Pre-EkoNES: Fall From Heaven

[Ekolite]

Use of the original seven would actually be fairly discouraged. Players can use them if they really want, but there are 21 gods and any number of ghosts, spirits and idols available to worship. It would be better to have a little bit of imagination.

The Culture and Society line does indeed improve and strengthen religions, allowing you powerful religious Units and buildings. There may be a few techs available in other lines which also help of course. The main one that springs to mind is the Construction sub-line which is needed at various stages for many buildings.

One important thing to rememeber is that you are not your people, I am your people. Therefore you cannot outright control their beliefs and practises. You may influence them by announcing a state religion, making use of Preachers or projects however.

At the start of the game, most people will esssentially be pagan, or loosely worshipping one of the 21 gods. Over time these faiths will gain or lose momentum as a result of events and player actions.

For example, you could choose to run an ''Inquisition'' Project, which would attempt to remove undesirable religions. It is usually in your best interests for you to have a set religion and to try to make it as dominant as possibel in your lands, as having opposing faiths in Empire can lead to destabalising events and reduces your people's sense of unity (Cultural Stability) which causes a whole load of problems, the most extreme being seperatist states, rioting and civil war.

[kenkrajen]

are the lanun/calabim/malakim still open?

[Algeroth]

It's February already? Why someone haven't noticed me?

Can I take the Malakims?

[Ekolite]

I'm pretty sure I sent you a PM Alegroth.

EDIT: Although I might have you confused with Adrogans... One of you got a PM...

Didn't I put it on the front page?

[Ekolite]

Kenkrajen, I'm going to put you on a reserve list. If I decide I can handle more players then you will be in the game, if not then I'm afraid I can't accept you although as a reserve you will take over for other players if they have to permanently leave the game for some reason.

Alegroth was my first reserved player.

---

Assumming we have no drastic lore changes I am very, very pleased with the spread of players across the allignments, according to cannon lore we have 3 good nations, 3 evil nations and 2 neutral nations. Of course things are unlikely to be so cut in stone as Good, Evil or Neutral, but we might just avoid the extermination of all wordly evil unlike in the previous NESes .

Of course, I plan to intervene long before that ever happpens. Oh sorry, did I say ''I''? I meant ''Agares'' .

[Tyrs]

Heh, I think the NESes will become Ffh 1-Good Ffh 1- Neutral Ffh 3-Evil
I've seen KC's writing...

[Ekolite]

Hahaha I'll do my best to make sure the allignments stay roughly in balance, it should make for a more interesting game I think.

Also, all players will need to send me their email address via PM asap. This is because you will hopefully over the next week or two be receiving an example stats spreadsheet. This serves three purposes:

1. It will help us iron out any potential contact problems before the start of the game.

2. It will allow you to see what you are getting yourselves into, the spreadsheet is unfortunately quite exhaustive although i am doing my upmost to add explanatory comments in a range of places. Although it looks complex it is fairly easy to understand once you know how it works.

3. It will allow the players to become familiar with the spreadsheet before tehy are expected to write orders refering to it.

[KillerClowns]

Originally Posted by Ekolite

Of course, I plan to intervene long before that ever happpens. Oh sorry, did I say ''I''? I meant ''Agares'' .

You can't see me right now, but I'm doing a happy dance. This is just as well, since seeing my happy dance has an effect similar to staring directly at the geometries of a Lovecraftian horror.
EDIT:

Originally Posted by Tyrs

I've seen KC's writing...

Not gonna lie, one of my plans is "in case of emergency, be too interesting and/or useful to destroy."

[Ekolite]

Not gonna lie, one of my plans is "in case of emergency, be too interesting and/or useful to destroy.

Good strategy .

[orangelex44]

Bad strategy. The best one is to be the destroyer, not the destroyee...

[KillerClowns]

Originally Posted by orangelex44

Bad strategy. The best one is to be the destroyer, not the destroyee...

That's why it's prefaced with "in case of emergency." As in, "if things are going poorly." If I have the power required to be the destroyer, it isn't exactly an emergency, is it? Although I fully intend to remain interesting regardless of where I stand.

[Ekolite]

Just to show this is still poughing slowly along, a small addittion to the rules:

Recruitment

A maximum of one unit can be recruited in a city or fort.

Some units require special buildings to be built. These units can only be built in a city, as their pre-requisite building cannot be built in a fort.

For units requiring a resource, you can recruit a maximum of units requiring that resource equal to how many of that resource you have access to. For example, if you have a charioteer building producing one chariot resource, and you import another chariot resource, you may train a maximum of two chariots per turn. These must be trained in separate cities or forts.

Similarly, you may only manufacture weapons upgrades for your units equal to the number of the metal resource you have. Weapon production requires gold, and they can be traded separate of traderoutes to other players, like a player might trade techs or gold.

Drafting

To gain additional units in an emergency, they can be drafted. Drafting can only take place in cities. Only certain units can be drafted, and they will be listed in the unit stats. Drafted units have a 20% strength penalty compared to traditionally trained units, and the city gains a 5% Government approval penalty for each unit that is drafted. This penalty can only be removed by disbanding the unit. If these drafted units become heavily damaged or destroyed, the city will receive base approval penalties that cannot be removed, even when the unit is disbanded.

The total number of units that can be drafted per turn is 1 in a city with a population of 1-4, 2 with a population of 5-9, 3 with a population of 10-14 etc etc.

I spent a couple of hours today completely redesigning how combat will work, making it far less hassle to do and making player tactics much more important and do more then just give a % bonus. Perhaps tomorrow I will post details on how combat works, although many mods seem to keep the actual mechanisms of battle quite shadowy, perhaps to prevent expoitation and/or complaints.

[Ekolite]

I have three of the seven tech lines completely mapped out, three more roughly planned but still in need of refining and the final tech tree (Government) is only going to be ten techs long at the max.

I've had an interesting idea about how to work mana, having it as a resource that is produced with mana node improvements, used up in rituals and spells by mages, and possibly stored for later use.

For example, a mana node may produce 2 nature mana resources per turn, you might be running a ritual which eats up a nature mana each turn in exchange for a food bonus of 15% in your capital, you would then have 1 nature mana available for use in combat. A higher leveled mage would be able to channel more mana at once and so cast more powerful spells.

This would be a useful way to rationalise spell-casting and make it more strategically orientated. Unfortunately, a different system will need to be created for priests, and I don't know what yet. Any ideas or opinnions based on that would be very helpful.

[Immaculate]

This mana system rewards peace-lovers which i am not sure i like. Perhaps a limit could be placed on mana storage (without making mana batteries or something).

Otherwise, I REALLY like it- especially the turn by turn consumption for peaceful purposes.

Priest spells could be based on 'god's name' faith. For example, Junil faith would power order spells and Lugus faith would power empyrean spells. The faith would be drawn from the total world's population that adheres to that religion (or just the player's nation). Bigger civs with more devoted population would have more faith to draw.

EDIT: hide the battle stats for exactly the reasons you outlined.

Immac.

[Ekolite]

Yes, mana will definitely have a limit on storage (if I allow it to be stored at all), the amount that can be stored could probably be increased with projects and certain buildings though which will be interesting.

The idea of mana storage is so that you have a little extra to use in an emergency, not to build up immense stockpiles that allow you to field a hundred adepts, runing on a net mana loss.

The idea about faith is good too, especially considering I already have a mechaniism in place displaying the % of people who follow various religions in each city. However, I might just link it to holy buildings which will be easier to keep at a controlled level and it would make sense, as the more temples there are, the more worship is going on. A compromise would be making certain levels of temple require at least x% of the religion in the city. This would mean that you could either have a couple of fairly weak priests, or a group of identical but pretty powerful priests. It also limits the amount of priests you can field, as there is only so much faith going around.

The only thing I dislike about these ideas is that it's yet another stat for a NES which already has a lot of stats. I hope I'm not going overboard with the various modifiers and controls...

[Adrogans]

Um. You can count me out now. I am in too many NESes and will not be able to give this the time it deserves.

[Immaculate]

Welcome aboard Kenkrajen!!!

Glad to play alongside you this time!!!

[Ekolite]

Originally Posted by Adrogans

Um. You can count me out now. I am in too many NESes and will not be able to give this the time it deserves.

Oh ok, it's a shame that you have to drop out but I understand.

[LDiCesare]

Hide the combat mechanics please, as publishing it would lead to weird tactics that abuse the system.

Regarding mana, if you haven't played Dominions, you should give the demo a try (depending on your OS, pick it here: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwint...DOM3_page.html ). In this game, 'mana' comes as magic gems. Most are generated by province sites, such as your capital. Most sites must be sought before you can use them (so a province with a death site doesn't provide any gem until a death mage found the site). Gems can be generated by spells (one air spell converts corpses into death gems, and there are many global enchantments that, for an initial investment, provide a reucrrent gem revenue - these tend to be dispelled by other players when they have a chance). Gems can also be generated by creatures or objects ("clams" being the prime example). Now these are useful to either cast global spells (summons mostly), cast battle magic (easy spells don't require gems but powerful spells do, and using gems on spells that don't need them lets you cast spells you couldn't or cast them with less fatigue and with better efficiency), or build magic items. They can also be alchemised into gold when utterly desperate for gold.
Contrary to what Immac thinks, such a system definitely doesn't favor peaceful civs (dominions is a wargame). Taking a province with a magic site can be extremely rewarding, and gem economy (and blood economy too but I digress) is as important as gold economy. The demo doesn't do the game justice (too limited in time, and only 2 nations to play among the dozens, really different, available), but if you want to see what a magic gem economy looks like, it's worth casting a glance.

[Ekolite]

Hmm... That is interesting and I may incorpoarate some of those ideas into the mechanic. My main target at the moment is finishing the email-stats spreadsheet to send to the players, which I think is almost done although I've been distracted by the Magic and Combat systems lately so I can't be sure of the progress on that front.

Next weekend I will devote as much time as possible to finishing the spreadsheet and hopefully get an example spreadsheet put up in the OP.