A few Ideas

[KaNeaGE]

ive noticed may people trying to give the Order and Ashen veil some flavor to make them unique and make them more end game friendly. heres my ideas

Order - make a moving holy city. this holy city comes automatically equiped with the G. Prophet holy building (forgot name) and every 10-15 turns it randomly moves itself to another city. this city must meet three requirements.

1. the city must have the Order.
2. the civilization must have Order as the state religion
3 the city must have Temple of the Order built

Note i did not say within your borders. Any city anywhere that meets these requirements becomes eligible. The founding civ doesnt want to spread it because he wants his cities to have a monopoly on the Holy City but the nonfounding civs want it. Civs that didnt found a religion now have a chance at getting a holy city but they have to swith to the Order to have a shot at it. It makes the Order seem like "The Best Kept Secret" of the religions and will make many other Civs want to convert to it.

Ashen Veil- I dont know FFH lore but AV strikes me as a religion that is intolerant of other religions. (i may be way off but go with me) What i propose is Ashen veil be given a 20% chance to REMOVE another religion (even if its the state religion) when it first spreads to a town. Every turn after that, it has a 5-10% chance to remove another one until AV is the last one standing. Temple of the Veil is in a sense is usless until AV is the last one standing. This temple, however, gets a big boost to effectiveness due to the loss of other religion bonuses.

Temple of Veil- +3 Beakers +20% Culture +1 Gold and +10% Building Construction + other happiness stuff. this temple automatically destroys all other temples in the city. Ashen Veil holds a monopoly in each of its cities.

A few other things to note would be, if AV is State Religion increase the chance to remove a religion by a higher %, maybe up to 25% a turn. This way if u sumbit to the will of the Ashen Veil, it will quickly work to remove the unworthy religions.

In regards to other Civs getting AV this would be the way AV spreads itself. The Order spreads itself willingly as other civs would love to get a piece of that Holy City. AV spreads itself unwillingly and forcefully. if you are OO and every few turns one of your cities in the empire keeps getting OO kicked out of a city, you may begin to feel the pressure to change, or you may deal with it and keep making disiples to respread you religion.


Another Idea

I hate when i make a beeline for Bronze working and i have no copper, or Iron Working and no Iron. Why would I be the first to discover how to use copper, if i have no copper to begin with. Ya i dont know either. so i ask for the FIRST Civ to found Bronze Working, Iron Working, Horseback Riding, and Mythril Working to get a free resource of it in their capitol or a random city. this makes this beginning route in the tech tree less risky when going military

Enjoy and plz give feedback

 

[Sureshot]

well, order is more like you describe the veil.. like inquisitions to remove other religions and all that

i feel your pain on the no-copper.. always hurts

 

[KaNeaGE]

Malakim is Desert people and Lanun are seafaring people. these are well and good until lanun is landlocked or malikim is in a forest.
What i propose is a beginning set of technologies that help you fit in with the environment. What i mean by this is simple. Lets say 5 Techs that are 1st on everyones list, a civ can not pick any other tech until one of these are completed.

These Tech will give bonuses based on the terrain you are surrounded with. for example, if your Civ is started in frozen tundra and ice, you would pick a tech called Frozen Adaptations. this will allow your civ, no matter what civ it is, to be able to build on ice, and able to get extra food off of tundra among other things i havent thought of. (Work in progress so dont take this all too seriously) There can be these Techs for Desert, Forest, Mountains ect.

The elves should keep their elven bonuses as should dwarves, lanun, and others. they learned those tricks before the Ice Age and should keep them. However, when they come out of their hiding places they should learn to adapt to their new surrounding.

As said earlier this should be the first tech a civ researches. this is a tech because it will allow us to see our surroundings before we make a choice. I imagine the tech will be cheap, only 1-3 turns to finish because we dont want civs to get a huge lead on others just based on starting position.

Any comments? plz Post

 

[MrUnderhill]

Yeah, I agree with Sureshot, the Order should be the intolerant one, while the Veil should have that "deep, dark secret" feel (mobile Holy City...hmm...).

As for the no-copper issue, just found Runes (which becomes available at the same time as Bronze Working), use a Great Sage to rush Arete, and build the Mines of Gal-dur.
Everything that needs copper in FfH can use iron instead, anyway (except copper golems, but meh).
You even get 3 engineers (the rarest specialist in vanilla, and almost equally prized in FfH), and some extra iron to trade with.

 

[SchpailsMan]

I hate when i make a beeline for Bronze working and i have no copper, or Iron Working and no Iron. Why would I be the first to discover how to use copper, if i have no copper to begin with. Ya i dont know either. so i ask for the FIRST Civ to found Bronze Working, Iron Working, Horseback Riding, and Mythril Working to get a free resource of it in their capitol or a random city. this makes this beginning route in the tech tree less risky when going military

IMO, lacking a resource is part of the game. When you beeline to a resource-enabling tech, you are basically making a gamble, and it's a gamble you just might loose. Some units don't need any resource: if you don't want to race to BW and fail to get any copper, go for the recon line for example. Some disciple units may also be built without any resource, and reagents/incense are visible from the start so you can plan effectively for priests and mages. BW, IW and AH, on the other hand, are techs that call for a gambit. It's just normal that you may end up with no copper, no iron etc.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I really like the imagination at work in the proposal here. But the comments have been solid too and I agree with them too. So I'll third Sureshot's thought that the Order fits better with the eliminate-the-competition concept. And does not Evil often try to exploit greed, try to gain purchase by offering temptations? That sort of fits with the moving Holy City idea. Flip flopped or not, it's still imaginative thinking from a new angle.

It seems to me though, that a leader would want some hope he could get and retain the Holy City. It's a temptation to know you might steal the Holy City. It is much less a temptation to know you might steal the Holy City only to lose it a decade later. So to complete the idea I think it needs a mechanism by which civ leaders can influence (not control) where or when it moves.

I was going to agree with the copper thing to, but Mr.Undershill and SchpailsMan put up some good rebuttals. So mark me down on their side for that one.

I've had some similar ideas on terrain-friendly capabilities. I suspect we'll see something come out in a future phase as The Team fleshes out a couple more civilizations (e.g. Illians).

I've no idea how programmable thiese ideas are, but they deserve to swirl around in the Creative Process.

 

[Endovior]

So far as the moving holy city goes, how about this:

The Holy City of the Ashen Veil is simply a matter of who the Demons favor most at the time. Every 20-50 turns, the demons will evaluate all the cities currently hosting the Veil, and determine which is most favorable to them, as per the following criteria. They will then move to the city with the highest total.

1. Length of time that the Ashen Veil has been present in a city. (+1 per turn)
2. Amount of research taking place in the city. (+1 per beaker)
3. Status of Ashen Veil as State Religion. (+100%)
4. Presence of certain buildings.
(Demon's Altar, Temple of the Veil each gives +10)
(Asylum, Basilica, Temple of Kilmorph, Temple of Leaves, Temple of the Order, Temple of the Overlords each takes -10)
5. Presence of certain wonders.
(Catacomb Libralus, Crown of Akharien, Infernal Grimoire, The Great Library, The Nexus, Soul Forge, and Tower of Necromancy each gives +20)
(Altar of the Luonnottar, Aquae Sucellus, Blood of the Phoenix, Mines of Gal-Dur, Temple of Temporance, Tomb of Sucellus, Tower of Complacency, Yggdrasil each takes -30)
6. Sacrifices. (Each population point sacrificed [the whip] since last change gives +3. Each unit sacrificed since last change gives +5)
7. Priests. (Each unit serving the Veil currently in the city gives +5, each unit of another religion gives -10)
8. Magic (If the city has access to Death or Entropy mana, +5 for each. If the city has access to Law or Life mana, -5 for each. For any other type of mana, +1 for each.)
9. Mages (If the city contains casters with Death or Entropy promotions, +5 per level of each. If the city contains casters with Law or Life promotions, -5 per level of each. For any other type of caster, +1 per level.)
10. Each other religion present in the city. (-5 per Religion, -20 for the Order)
11. The Holy City of another religion entirely blocks the Ashen Veil Holy City.


As such, you have a number of options for attracting the Veil Holy City. You can build wonders, or sacrifice people and units, or stockpile priests and mages.

 

[SchpailsMan]

This sounds interestings. I like the fact that you can get some control over the mechanism, and yet that another player might make a push to steal the Holy City from you. I'm only afraid it might end up pushing Veil civs against each other, but then again it's not like there were too many inter-civ conflicts already.