Introduction:
What started as a minor addition to the Calabim turned into a new race: The Aristrakh
(The word was derived from the Russian word Aristarkh which is a from the Greek Αρισταρχος (Aristarchos), derived from αριστος (aristos) "best" and αρχη (arche) "origin, source". This name was borne by Aristarchus of Samos, a 3rd-century BC Greek astronomer and mathematician.)
Background:
A small group of Calabim Vampires are fed up with their hidden way of live and instead fully embraced their powers, not caring what the rest of Erebus would think about them. The first Calabim apostate is Nikephoros (The name is from an ancient Byzantine Emperor) who is both the hero and a leader for the Aristrakh. They are intended as a rather generic undead civilization. While not seeking dominance or destruction of their enemies, the Aristrakh turned on their former Calabim cousins for a quest of absolute personal power.
Civilization Synopsis:
The Aristrakh are intended to be played as a two tier civilization: A never ending sea of rotting flesh and bones lead by incredible powerful masters of the undead: the Vampires of the Aristrakh. The civilization will not gain population via food, but through rituals, so you have to build your "citizens". Furthermore there is an intrinsic divergence on the use of city population: With your vampires you will want to have big cities to gain the most experience out of them, but the undead army needs those "citizens" to upgrade their troops, for more on those mechanics see below.
All undead Units, except the Banshees and the Reanimated General, can not gain any experience, however all Vampires and the Reanimated General will strengthen the undead units.
Units:
The Vampires:
1) Nikephoros (Hero)
2) Ancient Vampires
3) Brujahs (replace Berserker)
4) Vampire Count (replace Phalanx)
5) Vampire Lords (replace Immortals)
6) Dracolich Riders
The Undead Army:
1) Acolytes (replaces Settler)
2) Skeleton Spearmen (melee line)
3) Skeleton Archers (archery line)
4) Zombies (recon line; gain access to unique spells by researching poisons and animal mastery)
5) Skeleton Horsemen (horsemen line)
6) Skeleton Horsearchers (new horsearcher line)
7) Banshees (arcane line)
8) Reanimated General (no picture, early support)
all of those units (besides the acolytes and the Reanimated General) can upgrade to more powerful versions by consuming population:
1) add Zombies (costs 1 Population upgrades to zombie mob and than horde)
2) reinforce Skeletons (costs 1 Population upgrades to Skeleton Spearmen Squad)
3) add standard bearer (costs 1 Population upgrades to skeleton company (archer and spearmen))
4) reinforce Skeleton Archers (costs 1 Population upgrades to skeleton archer squad)
5) reinforce mounted skeletons (costs 1 population upgrades to skeleton horsemen/ Horsearchers to a squad)
6) add standard bearer (costs 1 population upgrades to skeleton horsemen/ Horsearchers to a company)
7) reinforce Banshee (costs 2 than 4 population, upgrades to banshee pair than triplet)
Buildings:
The Aristrakh have access to a variety of unique buildings, most of them will replace the generic ones (which would be useless to them) so it is still worthwhile to research technologies like medicine for example. Some Buildings will increase the warweariness of your opponents by a small amount, this helps if you make use of dark ritual (see below), make sure to build them in all cities to gain a significant effect.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9231145&postcount=168 and
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9282927&postcount=195
Civilization Mechanics
Vampires:
All Vampires start with the Souldrinker promotion, which gives you additional experience in battle and it will give them the Soul Harvest ability. Soulharvest works like feast, but it will not draw from your population instead it will take three turns to cast.
A second ability that all Aristrakh vampires posses is a battle frenzy system: the vampire gains the Murderous Frenzy promotion after combat which increases his strength, his combat healing rate and decreases his normal healing rate. This effect can stack up to five times and has a chance to wear off each turn. So you can either gain experience by staying in your cities casting Soul Harvest or through endless combat.
The third intrinsic ability that all Vampires share (together with the Reanimated General) is a Combataura that buffs all Undead units around them. The undead gain in strength, based on the strength of the aura, they will be Hasted and Undying (adds a chance to withdrawal from Combat)
In the very late game you will have the possibility to get Dracolich Riders, those are mounted Vampire Lords on undead dragons. There are two ways to get them:
1) Get a living Dragon, that can be Acheron for example, any unit with the Dragon Promotion will do. Get them in your city drain their live and you now have a Dragon Graveyard in you city, allowing your Vampire Lords to mount a Dracolich.
2) Take your Vampire Lord and go to the Dragon Bone Improvement, if it happened to be spawned on the map and mount an undead dragon.
Minor Undead:
All undead minions besides the Banshees and the Reanimated General can not gain any Experience. If you advance in the technology tree you can upgrade them to more powerful versions. The upgrade will not cost any gold, but will instead draw from your population (usually 1, for banshees it is a bit more). You can also build the upgraded Versions, but this too will cost you Population there is no difference in either upgrading them or creating the more advanced troops. The upgrade system allows for more complex strategies however.
All those units, again with exception to the Banshees and the Reanimated General, will cost no military upkeep, they still cost maintenance however.
Population:
Population is gained by completing rituals. There are two kinds of rituals:
1) Death Pact: the bread and butter, a repeatable ritual that increases the population of your city based on its size and on the technologies researched:
- Death Pact I: only build-able in cities of size 1-5, adds 1 population
- Death Pact II: only build-able in cities of size 6-8, adds 2 population, needs philosophy
- Death Pact III: only build-able in cities of size 9-13, adds 3 population, needs priesthood
- Death Pact III: only build-able in cities of size 14-16, adds 4 population, needs religious law
- Death Pact IV: only build-able in cities of size 17-25, adds 5 population, needs theology
Higher tier Death Pacts will actually cost more production compared with the population gained. While it is still viable to upgrade your cities only using Death Pact there is a much more tempting alternative: Dark Ritual (see below)
2) if you want to exceed the current city size limit placed on you by Death Pact you can build the repeatable national* ritual: Dark Ritual.
Dark Ritual increases the size of all cities you own by 1 but lowers your standings with other factions. The ritual gets cheaper when researching arcane technologies.
The third picture is the new ritual available for the Calabim, see: Playing as the Aristrakh section
Religion:
The Aristrakh are quasi agnostic, they don't really care about religions since their path to power is through their unique authority over the undead. They still can research religious technologies and even adopt state religions and build temples, but they don't have access to any new units or heroes.
Strategies:
You can either choose to have only a few big cities with Death Pact and only upgrading a few skeletons until you reach advanced technologies and build your elite units or you can build many cities and pump out tons of skeletons and upgrading them. To keep the population up you will need to make repeatedly use of Dark Ritual. Since skeletons are dirt cheap you don't need big cities. Of course you can choose a middle ground.
My usual strategies are:
-found initial city on a tile with many hills nearby (you will need a lot of
)
-immediately research mysticism for god-king
-get the capital to population-size 5
-build a lot of skeleton spearmen and some acolytes and expand
-research up to festivals for haunted towers, research animal husbandry for unearthed graves
-research up to bronze weapons for mines and skeleton spearmen squads
-research philosophy for death pact II (increases city size limit to 10)
-research up to code of laws for halls of the dead and hamlets and knowledge of the ether for banshees
-from here on out you should have a good economy and somewhat competitively force
Playing as the Aristrakh:
1) Start your game as the Aristrakh like any other faction.
2) Finish the ritual "Death's Embrace" (see the third picture Population section) and your Calabim nations becomes the Aristrakh. Completing this Ritual kills all living nonvampiric units. There are huge benefits for choosing the second option:
You can save your religious Heroes. All standard Vampires can immediately transform into ancient ones regardless of the current progression in technology. You can grow your cities to much larger sizes.
* (can only be build one at a time)
What started as a minor addition to the Calabim turned into a new race: The Aristrakh
(The word was derived from the Russian word Aristarkh which is a from the Greek Αρισταρχος (Aristarchos), derived from αριστος (aristos) "best" and αρχη (arche) "origin, source". This name was borne by Aristarchus of Samos, a 3rd-century BC Greek astronomer and mathematician.)
Background:
A small group of Calabim Vampires are fed up with their hidden way of live and instead fully embraced their powers, not caring what the rest of Erebus would think about them. The first Calabim apostate is Nikephoros (The name is from an ancient Byzantine Emperor) who is both the hero and a leader for the Aristrakh. They are intended as a rather generic undead civilization. While not seeking dominance or destruction of their enemies, the Aristrakh turned on their former Calabim cousins for a quest of absolute personal power.
Civilization Synopsis:
The Aristrakh are intended to be played as a two tier civilization: A never ending sea of rotting flesh and bones lead by incredible powerful masters of the undead: the Vampires of the Aristrakh. The civilization will not gain population via food, but through rituals, so you have to build your "citizens". Furthermore there is an intrinsic divergence on the use of city population: With your vampires you will want to have big cities to gain the most experience out of them, but the undead army needs those "citizens" to upgrade their troops, for more on those mechanics see below.
All undead Units, except the Banshees and the Reanimated General, can not gain any experience, however all Vampires and the Reanimated General will strengthen the undead units.
Units:
The Vampires:
1) Nikephoros (Hero)
2) Ancient Vampires
3) Brujahs (replace Berserker)
4) Vampire Count (replace Phalanx)
5) Vampire Lords (replace Immortals)
6) Dracolich Riders
The Undead Army:
1) Acolytes (replaces Settler)
2) Skeleton Spearmen (melee line)
3) Skeleton Archers (archery line)
4) Zombies (recon line; gain access to unique spells by researching poisons and animal mastery)
5) Skeleton Horsemen (horsemen line)
6) Skeleton Horsearchers (new horsearcher line)
7) Banshees (arcane line)
8) Reanimated General (no picture, early support)
all of those units (besides the acolytes and the Reanimated General) can upgrade to more powerful versions by consuming population:
1) add Zombies (costs 1 Population upgrades to zombie mob and than horde)
2) reinforce Skeletons (costs 1 Population upgrades to Skeleton Spearmen Squad)
3) add standard bearer (costs 1 Population upgrades to skeleton company (archer and spearmen))
4) reinforce Skeleton Archers (costs 1 Population upgrades to skeleton archer squad)
5) reinforce mounted skeletons (costs 1 population upgrades to skeleton horsemen/ Horsearchers to a squad)
6) add standard bearer (costs 1 population upgrades to skeleton horsemen/ Horsearchers to a company)
7) reinforce Banshee (costs 2 than 4 population, upgrades to banshee pair than triplet)
Buildings:
The Aristrakh have access to a variety of unique buildings, most of them will replace the generic ones (which would be useless to them) so it is still worthwhile to research technologies like medicine for example. Some Buildings will increase the warweariness of your opponents by a small amount, this helps if you make use of dark ritual (see below), make sure to build them in all cities to gain a significant effect.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9231145&postcount=168 and
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9282927&postcount=195
Civilization Mechanics
Vampires:
All Vampires start with the Souldrinker promotion, which gives you additional experience in battle and it will give them the Soul Harvest ability. Soulharvest works like feast, but it will not draw from your population instead it will take three turns to cast.
A second ability that all Aristrakh vampires posses is a battle frenzy system: the vampire gains the Murderous Frenzy promotion after combat which increases his strength, his combat healing rate and decreases his normal healing rate. This effect can stack up to five times and has a chance to wear off each turn. So you can either gain experience by staying in your cities casting Soul Harvest or through endless combat.
The third intrinsic ability that all Vampires share (together with the Reanimated General) is a Combataura that buffs all Undead units around them. The undead gain in strength, based on the strength of the aura, they will be Hasted and Undying (adds a chance to withdrawal from Combat)
In the very late game you will have the possibility to get Dracolich Riders, those are mounted Vampire Lords on undead dragons. There are two ways to get them:
1) Get a living Dragon, that can be Acheron for example, any unit with the Dragon Promotion will do. Get them in your city drain their live and you now have a Dragon Graveyard in you city, allowing your Vampire Lords to mount a Dracolich.
2) Take your Vampire Lord and go to the Dragon Bone Improvement, if it happened to be spawned on the map and mount an undead dragon.
Minor Undead:
All undead minions besides the Banshees and the Reanimated General can not gain any Experience. If you advance in the technology tree you can upgrade them to more powerful versions. The upgrade will not cost any gold, but will instead draw from your population (usually 1, for banshees it is a bit more). You can also build the upgraded Versions, but this too will cost you Population there is no difference in either upgrading them or creating the more advanced troops. The upgrade system allows for more complex strategies however.
All those units, again with exception to the Banshees and the Reanimated General, will cost no military upkeep, they still cost maintenance however.
Population:
Population is gained by completing rituals. There are two kinds of rituals:
1) Death Pact: the bread and butter, a repeatable ritual that increases the population of your city based on its size and on the technologies researched:
- Death Pact I: only build-able in cities of size 1-5, adds 1 population
- Death Pact II: only build-able in cities of size 6-8, adds 2 population, needs philosophy
- Death Pact III: only build-able in cities of size 9-13, adds 3 population, needs priesthood
- Death Pact III: only build-able in cities of size 14-16, adds 4 population, needs religious law
- Death Pact IV: only build-able in cities of size 17-25, adds 5 population, needs theology
Higher tier Death Pacts will actually cost more production compared with the population gained. While it is still viable to upgrade your cities only using Death Pact there is a much more tempting alternative: Dark Ritual (see below)
2) if you want to exceed the current city size limit placed on you by Death Pact you can build the repeatable national* ritual: Dark Ritual.
Dark Ritual increases the size of all cities you own by 1 but lowers your standings with other factions. The ritual gets cheaper when researching arcane technologies.
The third picture is the new ritual available for the Calabim, see: Playing as the Aristrakh section
Religion:
The Aristrakh are quasi agnostic, they don't really care about religions since their path to power is through their unique authority over the undead. They still can research religious technologies and even adopt state religions and build temples, but they don't have access to any new units or heroes.
Strategies:
You can either choose to have only a few big cities with Death Pact and only upgrading a few skeletons until you reach advanced technologies and build your elite units or you can build many cities and pump out tons of skeletons and upgrading them. To keep the population up you will need to make repeatedly use of Dark Ritual. Since skeletons are dirt cheap you don't need big cities. Of course you can choose a middle ground.
My usual strategies are:
-found initial city on a tile with many hills nearby (you will need a lot of
)-immediately research mysticism for god-king
-get the capital to population-size 5
-build a lot of skeleton spearmen and some acolytes and expand
-research up to festivals for haunted towers, research animal husbandry for unearthed graves
-research up to bronze weapons for mines and skeleton spearmen squads
-research philosophy for death pact II (increases city size limit to 10)
-research up to code of laws for halls of the dead and hamlets and knowledge of the ether for banshees
-from here on out you should have a good economy and somewhat competitively force
Playing as the Aristrakh:
1) Start your game as the Aristrakh like any other faction.
2) Finish the ritual "Death's Embrace" (see the third picture Population section) and your Calabim nations becomes the Aristrakh. Completing this Ritual kills all living nonvampiric units. There are huge benefits for choosing the second option:
You can save your religious Heroes. All standard Vampires can immediately transform into ancient ones regardless of the current progression in technology. You can grow your cities to much larger sizes.
* (can only be build one at a time)
Very nice work!
