I don't like this. 1 building requirement is bad enough - remember that lots of people wanted *all* the building requirements for units removed.
2 building requirements for a particular unit is a terrible idea, particualrly if one of those buildings does nothing but act as a requirement.
I personally lean towards preferring no build requirements for anything but specialist units (priests, mages) and maybe high end units (pikemen, knights), but I can live with 1 building requirement. Remember that in vanilla, units don't have building requirements.
I would also like to change the military school building back to a barracks that gives +2 free xp to all land units, and then just have the specialists (archery range, training yard, etc) give training. I don't like changing everything into training buildings.
* * *
Oh wait, I realized that I think by "spawn" you mean free units through a planar-gate mechanic, rather than building them with hammers. So the buildings literally do nothing but increase the spawn rate. That seems kinda lame. If you did want to use them, why *not* make them the training ground/stable etc. replacements, that give both xp and act as the placeholders for unit spawns?
But why should they get a bunch of free units? That is a hugely powerful mechanic. Compare these guys to the Amazons, you are making the Lizards massively more powerful. Or compared to the Empire or normal human civs. They get building in jungles, *and* spawn free units?
Remember that Sheaim and Kahdi have weak-ass unit rosters without the spawning.
sorry i should have been more specific. these are required for the lizardman victory condition (ie closing the warp gates) and they are linked directly to the Engine of the Gods Unit.
How will this victory condition work? You win when you cast the spell?
i make one Plaque national wonder for each Mark of the Old Ones improvement (there are 6), and have each plaque require the resource that the Marks provide.
The intention of the feature issue was to have all these improvements yield the *same* resource, not different ones, but we could do it this way.
This is still going to be messed up for random maps. What if not all 6 features spawn? What if the map isn't large enough?
I'm still very ambilvalent about all this. A victory condition attainable by only a single civ, that only works sometimes depending on the map script?
What tech requirements do you have in mind for the Plaques?
I guess you could use the Place All Features function if you wanted to play for this condition. I like the concept of requiring them to try to capture the features.
You should give Amazons something that benefits from the Old ones feature resources too; we want to make these civs fight over these resources.
Sacrificial Pit of Sotek: Slaves can be sacrificed to provide +1 Happy for x turns, and/or +15 Beakers.
Why not tie this into the Temple of the Old Ones? i see no need for a separate building.
nah. im pretty adament about the chamelions being invisible.
Then lower their strength or give thme some other penalty; IIRC the skaven ranger is invisible but has -1 strength. But you can't just take a standard ranger *and* put such a powerful ability on top of it, particularly when the AI can't really understand how to use recon units to detect invisible units, so its easy to run around eating all their workers.
Sorry. I've added a design feature into a lot of the other monsters; tier2 monsters (giant, griffon etc) all require either aerie or breeding grounds. But these are not common resoruces.
So I made the tier1 monsters (troll, pegasus) cost more (120 hammers) but build 50% faster with their resource.
So, you *can * build a troll even without breeding grounds, but it will cost you 40 more hammers to do so.
I suggest you use this here to, so the Amazonian and Lizardmen jungle swarm costs 120 hammers, but builds 50% faster with the breeding ground resource.
sorry, its a pikeman replacement.
Ok, probably fine then.
it makes sense if you know what the salamanders actually do.
basically the salamanders are large dinosaurs that produce a HIGHLY corrosive, toxic saliva, strong enough to corrode stone. the skinks poke the salamanders with thier spears to antagonise it, so it spits its acid at walls.
Ok. Then change the name; not a "Skink Salamander hunting pack" just make it "Salamander". Like "Giant".
So it is a strength 5+4 poison unit that does collateral damage to 2 units like a Giant, and has a catapult's *wall* bombardment ability, but not their ranged attack bombardment ability.
and no, it shoudl require the last magic line tech and a high tiered construction tech.
Arcane mastery and Advanced engineering?
But if the engine wins you the game, then why does it even need combat stats?
Skink Mage-Priest: strength 4, 1 moves, starts with channelling 1. can learn any wind of magic.
Slann Mage-Priest: Strength 8, 1 moves, starts with channelling 1 2 and 3. starts with all slann spells, can learn any wind of magic.
This is a problem. The winds of magic promotions all require their appropriate techs. So the only way that you can get this is just to let them have access to all the Lore of X techs, and they'll have to research them in order to be able to get any .
And then go back into the promotion requirements, and change it so that for eg:
Bright magic 1 requires channeling 1 AND [Dark magic 1 OR lizardman racial promotion OR Skink racial promotion].
Jade magic 1 requires channeling 1 AND [Lore of Athel loren 1 OR lizardman racial promotion OR skink racial promotion]
etc.
Also, why only a channeling 1, and a channeling 3? No channeling 2?
Can one version upgrade to the next?
Logical tech requirements are Magic of the Old Ones (for channeling 1), Education (for channeling 2) - or Tracking (for channeling 2) and Arcane Mastery for channeling 3.
Another possibility: they could also start with 1 random level 1 lore of x promotion, so that they can cast something before you research any lore of x techs.
i think id rather the slann spawn via the sheaim mechanic.
Ok, this is doable. Maybe the Plaque buildings should be the requirements for whatever super-mages to spawn?
And then you could just steal gods of old disasters directly, including having the unit die? If they're free you don't need to be able to preserve them.
Wait, are you now just talking about the archmages as being the Slann?
I thought you wanted both normal caster wizards, and then Slann spawning through the planar-gate who didn't use normal magic but could cast Disasters instead?
i think the basic Skink Brave and Saurus Warrior units chould be buildable without any spawning buildings. maybe also alow their workers to upgrade to military skink units at level 5?. give them *SOME* measure of control over their units.
I'm confused again.
I was talking about super-disaster caster-units.
You are now saying that they shouldnt' be able to build their normal units with hammers *at all*? And should *only* be getting units through the planar gates?
That is incredibly hard to balance. The normal units should be buildable.
a battering ram is fine i guess. just out of flavour. id prefer something like a Triceratops or Ankylosaurus.
Does that make sense for Amazons?
I'm relatively indifferent, but it would be pretty weird for a Triceratops to require the Construction tech.
basically this is supposed to represent tha fact that a slann sitting at the top of their pyramid can see the slann sitting at the top of a pyramid in the nearest city. and because the slann all have mind links they can share each others power and cast spells through each other. this isnt essential, just a cool idea.
sorry guys.
