Just a new civ idea

I started to implement a new civ a couple of monthes ago. But according to the progress rate, Civ6 will probably be released before my civ
So I give here the main ideas. I think that there are some new mechanisms that can inspire modders.
And comments, suggestions, remarks, improvements (and even criticisms) are welcome. And marks of interest may motivate me to find time for the implementation!


Overview :
Main ideas: Elven, sprawling, magic, mana, terraforming

Hvitalfars are a an elven civilization. After the civil war and the Svartalfar secession, they remained faithful to the ljosalfars and the queen of summer. After some times, a former repented student of Kylorin, Gastrius, teached some of them all the mysteries that were discovered during the age of magic, and especially the power of mana, and how it could be used against their foes. After they unsuccessfully tried to convince other elves to follow this path, they decided to create their own civilization.

Hvits like to live in large sprawling cities. Like other sprawling civilizations, the number of cities that they can build is quite limited (3 on a normal map). More they do not know how to create settlements and they even cannot conquer a city; after a successful city attack, they can either chose to raze it or to create a fort on its ruins. And they are a mage nation, and contrary to the Kuriotates, they lack artisans to create any kind of economy boosting building. To survive despite these stricts constraints, their elven characteristic is of course useful, but they had to use magic, to fullly exploit the power of mana and to invent powerful terraforming mechanisms.

Hvits cannot build powerful military units. Like other elvens civilization, they cannot master gunpowder or create siege weapons or chariots. More the most powerful melee units that they can train are champions. And even knights are fordidden to them. Fortunately, thanks to their Ljosalfar heritage, they master all the archery line. And they can train the most powerful mages of Erebus.


Mages
Hvit arcane units have some very specific features. They had to learn to fight in an hostile world and have some means to temporarilly increase their strength. The mage training make a great emphasis on summons and arcane units can improve their summons and take advantage of their victories. But the most specific aspect of Hvits mage is the way they can perform terraforming by "stealing" ressources and mana from any land to use it in their territory, and to sacrifice to create a new mana node.

• Can cast "Concentrate" (takes 1 turn to cast). Gives the "Concentrated" promotion (+1/+1 to strength, spellcasting forbidden, 50% chance to wearoff per turn).
• Arcane units act as commanders for their summons. This is automatic, and the arcane units have access to all great commander promotions. But, they cannot command units other than their minions.
• Can pillage mana and resources (see below)
• Any archmage can be sacrificed on a tile to create a new mana resource.

Ressources pillaging

Hvits arcane units can pillage resource. This can only be done in either their own land or in an unclaimed territory. Most resources can be pillaged. Mana has no specific constraints, but others require the knowledge of a specific technology. To pillage a resource, they have to stand on it, and to cast a spell which requires 4 turns. They gain a promotion, that can be passed to another unit and that allows to recreate a similar resource in another place. Beware, magic is not an exact science and pillaging iron can recreate copper or gold.

Resource pillaging constraints:

• Quarry resources: Construction
• Mine resources: Mithril working
• Cereals: Sanitation
• Pastures: Animal handling
• Plants: Medecine
• Hunting: Animal mastery
• Sea food: Optics (and required some specific training in a school)

All resources can be pillaged with two exceptions: vine, that requires some specific training, and gunpowder. Too many Hvit mages have left their life trying to extract gunpowder seeds from the ground and now these researchs are forbidden. Anyway, who really cares... Gunpowder is not so useful for an elven civ...


Mana resources:
Hvits, after the teaching of Gastrius, have a great knowledge on mana. They can even gain some economical bonus from it. The actual gain depends on the mana node.

• Most mana economical bonus (0/+1/+1) (food/production/trade)
• Exceptions :
  • Creation mana (2/0/0)
  • Earth and fire mana (0/2/0)
  • Air, water and dimensional mana (0/0/2)
  • Other necromancy related mana (-1/+2/+1)

Mana connectors:
Hvit mage have created a new technology to extract mana, which is called "mana connector". Mana connectors not only provide mana, but they can insure some economical advantage for it. Mana connectors can be build either on a mana resource or on any bare land. In the later case, their presence can attract mana and create a new mana resource. Mana connectors can be built by any arcane unit, and it requires 4 turns.

• Mana connector (0/0/+1); turn to an ancient mana connector in 10 turns
• Ancient Mana connector (0/+1/+1) and doubles the economical bonus of the mana node. When created on bare land without a mana resource, there is a 1/1000 probability per turn to create a new mana resource. Turns to a legendary mana connector in 20 turns.
• Legendary mana connector +1/+1/+1 and triple the economical bonus of the mana node. When created on a tile without a mana resource, there is a 1/500 probability per turn to create a new mana bonus. Turns to an eternal mana node in 30 turns
• Eternal mana connector. Only available with a mana node. +1/+1/+2, triple the mana economical bonus, and provides additional benefits from mana:
  • Divination mana gives +1 health in surrounding cities
  • Alteration mana gives +1 happiness in surrounding cities
  • Necromancy mana gives +2% research in the civ
  • Elementalism mana gives +2% production in the civ.

Schools

Schools are kind of universities that give the magic units some specific knowledge in a given field.
Precisely, schools give degrees in magic. Degrees are "bachelor of magic" (BM), "master of magic" (MM) and "doctor of magic" (DM). Training an arcane unit gives for free the BM of the school that is present in the city. The schools also provide paying training of units. BM is opened to units with chanelling I (or higher) and costs 200 gp. MM is opened to units with chanelling II (or higher) that already have the BM of the school and costs 150 gp. DM is opened to units with chanelling III that already have the MM of the school and costs 150 gp. DM can also be taken by units with chanelling II, but as it requires additional training, the time and price are doubled. Otherwise, all trainings takes 2 turns.
All schools give +2 exp to arcane units trained in the city.

Creating a school is rather expensive, as one has to build a nice place to train students with lecture rooms, labs, etc. It costs 300 hammers. One can have one (and only one) school in every city and they can be different or similar (but remember that the number of cities is limited to 3). Once a school is build, you can replace it with another school. It even does not costs you any production. Just send your army to throw the previous students and teachers out their buildings, and to kill the ones that resist and you can reuse the same buildings for another school. The only problem is that your population does not really like this kind of practise and one should expect 1-3 turns of revolt in the city, 1-2 drop in population and +3 unhappy citizens for some turns...


Special units:


Blocked units:
Arquebus, Bersekers, Phalanx, Immortals, Catapult, Cannon, War Chariot, Chariot, Knights

Buildings

World spell:
Blessing of Embarr (available at Strength of Will)
For every mana owned by the the civ, there is a 15% probability that every unit increases its knowledge in the corresponding mana sphere.
For instance, with 2 body mana nodes, every units has a 30% probability, either to get body 1, if it does not have already any body promotion, or to get body 2, if it already has body 1, etc...


Leaders:

"Beware everybody. We are just mages, our wands are ligther than your axes, ours robes are finer than your mails. But when our djinnis will have razed your cities and that we have harvested all the gifts of Creation, nobody will want to settle there. Ever."
DoK

Didn't read everything yet but something bugged me about the lore :

Quote from Magister Cultuum from one of the lore threads :

However, the only ones I know for a fact are dead are Laroth and Gastrius. A copy of Gastrius lives on in Perpentach.

Click to expand...

Would be hard for Gastrius to be your hero if he died. moreover , he was killed by Kylorin , so he probably not was one of the repentant ones.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=273776

There are interesting gameplay ideas though

Please, please don't make them elven.
There's already three in RifE at the moment.
Ljos, Svarts and (IIRC) Sidar.

And, nothing really in their lore shouts out elven. I'd keep away if I were you, please?

lemonjelly said:

Please, please don't make them elven.
There's already three in RifE at the moment.
Ljos, Svarts and (IIRC) Sidar.

And, nothing really in their lore shouts out elven. I'd keep away if I were you, please?

Click to expand...

The Sidar are not elven. They are men. Admittedly, they learned many of their rituals (including Shading) from Sandalphon's study with the Once-Elves in the Shaded Vale, but that does not make them elven.

There are plans for a new elven civ though, so 3 is the appropriate amount.

lemonjelly said:

Please, please don't make them elven.
There's already three in RifE at the moment.
Ljos, Svarts and (IIRC) Sidar.

And, nothing really in their lore shouts out elven. I'd keep away if I were you, please?

Click to expand...

You are right, they could be men with a similar gameplay. But a 3rd elven civ should be good thing (and it seems that there are other plans for that) and in the fantasy standards elves are supposed to be great mages (which neither Ljos, nor Svarts are).

Indeed, I really wonder if a sprawling civ without the economy boosting buildings that Kuriotates get, can really be viable. And making them elven is a way to imrpove that (with +1 prod thanks to the forests, +1 food thanks to FoL and happiness and health with way of the forest).

black_imperator said:

Didn't read everything yet but something bugged me about the lore :

Quote from Magister Cultuum from one of the lore threads :

Would be hard for Gastrius to be your hero if he died. moreover , he was killed by Kylorin , so he probably not was one of the repentant ones.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=273776

There are interesting gameplay ideas though

Click to expand...

Too bad... I really wanted to put an emphasis on metamagic...
Will think of that.

Well, Metamagic doesn't have an Unique Feature. You could make one and include that in your lore. Gastrius could have a son/daughter who's one of the leaders, or a close friend who kept notes of all his work?

lemonjelly said:

Well, Metamagic doesn't have an Unique Feature. You could make one and include that in your lore. Gastrius could have a son/daughter who's one of the leaders, or a close friend who kept notes of all his work?

Click to expand...

Why not. Dok could be the hidden son of Gastrius and Faeryl. Any fantasy world needs some half-elf.

I'd prefer to see different races, rather than ones we already have.

I heard something about gnolls which sounds cool.

Fairies would be great, but too princess y and similar to elves.

I'm thinking its time for a good underworld civ, which could have some great unique qualities. Some Spider-people, some blind troglodytes, hydras. Might be a bit similar to the Archos, but they focused almost solely on spiders, plenty of room for other underworlders IMO. Heroes 3 FTW

inuyashasama said:

I'd prefer to see different races, rather than ones we already have.

I heard something about gnolls which sounds cool.

Fairies would be great, but too princess y and similar to elves.

I'm thinking its time for a good underworld civ, which could have some great unique qualities. Some Spider-people, some blind troglodytes, hydras. Might be a bit similar to the Archos, but they focused almost solely on spiders, plenty of room for other underworlders IMO. Heroes 3 FTW

Click to expand...

Other races are planned, for the main mod. And the new Elven faction is NOT your typical elven race.

The one civ i want is the Illithid civ :



Oh yeah!

Illithid are so awesome!

Two aquatic races are planned. You've heard about the Bezeri. That's all I'll say on the subject.

Will they be able to build cities in the water, like in Planetfall?

That would be what is meant by 'aquatic'.

new water civ.. Aifons maybe? We already have the Scions filling in as another ancient civ!

The Aifons will never be in RifE. Maybe as a modmod, but not in the main mod.

It is my firm opinion that they were destroyed utterly, in order to allow Mulcarn to enter Erebus. Quite a bit of lore to back that up as well.

black_imperator said:

Didn't read everything yet but something bugged me about the lore :

Quote from Magister Cultuum from one of the lore threads :

Would be hard for Gastrius to be your hero if he died. moreover , he was killed by Kylorin , so he probably not was one of the repentant ones.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=273776

There are interesting gameplay ideas though

Click to expand...

Not that it really changes things, but since writing that we found out that Laroth never actually died, he just decided to go live in the land of the dead while still alive. He probably doesn't want to emerge until becoming a god though, and the Once Elves guarding the passage they used to except would probably try hard to stop him if he did.



I have no real basis for this, but for some reason I've always liked to think that after Gastrius died his the great machine of hell processed his soul into the Demon Lord known as Judecca.


Assuming he was not processed that fully though it is possible he could be resurrected. Some references imply that normally resurrection only works on souls that have not yet left the plane of Erebus, but that they can be returned if the god who rules the plain the soul inhabits wants them to be. Charadon's soul was dwelling in the eternal battle field of Camulos's hell before the Doviello Shamen convinced Camulos to allow them to resurrect him. If this civ was an evil enough civ I could imagine Aeron deciding to send Gastrius back.






Since this is planned to be an elven civ aligned with the Ljosalfar, the student of Kylorin who would fit them best is probably Majen, the elf who headed up the School of Creation Magic. As he is an elf and his magic sphere is one of the most Good aligned ones, I'd say it is probably that he is still alive and well. (The other elven master may still be around too, but Wode the master of Shadow Magic would almost certainly be a Svartalfar.)

It seems oddly appropriate for another Sprawling civ to have a connection to the creation sphere like the Kuriotates do. If you do change ti to fit the sphere better, remember that Creation magic s considered the most potent but least reliable sphere of all. Hmm...on second thought, you might have to change a lot it you want a creation focus, as this is the one sphere that relies most on innate talent and least on training. It practitioners would need that spark of rare genius given by Amathaon, and rarely have the discipline to go through the hierarchical schooling system. Amathaon seems like the most Chaotic of the Good gods, although his is the sort of creative chaos from which new forms of order spontaneously emerge.





It may be worth noting that the elven Civil war did not officially end until the Summer court vanquished and assimilated the Svartalfar, and Faeryl managed to impersonate Arendel so that she was left as the queen of all the elves and Arendel was left buried alive. Officially the 2 elven civs were at war for all of their seperate existence, it is just that the Age of Ice made actual offensives impossible. There were also several smaller elven communities which officially stayed out of the war, mostly due to isolation, most of which favored Arendel over Faeryl.



If I were to add another elven civ I'd likely make it the Once Elves. I'm afraid that implementing them would require divulging too much of the Ashes of Brigdarrow, which Kael presumably still wants to keep secret from the forum. I'd probably want him to reveal more canonical info on what they did after Auric's departure before I could implement it anyway.

MagisterCultuum said:

Not that it really changes things, but since writing that we found out that Laroth never actually died, he just decided to go live in the land of the dead while still alive. He probably doesn't want to emerge until becoming a god though, and the Once Elves guarding the passage they used to except would probably try hard to stop him if he did.



I have no real basis for this, but for some reason I've always liked to think that after Gastrius died his the great machine of hell processed his soul into the Demon Lord known as Judecca.


Assuming he was not processed that fully though it is possible he could be resurrected. Some references imply that normally resurrection only works on souls that have not yet left the plane of Erebus, but that they can be returned if the god who rules the plain the soul inhabits wants them to be. Charadon's soul was dwelling in the eternal battle field of Camulos's hell before the Doviello Shamen convinced Camulos to allow them to resurrect him. If this civ was an evil enough civ I could imagine Aeron deciding to send Gastrius back.

Click to expand...

Many thanks for these great precisions and suggestions.

Concerning alignment, I also considered evil as a possibility for this civ. Stealing neighbor resources is an odd practise for a good civ, even if it is a matter of survival. Anyway, there is no space for another evil elven civ and elvish characteristics have such a good synergy with a spawling civ.

Since this is planned to be an elven civ aligned with the Ljosalfar, the student of Kylorin who would fit them best is probably Majen, the elf who headed up the School of Creation Magic. As he is an elf and his magic sphere is one of the most Good aligned ones, I'd say it is probably that he is still alive and well. (The other elven master may still be around too, but Wode the master of Shadow Magic would almost certainly be a Svartalfar.)

It seems oddly appropriate for another Sprawling civ to have a connection to the creation sphere like the Kuriotates do. If you do change ti to fit the sphere better, remember that Creation magic s considered the most potent but least reliable sphere of all. Hmm...on second thought, you might have to change a lot it you want a creation focus, as this is the one sphere that relies most on innate talent and least on training. It practitioners would need that spark of rare genius given by Amathaon, and rarely have the discipline to go through the hierarchical schooling system. Amathaon seems like the most Chaotic of the Good gods, although his is the sort of creative chaos from which new forms of order spontaneously emerge.

Click to expand...

Creation could make sense. I focused on metamagic because mana is so important in this civ. For the mages, for economical reasons with the connectors, for the world spell. So important than archmages are even ready to be sacrificed for a new mana.

But being able to dig a resource and to recreate it in another place is a powerful, almost divine, operation similar to creation and they may have learnt it directly from Amatheon or from a great mage like Majen.

Problems with creation are that its spells are not really useful for a sprawling civ (except growth). When birth becomes available, probably all cities will be over 8 in size. And fertility is similar, but less powerful, than the resource manipulation feature of the civ. But another Creation 3 spell can be proposed, closer to the civ characteristics (maybe allowing to create a new resource (single shot, of course !) or to change an animal to another one). And it could make sense to have the knowledge of fertility as a prereq to any resource manipulation.

I understand what you say about training vs creativity. I like the idea of training and of schools that can give your mages great powers. But you have to pay for that. In money, in time, and even in revolt, population drop and unhappyness in your cities. And I do not really like too much randomness in the game. But maybe both can be combined. For instance, a school could be:

Amatheon Chapell
Students pray Amatheon for inspiration et revelations on the mysteries of creation

• BM: Free Creation 1 + Random feature.
• MM: Free Creation 2 + Random feature.
• DM: Free Creation 3 + Random feature.

where the random feature could be a nice mutation, knowledge of another mana sphere, a great promotion, or maybe even better a degree from a random other school (even not already built)..

If I were to add another elven civ I'd likely make it the Once Elves. I'm afraid that implementing them would require divulging too much of the Ashes of Brigdarrow, which Kael presumably still wants to keep secret from the forum. I'd probably want him to reveal more canonical info on what they did after Auric's departure before I could implement it anyway.

Click to expand...

The Once Elves... Ashes of Brigdarrow... Curious to learn about that! Just a matter a patience, if I understand

The Once Elves are Varn Gossam's original people, the descendants of a band of elven mercenaries led by Arak the Erkling (Varn's father) which Laroth hired before fleeing the Patrian capital for the sacred Isle of Nemora after sensing that Kylorin would soon have a change of heart and repent his evil ways. Arak and his band descended with Laroth into the Well of Creation, and were enslaved by the archmage in the land of the dead for centuries. They from the Netherworld (although Arak himself did not make it out) and created a civilization within the Well of Shadows, a liminal space that was neither fully in the world of the living or the world of the dead, which sunlight never reached. (This region was later merged with Erebus, when a young Auric Ulvin channeled the sun through the vale of shadows and destroyed it in order to create a distraction that would allow him, the other survivors of Brigdarrow, Talia, and Varn Gossam escape from the army of Varn's elder brother the Once Elf king Haerlond Gossam.) The Once Elves separated from the greater elven nation long before the civil war, and long ago abandoned elven culture and even the elven language to fit in better with the Patrians. Since they live in almost total darkness, their pallor is more extreme than the merely somewhat nocturnal Svartalfar, verging almost on appearing Drow in some instances. Most who saw them would assume they were Svartalfar, but they were actually on better terms with the Ljosalfar than anyone else. They were very isolationist though and did not really have any allies or enemies in Erebus.


The Ashes of Brigdarrow is a story dealing with Auric Ulvin's childhood, before he became an evil would-be god. It is supposed to be part of The Book of Tears, an anthology of tales of Erebus which Kael hopes to someday publish. A few sections of it were made publicly available a long time ago, but most of it was not. A year ago he sent me a rough draft of the whole thing for me to help him edit, but asked that I not share it with the forum. I sent it back with plenty of grammar/punctuational fixes, as well as pointing out a few inconsistencies and asking a few questions. He answered most of these, but not in very revealing ways, and I haven't heard from him about it since then. I may have revealed a bit too much from the tale, but there is still plenty I did not. The only portion of the actual text I've revealed is a small excerpt which I secretly added to the civilopedia in my modmod, in the entry for the Tarch's Tower unique feature. Said tower is a very minor part of the story yet plays an important role.