Great Artists, Disciples, and revolting cities

WarKirby

Arty person
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Jul 13, 2006
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Glasgow, Scotland
Something that was pointed out to me in another thread, a fact I was aware of, but forgot about, is that the "Create great work" spell, when cast in a revolting city, causes that city to instantly return to order.

As I understand, this was probably for Great Artists, to give them an extra useful ability, and to create a huge bastion of culture on the frontline. All well and good.

But the problem, is that the lowest level Disciple units of all religions (except AV) have a mini version of this spell, too. It only gives about 0.5% of the culture that a Great Artist version does, but it has the same effect of instantly quelling revolts. And when attached to such a cheap and easily spammable unit, really doesn't seem right.

Moreover, I feel that it severely devalues the Order high priest spell, Unyielding Order. As the only advantage that yields in this regard, is not consuming the caster when it's used. Which is mildly useful, but hardly worthwhile.

I'd like to suggest, giving Disciple units a modified version of the Great Artist spell, which does NOT stop revolts in cities.
 
I don't mind either way, I rarely have a disciple handy for that purpose anyway.
 
I'm not sure how I ratonalize it in the game world, but I usually do bring packs of disciples along with me. I guess you could see it as a hammer investment in the new population that makes them go "maybe these guys aren't all bad."

I believe it's actually the culture bump that ends revolts, not the ability itself.
 
I think I would prefer neither having the ability to end a revolt. An excellent painting has never stopped an angry mob with pitchforks.

And religion is often the cause of angry mobs with pitchforks, so I doubt that would help much either.
 
I wish I could kill people to end revolts. My government name does say Tyranny, right?
 
BtS removed that ability from great artists, so presumably it is an intended effect.

It's not as useful as it sounds though, since the city will still have a high chance of revolt for a while. Disciples can suppress those too, but the revolt chance will continue.
 
I think I would prefer neither having the ability to end a revolt. An excellent painting has never stopped an angry mob with pitchforks.

And religion is often the cause of angry mobs with pitchforks, so I doubt that would help much either.

This is true.
My main issue here, isn't really whether or not it makes sense, but just about game balance. great artists are rare and valuable, so you have to make a choice in what to do with them.

disciples can be built in 1 turn at your average industrial capital. And since they have less uses, there's less choice to make.

But I do agree that neither of them being able to do it, really makes sense. I would hardly raise hell if that ability was removed from both, but the disciples are mainly the one I care about here.
 
Killing people to end rebellions sounds cool. And feasting should absolutely do that as well. "Get back to work right now or suffer the same fate!" They don't have to know it is inevitable either way.
 
Killing people to end rebellions sounds cool. And feasting should absolutely do that as well. "Get back to work right now or suffer the same fate!" They don't have to know it is inevitable either way.

Killing people would generally make the rebellion worse until you hit a threshold of more people killed than left.

Thus you'd need to kill half the population to gain control if you went with killing people. That'd make sense logically.
 
My average industrial capital has better things to do than spew out a disciple each turn. My lesser support cities, like mature commerce centra, can spend their time producing disciples, though. They'll never make enough to quell all rebellions.

The option to avoid rebellion by killing people is already there, just raze the city. Angry citizens will rather starve to death than work the fields, so suppressing a rebellion by killing them doesn't sound feasible.

And they're not making a painting to stop the rebellion. That's stupid. It's more along the lines of reassuring the populace, placating the local lords, replacing the most vocal opponents and generally spreading love for their new overlords.

Culture isn't art, it's MacDonald's and Barack Obama and badgers and crappy television commercials. Whatever makes people feel like part of something.
 
You can end rebellion by razing cities as soon as you capture them, but that let you end rebellions by killing the people of your own cities.


In my version I added a spell that can raze your own cities, and cause a diplomatic penalty with whoever had the most culture in the city similar to the normal raze city penalty. I couldn't figure out how to make it count as the same type of penalty, but "Past events have drawn our people apart" works.

I also made it so that Feast and Consume soul can be used on cities of any size, and raze the city with the same diplomatic penalty if the city is down to size 1. Additionally, I changed Beasts of Agares from units you build to units summoned by Profanes in cities with Demons Altars. They have limited duration, but they can devour the souls of living units for extra duration an the unit's xp or the souls of a city's population in order to both boost their duration and get the promotions/xp being built in the city would give them. Their feasting spell causes revolts, costs population, and can raze cities and cause a diplomatic penalty just like the Vampires' or Eaters of Dreams' can, and it is automatically cast when they are first summoned. (None of these can be used to raze cities if the No City Razing gameoption is on.)

Unfortunately, the last time I tested this it seemed like the AI was destroying its own cities to much, even though I blocked them from razing any city that wasn't in rebellion. I should probably make the blocks even more restrictive to prevent AI suicide.
 
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