As some of you may have noticed in the Lore thread, I'm planning an Aquatic civilization. Now that I have the basic mechanics planned out, I'm going to open this thread up for discussion. :p

Civilization: BezeriCity Names: Need 4.

Capital - Bezer'ej.


Leaders:
Cimesiat: Lizard leader. Feral/Charismatic/Beseiger (City Raider, possibly a city effect promo)Feral may have to be removed, but in general I like it for them. Not too strong in the ocean anyway, should have plenty of barb ships pillaging.

Artwork:
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc310/Valkrionn/Civilization/AquaticStarWarsLizard.jpg

Targassat: Toad leader. Feral/Arcane/PhilosophicalArtwork:
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc310/Valkrionn/Civilization/toadMan_With_background3.jpg
Alignment: They are good, but also arrogant, viewing the 'lesser' races with disdain. They have a slight predisposition towards slavery, if only because of their views. I could see them as Lawful Neutral, rather than Good, but we don't have that alignment. :lol:

Race: Toads/Skinks.A Mazatl splinter-group, from just before the Age of Ice, who live in coastal territory and make use of nature and body magic. Once the Ice Age began, they saw no option but to rapidly change themselves in order to survive... Becoming more like the fish they relied on for food. They were eased into this new life by the Tsaayiq'an, a pre-existing aquatic race of toads the lizards came in contact with. Over the centuries since, the two cultures have merged, utilizing the best of both... The agility, adaptability, and numbers of the Lizards, and the tremendous arcane aptitude of the relatively rare Toad.

World Spell: Favorable Tide

Lasts 20 turns
All water (Coast, Ocean, Deep Ocean) tiles on the map gain 2 :commerce:, while all water territories within the player's control have an X% chance of gaining a random resource, where X depends on your current Faith level.



Religion: They are opposed to both the White Hand, representing the death of their lands and many of their people, lost to the ice, and the Overlords, which they view as a spreading corruption in the Oceans. All other religions are open to them, barring the Ordo Machinarum... Rather than fire and steam, they use biological systems. Hannah will not like them, Falamar will as long as he's not OO.

Unique units and Heroes: Basically, agressive archers and defensive mounted, with a few Arcane units in the mix. Workboat UU rather than a worker, Worker UU that is able to sacrifice itself to turn land into coast. Hero should be a Horse Archer, representing the epitome of their combat prowess.

Quite a few of these can be done via promotions, but I'm not sure about that... Would be cleaner, but wouldn't list them in the pedia.



Melee-Either a very weak or nonexistant melee line. I want to emphasize less used lines.
Archery- I want the Archery line to be the attack force. I'm thinking either begin with coral javilineers, progressing to using tamed/manipulated marine life, or two completely seperate lines to make up for the loss of the melee line. In that case, the 'normal' line will be javilineers and net casters, with the other using animals.
Mounted- Stack/City defense. Does not gain terrain defense, and has low withdrawal, but gains a higher defensive strength and bonuses vs melee, recon, and most importantly, Naval. I envision them riding serpents into battle... Aquatic snakes can transition to land pretty well, so I think it works better than sea horses. I think I'll switch Knights and Horse Archers for them as well, seeing as they'd be a combination of their two best lines.
Arcane- These are the toads... The Slann, if you will. :lol: Large and slow, but with incredible arcane ability... Start with twincast, and have high defence. To balance it, they are limited in number... 12 adepts, 8 mages, and 4 arch-mages. They will, at the least, have a unique water line... Special water magic, like body/corpus. This is because water is the one magic they HAVE to have, yet spring and waterwalking are useless to them. I'm thinking some buffs rather than attack magic... Extra first strikes, defense, etc. Ideas here would be nice. I think a nature line could work as well, representing their biomagic.
Hero- Preliminary idea, by armyofwhispers. Likely to change at least slightly. :lol:

Deep beneath the waves no light nor sound breaks the oppressive stillness. The hunt was on. Long had Skaa'ral and his men waited and watched this beast and now was their chance. As the rest of the hunters look on, Skaa'ral waves them off and enters the submerged cave alone, armed only with a mithril javalin he had stolen on a surface raid mere days before.

As the hours pass, hope fades and the group is forced to reflect on the circumstances that brought them here. Many recall the massive beast that time and time again defeated the defenses of even the mighty Bezer'ej itself to rob it's supplies. Others recall the voice of Skaa'raj with his call to arms to remove the threat.

After half a day most have given up hope of their leaders return, and the group prepares to return to the city to mourn their loss. Yet even as they turn to leave, Skaa'raj emerges from the cave... but not alone.

Covered in wounds that still flow freely, Skaa'raj does not swim, but rides triumphantly from the cave mouth mounted on a sea serpent that would give even the great leviathan pause.

As Skaa'raj gives the signal to go home, only one of the group notices that the beast seems strangly subdued and responds to commands as if trained from birth to do so... As they turn for home once again he wonders what could possibly have occured in the cave...




Buildings: Not a complete list by any means, just beginning on this.


Palace - Generic palace benefits. Reduces Distance maintenance by a large amount, enabling you to place your few cities around the world ocean. I'm thinking Water/Nature/Body magic, to fit the feel of the civ... Nature and Body represent their alteration of themselves.

This should REALLY help rake in the trade benefits... Which is why they won't be gaining much, if any, commerce increases from terrain. No need to add it.


Forge - Growth Chamber - +10%:food:, +1:yuck:, +10%:food: stored at size increase

Water Magic:


Capsize: 1 turn buff, gives first strikes and withdrawal + bonus vs. naval
Stealth on the water
AoE style attack, wrecks improvements, chance to reduce population, area effect Vitalize. Hurts the enemy, but helps them in the long run if they fight you off. Probably work in some kind of weighting, making it less likely to destroy upgraded improvements, especially forts.


Nature Magic: Bio-magic, C'naatat. Want a full line here, as their nature magic is rather... different... from the normal line.


Nature 3: Uplifted Sage (Need a better name, this gets the basic idea across though) - Lich-analog, unable to move but gets spell-casting boosts.

Water/Nature Cross-Sphere Magic:


Water/Nature 1: Tame Beast - Mezmerize clone only affecting sea creatures.
Water/Nature 2: Grow Kelp - Plants Kelp on the tile. 5-turn delay.
Water/Nature 3: Summon the Deep - Improved Elemental with Water and Nature affinities.


Features


4 city max, 3 square reach. Kuriotates of the sea. No settlements. Can permanently improve their cities using a series of buildings (as in Arctic's idea).
Extra yield from ocean, gains Seafaring tech.
Units gain 1 water attack, lose 1 strength on all land terrain other than Marsh, losing 2 additional strength in Desert.
Can not use metal weapons, instead gain additional strength with the melee line(otherwise nearly useless for them).
Most, if not all, units have access to the Kraken's 'Submerge' ability.

This will most likely be granted upon reaching a certain level... How does level 4 sound?


Possibly 'Production Fallow'. No hammers, builds and grows with food. Seeing as they have no real competition for growing space I think forcing them to choose pop or units would be nice, and fits with the aquatic theme... How do you use normal industry without fire?

Current plan here is to adapt the Commerce->Research slider to be Food->Production. This slider will be invisible to all leaders who do not have the *ignore production* modifier, activated by traits like Fallow. I will have to figure out how to apply it to one city only, and to have a separate slider for each city. Once the hard part is taken care of, I'll set it to automatically set itself at 100% for any city training a unit marked *build with food*, and set itself back to 0 for any other units, assuming the leader does not have the necessary trait. If they do, it will be visible and capable of being manually set for each city.


Entirely unique series of aquatic improvements.
Unique Forge, Smokehouse, all other fire-based buildings.

Fighting the Bezeri:


Will add a ritual granting a water-walking promotion to all a civ's units. The promotion will wear off when no longer on water, and not at war with the Bezeri.


Other:


Need to bring in Kelp, which means I'll have to distribute custom mapscripts.... Need to do this anyway, to enable them to start in the ocean. Will have to check with Jean to see how to edit FlavourMod for that as well.
Allow Fish to spawn in oceans, possibly the other seafood resources.
Plenty of other things I'm not thinking of atm.

Saved for expansions. :lol:

Reserved for future use.

*Grins.* I don't know what I look forward to more... playing as them, or teaching them to fear Patria Reborn... it may be a while, I suppose, before their AI is ready to put up a proper fight.
Anyways, how are they supposed to get more mana, aside from trade or coastal cities? Or is this a sacrifice you intend for them to make in exchange for being better able to harness the spheres of Water, Body and Nature? Perhaps they could build relatively expensive, unique National Wonders that grant them mana.

World Spell: Bountiful Harvest-
5% chance to spawn each water resource in their culture (So a 25% chance in all to get a resource in a tile)

water / nature:


(water 2/ nature 2) grow kelp: 7 turn cast with once/mage limit. (this works out to 12 cast total without liches / destroying units)
(water 3/ nature 3)Summon the Deep: upgraded version of water elemental with affinity to both water and nature mana.


I'd almost say for the cross-over spells just make three. For instance is you use my two, plus your mesmorize at water 1/ nature 1

Also, don't forget about submerged mana nodes.

Edit: Forge UB: forced growth chamber - +10%:food:, +1:yuck:, +10%:food: stored at size increase
All units should also have the amphibious promotion

Edit 2: (I keep coming up with extra stuff) Submerged mana nodes could be worked by either water walking mages or arcane barges from non-bezeri/lanun civs

how do u want to solve the "conquer the seaciv with landpeople"-issue?

if they conquer your cities they are close to useless to them by default (land conquers sea i mean ^^) so there has to be some benefit for them. also there should have to be some terrain where landunits can stand on or everyones unique units will be useless against seapeople.

I'm assuming Berenzi-anyone wars will be Scorched Earth by definition. Valkrionn has also already mentioned a water-walking granting ritual, although treating Berenzi cities as both land and sea would work as well.

Hero should be a Horse Archer, representing the epitome of their combat prowess.


for your consideration:

Deep beneath the waves no light nor sound breaks the oppressive stillness. The hunt was on. Long had Skaa'ral and his men waited and watched this beast and now was their chance. As the rest of the hunters look on, Skaa'ral waves them off and enters the submerged cave alone, armed only with a mithril javalin he had stolen on a surface raid mere days before.

As the hours pass, hope fades and the group is forced to reflect on the circumstances that brought them here. Many recall the massive beast that time and time again defeated the defenses of even the mighty Bezer'ej itself to rob it's supplies. Others recall the voice of Skaa'raj with his call to arms to remove the threat.

After half a day most have given up hope of their leaders return, and the group prepares to return to the city to mourn their loss. Yet even as they turn to leave, Skaa'raj emerges from the cave... but not alone.

Covered in wounds that still flow freely, Skaa'raj does not swim, but rides triumphantly from the cave mouth mounted on a sea serpent that would give even the great leviathan pause.

As Skaa'raj gives the signal to go home, only one of the group notices that the beast seems strangly subdued and responds to commands as if trained from birth to do so... As they turn for home once again he wonders what could possibly have occured in the cave...

*Grins.* I don't know what I look forward to more... playing as them, or teaching them to fear Patria Reborn... it may be a while, I suppose, before their AI is ready to put up a proper fight.
Anyways, how are they supposed to get more mana, aside from trade or coastal cities? Or is this a sacrifice you intend for them to make in exchange for being better able to harness the spheres of Water, Body and Nature? Perhaps they could build relatively expensive, unique National Wonders that grant them mana.

Seafood resources, or at the least Fish, and Mana,will be allowed to spawn in the Ocean. I'll also add at the least Kelp as a feature, which will mean distributing custom mapscripts. Will likely add some Haunted Lands to the maps while I'm at it, as well. Of course, Mana will be more numerous on land... Going to have to play with that carefully, as there's not as much in the ocean.

World Spell: Bountiful Harvest-
5% chance to spawn each water resource in their culture (So a 25% chance in all to get a resource in a tile)

I could work with that... The only issue I see is the utility doesn't last long. They only have 4 cities, which you'll be able to get out quite early.. Anything beyond that and you might as well use it.

water / nature:


(water 2/ nature 2) grow kelp: 7 turn cast with once/mage limit. (this works out to 12 cast total without liches / destroying units)
(water 3/ nature 3)Summon the Deep: upgraded version of water elemental with affinity to both water and nature mana.


I'd almost say for the cross-over spells just make three. For instance is you use my two, plus your mesmorize at water 1/ nature 1

Also, don't forget about submerged mana nodes.

Edit: Forge UB: forced growth chamber - +10%:food:, +1:yuck:, +10%:food: stored at size increase
All units should also have the amphibious promotion

Edit 2: (I keep coming up with extra stuff) Submerged mana nodes could be worked by either water walking mages or arcane barges from non-bezeri/lanun civs

I like those. :goodjob: I could actually see making them into FoL followers, honestly... Not really big on forests as we would imagine, but Kelp Forests should count. :lol:

I like that forge as well... And all units will have waterwalking as part of their racial. Kind of important if they settle on the water. :lol:

That's a good idea there... Mages can't really improve mana for the AI, but barges will be able to. :goodjob:

how do u want to solve the "conquer the seaciv with landpeople"-issue?

if they conquer your cities they are close to useless to them by default (land conquers sea i mean ^^) so there has to be some benefit for them. also there should have to be some terrain where landunits can stand on or everyones unique units will be useless against seapeople.

I'm assuming Berenzi-anyone wars will be Scorched Earth by definition. Valkrionn has also already mentioned a water-walking granting ritual, although treating Berenzi cities as both land and sea would work as well.

KillerClowns has it right. Any land city the Bezeri capture will be razed, and vice-versa.

Atm, there will be a ritual available for civs at war with the Bezeri granting Water-Walking, which will only wear off A)Once you're no longer at war with the Bezeri, and B)Once the unit is on land again, to prevent accidental death. :p The AI can already use water-walking well enough, so it will work for now.

My end goal is rather more complex... Change the current water-walking to be available adepts, with an improved version at mage-level granting it to the entire stack. Then, when at war with the Bezeri, tell the AI to first prioritize water mana, then get a mage with water 2, then build kill stacks centered on that mage.

for your consideration:

Deep beneath the waves no light nor sound breaks the oppressive stillness. The hunt was on. Long had Skaa'ral and his men waited and watched this beast and now was their chance. As the rest of the hunters look on, Skaa'ral waves them off and enters the submerged cave alone, armed only with a mithril javelin he had stolen on a surface raid mere days before.

As the hours pass, hope fades and the group is forced to reflect on the circumstances that brought them here. Many recall the massive beast that time and time again defeated the defenses of even the mighty Bezer'ej itself to rob it's supplies. Others recall the voice of Skaa'raj with his call to arms to remove the threat.

After half a day most have given up hope of their leaders return, and the group prepares to return to the city to mourn their loss. Yet even as they turn to leave, Skaa'raj emerges from the cave... but not alone.

Covered in wounds that still flow freely, Skaa'raj does not swim, but rides triumphantly from the cave mouth mounted on a sea serpent that would give even the great leviathan pause.

As Skaa'raj gives the signal to go home, only one of the group notices that the beast seems strangely subdued and responds to commands as if trained from birth to do so... As they turn for home once again he wonders what could possibly have occurred in the cave...


Oooh... I like that. :goodjob:


Edit: One important idea I forgot to mention... To help keep them balanced vs other civs, I'm considering having all Tier 3 and up units limited. Say, 32 total for tier 3? Spread between 4 cities, that's 8 units each. Makes for a limited attack/defense force, which should help... Worried about how it would play vs a human though.

A few things.

First, water walking only works on coast tiles. Somehow I doubt that you would be able to put a city with 3 workable rings around it all in coast. Therefore, if you want to be able to attack using water walking you need to change it so that it works in ocean tiles as well.

Second, your idea for a unit limit. The kurotaes don't have one - why should these people? Your biggest limit is going to be that you only have 4 cities, only able to produce with food, while I'm going to have possibly a dozen or more as just about any other civ. In a human vs human game my VERY simple solution is to just spam ships and start blockading. With ships blockading everywhere within their movement range around themselves, it would be startlingly easy to send a large stack of ships and be able to reduce the cities to uselessness just by putting them nearby and clicking blockade.

Third, with them being production fallow, how are you going to modify it so that priests and engineers don't give production but are still useful? You don't want them to get food, because then you could run into the problem that the city can support itself by not working any sea tiles and only working specialists. Or the problem of the city that can grow indefinitely to massive sizes. The other MAJOR problem is that larger cities aren't going to be able to produce as much as smaller cities. And unless you add water improvements, getting a bunch of 2 food 1 commerce ocean tiles is quickly going to make someone want to play a different race.

Fourth, as I just brought up, commerce. You can't run an economy off of trade alone, and ocean tiles produce 1 commerce. You need to add something so that late game they can still stay up with the kurotaes enclave spam, without being severly OP in the early game.

Fifth, food. With both production and city growth being run with food you need to give tiles more than 1 food at the start of the game.

Now I'm going to start speculating on things you could do. To start, give every water square 2 food instead of 1 - just like the lanuan. Then change the lighthouse to instead of adding 1 more food, add 1-2 commerce for every sea tile. Next, with kelp, (i'm assuming it normally adds 1 food for all races), give them a bonus to kelp so that they get 1 extra food from kelp. Then, make FoL their primary religion. Special unit, speakers of the waves or some such, allow them to plant kelp. Then, going along with the ancient forest mechanics, have kelp eventually turn into coral reefs (-1 additional movement, takes 3 moves to go through instead of 2 for kelp or 1 for ocean, +1 more food, +2 commerce). This would give them on an ocean tile with coral reef and lighthouse +5 food, +4-5 commerce (depending upon whether you add +1 or +2 commerce from lighthouse).

Then, you can also make a spell or a workboat ability to raise the oceans, turning an ocean tile to a coast tile for +1 more commerce. If you make it a spell, consider making it an earth spell, rather than a nature or water spell. After all - what good is a wall of stone when your city is underwater.

If you don't want to go with kelp-coral reef, you will need to find some other way to improve the tiles around them. Even with that, you probably want to find some other way to improve it if you want it to be possible to use them with a religion other than FoL.

Anyways, if I come up with more later I'll add on.

-Colin

Edit: Also, you will have to find some other way than water walking to attack them if you want the khazid to be able to take them on. Khazid can't get mages, and if lvl 1 water allows water walking as per the lvl 2 spell, the khazid would be forced to attack with adepts... aka, fail. Otherwise, you need to allow the khazid to build submarines or something, as I'm assuming you don't want ships to be able to take out these guys. As the ships are generally more powerful than regular units of the same teir, that might be a bit OP attacking them.

Water Walking works for all water everywhere. Drowns are personally restricted to not be allowed in the Oceans, and are thus the only Water Walking unit incapable of going into the Ocean. But they are also the most common water walking unit currently, so I can understand the confusion.

Aslo, he's adding a ritual, so even Mechanos and Khazad will e able to war with them properly.

Ahh, I hadn't been aware that drowns were the ones restricted to costal tiles - I thought it was all water walking. Of course, this could be a fall further thing and FFH only allows costal tile walking. I haven't played FF recently because I am forced to be on 3.19.

-Colin

Water Walking works for all water everywhere. Drowns are personally restricted to not be allowed in the Oceans, and are thus the only Water Walking unit incapable of going into the Ocean. But they are also the most common water walking unit currently, so I can understand the confusion.

Any change I could convince you to allow promotions to modify a units TerrainImpassibles, FeatureImpassibles, TerrainPassables, and FeaturePassables in the next version of FF? I'd find that very useful for my modmod, but am pretty sure t is above my C++ skills..

Not for 051, and probably not for a while. I don't have as much coding time as I used to and I have a lot of projects which I really need to get done because I have been stupid enough to advertise them and now people are waiting for their implementation.

Ahh, I hadn't been aware that drowns were the ones restricted to costal tiles - I thought it was all water walking. Of course, this could be a fall further thing and FFH only allows costal tile walking. I haven't played FF recently because I am forced to be on 3.19.

-Colin

Jotnar Tritons use waterwalking and since I've had them out past coasts I believe this is universal.

A few things.

First, water walking only works on coast tiles. Somehow I doubt that you would be able to put a city with 3 workable rings around it all in coast. Therefore, if you want to be able to attack using water walking you need to change it so that it works in ocean tiles as well.

This was already answered, but waterwalking does work on ocean tiles. ;)


Second, your idea for a unit limit. The kurotaes don't have one - why should these people? Your biggest limit is going to be that you only have 4 cities, only able to produce with food, while I'm going to have possibly a dozen or more as just about any other civ. In a human vs human game my VERY simple solution is to just spam ships and start blockading. With ships blockading everywhere within their movement range around themselves, it would be startlingly easy to send a large stack of ships and be able to reduce the cities to uselessness just by putting them nearby and clicking blockade.

Kuriotates do not have one, because they are still on land and more vulnerable to attack. The Bezeri would be able to build up a massive stack basically unaffected by anyone else, and then attack from the sea... But I'm probably not going to use it. Mostly for multiplayer balance reasons.


Third, with them being production fallow, how are you going to modify it so that priests and engineers don't give production but are still useful? You don't want them to get food, because then you could run into the problem that the city can support itself by not working any sea tiles and only working specialists. Or the problem of the city that can grow indefinitely to massive sizes. The other MAJOR problem is that larger cities aren't going to be able to produce as much as smaller cities. And unless you add water improvements, getting a bunch of 2 food 1 commerce ocean tiles is quickly going to make someone want to play a different race.

Honestly, they'll probably get commerce.

As for the other point, they'll have an entire chain of unique water improvements.


Fourth, as I just brought up, commerce. You can't run an economy off of trade alone, and ocean tiles produce 1 commerce. You need to add something so that late game they can still stay up with the kurotaes enclave spam, without being severly OP in the early game.

I'm not sure about that, personally. Oceans already produce commerce, as do coastal tiles... They'll have a town-type improvement, so I'm not adding anything to them. They should have a massive trade empire.


Fifth, food. With both production and city growth being run with food you need to give tiles more than 1 food at the start of the game.

I'll be adding food to Oceans, Coasts, and Kelp.


Now I'm going to start speculating on things you could do. To start, give every water square 2 food instead of 1 - just like the lanuan. Then change the lighthouse to instead of adding 1 more food, add 1-2 commerce for every sea tile. Next, with kelp, (i'm assuming it normally adds 1 food for all races), give them a bonus to kelp so that they get 1 extra food from kelp. Then, make FoL their primary religion. Special unit, speakers of the waves or some such, allow them to plant kelp. Then, going along with the ancient forest mechanics, have kelp eventually turn into coral reefs (-1 additional movement, takes 3 moves to go through instead of 2 for kelp or 1 for ocean, +1 more food, +2 commerce). This would give them on an ocean tile with coral reef and lighthouse +5 food, +4-5 commerce (depending upon whether you add +1 or +2 commerce from lighthouse).

They're already going to get the Lanun food bonus, but I like the Lighthouse change.

Kelp bonus is in too, and you're right about the normal food... Just like in Orbis. :lol:

I'm considering making them FoL followers already too. :p


Then, you can also make a spell or a workboat ability to raise the oceans, turning an ocean tile to a coast tile for +1 more commerce. If you make it a spell, consider making it an earth spell, rather than a nature or water spell. After all - what good is a wall of stone when your city is underwater.

If you don't want to go with kelp-coral reef, you will need to find some other way to improve the tiles around them. Even with that, you probably want to find some other way to improve it if you want it to be possible to use them with a religion other than FoL.

Anyways, if I come up with more later I'll add on.

-Colin

Edit: Also, you will have to find some other way than water walking to attack them if you want the khazid to be able to take them on. Khazid can't get mages, and if lvl 1 water allows water walking as per the lvl 2 spell, the khazid would be forced to attack with adepts... aka, fail. Otherwise, you need to allow the khazid to build submarines or something, as I'm assuming you don't want ships to be able to take out these guys. As the ships are generally more powerful than regular units of the same teir, that might be a bit OP attacking them.

Khazad already have an Ironclad UU, actually... Should be more than strong enough. ;)

Aslo, he's adding a ritual, so even Mechanos and Khazad will e able to war with them properly.

And the Mechanos have flying ships, so they should be able to attack as well even without a ritual. :goodjob:

Then, going along with the ancient forest mechanics, have kelp eventually turn into coral reefs (-1 additional movement, takes 3 moves to go through instead of 2 for kelp or 1 for ocean, +1 more food, +2 commerce).

I like this idea actually, but what would spawn defensively to replace the Ents?

Third, with them being production fallow, how are you going to modify it so that priests and engineers don't give production but are still useful? You don't want them to get food, because then you could run into the problem that the city can support itself by not working any sea tiles and only working specialists. Or the problem of the city that can grow indefinitely to massive sizes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't those give no more than +2:hammers:? In which case converting that to food production would give no benefit at all beside GPP and each additional pop would still add :( and :yuck:

The biggest power boost for these guys would be AV with sacrifice the weak. Although with no access to land-based health resources except through trade, :yuck: would curtail growth quite powerfully.

4 cities does not massive trade empire make. The maximum number of trade routes, by end game, if you max them all out is what? 6? With foreign trade, long term peace, massive cities, etc, the most I have ever seen out of one trade route is 6 commerce - that was for a calibam city of size 40. All together, that would be 36 commerce, per city, so with 4 cities a grand total of 144 commerce from trade routes. An enclave gets 1 food and 6 commerce after taxation, 7 with choosing financial. All those trade routes amount to 24 or 20.5 (with and without financial leader) enclaves, and that isn't even counting the kurotaes own trade routes - and they can get just as many as these guys, as well as probably being the biggest competitors city size wise.

The reason why I keep bringing up the kurotaes is that they are the most similar people to what you are trying to make. And most people agree that generally, the kurotaes are rather outclassed by most of the other races - which would you rather have, 4 cities that can crank out a unit a turn, or 12 cities that average 2 turns per unit?

The other big thing that I thought of that you will need to worry about is health. With your only health resources being the various sea ones, and needing to work lots of tiles, you will need lots of buildings that increase the health cap of your cities. Another thing - currently kelp only spreads along coast tiles, it doesn't spread across ocean. If you want them floating in vast kelp fields then you'll need to modify that. Though, to solve the health problem, you could make kelp give +1 health like forests do.

Lastly, unit limits. I know that they are difficult to attack. However, having so few cities, all easily disrupted through a few blockading privateer fleets, will probably gimp them more than enough. Most players would never reach the unit cap anyways. And the ones who do are usually in multiplayer, and that limitation would probably lead to them getting steamrolled. Edit: Mages. 12 adepts is a bit whimpy, but whatever. Even with twincast its not like they're that useful anyways. 8 mages however, is, rather weak. Especially, if you're playing a mage heavy game (amurites, svaltar, khadi, thessa, grigori - anyone with arcane). For most non-mage heavy games, I usually end up with 4-8 mages on a small map - more on larger maps. They are doing things like having fireball to bombard city defenses or sitting in my cities casting hope and whatnot. For mage heavy games though, i usually have 20 or so - and thats on a small map before I even have arcane lore. Big maps I may have 50+, especially if I'm playing multiplayer. 8 twincasting mages really doesn't compete at all. Lastly, I would like to point out the grigori. 8 adventurers isn't that tough to get before strength of will. If I was to play a mage grigori game, that would be 8 mages all with combat 5, twincast, my promotion line of choice (generally, death and fire), and possibly heroic defense 1-2 (maybe heroic attack 1-2 for the oldest). Then with strength of will I get 4 archmages and 4 liches. Then summoning 16 fire elementals or whatever and not much usually survives. To top it all, they can they upgrade any melee, archery, or recon unit to a lunnotar (again, available at strength of will), and lunnotar have channeling 1-3 - add another 4 fire elementals to that list, with combat 5 lunnotars to defend the stack - and they don't even have to be heroic.

Hope my thoughts are useful.

-Colin

Another thing - currently kelp only spreads along coast tiles, it doesn't spread across ocean. If you want them floating in vast kelp fields then you'll need to modify that. Though, to solve the health problem, you could make kelp give +1 health like forests do.

kelp is in the game already?

Maybe Kelp is being copied from some modmod?
I'd suggest implementing it exactly as alpha centaurii does.

It should be a feature which gives +1 food in the tile, and possibly some defence penalty for ships due to poor manouevrability. also, it should be possible to build improvements in it without removing it, assuming there will be some kinds of sea improvements

The sight of a kelp field spreading across an ocean is pretty wondrous to behold.

Honestly, I don't think most kinds of kelp would survive so well in the deep waters of the ocean. Maybe things are different in a world where plants don't use sunlight though.


Why is it that features won't get placed in large open expenses of ocean? I added a Doldrums feature for the ocean a while back, but it was kind of useless since it never actually got placed.

(The Doldrums were mostly an attempt to make Fair Winds more useful. This invisible (well, really small) feature had a +7 movement cost, but the Fair Winds promotion gave Double Movement in this feature so this barrier didn't matter if you has air magic to power your sails.)

How would fireballs fare against them? Cause I could see an Amurite player building a gigantic navy of Arcane Barges and just fireball spamming you do death, or just outright destroying you with them.

kelp is currently implemented in orbis, and I believe rise of darkness. At the moment, it adds 1 food and costs 2 movement. In orbis, you can have a coast square with kelp and fish (or any other aquatic resource), and a fishing boat and you can get 9 food from it - 10 if lanuan. On the other hand, orbis population costs 3 food. Kelp also spreads like forests do on land - aka, slowly, and never where you want it to. It also only spreads and can exist on coast tiles, it cannot exist on ocean.

-Colin

Kelp also spreads like forests do on land - aka, slowly, and never where you want it to.

:mischief:


Seems like a special water spell to plant kelp would be good.

I'd really like to see it out in the ocean though not just the coast, logic be damned. We don't need another coast civ, I'd really like to see a true deep-ocean civ.

kelp is currently implemented in orbis, and I believe rise of darkness. At the moment, it adds 1 food and costs 2 movement. In orbis, you can have a coast square with kelp and fish (or any other aquatic resource), and a fishing boat and you can get 9 food from it - 10 if lanuan. On the other hand, orbis population costs 3 food. Kelp also spreads like forests do on land - aka, slowly, and never where you want it to. It also only spreads and can exist on coast tiles, it cannot exist on ocean.

-Colin

Hmmm, I could use some Kelp in Rise of Darkness.

4 cities does not massive trade empire make. The maximum number of trade routes, by end game, if you max them all out is what? 6? With foreign trade, long term peace, massive cities, etc, the most I have ever seen out of one trade route is 6 commerce - that was for a calibam city of size 40. All together, that would be 36 commerce, per city, so with 4 cities a grand total of 144 commerce from trade routes. An enclave gets 1 food and 6 commerce after taxation, 7 with choosing financial. All those trade routes amount to 24 or 20.5 (with and without financial leader) enclaves, and that isn't even counting the kurotaes own trade routes - and they can get just as many as these guys, as well as probably being the biggest competitors city size wise.

You neglect the fact that they will all be trading to other 'continents', making quite a bit of money from the start as a result... In addition to them getting commerce on EVERY tile near them, having two of six sea resources (Shrimp and Pearl) providing large commerce boosts, and a town-analog... They'll be fine commerce wise.


The reason why I keep bringing up the kurotaes is that they are the most similar people to what you are trying to make. And most people agree that generally, the kurotaes are rather outclassed by most of the other races - which would you rather have, 4 cities that can crank out a unit a turn, or 12 cities that average 2 turns per unit?

The way I play, I'd rather have the four cities. :lol: More easily defendable for a builder civ, especially once I start purchasing all the master promotions.


The other big thing that I thought of that you will need to worry about is health. With your only health resources being the various sea ones, and needing to work lots of tiles, you will need lots of buildings that increase the health cap of your cities. Another thing - currently kelp only spreads along coast tiles, it doesn't spread across ocean. If you want them floating in vast kelp fields then you'll need to modify that. Though, to solve the health problem, you could make kelp give +1 health like forests do.

Kelp will provide health to nearby cities, and will be placed in the ocean. They'll have to worry about health the same way the Elves do. :lol:


Lastly, unit limits. I know that they are difficult to attack. However, having so few cities, all easily disrupted through a few blockading privateer fleets, will probably gimp them more than enough. Most players would never reach the unit cap anyways. And the ones who do are usually in multiplayer, and that limitation would probably lead to them getting steamrolled. Edit: Mages. 12 adepts is a bit whimpy, but whatever. Even with twincast its not like they're that useful anyways. 8 mages however, is, rather weak. Especially, if you're playing a mage heavy game (amurites, svaltar, khadi, thessa, grigori - anyone with arcane). For most non-mage heavy games, I usually end up with 4-8 mages on a small map - more on larger maps. They are doing things like having fireball to bombard city defenses or sitting in my cities casting hope and whatnot. For mage heavy games though, i usually have 20 or so - and thats on a small map before I even have arcane lore. Big maps I may have 50+, especially if I'm playing multiplayer. 8 twincasting mages really doesn't compete at all. Lastly, I would like to point out the grigori. 8 adventurers isn't that tough to get before strength of will. If I was to play a mage grigori game, that would be 8 mages all with combat 5, twincast, my promotion line of choice (generally, death and fire), and possibly heroic defense 1-2 (maybe heroic attack 1-2 for the oldest). Then with strength of will I get 4 archmages and 4 liches. Then summoning 16 fire elementals or whatever and not much usually survives. To top it all, they can they upgrade any melee, archery, or recon unit to a lunnotar (again, available at strength of will), and lunnotar have channeling 1-3 - add another 4 fire elementals to that list, with combat 5 lunnotars to defend the stack - and they don't even have to be heroic.

Seeing as FF changed Twincast to be available to all lvl 10 arcane units, I'll probably increase the cap by quite a bit. They'll have other bonuses to casting, and are supposed to be rare, so a cap is still appropriate... maybe 24/12/4?


Hope my thoughts are useful.

-Colin

They are, giving me things to think about. :goodjob:

kelp is in the game already?

It is in Orbis, which is where he's getting the stats.

Maybe Kelp is being copied from some modmod?
I'd suggest implementing it exactly as alpha centaurii does.

It should be a feature which gives +1 food in the tile, and possibly some defence penalty for ships due to poor manouevrability. also, it should be possible to build improvements in it without removing it, assuming there will be some kinds of sea improvements

The sight of a kelp field spreading across an ocean is pretty wondrous to behold.

That's basically what I have planned. Small food boost, and a movement/defense penalty for ships.

Honestly, I don't think most kinds of kelp would survive so well in the deep waters of the ocean. Maybe things are different in a world where plants don't use sunlight though.


Why is it that features won't get placed in large open expenses of ocean? I added a Doldrums feature for the ocean a while back, but it was kind of useless since it never actually got placed.

(The Doldrums were mostly an attempt to make Fair Winds more useful. This invisible (well, really small) feature had a +7 movement cost, but the Fair Winds promotion gave Double Movement in this feature so this barrier didn't matter if you has air magic to power your sails.)

Yeah, I'm fine with kelp in the ocean. :lol: Can always claim that it's root system is composed of air nodules, letting it float near the surface.

As for features, did you edit the mapscript? As far as I know, any non-Firaxis script will have to be edited to get new features to show up.

How would fireballs fare against them? Cause I could see an Amurite player building a gigantic navy of Arcane Barges and just fireball spamming you do death, or just outright destroying you with them.

Fire will probably work quite well... I think a 10% weakness will work.

kelp is currently implemented in orbis, and I believe rise of darkness. At the moment, it adds 1 food and costs 2 movement. In orbis, you can have a coast square with kelp and fish (or any other aquatic resource), and a fishing boat and you can get 9 food from it - 10 if lanuan. On the other hand, orbis population costs 3 food. Kelp also spreads like forests do on land - aka, slowly, and never where you want it to. It also only spreads and can exist on coast tiles, it cannot exist on ocean.

-Colin

That is actually something I'm worried about... Will need to play with food bonuses there.

Prehaps Erebisian(sp?) kelp is rootless and floats on the surface...

Edit: I was beat to it...

Haha, yes you were. ;)

Going back to the proposed new spell lines, nature in particular, I had a thought:

Nature 3: Toad Sage - Converts archmage to 'Toad Sage' similar to lich conversion.

What I'm thinking is a powerful, arcane, defensive unit with held. This boosts the level 3 arcane limit to 12 it's true, but if you make lich's only available to evil civs and sages only to neutral or good, you could avoid this. The held alows you to have some powerful defensive casters throwing magic at things like arcane barges, or blocading ships, without allowing the civ the benefit of lots of attack archmages.

When a toad reaches the highest level of one-ness with nature, he can choose to bond to a location in such a way that it boosts his magical power at the cost of never being able to leave again.

Hmm... I like that. I think I'll ban them from Liches, instead using something like what you proposed.

Ya know... perma-rooting the mage would be an interesting option, and it wouldn't be too bad to leave it without any limit at all on how many of them you can have at a time. I mean, you can't move the blighting thing, so it isn't like you'll swarm people with them... (well, unless there is a permanent Level 3 summon with decent strength, then you are still a threat at long range...)

Yeah, they aren't getting a perma-summon like that. :lol: I AM thinking about giving them a second twincast... Actually might end up a THIRD if I make their inherent twincast separate from the normal one you can now gain at level 10. Believe you said they stack?

Anyway, leaving them unlimited might be a good idea... If I stick to the Warhammer theme here they'd be mummies, anyway, so there might actually be more of them than the living ones. :lol: Would be an endgame thing, where they need the most help defending their cities, so it would probably work out pretty well.

Edit: Updated the first two posts with some of the spell/building/hero ideas people have posted. :goodjob:

Unique Forge, Smokehouse, all other fire-based buildings.

Lighthouse UB - Scream of the Deep
(sound based lighthouse makes more sense on the ocean floor. Previously mentioned commerce bonus.)

Smokehouse UB - Preservative excretions gland
(flavor change only)

Harbor UB - Hatchery
(+:food:)

Shipyard UB - Monstrous Growth Chamber
(flavor change only)

I'm assuming the ship realted buildings need to be changed simply because a harbor on the ocean floor seems silly.

Hrm, I did forget about parking one in each city. Especially if you teach them all of the City Boosting spells, that might be too much to allow. Maybe a CityBonus ability which makes it unattractive to park them IN a city (but perfectly fine to park them in the 8 tiles AROUND the city if you have so many...) Something like a defense and food penalty?


And yes, Twincast type abilities stack to as many as you want, but I am too lazy so far to make it possible to gain more than 1 extra casting per promotion so far :p

As for features, did you edit the mapscript? As far as I know, any non-Firaxis script will have to be edited to get new features to show up.

No I didn't edit it. I mostly use Hemispheres, and the new features showed up on the coast but not in the ocean. I think that the game is coded to not put anything in water tiles too far from land for cities to be built, similar to how it doesn't give those tiles yields.

I know that they are difficult to attack. However, having so few cities, all easily disrupted through a few blockading privateer fleets, will probably gimp them more than enough.

Considering that these guys have submerged cities, should a blockade even affect them? Perhaps you could make the blockade skill only usable on coasts? That actually makes more sense to me anyway as it's incredibly difficult to just sail out into the ocean and stop everybody from fishing or sailing past.

If they mostly operate in Oceans, they'll need resources to ensure that their empire is capable of producing Food / Hammers / Gold. Aside from setting Ocean yields to say 2 Food for the Bezeri, you'll need resources and improvements to increase their yields.

Suggested resources:

Kelp
Fish
Whales
Clams
Krill
Coral (+1 Hammer, damage enemy ships like Razorweed)
Seahorses
Pearls

Considering that these guys have submerged cities, should a blockade even affect them? Perhaps you could make the blockade skill only usable on coasts? That actually makes more sense to me anyway as it's incredibly difficult to just sail out into the ocean and stop everybody from fishing or sailing past.

well, it depends upon what the lore is going to be. Are the cities truly submerged? Or are they great floating rafts of cities. At the least though, they would need a floating harbor so that foreign ships can dock and trade with them.

Another thing I just thought of - you might want to add a civilization trait that gives -50% or something culture, otherwise it might be too easy to win a cultural victory. The other thing is you may want to modify regular civs so that their culture doesn't stop when it hits an arbitrary mark in the sea.

-Colin

If they mostly operate in Oceans, they'll need resources to ensure that their empire is capable of producing Food / Hammers / Gold. Aside from setting Ocean yields to say 2 Food for the Bezeri, you'll need resources and improvements to increase their yields.

Suggested resources:

Kelp
Fish
Whales
Clams
Krill
Coral (+1 Hammer, damage enemy ships like Razorweed)
Seahorses
Pearls

Krill might be a better name for shrimp, at least out int he ocean... Maybe do like Deer and Arctic Deer?

As for hammers though, if I manage to do it the way I want to they won't use them at all.

Another thing I just thought of - you might want to add a civilization trait that gives -50% or something culture, otherwise it might be too easy to win a cultural victory. The other thing is you may want to modify regular civs so that their culture doesn't stop when it hits an arbitrary mark in the sea.

-Colin

I don't see why it would be any easier to win a cultural vic just because you have 4 cities, and more available real estate. As far as I know the Bezeri will have no additional culture producing buildings but I could be wrong. Regardless, a -50%:culture: hit is a massive nerf... even the Doviello only have -20%:culture: or -25%:culture: and if I remember correctly that's from their feral trait which the Bezeri get anyway.

As to your other point, I've never noticed culture stop expanding into ocean before, but then that's not exactly been something I worried about.

EDIT- I just realised that it's actually -20% GPP that the Doviello get not culture.

EDIT2- Coral (+1 Hammer, damage enemy ships like Razorweed)
Well coral could conceivable give a +1 :food: anyway since coral reafs are home to massive schools of fish and huge amounts of other aquatic animals

I don't see why it would be any easier to win a cultural vic just because you have 4 cities, and more available real estate. As far as I know the Bezeri will have no additional culture producing buildings but I could be wrong. Regardless, a -50%:culture: hit is a massive nerf... even the Doviello only have -20%:culture: or -25%:culture: and if I remember correctly that's from their feral trait which the Bezeri get anyway.

As to your other point, I've never noticed culture stop expanding into ocean before, but then that's not exactly been something I worried about.

EDIT- I just realised that it's actually -20% GPP that the Doviello get not culture.

EDIT2-
Well coral could conceivable give a +1 :food: anyway since coral reafs are home to massive schools of fish and huge amounts of other aquatic animals

The specific reason why I said give them reduced culture is that with 4 cities and being difficult to attack, it might be too easy for them to win a cultural victory.

-Colin

I think 10% less will be fine. They won't have any +culture buildings beyond the normal ones, and they can't use OO so the main Culture religion is out.

You could just remove their capacity to gain culture altogether (they're just too alien in their thinking to ever become the main culture on the planet) As a compensation they automatically get the fat cross whenever they build a new city.

Other thoughts: Forcing Open Borders to all would stop them building a "wall" across the ocean.

You could just remove their capacity to gain culture altogether (they're just too alien in their thinking to ever become the main culture on the planet)


If you want to go along that line of thinking, start with the infernals, first and foremost. And then D'tesh. Given that they're both purely destructive races with no interest in much else, culture makes no sense for them.

You have to reconcile those logic errors before you can try to apply it here. And even still, I think culture can work for an aquatic civ, like it does for the Scions. If they're not horribly, repulsively evil, there's always going to be someone who finds their way of life intriguing.

maybe people on infernal borders just start hiding in the basement and stop practicing their home culture

I'm going to force borders, yes. It DOES mean they can move through your borders as well though.

Unique nature line:

nature 1: Attunement - adds 'attuned to nature' promo to units in stack {+25% str in forests/kelp -25% str in hell terrain (available only to animal/beast units)}

nature 2: Nature's wrath -adds 'Nature's Revenge' promo to units in stack {+50% str in hell terrain 2% change of becoming enraged on Hell terrain}

just basic ideas, I realize they aren't exactly fitting to the theme of editing one's race to adapt to a new environment, but I figured I'd throw them out for comment anyway.

cool, I did not notice this thread until now. an aquatic race would be awesome. they could definitely use the lizard's wetlands/marshes mechanic, since it seems like wet terrains would suti them very well, and their worldspell could be something that instantly turns all their land into wetlands, without the need to wait for that. or maybe something that slowly turns their land into water, which should be even better for them than wetlands :D I would see them as having tons of food, but lack commerce and especially hammers.

Actually this isn't an amphibious race like the Mazatl. It's a splinter group that to survive the age of ice became completely seabound. The mechanics of this, are a civ that exists only on the ocean.

Edit- also if Valkrionn has his way, they will be production fallow and use food to build things.

Couldn't have said it better myself. :goodjob:

Unique nature line:

nature 1: Attunement - adds 'attuned to nature' promo to units in stack {+25% str in forests/kelp -25% str in hell terrain (available only to animal/beast units)}

nature 2: Nature's wrath -adds 'Nature's Revenge' promo to units in stack {+50% str in hell terrain 2% change of becoming enraged on Hell terrain}

just basic ideas, I realize they aren't exactly fitting to the theme of editing one's race to adapt to a new environment, but I figured I'd throw them out for comment anyway.

What do you think Valkrionn?

I like them, but think they're too warlike. The first two levels, particularly the first, should be more utility than anything else. The Arcane line is meant to be support, with the strongest few serving as tanks. ATM, I'm thinking of an archery version of poisoned blade for one... Their archers use dart launching animals, so it fits the background for the magic to make it poisonous. Not decided on what KIND of animal though... Blowfish? Small frogs?

Considering changing the slight slavery focus to a large Caste System focus. Would reinforce the fact that outsiders are looked down on with disdain... In the Bezeri worldview, they are the lowest caste.

Considering changing the slight slavery focus to a large Caste System focus. Would reinforce the fact that outsiders are looked down on with disdain... In the Bezeri worldview, they are the lowest caste.




Excellent idea. :goodjob:

I like them, but think they're too warlike. The first two levels, particularly the first, should be more utility than anything else. The Arcane line is meant to be support, with the strongest few serving as tanks. ATM, I'm thinking of an archery version of poisoned blade for one... Their archers use dart launching animals, so it fits the background for the magic to make it poisonous. Not decided on what KIND of animal though... Blowfish? Small frogs?


Hydralisks?;)

...... Dear god, why did I not see it before? :eek:

:lol:

I dunno though, I've always felt that the nature line is fairly useless. Treetop defense is more useful than the poisoned arrows IMHO mainly because practically everything that isn't fodder is resistant to poison damage and archers can quite handily take those out themselves... usually. I'd actually like to see the Bezeri go a different way with their nature line.

I do see what you mean about my proposed spells being to warlike though... Perhaps some sort of health/food bonuses similar to the creation mana tier one spell? That would seem to fit their flavor as well, but may be OP for them.

hey, was the dawn of this idea spawned by my thread about the Aifons? that would really blow me away with happiness :lol:

Came up with something last night....

C'naatat 1 - Adds the C'naatat promotion to all units in the stack, caster must remain in stack (Think Haste). The promotion in and of itself does nothing, but it allows several autoacquire promotions based on terrain/features. The caster is manipulating all units as they go.

@Gekko: Pretty much. :lol: I always liked the basic idea, but didn't want to bring back the Aifons, so I decided to make a brand new civ. ;)

yeah, I remember a lot of people were opposed to resurrecting the Aifons. who cares about the name, as long as we have an awesome new waterbased civ for a different experience and to make the seas more interesting :D

Came up with something last night....

C'naatat 1 - Adds the C'naatat promotion to all units in the stack, caster must remain in stack (Think Haste). The promotion in and of itself does nothing, but it allows several autoacquire promotions based on terrain/features. The caster is manipulating all units as they go.


Gaining things like fur in snow, scales in dessert? Thus reducing the unit's natural penalties when traversing the surface world? Nice idea, but certainly must be managed carefully on the player's part (make sure that if one unit has mobility, all units have it and so on).

EDIT-Perhaps giving sea-based animals and beasts lungs? Of course if the mage leaves the stack, gills make a terrible substitute.

Essentially. They'll be highly specialized though, so benefits AND penalties. Say...

Fur- (requires tundra/ice & c'naatat) +1 def, - 1(2?) First Strike. The fur provides defense against the elements, and helps to absorb blows, but impedes movement.

Essentially. They'll be highly specialized though, so benefits AND penalties. Say...

Fur- (requires tundra/ice & c'naatat) +1 def, - 1(2?) First Strike. The fur provides defense against the elements, and helps to absorb blows, but impedes movement.

You could even call it 'attunement' :D

I'm considering making the C'naatat promo allow two promos, one terrain and one feature. Beyond that, you'd have to spend several turns to remove them before the unit is eligible for the spell again. Makes the units more specialized, but doesn't require the caster to be in the stack with them.

I'm considering making the C'naatat promo allow two promos, one terrain and one feature. Beyond that, you'd have to spend several turns to remove them before the unit is eligible for the spell again. Makes the units more specialized, but doesn't require the caster to be in the stack with them.

so the breakdown would be something like:
Desert- scales
plains-
grassland-
marsh- (is marsh nessesary given the Bezeri background?)
ice/tundra- fur

and then
trees- claws?
jungle- camoflage?
hills-
mountains?-

so a unit can be speciallised as an amazing fighter on a jungle/marsh but reduced effectiveness in either jungle or marsh, and kinda useless in a tile that is neither jungle nor marsh?

Seems to be quite a bit of micro-management there...

on plains and grassland they should get hooves :D

I was thinking that you could do something about mountain goats for the ability to cross mountainous terrain, but I'm not sure if that's gonna be unbalancing for them. Perhaps only certain units can get that upgrade?

Something like that... I'm torn between limiting it to one each, and giving some penalty for removing them, and allowing them to change based on terrain.

Actually.... May have a solution that removes the point/click micro, while still making it advantageous to keep the unit to the proper terrain. Or rather, feature.

Here's what I'm thinking... Terrains won't actually do anything. Allows you to move the unit more naturally, without penalties every few steps. Features, however, will grant promotions... Stepping off the feature will NOT remove the promotion, unless you step onto a different feature-type. The only exclusion will be HL, in that it won't grant a new promotion. When you lose a feature-buff, it will degrade into a temporary penalty, based on that buff... May reduce movement (Won't hurt units with only one movement, so maybe a FS penalty as well?), reduce attack/defense, reduce xp gained, so on. This will have a chance per turn to degrade, meaning it can last one turn, it could last 20, although both are highly unlikely.

So... Unit steps onto Plains Forest, gains some promotion. Unit moves onto Grass Forest, nothing happens. Moves onto Grass, again nothing happens. Moves onto Grass Jungle, gains a new promotion, loses the first, gains a promotion reducing certain stats.

It'll be less varied, but more easily used... Adding terrain in and you'd have constant penalties for using it unless I added micro and forced the user to remove it manually.

Edit: Actually, one place terrain WILL be taken into account.... Forests. I'll differentiate between Forest and Arctic Forest by terrain type.

So the features used will be: (Once this is filled out, I'll add it to the second post... Haven't thought much on it yet)

Forest/New Forest - ?
Arctic Forest - ?
Jungle - ?
Ancient Forest - ? May not add one, steps on the Elves a bit.
Burnt Forest - Camouflage, to blend in with the smoke. (Invisibility). Grants a defense hit when removed.
Scrubs - ?
Oases- ?
Kelp - ? Movement buff maybe... Natural environment after all.
Haunted Lands - Grants nothing, removes existing promotion. Penalty only.

Rather than have a detrimental promo when it switches, perhaps you could have a % chance of a permanent negative promotion when the spell is first cast. Probably no more than 2-5% to represent the chance of an arcane units failure to properly implement the change. Perhaps the % should be reduced for mages and no chance for archmages

I don't really like that method, because there's no way to control the penalties. The way I described, you still can't (usually... Check the next post.) prevent the penalty. You CAN, however AVOID it, and barring that, anticipate and plan for it. The Bezeri won't have many features relying on chance... Think the Scions, Jotnar, Grigori, and Doviello are enough of that. :lol: I'll only have a chance for the duration, because I think it's a better design than otherwise.

Had an idea for the Toads that I like... Thought I'd share it. Rather, I have several, based off one main idea. :lol:

Firstly, the Toads(Mage line) will be capable of serving as Commanders using the new system in FF. From that, I can go various ways...

1. Can only lead lower tier arcane units. Grants a higher tier of spells to the follower, extra defense and xp for the leader... Would have a large range. Basically, the more experienced caster can assist the lesser ones in battle. Goes well with the fact that even their Mages are limited... Encourages the use of adepts instead.
2. Arcane units can lead any other unit. Grants a small bonus based on the type of unit, and makes it immune to the side effects from the proposed C'naatat spell, along with those of any higher spells I think of later. Plays more to the role of buffer than combat caster.
3. Some combination of both. Allow the arcane units to be 'specced' for one or the other?

Updated the post above this with more reasoning than 'I don't like it', btw. Was in the middle of waxing my car when I first responded. :lol:

Could be a nice spot to highlight the feedback promotions instead of so much focus on the Benevolence ones :)

Scouts/Hunters/Whatever




Miosarva poked her head out of the water. The humans were doing as they usually do, pulling fish from the sea, prying open clams for pearls, and eating them for meat. As usual, they weren't watching for danger. This was good. The Berezi planned to attack these "Luhnoon" very shortly and they wanted the element of surprise. Coming out from the sea will definitely surprise the "Luhnoon." They won't stand a chance.
She dunked her head back under the water and swam towards the dock. She clung to one of the logs holding the dock up and watched a man catch a fish and reel it in. She grabbed the fish when it was within reach, ate it, and watched in amusement as the men looked around in shock to try to find what had taken the man's fish. But it was already back in the water, watching their every move.

Potential Targassat artwork:

http://www.mortalonline.com/files/conceptart/toadMan.jpg

Potential Targassat artwork:

http://www.mortalonline.com/files/conceptart/toadMan.jpg

DUDE, HE'S SO CUTE. I want one of those.

Fantastic artwork, Valk!
Who's the author? A link, pleaaase?

Was looking up 'Slann artwork' as I figured it'd be the best way to get a toad leaderhead. :lol: It comes from a game, actually... Got a lizardman I might use too, for the Cualli. 3rd column, third row. The toad is first on the bottom row.

http://www.mortalonline.com/conceptart

Thanks, there's some nice art in there :)
The lizardman is good too. It's too bad you'd have to stretch it vertically, though. It shouldn't be much, so the picture should still be rather nice looking.

Scouts/Hunters/Whatever




Miosarva poked her head out of the water. The humans were doing as they usually do, pulling fish from the sea, prying open clams for pearls, and eating them for meat. As usual, they weren't watching for danger. This was good. The Berezi planned to attack these "Luhnoon" very shortly and they wanted the element of surprise. Coming out from the sea will definitely surprise the "Luhnoon." They won't stand a chance.
She dunked her head back under the water and swam towards the dock. She clung to one of the logs holding the dock up and watched a man catch a fish and reel it in. She grabbed the fish when it was within reach, ate it, and watched in amusement as the men looked around in shock to try to find what had taken the man's fish. But it was already back in the water, watching their every move.

Sorry it took so long for me to respond... Been trying to think of a way to explain why I don't really like it. :p Think I finally have it...

The Bezeri are extremely arrogant. If they were spying on someone, they would make it incredibly obvious that they are, but do it in such a way that there's nothing you could do. They think they're above the 'inferior' races, meaning all surface dwellers with the possible exclusion of the Mazatl and Lanun. So... More Bond, less ninja. :lol:

Found some potential unit art... Blue lizards, pretty much satisfies what I needed aside from the arcane line. :lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10791

Edit: Also, SLIME! :lol: Need to make an event for this guy, if nothing else....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9727

And witches? Why have we not used these?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8462

Found some potential unit art... Blue lizards, pretty much satisfies what I needed aside from the arcane line. :lol:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10791

Edit: Also, SLIME! :lol: Need to make an event for this guy, if nothing else....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9727

And witches? Why have we not used these?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8462


I've had the witches sitting on my hard drive for a while, but never could think of something good to do with them.

*pauses to reflect on how bad that sounded*

....anyway. Amurite UU? Sheiam maybe?

Witches/hags should be rolled in as a barbarian unit, for sure. Add a "witches hut" improvement that spawns them maybe? Would give us an early Agares unit. Should have an obnoxious spell that isn't utterly overpowering. Don't want them razing cities. Maybe a minor demonic summons + a spell that removes human control from a unit for a number of turns (adds promotion "Bewitched")? Evil eye spell? Poison damage is a must.

Maybe Headology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny_Weatherwax#Headology)spell and curses-make the unit think it's been cursed

Sorry it took so long for me to respond... Been trying to think of a way to explain why I don't really like it. :p Think I finally have it...

The Bezeri are extremely arrogant. If they were spying on someone, they would make it incredibly obvious that they are, but do it in such a way that there's nothing you could do. They think they're above the 'inferior' races, meaning all surface dwellers with the possible exclusion of the Mazatl and Lanun. So... More Bond, less ninja. :lol:

Ok. Nothing a quick rewrite can't handle.

Miosarva poked her head out of the water. The humans were doing as they usually do, pulling fish from the sea, prying open clams for pearls, and eating them for meat. As usual, they weren't watching for danger. This was good. The Berezi planned to attack these "Luhnoon" very shortly and it was her job to study them. She had perched on rocks sticking out of the water and watched them for a long time. When they noticed, they attempted to scare her off, but she continued to sit there and watch.
After a time, the village guard arrived and she had to jump into the water where they couldn't come after her. Once they left, she was back up on the rocks. They had long given up trying to get rid of her and decided instead to ignore her. This time, she was hungry. She swam over to the dock and climbed up one of the logs holding it up. A man was fishing above her and was beginning to reel in a fish. As the fish passed her, she grabbed it, ate it, then dove back into the water as the man tried to attack her in frustration.
He gave up after a while, and she was back on the rocks, watching the village. She had learned much. These humans were quick to anger, but seemed unable to stay committed to a cause. She continued to watch the village as several of her kinsmen climbed out of the water and onto the rock. The villagers awoke to find dozens of lizardmen watching their every move.

Not very "Bondy", but it is rather arrogant.

Sorry to invade this thread without having read it thoroughly, but looking at the first post you mentioned you needed a better name than "Uplifted Sage". Not sure how appropriate it would be, but you could borrow "Baelnorn" from D&D.

For those unfamiliar, Baelnorn are basically good-aligned Elven liches charged as protectors and keepers of knowledge for their people. Probably not exactly what you are going for, but the important part is the name sounds cool. :p

Actually, the basic background works... Exactly what they are. :lol:

I like it. :goodjob:

I had an idea for land civs combating the bezeri. Instead of a ritual you could have a civic that requires you to be at war with the bezeri and have water mana. In return it grants all units water walking, or you could have the ritual and make it only last a limited time and require water mana.

Whys that better then a ritual?

Its easier to use. A civic can be implemented as soon as the war starts, a ritual takes time to construct.

Yeah, but unless it's in a unique catagory, you loose any other bonus from that civic catagory, which could badly affect you're economy, and you couldn't adopt it if you have changed civics in the last ten turns. Also, their tha turn of anarchy. A cheap ritual might only take a developed city 2-3 turns.

Yeah, now that I think about it a ritual is more effective.

I do think the ritual should require water mana to build though.

I had an idea for land civs combating the bezeri. Instead of a ritual you could have a civic that requires you to be at war with the bezeri and have water mana. In return it grants all units water walking, or you could have the ritual and make it only last a limited time and require water mana.

Its easier to use. A civic can be implemented as soon as the war starts, a ritual takes time to construct.

Yeah, but unless it's in a unique catagory, you loose any other bonus from that civic catagory, which could badly affect you're economy, and you couldn't adopt it if you have changed civics in the last ten turns. Also, their tha turn of anarchy. A cheap ritual might only take a developed city 2-3 turns.

Yeah, now that I think about it a ritual is more effective.

I do think the ritual should require water mana to build though.

A ritual is going to be best, and yes, it will require water mana. :goodjob:

i was thinking of a similair race a serpent style race since theres amphibians and lizards in there it would i think be nice to add serpents to there style as a melee kinda like a lanun clan and opposite of the dwarfs in there make there buildings be "grown" like for those of you who have seen stargate atlantis similair to the way wraith make their ships
just a random thought

Just wanted to say this is far from dead. I decided a while back that if I do it, I want to do it RIGHT, which IMO means they need to use Food for growth and production. Which means I want a slider that transforms food to production (Easy, clone of existing code) FOR EACH CITY (Not so easy. :lol:).

That said, talked to Xienwolf about it and it seems I may be able to do it.... So I'll start work on trying it soon, once I get a different project out of the way. ;)

Couple of things. I don't understand why you need a food/production slider. Why not give them something like the Conquest civic effect (build units with food) but have it basically always on? Then have a UU like a Mane that goes up in cost based on their current total population (including all sea-manes...seahorses?). Second, you have a workboat they can sacrifice to turn land (presumably adjacent to a coast) into coast. Do you have planned any way for everyone else to undo this? I doubt you'll want to give everyone the ability to generally turn coast into land. Maybe you can instead use the upcoming Malakim/lizard/Scion auto-terraforming system to convert tiles in their territory to coast so they revert naturally once the cities are destroyed.

Hmm... Using the Climate system for them would be interesting. They'd be flooding everything, after all... Only issue would be terrain that is already Ocean would then become Coast. Will play with it.

And I need the Food->Production slider because they construct BUILDINGS with food as well, not just Units. Conquest does not function that way.

I could do it with a conquest-esque system, and manes and so on (Thought of that a while back), but it feels half-done to me that way. If I'm going to make a civ, they're going to be well done. :lol:

I could also have just done it globally, but I don't want to do that either... Feels wrong to me.


The system I'll be using (One slider per city, available in the city screen) actually isn't too hard to use, as you only have 4 cities (Maybe one or two more, but yeah) as the Bezeri. ;)

why do they need a slider if they always use food to produce things? Won't the slider always be at 100% or am I missing something?

Missing one important thing: Their cities still grow via food. The more food they use for production, the slower their pop grows, and vice versa. I don't want to allow them to 'build' population, I like this method better.

It's also one of the things I'm fairly set on, like their focus on FoL and the different castes and their roles (Archery as attack, for example, and lack of a melee line). I highly doubt anyone can change my mind on it. ;)

Wow, that's actually quite powerful. I often have the annoyance of too much food to use, my city either grows faster than I can provide health and happiness, or I purposely avoid high food tiles and settle for using low yeild but higher production tiles.

With this method simply move the slider until your growth is stagnant and you're not wasting anything.

ps. will the A.I. understand this? And will this be constant micromanagement or will there be some intelligence to the slider as there is with the gold slider?

I'm hoping to use essentially the same code as the current slider, just moved from Player to City. So the AI may understand it, and I'll try to get it to drop the food slider when the city is starving. ;)

And yes it's rather powerful, but it's thematic (No normal industry under water) and limiting at the same time as being powerful... Do you want your new city to crank out defenders, or grow?

Interesting system, Valk.

I prefer interesting ways to limit expansion to uninteresting ones... A different project highlights that. ;)

Leader art has been added to the first post. Thank you Psychic_Llamas for the Cimesiat art edit!

I'll be moving this from 'Design' to 'Implementation' soon as I beat Dragon Age and wrap up the code for a different project. ;)

Excellent job, Psychic_Llamas!

And a new background for Targassat, also done by Psychic_Llamas. ;)

hehe thanks guys :p

Change anti-defender to something more appropriate :). Wall-climbers, or something like that... Or simply City Raider :D.

Change anti-defender to something more appropriate :). Wall-climbers, or something like that... Or simply City Raider :D.

The name won't be Anti-Defender, of course. Just used that because I don't have a name, and it tells you pretty much what it is. ;)

Besieger is what we use in the Warhammer mod. it gives melee units a promotion that adds 0.2 unhappy to nearby enemy cities, as well as extra city attack.

Ooh, that's a good one. Might steal it from you.... :lol:

There is a new project, which has the potential to radically change how we design the game (those of you who know, not a word ;)), so I'm likely going to be starting work on this civ AFTER I finish said project. Which means, either a very long time till next patch (Month, at the least, likely longer), or this civ won't be included in the patch.... Not sure at the moment which method I prefer.

Regardless, next patch is going to be a while. I may push out a quick version with new alignments/White Hand, if I do however the Lawful/Chaotic axis won't be fully integrated; Haven't had time to add it to buildings and so on. To be honest, right now all leaders (Aside from a few test leaders) are Lawful. :lol:

(those of you who know, not a word ;))

yes'sum :p

so I'm likely going to be starting work on this civ AFTER I finish said project. Which means, either a very long time till next patch (Month, at the least, likely longer)

aww :(

Is this civ still being worked on? It looks pretty sweet

It will be, yes. Scheduled for a later patch.

Possible World Spells:
The Great Storm - All units without Water Walking have their movement reduced by 1 for [variable number based on map size] turns.

Power of the Deep - 50% chance to grant the next level of Water Magic to each Berzei arcane unit

That's not really what I had in mind, to be honest.

Aiming for an economic spell for them, not war-oriented. Something that emphasizes their religion, maybe.

They will be completely blocked from adopting OO, other religions will be open to them.

Possible world spell (economic style):

The Great Current -- +2 trade routes in each city, AND 1 "merchant unit" (trade ship for Bezeri) for every city in the world with their state religion. Accessible at Trade (or Currency, or if that is OP, then even Taxation or something like that)

Something like that would definitely work, but it's still a bit early for me to think about specifics. ;)

There will probably be a few new civs before the Bezeri or the Isenj; Aquatic civs will require a LOT of work, but are definitely something I'd like to do. Just have other things scheduled first, base features and upgrades to existing civs.

Really cool, its a shame that these guys will be opposed to Octopus Overlords, Im looking for a civ that fits in with that religion. Either way I wish you the best of luck on the art and models for this race. Don't forget to make slave versions of these guys, I hate making frostlings or Lizardman slaves only to have them turn into human models of slaves. Also how are you gonna make the priests for these guys?

Really cool, its a shame that these guys will be opposed to Octopus Overlords, Im looking for a civ that fits in with that religion. Either way I wish you the best of luck on the art and models for this race. Don't forget to make slave versions of these guys, I hate making frostlings or Lizardman slaves only to have them turn into human models of slaves. Also how are you gonna make the priests for these guys?

The race that fits with the Overlords will be the Isenj. ;)

The models will be mostly lizards... Will try and adapt them into toads for arcane/priest units. VERY good toad art exists, it's just not animated.

Isenj? I checked the search bar nothing is showing up for that.

It will be the second aquatic civ. Only one would make it to easy for them to populate the whole ocean. They need a counterpart.

They aren't there, that's why. :p

No real info on them yet, just know that they'll be an OO focused aquatic civ. Need at least two aquatic civs, or the one has too much room to expand.

There will be two aquatic civs, and a hybrid.

Edit: Ah! Ninja'd for the first time in ages. In my own thread, no less. Damn you, Shoggi.

that's a lot of stuff you are promizing us Valkrionn...
Luckily for us you don't allow us to play with what's already done.
If you did, I wouldn't have the time to even finish one game before you add a new civ, new balance, new effect :D

Beware: highjacking of the thread :
(What are you thinking to do to balance the Jotnar ?to limit the 5-7 über cities?, more than kuriotates, almost as big save for late game...etc)
(are you planning to do something to balance the luirchips with all the goodies the other civ got ?

Potential City names...



Uxmal'tc

Oxkin'tok

Ikun'chi




Essentially mutations of Mayan site names. Which would be rather fitting considering the origin/inspirations of the civ...



As for a better name for the Nature spell making Relic Priests (WOOT! Lord Kroak!)... Natural Mummification? :P

Going back to the proposed new spell lines, nature in particular, I had a thought:

Nature 3: Toad Sage - Converts archmage to 'Toad Sage' similar to lich conversion.

What I'm thinking is a powerful, arcane, defensive unit with held. This boosts the level 3 arcane limit to 12 it's true, but if you make lich's only available to evil civs and sages only to neutral or good, you could avoid this. The held alows you to have some powerful defensive casters throwing magic at things like arcane barges, or blocading ships, without allowing the civ the benefit of lots of attack archmages.

When a toad reaches the highest level of one-ness with nature, he can choose to bond to a location in such a way that it boosts his magical power at the cost of never being able to leave again.

Somebody's been watching too much Naruto :lol:

If you plan to implement these aquatic civs, make sure to check out and modify some of their events first. You wouldn't want their library catching fire for example. Also.. will rites of ogma be modified to allow mana nodes to be created in the water?

any chances this concept will make it ever into existance within the next months, or even at all?

It will make it in, but not until well after 1.5.

Have you go an apporimately version outline you are willing to share in the wiki. Something like:

1.4 - Guilds, Units Per Tile,
1.5 - New Magic system, Interface refinement
1.6 - Bezeri and other new Civs

etc.

That order is terribly wrong, there... :p



1.4x - Dynamic Traits, leaders finished, Airandamar, Magic System
1.5x - Building/Unit/Civic/Tech passes, including new Unitcombats
1.6x - Guilds
2.0x - New civilizations, bug fixes, stability/speed & AI, game-changing mechanic #2

New civs will end up sprinkled throughout, but the Bezeri will come at 2.0. As with the Isenj.

That order is terribly wrong, there... :p



1.4x - Dynamic Traits, leaders finished, Airandamar, Magic System
1.5x - Building/Unit/Civic/Tech passes, including new Unitcombats
1.6x - Guilds
2.0x - New civilizations, bug fixes, stability/speed & AI, game-changing mechanic #2

New civs will end up sprinkled throughout, but the Bezeri will come at 2.0. As with the Isenj.

Airandamar? Isenj?

/edit:
mkay, so after searching the forum, isenj = the 2nd aquatic civ, and airandamar = a new religion.
what kind of religion? always felt the religions in ffh have been missing someting (too specialized in theme and alignement, which is wonderful for atmosphere but horrible for anyone wanting to play money or production focused but evil, waterfocused but good, rogue style but good, and so on)

I'll only say two things about Airandamar....

First, it does not affect alignment, alignment affects it.

Second, if you can figure out what the word means (as it is NOT simply a made up name), you may be able to guess at part of the lore behind it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Andaman

a religion that flys you to your place of vacation! yeah! overprized drinks and lying in the sun while relaxing. thats a religion i could like.

i guess a wind religion, possibly dedicated to tali, favoring maybe trade routes? exploring? air magic?
thematically near the austrin?
as the wind can be mild and favorable, and also stormy,, unpredictable and destroying? = you define the aspect of it by your actions? therefor your realm changes either beeing harrassed by storms (damaging enemies or someting alike?), or by mild rains, improving harvest and creating a plentyful territory?

You are incredibly far off. :lol:

was that answer for the vacation thing or after the tali edit?

All of it. :p

mhhhhh... well the name has obviously been chosen after that airline. cant find the exact meaning of the name. so it either means someting important, you're a crazed moron trying to confuse poor people like me ( :p ) or it HAS someting to do with the airline, just in a way i havent puzzled out yet.
or theres someting else in the world sharing that name.
awwww my head hurts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands
maybe that helps anyone...

The name has nothing to do with an airline, and while it IS a word within a valid language, it comes from a language that is NOT used in the real world. Except by some very large nerds. :p

i speak neither sindarin, nor klingon, nor newspeak nor galach, na'vi or esperanto. :(
those are all constructed languages that come to my mind at the moment.

you talked of nerds, guess that leaves only the fanatasy/scifi ones. galach and na'vi are to special. so i guess its either klingon or sindarin.

/edit:
according to own of your posts its quenya.
there is no word "airandamar" in whole, but:

airon - noun ocean
aman - adj. blessed, free from evil

and since this is the topic about a water civ with an evil and a good part.... moooo!

Still looking for a Civilization spell that is economy based? I have a suggestions.

Favorable Tied - Last 20 Turns
All coastal Regions in the world produce 2 extra the commerce, while all water territories within the players control have a 2% of gaining a random resource.

i speak neither sindarin, nor klingon, nor newspeak nor galach, na'vi or esperanto. :(
those are all constructed languages that come to my mind at the moment.

you talked of nerds, guess that leaves only the fanatasy/scifi ones. galach and na'vi are to special. so i guess its either klingon or sindarin.

/edit:
according to own of your posts its quenya.
there is no word "airandamar" in whole, but:

airon - noun ocean
aman - adj. blessed, free from evil

and since this is the topic about a water civ with an evil and a good part.... moooo!

Yes, it is Quenya. And it has nothing to do with oceans or evil. :mischief:

Still looking for a Civilization spell that is economy based? I have a suggestions.

Favorable Tied - Last 20 Turns
All coastal Regions in the world produce 2 extra the commerce, while all water territories within the players control have a 2% of gaining a random resource.

That's actually a very good idea... May use it, with a few alterations.



Favorable Tide

Lasts 20 turns
All water (Coast, Ocean, Deep Ocean) tiles on the map gain 2 :commerce:, while all water territories within the player's control have an X% chance of gaining a random resource, where X depends on your current Faith level.

Faith level.

Crual you :)

bah, im sick of puzzles. ill just hope the new religion will be fancy and inventive, originally. :)

the world spell sounds fine.

havent red the whole thread, but what about unique buildings?
had some ideas...

Hatchery(replaces harbor)
usual harbor boni (+extra health for toads) +10-20% milit. production

Tadpole Basin(replaces granary or smokehouse):
+0.2 :health: per kelp/kelp forest feature

Cold Rift Conservation(Replaces Salt House)
20% Food stored, 5% city defense (the food is stored safe deep within the ocean, enabling the city to withstand a siege longer)

Bubbling Pool(replaces hunting lounge):
+1 :health: for Water Mana
+1 :) for Nature Mana

Burning Rafts(not sure about what to replace):
+0.2 production per kelp or kelp forest feature
(the idea is that kelp is dryed/smoked on rafts and burned for either heat or used as building material)

Coral reef(replaces aqueduct)
provides fresh water (basically theres no need for fresh water here, but it represents a better health provided by diverser species to feed on)
+3 :health:

Royal Breeder(unique national)
gives +1 toad rescource, +2 experience for mounted units(for all cities?). in the bezeri society giant frogs are used as strong mounts, and the royal breeders are matched in skill and knowledge concerning mounts only by the hippus.
however, those frogs not so lucky to end up with a lizardmen on their back are returned to bezeri society - served right on their dishes :->
i dont know if you will use frogs as mounts, but it somehow came to my mind.

before anyone argues about giant lizardman and frogs eating other frogs - cannibalism is widespread in nature among those species. its absolutely acceptable to eat nonsentient frogs, even if youre a anthropomorphic giant frogbeeing yourself(escpecially if you believe yourself superior to everything else) :D

just some ideas...

bah, im sick of puzzles. ill just hope the new religion will be fancy and inventive, originally. :)

Hint: Cycles.

As for inventiveness... Yes, plenty of that. Developed it while in a Religion course at the college, while covering Eastern religions. Fairly... Unique... as a result. :D

And there is fully fleshed out lore for it, and an epic pedia that will be split similarly to the Beltane Cycle (Check the Fawn for the first page in that, btw), written by KillerClowns.


the world spell sounds fine.

havent red the whole thread, but what about unique buildings?
had some ideas...

Building ideas are always good.


Hatchery(replaces harbor)
usual harbor boni (+extra health for toads) +10-20% milit. production

Not sure about this one. Their cities are submerged entirely... Was thinking more along the lines of a floating trading post for the harbor, very trade-focused civ.


Tadpole Basin(replaces granary or smokehouse):
+0.2 :health: per kelp/kelp forest feature

Wouldn't be enough tadpoles, honestly. Tsaayiq'an are rare and long lived, and the lizards don't produce tadpoles. :p


Cold Rift Conservation(Replaces Salt House)
20% Food stored, 5% city defense (the food is stored safe deep within the ocean, enabling the city to withstand a siege longer)

This is a good one.


Bubbling Pool(replaces hunting lounge):
+1 :health: for Water Mana
+1 :) for Nature Mana

And this is an interesting one... They start with Water and Nature mana though, so that's essentially a free bonus.


Burning Rafts(not sure about what to replace):
+0.2 production per kelp or kelp forest feature
(the idea is that kelp is dryed/smoked on rafts and burned for either heat or used as building material)

They wouldn't burn it (nor need to), and are meant to be heavy into FoL.

Sustainable harvest would be something FoL espouses, though, rather than not touching kelp at all. So it could work.... Aside from the fact that they don't use production. :p


Coral reef(replaces aqueduct)
provides fresh water (basically theres no need for fresh water here, but it represents a better health provided by diverser species to feed on)
+3 :health:

Interesting.


Royal Breeder(unique national)
gives +1 toad rescource, +2 experience for mounted units(for all cities?). in the bezeri society giant frogs are used as strong mounts, and the royal breeders are matched in skill and knowledge concerning mounts only by the hippus.
however, those frogs not so lucky to end up with a lizardmen on their back are returned to bezeri society - served right on their dishes :->
i dont know if you will use frogs as mounts, but it somehow came to my mind.

Nope, they ride aquatic Snakes. Giant snakes. :p


before anyone argues about giant lizardman and frogs eating other frogs - cannibalism is widespread in nature among those species. its absolutely acceptable to eat nonsentient frogs, even if youre a anthropomorphic giant frogbeeing yourself(escpecially if you believe yourself superior to everything else) :D

just some ideas...

Eh, not really cannibalism. Huge difference between a sentient toad and the toad resource, there. :p

thy for your feedback ;)

Eh, not really cannibalism. Huge difference between a sentient toad and the toad resource, there.

yep, thats what i meant. nevertheless, only few humans eat apes for example, although i personally suppose thats more about their lack of qualification for factory farming. buuuuut thats a different topic.


-yet i like the idea of a free toad rescource bonus. as their building on ocean they will be basically limited to those few water rescources and this could be a way to improve the range of rescources without much effort
What about those ideas:

Muddy Cavern/Cavity (unique, national)
provides +1-2 toad rescource(s)

Deep Sea Caverns(replaces walls)
+% city defense, +%food stores
with the cold rift, it could be replacing the walls and palisades while at the same time improve food stored (since theyre a food based civ, eh?)
in times of need, bezeri population is evacuated into these caverns, protecting them of harm from any battles.

And turn the tadpole basin into the

Chinampas (unique building, or replacing i dont know what)
(from the atztec floating gardens, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa)
im not sure about this, but i think its an interesting idea. although this would also be a valid explanation to implement same kind of land-rescource harvesting for the civ)
still, :health: per kelp forest and
maybe :food: per kelp forest, because: while the farming on those artificial islands isnt enough to spread a full rescource to your cities (like corn, rice or whatever) the different plants growing here widen the bezeri menu.
why per kelp (forest)? cause thats the prime material those things are constructed of :D

thinking about it a bit more, it could also be some kind of unique improvement....

Will you be adding more ocean resources? Would kind of suck to only have the few in place now.

Oh, there will be more oceanic resources.

Including having mana spawn out in the ocean. :p

Cool :goodjob:

guess that will give some more flavor to the lanun too...

Pirate Fleets will already do that far better. :p

How will the Domination victory condition change?

Not sure, honestly, but the Bezeri aren't really capable of it regardless. Only 4 cities.

Airandamar


My Quenya is a bit rusty, what with Galadriel having buggered of to Valanor ages ago and me being a Wood Elf by birth... But closest translation I can get to is... "Old Long House"

So... Potentially "House of the Ancient"

Airandamar


My Quenya is a bit rusty, what with Galadriel having buggered of to Valanor ages ago and me being a Wood Elf by birth... But closest translation I can get to is... "Old Long House"

So... Potentially "House of the Ancient"

Well, as a disclaimer: Translation was made by Black_Imperator, and he said he may not be precisely right.

The 'Old' part is close; Actually 'Endless'. :p

The rest is incorrect.

Well, as a disclaimer: Translation was made by Black_Imperator, and he said he may not be precisely right.

The 'Old' part is close; Actually 'Endless'. :p

The rest is incorrect.

+

Hint: Cycles.


That makes 'endless cycles'?

Step in the right direction.

Hmmm...


So we're looking at a compound of of Aira (Old), Randa (Cycle/Age) and suffix Mar (Land/World/Home).


Old Cycle of the World.


Endless is more accurately Oio, signifying an endless period.



So... A religion focused on the Endless Cycle of the World. And the religion changes based on your alignment... I suspect a strong Life/Death (Maybe Light/Dark) theme to it seeing as the cycle between those two forces is often viewed as -the- endless cycle. And that would also allow for good to have a stronger focus on the "Life" aspect of it, and Evil on the "Death". With Neutral being, as always, the balancing act.


And your mention of Eastern Religion earlier might lend support for this theory due to the nature of Ying and Yang.



Edit: Unless the name is kinda set in stone. Oirandamar (Eternal Cycle of the World) might be more accurate... That is -if- my conclusions hold true :P

sounds better than all of my assumptions :D

Hmmm...


So we're looking at a compound of of Aira (Old), Randa (Cycle/Age) and suffix Mar (Land/World/Home).


Old Cycle of the World.


Endless is more accurately Oio, signifying an endless period.



So... A religion focused on the Endless Cycle of the World. And the religion changes based on your alignment... I suspect a strong Life/Death (Maybe Light/Dark) theme to it seeing as the cycle between those two forces is often viewed as -the- endless cycle. And that would also allow for good to have a stronger focus on the "Life" aspect of it, and Evil on the "Death". With Neutral being, as always, the balancing act.


And your mention of Eastern Religion earlier might lend support for this theory due to the nature of Ying and Yang.



Edit: Unless the name is kinda set in stone. Oirandamar (Eternal Cycle of the World) might be more accurate... That is -if- my conclusions hold true :P

Your conclusions about the name are entirely accurate. It is 'Endless Cycle of Worlds'.

Your conclusions about how the gameplay would work, however, are dead wrong. :D

I'm fairly positive that people won't get much more of it; It's a fairly unique idea. Unless you read the specific books I do. :p


As for the name.... Eh. Airandamar sounds better.

one thing for sure: i will never be able to play that religion without thinking of the airline :>

is the endless cycles of worlds meant in a metaphorical way? like 'worlds' as lives/the world as the environment an individual lives i/possibilities?
or real, actual worlds in the whole? like different planes of existence?

I will not say anything on that, other than that you are wrong with both lives and planes.

Hmmm...

So we're looking at a compound of of Aira (Old), Randa (Cycle/Age) and suffix Mar (Land/World/Home).

Old Cycle of the World.

Endless is more accurately Oio, signifying an endless period.


Just checked and you seem to be partially right.

Actually some words' meaning change if you change the dictionnary you look at. In the one i used for this word, Aira means Endless, Old. The Enless meaning disappears in another one ^^

My Quenya is a bit rusty, what with Galadriel having buggered of to Valanor ages ago and me being a Wood Elf by birth... But closest translation I can get to is... "Old Long House"

My Quenya is limited to asking for directions to the hotel or toilet. :(

My Quenya is limited to asking for directions to the hotel or toilet. :(

guess youll be staying sober on your trip to elfland. guess you wont lose out much anyway...

@Valkrionn ... where did you get the Artwork for Cimesiat? He's Iguanid you know :p

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9802557#post9802557

Hour upon hour of searching, is where. :lol:

The original is here: http://media.photobucket.com/image/lizard%20man/RobShanti/attachment-1.jpg?o=300

I would request you don't use him, seeing as we will be. There are a few other images I'd ask you not to use as well, as we'll be using them as new Cualli/Mazatl leaders in 1.4; Namely:


Cualli

http://sansyu.deviantart.com/art/Lizard-Man-142121496

Mazatl

http://gobboking.deviantart.com/art/WizardLizard-70014043
http://i39.tinypic.com/11ifpdk.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/2mr8i9e.jpg (My favorite leader portrait. :p)


Here's a pic we considered for use as Cimesiat, but ultimately rejected... Similar bone structure, may work for you. http://v3ss.deviantart.com/art/Merg-35588130


Edit: We have quite a bit more lizard art (like I said, spent hours searching. Saved some good ones) so if you want links, get on #erebus and ask. ;)

Have one that we aren't explicitly using yet, but that I like and think would fit for a larger-bodied lizardman; A cualli, not a mazatl.

I suppose I will get on Erebus then.

Well... The Bezeri now have a graphic for their mounts. :lol: Not quite a serpent, but it works. I may have to work on them now.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=15691

That's a pretty cool Sea-Dragon.

You have my thanks ;)

Bezeri? Bezer'ej? Isenh? C'naatat?

Interesting...

I don't suppose that any Wess'har are going to be showing up? ;)



Also, I believe you mentioned having C'naatat as a promotion? Perhaps it could work in a similar way to the Balseraph Mimic units?

Bezeri? Bezer'ej? Isenh? C'naatat?

Interesting...

I don't suppose that any Wess'har are going to be showing up? ;)



Also, I believe you mentioned having C'naatat as a promotion? Perhaps it could work in a similar way to the Balseraph Mimic units?

:goodjob:

Glad someone knows the source, at least, though it's Isenj. :p

And no, Wess'har will not show up. And none of the names really have much to do with the civ(s) other than general themes.


Bezeri = Aquatic civ. Reptiles, though, not squid.
Bezer'ej = Name of capital, rather than planet.
Isenj = Fast breeding civ, but not spiders. :lol:
C'naatat = Discipline of magic, not a symbiont.


And I'm not sure how exactly that will work yet.

Wess'har sounds quite interesting ... I may have to read this series ...

Bezeri? Bezer'ej? Isenh? C'naatat?

Interesting...

I don't suppose that any Wess'har are going to be showing up? ;)



Also, I believe you mentioned having C'naatat as a promotion? Perhaps it could work in a similar way to the Balseraph Mimic units?Sh:):):):):)... of course ! I didn't understood why the name rung a bell.... thx..