Balance and Flavor Suggestions (long)

[Nikis-Knight]

One hidden benefit of the CoE religion is that it doesn't give infidel diplomacy penalties. Obviously not relevant in mp, but as MC said, it helps you to choose your battles, rather than have them forced on you.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Empyrean feels an underpowered religion, to me.

Militarily, it's pretty decent, although Radiant guards and rathas are somewhat lacking in raw power. But military isn't supposed to be it's thing. Isn't empyrean the religion of thought and reason, where order is the religion of action?

I think Empy could do with some more unique stuff. for example, an extra hero. Not a fighter like chalid, but a support hero. Casting buffs on your troops, providing bonuses to cities, and such. It needs more lore-relevant things, because right now empyrean is an excellent military religion, and just about any other one is better if you want ot be peaceful.

That's not what underpowrered means.

Empyrean is currently overpowered and unflavorful. They're two totally separate problems with different solutions.

 

[Rystic]

Council of Esus needs the biggest overhaul, IMO. They should get another hero who can Inquisition. Also, all units born with CoE should get something. Maybe only recon can turn HN, but there should be different spells for melee, disciple, etc. For instance, I wouldn't mind if Disciple units could be born with Esus instead of their normal religion, and spread that or what they usually would (or even turn units to the Esus religion). Most of all, though, I think Council of Esus needs a civic. Something that deals with crime rates and money.

 

[Verdian]

Interesting post. I especially like the idea that weapon promotions are percentage based, instead of a flat bonus. This helps keep higher tier units better than lower tier.

I disagree with a lot of your religion points, especially the suggested alignment shifts for RoK and FoL. The wealth produced by RoK is a by product of their cultural values (honesty, hardwork), not the purpose of the religion. And FoL is interrpreted differently be each alignment, so the lack of change fits it very well. The only tweak I feel OO needs is Hastur's Razor. Right now it is weak. I know it is suppose to be unpredicatable, but it is too negetively unpredicatable. He needs a new spell.

Spot on with your critique of monks (and perhaps the devout, I seldom build them). Monks are too expensive for a subpar unit. I would like to see them lowered in hammer cost, as well as moved to philosophy. If that was changed, then their stats would be fine. How FF implimented them sounds interesting, too.

And yes, Council of Esus needs some bonuses for actually following the religion... I would like to see Shadows limited to the religion.

 

[Iceciro]

Esus needs some sort of priest unit you can pay gold in order to get powerful spells/effects from. As it is there's no "paying for miracles" in Esus except the spread of religion.

 

[Rystic]

Esus needs some sort of priest unit you can pay gold in order to get powerful spells/effects from. As it is there's no "paying for miracles" in Esus except the spread of religion.

Exactly. "Paying for miracles" is Esus's theme. Most of all, though, there has to be a way to convert individual units to Esus. Do you know how annoying it is when I have to reload in hopes my Rathas Denmora will have Esus THIS TIME?

 

[cIV_khanh93]

5 Adepts can heal an Iron golem instantly. 6 champions would destroy the 1 iron golem and all 5 adepts. The iron golems can cast fireballs while the champions cannot, but the mages on the champions side can cast fireballs, they can heal without the adepts, start with combat 2 and advance past combat 2.5, become specialized to adapt to your enemies troops (Anti-melee 1-2, anti-archer 1-2, etc...), and that's looking at the pinnacle of the golem's strength. Everything above and below iron golems struggles even more than Irons at dealing with equivalent troops. Perhaps I am just a poor Luchurip player, but it seems that even with the Fireballs the golems are inferior to most other civs armies.

against an army of equal troops (which is wrong, you should have compared hammers, there is a 2 troop difference) the golems will not have one sixth the units, they will have 5 less. If the enemy has mages (with fireball) in the same amount of your adepts, then in your scenario they have the same amount of troops, cept the champions have 5 fireballs and the golems have (army size -5) fireballs. If the golems see an approaching stack, they fireball it and it is weakend significantly. this will work in enemy territory until engineering. Also remember that at tech parity, the golems have a 2 str bonus. Also, gifts of nantosuelta+a SoK ready in every city+national epic= 2 really fast GEs that can bulb smelting and iron working. (Actually, i last used the dark orb to insta-get iron working, can GE's even bulb this?) Your rebuttle?

 

[civ_king]

also, the bigger the stacks, the more the odds tip in the Luichirps favor...

 

[Xetal]

Your rebuttle?

The Iron stack has 1 movement, and cannot be increased with haste.
The fireballs have 2 range.

This makes the strong stack of Irons and their adepts very vulnerable to a large number of things. Mobility I and the Haste spell provide a lot of situations where the poor short-range fireballs and 1 movement Irons just can't do anything about it. Even assuming you're attacking when they have fireballs and Irons and you just have 8 strength champions: 3 movement mages (and/or disciples) and 3 movement champions can move into range to maelstrom/fireball the Irons and then attack and destroy them.

The lack of movement also leaves them quite vulnerable to abilities such as Blinding Light, Entangle,

It isn't just that the golems are at a disadvantage from their inability to use weapons. They're also at a disadvantage because of their inability to get promotions and their inability to get specific buffs. I see a lot of people showing the +50% as a big advantage... starting with 2 exp (or with an aggressive civ) gives you combat I. Combine that with enchanting I and you're already at +40%.

You can't upgrade a single unit in a stack with drill promotions for the D-strikes.
You can't catch a haste.
You can't get mobility.
No Enchanted Blade, no Flaming Arrows (Even though you start with enchanting mana =/)
No City Garrison/City Raider for troop specialization.
No Bless
No guardsman protecting your adepts from assassins.
There are a lot of other buffs/abilities that you can't make your golems benefit from...

I don't know... maybe the AI's inability to get the first strike on the golem armies balances the civ, or maybe I just don't like playing them because they seem to be so easily to counter, but to me the advantages seem to be heavily outweighed by the disadvantages.

 

[vali]

Do you know how annoying it is when I have to reload in hopes my Rathas Denmora will have Esus THIS TIME?

I just got into modding, and one of the first things I did was make all assassin type units automaticly start with council of esus religion. It had the nasty side effect of giving hyborem more than his share of manes, but eleminating that annoying element of luck was worth it.

 

[Rystic]

I just got into modding, and one of the first things I did was make all assassin type units automaticly start with council of esus religion. It had the nasty side effect of giving hyborem more than his share of manes, but eleminating that annoying element of luck was worth it.

If the state religion is Esus, all recon heroes should be born with it, even if they're not in a city with Esus.

 

[Luckmann]

If the state religion is Esus, all recon heroes should be born with it, even if they're not in a city with Esus.

That doesn't really help some units, like Svartalfar's Alazkan the Assassin, which is usually built long before the Council of Esus comes into being.

That, by far, I do think is the main problem with how the mechanics work at the moment. I wouldn't want the mechanic edited out, but having units go to a temple and adopt the current state religion (At a cost? Over a number of turns? Beats me) would drasticly increase the worth of Council of Esus for me.

I just don't see any reason to convert to Council of Esus. Units getting the religion is random, you get all the benefits for either being the founder, building the Holy-City Wonder, or simply researching the religion. The only major benefit of the entire religion itself, to me, is to be able to declare war without withdrawing troops.

And I feel that's bloody worthless.

 

[Azhral]

Gibbon is also a good reason to switch to CoE. Earliest anybody can get a Channelling 3 unit. Oh, and Shadowriders are basically the most powerful unit in the game.

Anybody else find that Nightwatch die way too easily, even with Iron Weapons? For me its a miracle if they even win a battle.