So, playing a Svartalfar game today, I noticed something I'd never tried before:

Alazkan's copy can declare its nationality, allowing it to take cities. This doesn't cause Alazkan himself to declare nationality.

This is important, because part of what makes Alazkan so good, is the ability to basically farm XP during peace time in nearby empires, and then when you want to finish them off, you can just have his illusion capture all those empty cities left in your wake, without missing a beat.

It has very much come to the point where the Svarties don't really need anyone else to conquer an opposing empire, unless that empire got a pretty major unit advantage. Kinda sad.

Anyhow, I'm really just curious if this seems like a bit of an exploit to anyone? Should Alazkan's shadow really be able to declare nationality, without him also being declared?

I've noticed that too although I decided not to use it. I'd say that mirror shouldn't be able to capture cities even with declared nationality.

In .32, IIRC, Illusions will no longer be able to destroy units - they'll have a combat limit like siege weapons. That'll prevent the Mirror'd Assassin from taking a city, wouldn't it. Unless it were already unoccupied, which I don't see as a big deal.

Nice point, though, with regard to the present version. I thought he was a exploitive even without that. The change to Illusions "fixes" him IMO.

Alazkans Mirror will allready be nerfed alongside other Illusions so no more Killing 8 Units per Turn with him.

Edit: Got ninjaposted. :p

Not any feature that is fun and powerful need be nerfed. The game is designed to be fun. Following that route whould lead to half the games features taken out or seriously reduced. Bad road to go imo (and there are allready some examples where too much complaining lead to nerfs beyond reason. Like utterly cutting the fun out of the Grigori from every angle by barring them important features and overreducing Slave-Trade.).

Only things that outshaddow / obsolete everything else in their field (like Meteor Shower did to magic) should be adressed with massive herfs cuts imo.

And that the AI cant handle anything which is really good (like Alazkan, Nexus or highly promoted Canibalizing Hidden Nationality) should also be known so not a big feat on Alazkans behalf...

Sidar can do the same with 2 Blitzing Esus-Ghosts albeit a bit later..

It would be somewhat fitting for Illusions to also be flagged as <bCannotCapture>, which prevents taking slaves as well as cities (but still allows fighting)