Chislev Module

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=24616


Hey guys, I'm here with the Chislev rebalancing no one asked for! Yay!

Anyways let me get down to business to defeat the huns with this module.

First of all, to play, simply download the file from the link, and put it in the modules folder. If I understood black imperator correctly, this should allow you to choose to turn this on or off.

Secondly, I recommend you use the standard version of Ashes of Erebus. It's the version I modded.

Now onto why you should totes download this mod.

Tribal Law now kicks but: I have changed the category to a cultural values civic, and given it a 20% production bonus, a 10% science boost, 25 % military production boost, gives a -25% number of cities modifier, and it gives the camp improvement 1 hammer and 1 commerce, as well as happiness from the buildings that you will build.

Buildings worth building: The Chislev were supposed to be a builder civ, but they had no buildings worth building. I fix this problem. Their elder council is now a generic elder council, except it keeps the +1 culture. The pagan temple now gives +10% science! The totem of the old enemy has been moved to horseback riding, it gives the mobility 1 promotion to all units built in its city, and it provides +10% production with horses, and +10% bonus to commerce with deer and fur.

Better unique units!: You ever wonder, geez, I want to conquer with these guys, but they don't have any shiny toys? Well, I've kind of fixed that! You know your rock raven? Well, it is now a bird of doom. It has 10 ranged strength and a cap of 90%. Your commander unit now starts with channeling one and channeling two, and has unit combat mage, so basically, you're a wizard Harry Chizlev commander. The Spirit Healer now begins with Body 1 & 2, Life 1 & 2, on top of what it had before.

Last small change- Absaroke is now Imperialistic Defender. There's more of a choice for the Chislev, either choose the leader who'll help you get a big empire, or the one who'll help you afford it.

And finally thanks go to,Black Imperator who answered some technical questions, Ronkhar who made Ashes of Erebus with some help, the team of rife, Kael and his crew, and finally the makers of Civ4 and the community who may or may not download this.


Future plans- Give me a week or two and I'll come up with some

Changelog version 1.1: I hear I'm supposed to make one of these
Chislev now have Civ trait Ancestral Wisdom, which gives all units except worker, settlers and Heroes Spirit Guide. Not sure how useful that'll be, but it fit.
Shaman Unit is Chislev replacement for mage.
Spirit Healer now has Medic 3 (which means heal) and has 2 base movement points.
War Chiefs now work as intended.
Rock Raven has lower ranged strength and damage limit, but gets some small collateral

Reserved

I always loved Chislev!!

yeah for your re-balancing !

/what a great christmas!

and here find one more for effect : "!"

Edit: I like your changes.. It's just that I liked the fact that their great-generals were usable as "soldiers", and now, while it gives an early-wizard, it's not exactly the same.

Well, I playtested the Chislev, and their commanders don't work as intended. They have channeling one and two, but can't get spellcaster promotions. Will have to fix that. Also, the rock ravens might be overpowered. Does anyone else think so? I might halve their strength, give them a requirement for sorcery, and give them collateral to make it less overpowered. Can anyone else give me feedback about this?

the sphere promotions require the Adept UnitCombat. You can give your Commander a promotion that gives them Adept as a secondary unitcombat.

jackelgull said:

Also, the rock ravens might be overpowered. Does anyone else think so? I might halve their strength, give them a requirement for sorcery, and give them collateral to make it less overpowered. Can anyone else give me feedback about this?

Click to expand...

That was my first thought on reading the patch notes; they have always been a diamond in the rough, but sound pretty bonkers now, if my understanding of ranged attack stats is right. Though I think illusionary units have essentially the same damage limit? So was withholding judgement until having tried the mod. Downloading now, can't wait to play!

-edit- Well, they're not quite as crazy as they sounded, but could probably still use a little dialing back. Maybe try 50-60% max ranged damage next? Definitely wouldn't vote for moving them to Sorcery though; the Hunter/Raven combo is one of the few things Chislev have had going for them in the early game these past years, making for excellent animal taming & settling, clearing out neutral territory & dungeons for expansion, scouting, farming enemy lands for war exp or pillage, or just providing a good defense long enough for your economy to finally hits its stride. Waiting until Sorcery to get to play around with Spirit Healers already feels like an eternity, and by the time you get them they're already somewhat obsolete on the melee combat front (and btw, I've never seen them start with or gain the ability to cast Spirit Guide, despite what their lore says?); if Rock Ravens were at Sorcery as well, they'd probably still be worth it (although you could just get Air2 for Maelstrom at that point), but it'd be a long, long slog to get there, and Chislev aren't the greatest for tech races, especially if they can't expand. But the effectiveness of the ravens scales with the strength of the enemy units, instead of that of the Chislev, thereby providing a means of alleviating the tech disadvantage for a time (or if it's just one of *those* games, chilling those barb groups out), until you can catch up.

...Though the tech race might not be as bad anymore, still testing tech orders on that front. Was dumb and went for TotOE too early first game, got a few generals out of slapping the Luchuirp around, but most of my expansions were no good without the correct techs and things were stalling out. The new bonuses for camps sound perfect, just need to stay focused on collecting the correct economy techs in the correct order once the Hunters & Ravens are out doing their thing.

--2nd edit-- Bugged prompt upon discovering Code of Laws; "Your society can now implement the civic Tribal Law (TXT_KEY_CIVIC_TRIBAL_LAW_STRATEGY). Would you like to start a revolution?"

--3rd edit--

Games 2 and 3 have gone much better ; the basic tech priority for each was Mysticism for God King and UBs, then Hunting for ravens, then Animal Husbandry and/or Code of Laws for taming and Tribal Law, order depending on how much room I've got to stretch out or go hunting at the start, and with resource techs like Mining and Calendar added in between where needed. Game 2 was a peaceful expansion across snowy hinterlands, until a clear tech lead had been established via FoL ancient forest camps and trade routes. Game 3 has been more war intensive, opting to attack the nearby Svarts and steal both their primo land and the RoK holy city, and because I didn't want to have to deal with their assassins or illusions later.

-In both the war and peace approach though, I made sure to keep hunting in the unsettled northlands, collecting creatures for either settling or augmenting my hunters, and clearing room to expand. Tribal Law plus Trade made all those distant settlements very worthwhile, and gave the hunters a place to rest up.
-Being able to run City States at the same time as Tribal Law has made expanding much less of a tightrope walk, though it's somewhat killed most of the urgency behind getting Councils of the Warchief. I'm still getting them eventually, just to stack more bonuses to unit exp and productions, and since the Warfare tech line leads to other big perks like Conquest, the Titan, Heroic Epic, Blitz, and possibly a warchief... overall to the change, just feels weird not really needing Councils anymore.
-Assassins were my first upgrade in both games. Aside from not being able to carry birds, they synergize well with rock ravens; the birds soften big targets up, and the assassins finish them off. Very solid chance of nabbing Aeron's Chosen as Chislev.
-By the time the Svarts went down in game 3 (turn 164, normal speed, as Absaroke) I had 4 warchiefs out, all generated from war exp. Only 2 of them were really all that leveled, to be honest, but if they all had magic as well, I imagine this game would be snowballing even harder than it is.



Some other change ideas for you... I don't know if any of these are still really needed, in the current state of the civ, but they'd be nice quality-of-life additions nonetheless.

-Give Chislev the Shaman unit, an existing unit replacing Adepts for three other tribal civs (The Clan, Archos, and Doviello) that doesn't require a mage guild. One less thing to have to build, makes the arcane line a tad more appealing from the outset, since you can use all your little satellite towns to build your adepts now while the big city producers can continue making actual fighters, other buildings, or important wonders. And fits right in with existing Chislev lore... always found it odd that they have the Council of the Shaman, and that Meskwaki himself is described as a shaman hero, but that they don't actually have the shaman unit. Little problem with all this, though, Shamans and Spirit Healers appear to have both the same 3d model and the same unit icon art.
-In the same sort of naming convention vein, give Warchiefs the ability to build their Councils of the Warchief with the Recruiter promotion. They're nearly the same thing as Command Posts, just with the global +defense and the maintenance modifier instead of the training rate mods to specific unit types. How you would want to handle this would bring a number of questions, though; if you were to implement this by just making these CotWCs replacements for the Command Post, I think it would mean only Natane would be capable of actually building them? While Absaroke would need to produce actual Warchiefs to build them (though as described above, that doesn't seem to be a problem anymore, so long as he's got a rival civ nearby to fight with)... while that'd be one way of making the two leaders more unique and different, I don't feel like Chislev having access to both Command Posts and CotWC is too powerful, and was actually playing around with stacking the starting exp from those two plus the Titan, or Apprenticeship, or Conquest, etc., in a number of strategies for them. And then there's the issue of whether this ability would have to follow the 1 per 3 relationship between CotWC and Tribal Councils, or if kicking enough butt in a war is enough of an accomplishment to warrant a CotWC reward.
-While considering the Warchief change above, and how it would've related to playing the older version Absaroke, I thought a neat idea might be a mechanic for gaining extra war experience from all combat experience. (If some other civ already has this gimmick, sorry, my bad.) It seemed a clean fit for Chislev lore, though; radicalized after the trauma experienced when the orcs rampaged through their territories, destroyed their ancestral homes and desecrated their most sacred sites, a portion of the Chislev populace has grown so xenophobic and distrustful of outsiders as to see all adversaries, be they another civilization, or just some random rabble of orcs and bandits, as mortal enemies in a war for survival. The point of the idea was a means of generating Warchiefs even if there were no enemy civs nearby to fight with in a given game, by letting them get a little war exp from fighting the neutral barb tribes (though in implementation, it seems like extending that to the Agares and Cernunnos factions, and not just Bhall, would be cleaner), but making it affect war exp gains from actual war sounded alright too. Originally I was thinking it'd work best by tying the mechanic to Totem of the Old Enemy, at a rate of something like +10% exp as war experience from all sources for each totem; so if you had just one TotOE in the starting city, and you killed an invading hill giant, you'd get war exp equal to 10% of the normal exp you'd get from killing the unit. If that was instead a Balseraph Freak, you'd get 110% war exp from it. Make that 3 total TotOE, and it's 30% and 130% war exp respectively. The new TotOE seems like it has enough going on at this point, though, so maybe a new totem to build might be preferable for this one. A Monument replacement, perhaps?

Thank you for the feedback. Many of these changes won't happen in the next version, but I'll keep them in mind for the future (if this mod has a future). What I am planning on doing next is scaling the rock ravens back to a 50% damage limit, and giving the Chislev a civ wide spirit guide promotion, meaning even if a unit dies in battle, its xp is never truly wasted. Also, I think I might just scrap the spirit healers spell casting abilities and give it heal and 2 base movement as well as a national limit of 4. This way you've got a healing unit that can keep up with your mobile army and heal them.

@black_imperator: how does "secondary unitCombat" works ? do you have any example (it interests me )

it's very simple, it's a tag you can add to any promotion that looks like this :


A unit with a promotion that has this tag will be seen by the game as a Commander ( in addition to its original unitcombat) and thus will have access to all commander promotions (again, in addition to the promotions it could access before).

that is sooo wonderful
And I suppose that tag doesn't appear in for units themselves... (EDIT: I checked.. it doesn't exist)

and as the promotion "secondary commander" already exists, I suppose that it's easier to create the Chislev commander as "UnitCombat_Arcane" and add "secondary commander" promotion than to do the reverse... which would need to create a new promotion.

New version out