Suggestion : Artifacts

One thing I really liked in the old old (but excellent) Warlords II game, was the possibillity of finding artifacts. How about implementing this in AND?

An Artifact would be attached to a unit the same way a promotion would, or they could be attached like Lead as Warlord, but different (able to both attach warlords and artifacts). The later already has a nice graphic (Treasure) and can also be used to build Artifact World Wonders, which then again could be "pillaged" when city was captured.

The effect could be Single Unit/Stack/Area/Empire and with Afforess skills it seems that only the imagination would be the limit

Situations where artifacts could be discovered :

(A) Capturing a Holy City (100% chance)
(B) Capturing cities where enemy had National Wonders (5% chance)
(C) Discovering in Huts (alternative to existing huts but low chance)
(D) Killing high XP units (or Generals) (5-50% chance depending how high level)
(E) Killing units already carrying artifacts (100%)
(F) First to discover a tech (100% chance)
(G) Event
(H) Quest

(1) Ancient
(2) Classical
(3) Medieval
(4) Renaissance
(5) Industrial
(6) Modern

Types of Artifacts :

Weapons

Jewelry

Religious items

Objects

Beer of Jaihu

Mona Lisa

Ark of Covenant

Cup of Jamshid

The Palladium

Lippershey's Spyglass

Olmec Compass

Rosetta Stone

Shroud of Turin

Dead Sea Scrolls

Lucy (Australopithecus) Fossils

Crystal Skull

Holy Grail

Excalibur

The Book of the Dead

The Was Sceptre of Set

IMPORTANT : The Artifacts should NOT be magical but can be mythical or legendary. So no flying or supernuking in classical era, nor should they be overpowering.

This is a cool idea. I will try to come up with some ideas for artifacts soon.

Ark of the Covenant may make a better artifact than wonder, because it was (per the Bible) dragged around by a whole bunch of different civs.

Iceciro said:

Ark of the Covenant may make a better artifact than wonder, because it was (per the Bible) dragged around by a whole bunch of different civs.

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it's the best representative for this idea. and form Indiana Jones we now that an army carrying the ark is unbeatable.

but realistically it should definitively add some morale to religious soldiers to fight harder and not retreat easily.

Here are some ideas ...

Rosetta Stone

Shroud of Turin

Dead Sea Scrolls

Lucy (Australopithecus) Fossils

Crystal Skull

Killtech said:

it's the best representative for this idea. and form Indiana Jones we now that an army carrying the ark is unbeatable.

but realistically it should definitively add some morale to religious soldiers to fight harder and not retreat easily.

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I like this idea. Maybe the Ark and other treasures could be something that could be attached to a city or unit. Attaching it to a city gives it an empire-wide bonus (small but still nice-sized) while attaching to a unit allows the player to move the treasure around and gives the unit a combat bonus (of course, it would have to be possible to "deattach" the treasure from a city).

If the unit carrying it is killed, then it's either picked up by the unit that destroyed that unit or in the case of being killed by an airstrike, ranged bombard, nuke, etc., it's lost and randomly resurfaces in some barbarian city, unit, or lacking either, some random city. If the city holding the artifact is razed, there's a 50/50 chance that the artifact pops up in the capital of the razing army or is lost for a while to resurface later.

Diplomatically, to prevent possible hoarding, possessing an artifact could cause that civilization to suffer a small diplo penalty with other civs.

Besides, it might be fun if it's implemented well-enough that a new victory condition is created where the civilization to collect all or a certain number of the artifacts wins (unless there's a lot of them, in which this wouldn't be too fun).

Some suggestions:

Rosetta Stone

+1 :science" in every city


Shroud of Turin

State spreads faster or higher chance of missionary success

Dead Sea Scrolls

Allows construction of EVA Units.

Lucy

+1 in every city

Crystal Skull

+1 and in every city (may need tweaking)

Ark of the Covenant

Free Fanatic/Crusader promo for units built in cities with State Religion


And so on.

holy hand grenade of Antioch!

civ_king said:

holy hand grenade of Antioch!

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please! you must add it as an easter egg!! i guess it is even better known then the most other artefacts.

I think this is obvious, but how about the Holy Grail? Or The Sword Excalibur? Maybe Even the Round Table.

xcrissxcrossx said:

I think this is obvious, but how about the Holy Grail? Or The Sword Excalibur? Maybe Even the Round Table.

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I almost put those on the list but those things are not real. Its like putting Roswell crash wreckage or Atlantis ruins or even Bigfoot. We don't have the The Sword Excalibur or the Holy Grail in a museum somewhere. I think they should be taken off the list. We should only have real artifacts.

NOTE: The Shroud of Turin is in my opinion is a fake however its still a real physical artifact that you can visit.

Hydromancerx said:

I almost put those on the list but those things are not real. Its like putting Roswell crash wreckage or Atlantis ruins or even Bigfoot. We don't have the The Sword Excalibur or the Holy Grail in a museum somewhere. I think they should be taken off the list. We should only have real artifacts.

NOTE: The Shroud of Turin is in my opinion is a fake however its still a real physical artifact that you can visit.

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The crystal skull is also a well documented fake.

What about just having some artifacts risk being proven fake and give a civ a temporary hit in diplo relations or unhappines? Not too long to turn off players but enough to give a brief flavor of disillusions with fake artifacts?

Dancing Hoskuld said:

The crystal skull is also a well documented fake.

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Fake or not they still have crystal skulls in museums. If anything it should be considered a work of art.

Right now I'll make a looooong list of artifacts so please come with all the suggestions you can. Second step is to shave it down and then start creating from there. When I'm finished its time for afforess or someone else who knows python or dll to make the "special effects".

Some artifacts might be "lost" or expire, while others (mostly religious) will be saved. Christianity is definately the easiest religion to find artifacts from, so I need some from earlier religions too.

And while some artifacts are not discovered or found, I bet that some ingenious guy made a really beautifull trefork and called it Poseidens Trident. And I bet his opponents (if the rumor was spread widely enough) would tremble just by the sight of it.

I am of the belief that almost all artifacts hold the power of suggestion. I do not believe in magic nor divine powers, but I do believe that belief can move mountains.

If we are not limited to "real only", then here are some more ...

Paranormal
- Bigfoot Footprints
- Roswell UFO Wreckage

Buddhist
- Buddha's Footprint
- Buddha's Tooth

Islam
- Muhammad's Footprint
- Muhammad's Cloak

Paleontology
- Frozen Mammoth
- Archaeopteryx Fossil

Space
- Mars Meteorites
- Moon Rocks


Mesoamerican
- Olmec Heads
- Dresden Codex

What about the gold mask of Tutanchamen or the bust of Nefertiti?

Might be funny though, if Nefertiti as a leader finds her own bust ...

I could make a list of myriards of Ancient Egyptian artifacts but I guess we should be more cultural diverse.

please list as many as possible. The more the better. Each person usually have their "nieche" of knowledge, so the cultural diversity will automaticly occur

Hydromancerx said:

I almost put those on the list but those things are not real. Its like putting Roswell crash wreckage or Atlantis ruins or even Bigfoot. We don't have the The Sword Excalibur or the Holy Grail in a museum somewhere. I think they should be taken off the list. We should only have real artifacts.

NOTE: The Shroud of Turin is in my opinion is a fake however its still a real physical artifact that you can visit.

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most reliquaries are fakes. doesn't change their morale effect on people. holy grail reliquary could be allowed as such. same as the INRI sign, parts of the real cross oj jesus, bla bla bla... (the letter two are real reliquaries and most probably fakes)

to keep realism the bonus should not be very different. morale is what it's all this is about.

other than that there one could think of something like secret plans (e.g. blueprints of some city walls) that give you a bonus against city defense. but that's not really an artifact.

maybe some maps from the great library that of foreign lands giving some visual bonus to units or additional defense modifiers? these are not confirmed but it is supposed that there might been some maps that contained the cost lines of antarctica WITHOUT the ice stored there among others from which later maps were copied - which is possible in theory as these were wiouth ice 10000 years before.

Hydromancerx said:

I almost put those on the list but those things are not real. Its like putting Roswell crash wreckage or Atlantis ruins or even Bigfoot. We don't have the The Sword Excalibur or the Holy Grail in a museum somewhere. I think they should be taken off the list. We should only have real artifacts.

NOTE: The Shroud of Turin is in my opinion is a fake however its still a real physical artifact that you can visit.

Click to expand...

Just because people haven't found them doesn't mean they never existed they could've just as easily been melted into scrap metal and reused. The Ark of the Covenant is the same way, no museum holds it and no one knows where it may lie, it too could have just as easily been lost to time and disintegrated into the ground (if it were buried) by now.

I have one:
Noah's Ark (it was thought to have been found nearly disintegrated and ice-locked on a mountain side back in 2008(It was a history channel special). It could have been just as likely to be photoshopped imagery but only the people airing it know if the mostly disintegrated, ice-locked wooden framework of a boat that's sitting under the snow on the side of a mountain is a real image.)

Artifacts, after being discovered, should then be moved to the city in the empire that is specialized to it (for example the city with most science beakers in the empire would get a scientific artifacts like the Antikythera-Mechanism [possible bonus for owning it: the university in the city it is in gets +1 :science and the museum gets +1 :culture]).

There could be religious (bogus/"psychological") bonuses for artifacts as well as economic and scientific ones.

Also, a spy could try to "steal an artifact" as well as it already can assasinate big persons (if you enable this BUG-option)

Important is, I think, that artifacts would have not to be too opverpowered, like you really would fight wars about it.

A few beakers in the city where it is placed should be sufficient. Military/Morale bonuses like for the holy lance or the mummies in the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo could also be interesting.

This idea would make the gameplay much broader and if artifacts also could be traded (like pictures in museums) it would also be fun. (A traded artifact should get into the respective military/holy/scientific/commerce/gold city, not always headquaters like with units being traded right now!)

I would use this mod, definately - but only if it has real historic value, meaning that I don't mind about bogus religious artifacts as long as they represent the effects they really had on society.