon Goetia, Shadow and Devout (Elohim unique assassin). Besides, steal and spread religion is just a general spell for CoE. So, there is no reason to limit those spell to just a few units only. It will makes CoE more weak and inefficient. Fancy using ur Shadow for nothing but missionary?

Actually I would like to make a macro view analysis as well, and have a few suggestions to improve CoE, but somehow I noticed that the post is getting too long now. It has taken me a few days to write this up. So, I'm skipping it in the meantime. Anyway, I don't know if the above suggestions is good enough or not, but it is possible that some of the issues above be fixed?

I'm sorry if the post is a little too cluttered. I have tried to edit it so that it flows nicely. Hope that it won't hurt anyone's eyes.

Interesting read - Thank you. I also tried a game a while back focusing on CoE and the thing i think you missed out on was the war mechanic. I was lucky enough to hit Runes first and also get to CoE first as well. I beelined for both so my economy was not up to much. Then i started churning out troops, Catapults and Axemen.... lots and lots of them.

Then switched to CoE, set up assult forces around three realtively lightly defended enemy cities and attacked. Three cities captured in 2 turns - including the rival capital. Took another smaller city 1 turn later and then they vassaled to me.

The ability to declare ware without having to be removed from the border is fantastic advantage (...for a human player). I dont see CoE as suitable for religuous victory (as a hidden religion that would make sense) but as a tempory tool for strategic gain.

In that game, i actually won a religious rune victory using the above tactic on another rival and then a tradtiotional war as runes on the final stage. Inquistors did the rest and the whole game was done by turn 400.

I only play Emperor / imortal so i dont know if this is feasible on Diety but i really enjoy the fact that CoE is different and strategically interesting religion/game mechanic and not just another religion. I personally think it is working and intended but that is just an opinion...

I second CruX's ideas. Very interesting. I also did not find anything special when playing CoE.

with some issues i agree, with some i do not.

CoE is one of the easiest religions to spread in the game. period. Declare your given nightwatch's nationality (it should have CoE state religion), and load him into your trojan horse. Move your horse to a rival city (with the nightwatch in it), and have the nightwatch cast spread religion. Since the horse can move through rival territory (and is a CoE hero), you've just spread your religion to every city in the game.

I do agree about inquisition though, although it should be less of a priority for CoE. I don't know if this is possible, but thematically what would fit best would be for CoE agents to "bribe" temple priests from other religions. In other words: the original religions would still be present in the town, but they would be preaching CoE induced words instead. Result? The town now counts as 100% CoE, even though all the other religions are still available. This would obviously cost well over 100 gold ofcourse.

that's a very nice post, CruX. i like your ideas!

The reason that the CoE & Aeron's Bounty Buttons won't show when you don't have enough money to spread them is because it is set to not show if you cannot cast the spell. If this were not set, then the spread religion spell would show all the time, even when not on a city square.


A nice fix for the problem with spreading CoE when it is not your state religion would be to make discovering Deception AFTER CoE is founded force the religion to form in one of your cities instead of giving you a Nightwatch (or possibly in addition to). This would result in you now having a city with the religion and just having to produce a unit with the religion on your own (or if also given a nightwatch, will allow for switching to the religion)

On a tangentially related issue, I find that if Faeryl, Rhoanna, Tasunke, or what's-his-face in charge of the Sidar is in the game, they tend to get to Deception really early. CoE has been the first religion founded in a number of my games, though the Khazad or Ljosalfar will usually get Runes or FoL into play if they're around. I don't really mind the latter two being something I have to race for depending on the leaders available, but it may be inordinately tough to get to Deception first at the moment.

And, while I'm at it, the AI really just does not like to found the Order, even when Sabathiel or Capria is in the game, which is also a little perplexing.

A very interesting post indeed! I think I agree with all said in it, though my experience with FFH and CoE is a bit limited.

One thing that has really bugged me regarding CoE is the stated problem with the importance of being the founder of it. Aiming for CoE and being run past by another Civ who founds it when you’re a few turns into researching Deception is really irritating, and I wonder if this disadvantage is intended from a balancing point of view or not. Is CoE really that much more powerful than other religions as to warrant such a disadvantage? From my limited experience, I can’t see how. 

I’ve also been trouble by the problems of units’ religions etc which I asked about in another post.

Would be interesting to know if all these disadvantages are intentional or not, as of now they are quite a few.

Hm another thing that just sprang to my mind is that neither of CoE:s uunique units is a recon unit, even though "Mask" requires recons. If one of them had been maybe this problem with units religions etc would have been less of a bother. just a thought.

Hm another thing that just sprang to my mind is that neither of CoE:s uunique units is a recon unit, even though "Mask" requires recons. If one of them had been maybe this problem with units religions etc would have been less of a bother. just a thought.

Shadows are recon units.

Shadows are recon units.

Ah offcourse, my mistake.

Amazing feedback, thanks Crux!

First the easy thing, the spread council of esus and aerons bounty abilities will be displayed but greyed out when disabled.

To point number two I'll remove the requirement for the CoE state religion in the spread mechanic. Now the unit just has to have the Esus religion to spread it. I added a block to keep the AI from using it unless it has CoE as its state religion (so the AI still wont spread it, though humans can do what they want with their nightwatch).

The steal range is a decent idea, but I think there is a better idea. The origional plan was that CoE units would have hide so they could go invisible, go in and steal stuff but that was moved to other areas and we have a bit of a design gap. Let me think about it.

#4- we need some sort of way to have a unit adopt CoE. Maybe just as a unit can pass it to a city, a non-good recon unit in a CoE city can choose to begin following the CoE. Again something to think about.

Finally a religious victory may not be a valid option for the CoE, at least without razing your competition. The whole point of the CoE is that it is secretive, I cant imagine CoE evangelists or any sort of attempt to convert the masses. So I think that disadvantage will probably remain.

Finally note that the CoE shrine got a massive boost in 0.32. That should also help make CoE more interesting. Thanks again for the feedback.

I personally think that if Spread CoE no longer requires the state religion it should cost more. I've been playing with no stste religion requirement but a cost of 125 gold for a while.



I tried to add a group of spells that allowed Shadows to "assassinate" all the followers or each religion (at an extremely high gold cost based on city size number or religion, number od religious buildings, ect) but for sme reason they never worked.



I'd like it if more religions could spread from one unit to another, not just CoE. Some passive mechanism sounds best. It should also be possible (but less likely) for units to gain the religion of the city where they are located or to s passively spread their religion in the city.

I'm my modmod I'm creating an Evangelist promotion that spreads the unit's religion (or, in the cast of the Luonnatar, removed all the religions) randomly and passively, though the PyPerTurn tag. It does necessarily sound like the most elegant permanent solution though. Also, I'm waiting to fully implement it (or them, as t might be easier to split it up into 1 different promotion per religion) until someone (probably xienwolf, although I'd be fine with Kael making the changes himself) adds the ability to require a unit's religion for a promotion, and/or also exposed canPromote to python so I can manually block it when inappropriate.

To point number two I'll remove the requirement for the CoE state religion in the spread mechanic. Now the unit just has to have the Esus religion to spread it. I added a block to keep the AI from using it unless it has CoE as its state religion (so the AI still wont spread it, though humans can do what they want with their nightwatch).

will there still be any incentive to adopt CoE? Besides Gibbon Goetia almost all their features require the religion present in a city or on a unit, but not as state religion. This makes for an ideal secondary religion, but also means it'd be the worst primary state religion in the game.

Oh, also I think that the invisibility effects of the NOx Noctis and anti-invisibility effects of Dies Diei really need to require the state religion.

I want the old slave trade back. You know, the one that was actually better than normal cash rushing when it came to buildings? That's why I used to like CoE.

A lot of people complained about it being overpowered, and sadly, Kael not only listened to them, he went way too far in overcompensating. Protip, game designers: When you nerf something you consider overpowered, don't hit the other end of the spectrum and make it worthless.

Finally note that the CoE shrine got a massive boost in 0.32. That should also help make CoE more interesting. Thanks again for the feedback.

Yeah the shrine is great, but it combined with Gibbon make CoE very front loaded in terms of benefits. In the current version if I get deception first I'll try to build the shrine, and possibly switch to CoE for a few turns to use Gibbon's ability before switching back to something else. I think the religion needs more incentives to actually stick with it for the long haul.

Gibbon's ability can be a complete game breaker though. Last time I built him, I took control of the Bannor, declared war on everyone, and used their world spell to spawn a horde of units which then went on a suicide mission to raze the Elohim capital and two out of three Kuriotates cities. Meanwhile I contrived to lose most of the Bannor cities to my real civ by being selective which directions I defended against.

Interestingly, if the civ Gibbon took control of gets eliminated while he's in control the player is awarded a game defeat, which seems wrong. To fix this I would suggest that if the civ under Gibbon's control loses more than 25% of their scoreboard points, they should notice that something is wrong and reinstate the original leader.

I want the old slave trade back. You know, the one that was actually better than normal cash rushing when it came to buildings? That's why I used to like CoE.

A lot of people complained about it being overpowered, and sadly, Kael not only listened to them, he went way too far in overcompensating. Protip, game designers: When you nerf something you consider overpowered, don't hit the other end of the spectrum and make it worthless.

I too liked the old slave trade, but think that it should alo require the Slavery Civic in order to buy or sell slaves.

oh, I just looked at the 0.32 changelog. I think the shrine is very good in its current form and adding more effects to the shrine would just make reaching Deception first even more critical. I think the invisibility ability should be restricted to players using CoE as a state religion.

I agree with uberfish.

I also think civs with CoE state religion should get a replaced smuggler's port (which would also require the council vote) which has a chance of letting ships have the same mask ability that CoE recon units do.

Well, not bad. At least, two of the niggling issue has been fixed. As for the other two pending, I'll wait it out then. Surprise us, please?:thumbsup:

As for issue five, I was a bit apprehensive in those suggestions initially, that's why I suggested quite a high cost and chance of failure. But it seems like it is still too strong for CoE. I guess it's inevitable then.

As for the shrine, I will need to do a few playtest on it before I can give any feedback. While another mechanic that I would like to test is the "Poisoned" mechanic, since this seems to gear more towards recon/CoE units. The other one would definitely be the Spell Delay feature.

As for the discussion on slave trade, I do not really agree on it since it is a part of undercouncil. I regards undercouncil as a civic in its own right, rather than a part of CoE, since undercouncil can be adopted by any evil or neutral civ. So, regardless of whether slave trade is strengthen and weaken, it has no impact on CoE.