A new unique feature

While making geat healer Ominous Destiny had the idea to make a new Archos related unique feature.

Here's my suggestion.

Nephila Clavata, Explorable Unique feature
always found on a forest/hill tile
provide silk
+1 Hammer on the tile
+1 Gold on the tile
+2 Gold with feral bond
+1 Hammer with animal handling
Randomly spawn baby spider if outside civilisation territory. 5% chance each turn ?
Count as a dark weald for archos when inside their territory
revealed by the "tell me about the natural wonder of erebus" choice during the traveller event
Mother spawn on that wonder when the archos use their world spell awaken mother
Archos units and any spider exploring it before awaken mother has been cast get the mother's touch promotion
Other civilisation gets random result;
- 10% - cernunnos baby spider spawn
- 10% - cernunnos spider spawn
- 10% - cernunnos giant spider spawn
- 10% - cernunnos level 3 giant spider with random promotion (rhagodessa, mucro, textus, argyroneta or Venenum) spawn
- 10% - cernunnos spider swarm spawn
- 15% - unit is lost
- 12% - unit gain the hallucinating promotion, if already have it, it gain the prophetics visions promotion
- 10% - unit is heavily damaged (~80% damage) and is poisoned
- 4% - unit get the mother's touch promotion if awaken mother hasn't been cast
- 3% - unit get the poisonous blade promotion if able
- 3% - recon unit get the spider blood promotion, other get the spiderkin promotion
- 2% - civilisation get Baeynrae(great healer) if she hasn't been created yet.
- 1% - civilisation get a baby spider with the spiderkin promotion
This "Dungeon" can't be cleared

Pedia:
Agares returned to Nyx and destroyed everything therein, every creature he created, every monument constructed, every glorious thought and idea. Everything save but a single, insignificant spider. It is said that this spider crawled her way to the surface and entered Erebus through the Nephila Clavata. Here it hung and spun her silk. Once in a great while a creature would seek refuge in the cavern and the spider would sustain herself on its flesh. In a single bite, she would experience all of its memories… needs, aspirations, desires, corruptions, aversions, and torments. One day she consumed a child of Ljosalfar and experienced memories of the future. With this knowledge, she burrowed deep into the earth to await an age of rebirth.


This features would use new promotions
Mother's touch
- Spider units growth 50% faster
- non-spider unit have a 5% chance to become a spider egg each turn.
- 5% to expire each turn unless the unit also have the spiderkin promotion
- gain the spiderkin promotion when this one expire

Hallucinating (will be something else if too hard to code)
- enemy/neutral unit appearing only in field of view of units with this promotion are seen as another random unit
- 4% chance to expire each turn unless the unit also have the prophetic visions promotion

Prophetic visions
- a small random part of the map (4~8 adjacent tiles) is revealed each turn

And Mother's touch would use a new unit
Spider egg
Power: 0
Movement: 0 (can't be higher)
10% chance to become a baby spider each turn

ToDo: add an event with no effect for the archos when that world improvement is on the map
Mention the archos in the pedia / write a more archos related story. These are probably the caves they took shelter in during the age of ice
Explain in the story that this wonder is a giant natural underground maze infested with spider
write a small text for each exploration result
rethink mother's touch... currently overpowered
make different, more friendly explore lair result for when mother had been awakened. idea: Chance to transform the tile into hell terrain more chance when the armagedon counter's high enough (reread agares-related story. Would clear the dungeon or alter the wonder in some way)
Tweak the pre-awakening exploration chances to be more fair for non archos
Add some other result for archos unit, keeping mother's touch result very high (minimum 2/3rd of the time)
I never really paid attention but I think the great person are generated in a specific order, the possibility to get a specific great healer from a source need random generation. need to verify

Lot to do


Changes:

2013-09-30
Verified: check if there's a better. "Tell me about..." choice for that world improvement (there's not)
added: Mother spawn on that tile when the archos use their world spell awaken mother

2013-09-29 4pm
changed ressource provided by the wonder. Will now give silk, gold and hammer. Reason: Nephila Clavata can be used as a mine full of spider web (silk)

2013-09-29 3am
Changed part of the story;
In a single bite, she experienced all of its memories…
In a single bite, she would experience all of its memories… needs, aspirations, desires, corruptions, aversions, and torments.

Here the spider hung and spun her silk.
Here it hung and spun her silk.

It is said that the spider crawled her way to the surface...
It is said that this spider crawled her way to the surface...

Erikulum said:

Lot to do, will wait for the modder approval before finishing everything

Click to expand...

Luckily there is modular loading, so you don't necessarily need approval to make this component, just compatibility. Once it's complete and bugless I'm sure Ronkhar would consider adding it.

I did some simple XML work last night. I still need to get the modular python working.

While I have some base in programation, I never used or even seen python code. Never even considered making a mod. I may be interested enough to try, my friend told me python is simple enough.

BTW, perfect art choice, will look great in a forest

One day she consumed a child of Ljosalfar and experienced memories of the future.

Click to expand...

Why did eating a Lljosalfar child cause this?

That feature was invented in this thread, Baerynrae's story. I (or we) will probably write a more archos-oriented story for it

well,

my 0.2:
this lair is totally unbalanced.

normally lairs / big lairs are 10-20% big bad, 20-30% bad, 0-20% neutral/small good, 20-30%good, 10-20% big good.

here, for archos it is : 100% big-good (as mother's touch is super strong for archos)
and for non-archos it is...
35% big bad.... (death/ 85% damage / big spiders); 91% bad/bigbad: small spiders / hallucinating, mothers'touch (5% chance of losing a unit so it becoms a baby-SPIDER???)

IMO, this lair could do well by being more balanced for non-archos civs.
and get lower boni (or some bad-results (not big bad, but at least bad) even for archos).


but otherwise nice idea, lore and effect-wise

It is very unbalanced. Archos should have a chance of dying as they're consumed for their memories to see if its time to rise.
Some Archos units could become permanently bound to the plot, "must defend mother".
Some Archos units could become servants of Mother, taking their commands directly from Mother and no longer listening to the Archos superiors, i.e. unit is replaced with an identical one controlled by Cernunnos.

When Archos cast their world spell, should the Mother unit be generated at this feature if its in the game rather than at their capital?

Calavente said:

well,
this lair is totally unbalanced.
normally lairs / big lairs are 10-20% big bad, 20-30% bad, 0-20% neutral/small good, 20-30%good, 10-20% big good.

here, for archos it is : 100% big-good (as mother's touch is super strong for archos)
and for non-archos it is...
35% big bad.... (death/ 85% damage / big spiders); 91% bad/bigbad: small spiders / hallucinating, mothers'touch (5% chance of losing a unit so it becoms a baby-SPIDER???)

Click to expand...

You are right, it's totally unbalanced.

I did this list at 2am, my goal was to make this feature unappealing for non-archos... at least while mother is still asleep. I want to add a different, more friendly set of result for other civs when mother's out. So maybe that will help

I added tweak the chances to be more fair to the TODO list but it will stay more bad-result oriented since the dungeon can't be cleared

thanks for the stats btw.

Mother's touch effect need to be tweaked. I will probably make it so that promotion never grant spiderkin and make the spider lose the promotion when they evolve. Transforming units in spider seem like a very strong mechanism but take ~30 turn (if they don't lose the promotion) and slighty reduce your chances to spawn new ones (I don't know the formula but I read that Archos have less chances to spawn them for each spider they already have)

Calavente said:

5% chance of losing a unit so it becoms a baby-SPIDER???

Click to expand...

4% chance to have 50% chance for the unit to turn into a baby spider (that can evolve). Seem more like a good thing to me, especially early game. Could treat it like a disease non-archos unit so that it would be removed when the unit is healed by magical mean

Calavente said:

IMO, this lair could do well by being more balanced for non-archos civs.
and get lower boni (or some bad-results (not big bad, but at least bad) even for archos).

Click to expand...

Lplate said:

It is very unbalanced. Archos should have a chance of dying as they're consumed for their memories to see if its time to rise.
Some Archos units could become permanently bound to the plot, "must defend mother".
Some Archos units could become servants of Mother, taking their commands directly from Mother and no longer listening to the Archos superiors, i.e. unit is replaced with an identical one controlled by Cernunnos.

Click to expand...

Will do, I like your idea for the "bad stuff". May also add a chance to become a "hybrid" - strong early game unit (4~5 power) that can't evolve or use weapon

Calavente said:

but otherwise nice idea, lore and effect-wise

Click to expand...

thanks

Lplate said:

When Archos cast their world spell, should the Mother unit be generated at this feature if its in the game rather than at their capital?

Click to expand...

Yes it should. Added it to the wonder effect.

That make me think. What happen if 2 archos leader are playing in the same game, can they both awaken mother?

Erikulum said:

That make me think. What happen if 2 archos leader are playing in the same game, can they both awaken mother?

Click to expand...

I think the game allows two similar civs to use the same national heroes - a check in the XML could confirm that. ( It's the religious heroes that are limited globally.) Same approach should apply to the world spell for getting Mother.

Just got another smaller idea that seem easier to program and I will start there so I put this unstarted project on hold for now. If you like it and are willing to program it then go for it!

Reread mother entry in the pedia... It's specified that only one mother can exist at once

Civ heroes are world limited. If there are multiple instances of the same civ only one can build the civ hero. If they are created by some other means however, like a spell, it is possible to exceed that limit (depending on how the spell is coded).

If a unit has a national limit it can be built again once you go below the limit. This would not work for heroes, you would be able to build them again if they die.