Esus barbarians

ID like to see some Esus mechanics:

1. Upon first adoption of Esus by any civ, Barbarians spawn a Nightwatch
2. Upon discovery of optics, barbarians can build privateers
3. Any civ that adopts Esus, allows barbarians to build one recon unit from that civ


the reasons are pretty much, that in MP, as it is right now, you aren't going to fool anyone with your hidden nationality units, which makes the Svaltafar worldspell the lamest MP-wise, and Esus pretty much the worst religion by far. In fact, I cant even imagine anybody thinking that Esus is a balanced religion compared to the rest.

An interesting idea for the spy thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308856 would be to allow spies to "convert" barbarians to the cause, by paying a healthy chunk of gold, the barbarian unit comes under the command of the player, but still remains masked.... if possible, unattackable by barbarians, (perhaps invisible to them?)

Partially seconded: the barbarians should at least make pirates. As for the Nightwatch and civ-specific recon units, those don't have the feel of barbarians...

Maybe allow HN units to become independent, somehow?
I'm not sure how it could be handled, though. There are many issues:
- Should it be able to attack its home civ?
- If not, how do we do it? A (hidden?) promotion saying what civ it originally was, so it can't attack those? Mustn't make independent HN look different for other human players.
- Then the independent unit could be more likely to pick targets in civs that its original civ has sour relations with. Or do we want to avoid that, to explain attacks by HN units on allies?
- Might be interesting to have a different UNIT_AI for those: Sneaky, will not risk itself too much, will retreat to safe land if possible (home civ territory if it doesn't have open borders with the potential attackers) to make intelligent use of HN units more believably assignable to independent units...
- Can it become independent without the player's consent? (0.5% chance per turn while HN, or something). Which would make it a good excuse for a human player to explain what a rampaging unit is doing. The loyalty promotion could be hidden when on HN units (except that it would be a couter-nature synergy between Law and Esus; is that acceptable?)
- Maybe have it pop out of your borders when it turns barbarian, or pick an outside target (for now).

Lots of questions...

Jules.lt said:

Partially seconded: the barbarians should at least make pirates. As for the Nightwatch and civ-specific recon units, those don't have the feel of barbarians...

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Neither do spectres, or mistforms, or Wraiths, but they are really cool as barbarians. (In patch R, there was a barabarian wraith).

Maybe allow HN units to become independent, somehow?
I'm not sure how it could be handled, though. There are many issues:
- Should it be able to attack its home civ?
- If not, how do we do it? A (hidden?) promotion saying what civ it originally was, so it can't attack those?
- Can it become independent without the player's consent? (0.5% chance per turn while HN, or something). Which would make it a good excuse for a human player to explain what a rampaging unit is doing. The loyalty promotion could be hidden when on HN units,
- Maybe have it pop out of your borders when it turns barbarian, or pick an outside target (for now).

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the independent thing has been done, and it is not considered an advantage and/or fun.

Neomega said:

Neither do spectres, or mistforms, or Wraiths, but they are really cool as barbarians. (In patch R, there was a barabarian wraith).

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Come on, big scary monsters are perfectly flavorful as barbarian units

Neomega said:

the independent thing has been done, and it is not considered an advantage and/or fun.

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Are you talking about the previous mechanic for enraged?

In any case, what about this: make barbarian City Watches/recon units of the civ spawn randomly from cities with Council of Esus (again, 0-1% chance per turn per city) with the kind of AI I mentionned and those civ promotions to make them act as independent allies.
City Watches could have UNITAI_CITYDEFENSE, or whatever it's called.

That would also make Esus more desirable, which is a good thing.

Jules.lt said:

Come on, big scary monsters are perfectly flavorful as barbarian units

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But masterless assassins aren't?

In any case, what about this: make barbarian City Watches/recon units of the civ spawn randomly from cities with Council of Esus (again, 0-1% chance per turn per city) with the kind of AI I mentionned and those civ promotions to make them act as independent allies.
City Watches could have UNITAI_CITYDEFENSE, or whatever it's called.

That would also make Esus more desirable, which is a good thing.

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perhaps, but what I am trying to fix, is the question of ownership of HN units. Its more a MP thing. I still want control of units, I just want the other players to question who is in control.

Neomega said:

But masterless assassins aren't?

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Well, those always have an employer, don't they?

Neomega said:

perhaps, but what I am trying to fix, is the question of ownership of HN units. Its more a MP thing. I still want control of units, I just want the other players to question who is in control.

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Same here. It's even more believable, too: HN units out of your control come out of your cities to attack your neighbors. What can you do about it? :innocent:
(and you still have full control of the units you build; only free ones are out of control)

eh, I know how you feel about HN units being easily identifiable... hopefully that can be changed so that people can use them and others cannot know it was them

Jules.lt said:

Same here. It's even more believable, too: HN units out of your control come out of your cities to attack your neighbors. What can you do about it? :innocent:
(and you still have full control of the units you build; only free ones are out of control)

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The only problem with that is that the victim will still blame You for their attacks. Since you built them.

The only time HN works in MP atm, is when you are so powerful that you can get away with attacking with them against someone and they are too afraid to declare war over it. And you are too afraid to declare war too, maybe because of the victims defensive pacts.

It is pretty silly that the Svartalfar revolve around hidden nationality so much, when they're the only dark elf race and all of their units are completely visually distinctive.

Same with a hidden nationality hero. He's unique. There's only one of him in the world, and only one civ can build him. Who do you think alazkan belongs to ?

That's why I suggest to create barbarians of different races.
In general the team should make the game a bit more MP-friendly as many players (like me) consider MP the most interesting part of the game as finally you have an enemy that uses the cool strategies the team designed. For example the Amurite wordspell in SP is pretty useless, but in MP it is one of the best.
Concerning the Svartalfar worldspell:Is it possible to give a unit a different skin if you don't play them? Because this IMHO would be the solution for this problem. So the Svartalfar players sees the normal darkelf skins whilst the other players see a normal barbarian skin. Certainly it would not make much sense flavorwise, but mechanicwise you could finally use it.

Grey Fox said:

The only problem with that is that the victim will still blame You for their attacks. Since you built them.

The only time HN works in MP atm, is when you are so powerful that you can get away with attacking with them against someone and they are too afraid to declare war over it. And you are too afraid to declare war too, maybe because of the victims defensive pacts.

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It also works to keep loki out of your territory, without war, as I did in a game with a large army of bears.

It sucks right now, because ot "roleplay" the sidar, or more exactly, Esus, my only option is to capture animals and kind of use them as an underground army, when I would so much prefer to use actual rogue-type units. I am happy at least now that barbarian animals heal, this help somewhat in hiding the owner.

Is it possible for the HN promotion to make the unit look like a barbarian (i.e. orc) unit?

Grey Fox said:

The only problem with that is that the victim will still blame You for their attacks. Since you built them.

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No you didn't: they popped automagically

It also occurs to me that the "hidden" status of Esus-running civs has little point in Multiplayer. Thing is, for any non-Agnostic civ, there's absolutely no point in not running a religion. That means that in Multiplayer, you going from a religion to no-religion pretty much states outright that you're worshipping Esus. What if we let the Esus civs faux-adopt a different religion? So you'd have civilizations that give every sign of following the Order or the Fellowship, but who secretly are sabotaging their neighbors with Nightwatch? It seems like it would be purely a cosmetic change, and a flavorful one at that. But useful nonetheless.

imho when you open up diplomacy with a CoE civ, it should show that they're using your same religion. of course Esus civs would deceive others into thinking they are brothers of the faith... and then backstab

25Hour said:

It also occurs to me that the "hidden" status of Esus-running civs has little point in Multiplayer. Thing is, for any non-Agnostic civ, there's absolutely no point in not running a religion. That means that in Multiplayer, you going from a religion to no-religion pretty much states outright that you're worshipping Esus. What if we let the Esus civs faux-adopt a different religion? So you'd have civilizations that give every sign of following the Order or the Fellowship, but who secretly are sabotaging their neighbors with Nightwatch? It seems like it would be purely a cosmetic change, and a flavorful one at that. But useful nonetheless.

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This is the better way of fixing Esus. Now no-one knows who's responsible for the hidden units!

(Ideally implemented as: you outwardly appear to keep your old religion, and its associated diplo mods. Everything else works as normal - some units disband, and you can't build 'old religion' specific units/buildings. When icon/diplo queries your religion, return Esus if that civ is also Esus, else return the 'old religion', stored elsewhere.)

Though this doesn't fix HN in general, including the Svartalfar world spell.

EDIT: actually, diplo mods aren't necessary - the AI already doesn't care about you being Esus, so you don't need to deceive it. Just the icon (and maybe other queries that I've forgotten*) should be enough to deceive a human player.

*such as those Grey Fox points out below

Not only that, it clearly says NeOmega has converted to the Council of Esus. Plus you can see on F7 screen where the Esus holy city is founded. And once the HQ is built you can check the wonder list who owns it. So yea, it's very secret alright.

Imuratep said:

That's why I suggest to create barbarians of different races.
In general the team should make the game a bit more MP-friendly as many players (like me) consider MP the most interesting part of the game as finally you have an enemy that uses the cool strategies the team designed. For example the Amurite wordspell in SP is pretty useless, but in MP it is one of the best.
Concerning the Svartalfar worldspell:Is it possible to give a unit a different skin if you don't play them? Because this IMHO would be the solution for this problem. So the Svartalfar players sees the normal darkelf skins whilst the other players see a normal barbarian skin. Certainly it would not make much sense flavorwise, but mechanicwise you could finally use it.

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I definitely agree with the Multiplayer thing. The AI is getting decent, but it will always be quite predictable, unlike human opponents, and therefore ultimately unsatisfying to beat.

That said, I think the proposed fix (while a step in the right direction) will not completely fix the problem, due to the fact that Svartalfar units all have the Commando promotion, which barbs almost never have. I'm not sure how one would hide this-- give Faeryl Viconia a different trait than Raiders? Maybe Charismatic. Something with no free promotions, at least to melee units.

Whatever is decided, though, I really don't think the Svartalfar worldspell should be announced. It's kinda like yelling "SNEAK ATTACK!"

It would be nice if non-animal HM units appeared as a cloaked figure. Have some barbarian units show up as cloaked figures throughout the game and then you really never know if it's a barb or somebody's HN unit.

the_fish said:

EDIT: actually, diplo mods aren't necessary - the AI already doesn't care about you being Esus, so you don't need to deceive it. Just the icon (and maybe other queries that I've forgotten*) should be enough to deceive a human player.

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Come to think, diplo mods might be necessary-- I think there's still that diplomacy screen where you can see the breakdown of how each AI sees each other civ. If there's no diplo bonus for Esus civs, that'd give their true religion away to any human looking at the screen. (assuming we're talking a multiplayer game with an AI or two thrown in.)

Also, diplo modifiers would be neat and flavorful!