.34 Speculation: Doviello and Illians

[Zechnophobe]

I was very pleased to see the changelog effects for these two civs. I'm brainstorming my thoughts on them.

First up, are the Doviello, who have now got a new thing. A fairly cool thing. What is it called? Slavery!

Now, I know a lot of civ4 fans are also fans of slavery, and I guess the Doviello are going to become a part of this. Let me just put the numbers out there for those who don't want to slog through the changelog thread:

40. Doviello Beastmen to Sons of Asena for 40 gold ( bronze working )
41. Doviello Sons of Asena to Battlemasters for 80 ( iron working )
43. Doviello Workers and Slaves to Warriors 20 gold.

So, let's consider for a moment, you have bronze working, and way of the wicked. For 60 Gold, and 25% chance, every unit you kill becomes a 4 strength Axeman. Further more, you know how cool it is to capture workers early on? Now for a pitiful 20 gold, you can upgrade it to a beastman. This is some pretty impressive combat continuation power, and really will allow for the Doviello to punch home combat. Further more, researching bronze working while an army of beastmen are in the field, will allow a sudden upgrade, on the spot, to the stronger axemen units. I *really* like how this will likely play out.

Lastly, Doviello can play a little worker heavy, because they can always upgrade those workers to defenders if the need arises. This is a slight thing, but puts them a little closer to mud golems.

Okay, next part of the Doviello changes comes here:

62. 2 wolves = 1 wolf pack.
63. 1 wolf = +10% strength to a wolfpack

That second part I'm not too keen on, unless a wolf pack is more than 3 strength. However, let's go back to our above model, wherein we have a very self perpetuating army (And remember that a wolf pack can still spawn wolflings I believe, to turn into more wolf packs or to empower). If we are going to be capturing slaves, and turning them into warriors, we'll be having more units in the field, which means a stronger World spell casting when you hit it up. Very very nice.

I'll stop the post here and start up another for the Illians.

 

[Zechnophobe]

4. Added The Illians as a playable civilization.
5. Added the Samhain ritual (Illian only, spawns barbarian frostlings, frostling archers, frostling wolf riders and Mokka).
6. Added the Ice I, II and III promotions.
7. Added the Slow spell (Ice 1, -1 movement, resistable, 30% chance to wear off each turn).
8. Added Ice mana resource (unlike other mana types raw mana cannot be converted to Ice mana, it is only provided by the Illian palace and Letum Frigus).
9. Added the Blizzard feature (non-winterborn units take cold damage when passing through it).
10. Added the Priest of Winter unit.
11. Added the Call Blizzard spell (Priest of Winter only, moves a blizzard from a neighboring tile into the casters tile, turns the casters tile into tundra from grass, plains or desert).
12. Added the Stasis spell (Illian world spell, all other players have production and research disabled for 20 turns modified by game speed).
13. Added The White Hand ritual (Illian only, spawns 3 disciples of mulcarn).
14. Added The Deepening ritual (Illian only, freezes the map temporarily and spawns blizzards around the map).
15. Added the Whiteout spell (Illian assassins only, allows them to become invisible in snow tiles).
16. Added the Ice Elemental unit (increased strength on snow/tundra tiles, cant enter desert or burning sands tiles).
17. Added the Summon Ice Elemental spell (Ice 2 summon).
18. Added the Snowfall spell (Ice 3, cold damage at range 1, temporarily transforms surrounding tiles to snow tiles).
19. Added the Temple of the Hand building (Illian Pagan Temple replacement, converts all surrounding tiles to snow tiles).
20. Added the High Priest of Winter unit (upgradeable from the Priest of Winter at level 6).
21. Added the Stir from Slumber ritual (Illian only, the player must kill another player before this ritual becomes available, summons Drifa the White Dragon).
22. Added The Draw ritual (Illians only, causes you to declare war on all players in the game, halves the population of all your cities, does damage to all your units, keeps you from being able to enter diplomacy with civs you are at war with for the rest of the game).
23. Added the Auric Ascended unit (biggest unit in the game, has an enhanced version of the Snowfall spell, can fly, magic immune, and huge amounts of strength and cold damage, if he dies the player loses all his traits).
24. Added the Ascension ritual (Illians only, requires The Draw ritual to be complete, summons the Auric Ascended unit, upgrades all priests of winter to high priests of winter).
34. Illians get +2 food from snow tiles.

Okay, let's first start with economy. The big things here are the +2 food from snow tiles, and the temple of the hand which turns all surrounding tiles to snow (I'm assuming that's a 1 radius change not 2 radius change). Since this comes off of Mysticism, it looks like a good solid early choice for the Illians.

What the temple/snow combo represents is two things. First of all is a great consistency in city locations. Because you can turn all tiles around your cities into 'grassland', it will be very easy to have food for even the most hard to place cities. I'm not sure exactly how this will effect 'snow' mountains, or 'snow' hills (Snow hill gets mined and is like, 2 food 3 production please?) but I think it's mostly upside. Real question is can you farm or irrigate it!

The second part of this is of course the fact your lands are nigh on useless to your enemies. At least in multiplayer this will make you pretty bad as a target, if nothing else. And with the blizzard and snow creating spells you can wage a very fierce war of attrition on enemies. Even if you jsut have defensive stacks running through an enemy, its likely enough to kill them if you freeze their cities to death.

Anyhow, let's talk a bit about military. Odd as it is, the agnostic Illians are probably one of the strongest races going down the religious line, what with the powerful priests and (I'm guessing) rituals they can perform from it. Invisible assassins might not be a bad thing, especially since I think the invisiblity is permanent on snow. And let's face it, performing "The Deepening" ritual, and heralding blizzards into an enemy city is the coolest way to fight ever. Piper the blizzard over, and let it wear them down while your winterborn forces pillage the countryside, and wait until the enemy is dead. Adding a bit to it with some area of effect spells from your priests. Hitting them with strengthened Ice Elements is just, dare I say, the Icing on the proverbial cake.


Lastly, I think the Illians have an interesting 'mayhem' side strategy going on. Sam Hain creates powerful barbarians around the map, Stasis is just about the coolest world spell ever (And could completely put an opponents battle plans on ice), and it gives me chills to consider the effects of The Deepening around the map. Snow? Blizzards? Empowered those Frostlings you popped out with Sam Hain? I like it!

I'm really looking forward to play the Illians (Especially if their Palace still gives Melee units +4 Experience, mauahahaha).

 

[xienwolf]

The Doviello upgrading their workers into Warriors will be a tad bit MORE interesting in Fall Further. That would mean getting a warrior who can automatically gain XP.

Might have to remove Aptitude on that upgrade, but even then you could just wait till you have some decent XP stored up before you upgrade the worker. So might have to clean all promotions off the little guys and reset their XP. Or just leave it and see how things play out

 

[Nimbus]

What I would like to know is, with the priests ability to have a terrain-changing blizzard follow them around, will there be something in place for the AI's other civs' to not want open borders with them? As a human player I can't see myself ever allowing open borders with them. But will the AI??? I can see huge parts of the map turning into ice -covered lands.

 

[Skitters]

The Doviello upgrading their workers into Warriors will be a tad bit MORE interesting in Fall Further. That would mean getting a warrior who can automatically gain XP.

Might have to remove Aptitude on that upgrade, but even then you could just wait till you have some decent XP stored up before you upgrade the worker. So might have to clean all promotions off the little guys and reset their XP. Or just leave it and see how things play out

If it isn't cleared would the industrious skill cause any issues for the unit - notably with the AI?

 

[xienwolf]

Just having a workrate doesn't confuse the AI, it is having Build Orders available that confuses them. All Dwarves have a small (positive) workrate currently in FfH due to racial bonuses IIRC. (all elves have a small negative one as well).