ashen viel

[Sureshot]

maybe turn all land tiles terrain to desert too lol, and remove rivers.. that would stop anyone from building there for a long long long time

 

[Maniac]

Re Diseased Corpses and the issue of the Veil not being able to cure disease, I suggested a while back that:
1) if you are running the Sacrifice the Weak civic, and
2) a unit of yours with the Diseased promotion dies in combat,
there's a chance you get a Diseased Corpses unit for free.

I believe this event would be possible with Python code, just like slave creation under the Slavery civic is. Is there someone with Python knowledge who could write this event?


re Demon's Altar, how about the building just giving a science bonus until some cooler mechanic is implemented?

 

[QES]

Re Diseased Corpses and the issue of the Veil not being able to cure disease, I suggested a while back that:
1) if you are running the Sacrifice the Weak civic, and
2) a unit of yours with the Diseased promotion dies in combat,
there's a chance you get a Diseased Corpses unit for free.

I believe this event would be possible with Python code, just like slave creation under the Slavery civic is. Is there someone with Python knowledge who could write this event?


re Demon's Altar, how about the building just giving a science bonus until some cooler mechanic is implemented?

Generally I think that deiseased corpses represent some logical problems.
A) Are not the undead immune to disease - and are not corpses unded?
B)Assuming that diseased corpses are infected (their power maybe), and therefor strangly subject to disease, should not their power stem also from numbers? And As has been mentioned here, MORE corpses become available becuase of disease? (I think maniac had a good idea)
C) Where do disesased corpses come from? How does a city "produce them?" Kill a bunch of citizenry - infect them, and then raise them from the dead? Or infect the citizenry, and kill them off and wait? It strikes me that "conscription/construction" of diseased/undead units is a bit - well nonsensical. As opposed to Gaining them through other means, like a slavery-esque function. Or, conversely, maybe the ASHEN VALE TEMPLE should provide some bonus to a "normal" unit that upgrades them (like drown) into diseased corpses. This would be better for flavor, and offer perhaps a better and more "rounded" unit as a whole.
-Qes

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I wouldn't mind if the Veil temple gave -33% upgrade cost when the destination unit had the undead or demon promotions.

 

[Gamestation]

What if diseased corpses simply gave no experience when killed? Then the Ashen Veil player can continously send diseased corpses without giving the enemy a chance to profit from all those easy kills. How experienced can someone get from killing someone who is already dead anyway? They probably just walk up to the army to get killed so all the army has to do is swing their weapons around until they break (the corpses and the weapons). They might as well be hacking at trees to get more experience, or breaking rocks.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Well in my current game where I have invented all five religions and have Priest units from all five religions casting spells on each other, I can report that

Diseased Corpses can be cured of their disease after all.

This means Veal (yes it was a good joke) cites can put of STR 6 units at a cost of 112 . Then Cure Disease on them with a priest from your first religion, and you have a very cheap 6 STR unit. Not so bad.

But the "traditional" way to use them is like siege units. They cause -30% collateral damage. They cost the same as siege units. So build a few and sacrifice them on a stack to soften them up.

And then with Imps, heck you can promote up all the importent units in your army with Enchanted Weapons, Loyalty, Blessings by creating Imps in where yo have many units in one tile. Eventually you will summun an imp that can grant these permanent promtions. And all without studying the various Mana node techs required.

As I type this it seems like the benefit to Veil is a lot of magic without a lot of magic research. It also occurs to me that if Khazad gets Runes, then Veil, is a Khazad very much like we are used to seeing, except with a bunch of magic in reserve. And if diplomacy is a problem, Runes is available to Good-shift you back to Neutral. That's got some potential.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I knew it was a good joke!

 

[Jono]

Was it? Was it really?

 

[Draconian]

QES and Maniac have some nice ideas here.

You are not going to "train" some of your citizens to become undead and diseased, right?
So make corpses unable to be build and add an option to the ashen vale temple that enables you to turn ALL living units into diseased corpses for free. They would keep their base strength, lose all promotions and the ability to get exp (like golems) and gain the undead and diseased "promotion".
Obviously those units are going to be weak, so this should be compensated by numbers: if you are running ashen vale state religion and you lose a non-undead but diseased unit, it should be reanimated as an undead disease corpse with the same base strength. Additionaly, if you kill a diseased enemy unit it is reanimated as well. Or only reanimate those enemies that are killed by corpses, kinda like the Baron works.
Maybe add a chance to this, so not all units are turned to corpses and make them require no or lower upkeep.
And if you want them to be really annoying add this:

What if diseased corpses simply gave no experience when killed? Then the Ashen Veil player can continously send diseased corpses without giving the enemy a chance to profit from all those easy kills. How experienced can someone get from killing someone who is already dead anyway? They probably just walk up to the army to get killed so all the army has to do is swing their weapons around until they break (the corpses and the weapons). They might as well be hacking at trees to get more experience, or breaking rocks.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Quick aside on the idea of no exp from killing undead ... the only, only form I could agree on would have it work like the Barbarian 100 system. Units with less than 100 exp would train up, but not above 100. If you ask me, some raw recruits who fought through the night and survived their first zombie attack are gonna feel a lot more confident and able come zombie attack #2. But yeah, I can see Babmur yawning.

 

[eerr]

The runes are neutral or good because you can be either alignment and have them as a state religion. If you are evil and adopt the Runes you become neutral.

The Overlords are the same in the other way, you can be Neutral or Evil and follow them. If you are good and adopt the Overlords you become neutral.

And alignment can be the followship.

edit: Drat, Grillick beat me.

perhaps runes should be made neutral and leaves should be made neutral-good?
you can go about making money in good and bad ways, while leaves always seems to be living in harmony with nature...

 

[Sureshot]

nature isnt always good, death is part of nature, so is a tiger who kills and eats other animals, so is a swarm of locusts.

 

[Quetz]

QES and M@niac did have some excellent points. "Producing" a diseased corpse did seem pretty funny to me.. much better as an uprade, or as a chance to spawn with Sacrifice the Weak and Diseased, like M@niac said.

I hope Kael sees those posts

 

[Jono]

Kael sees all, he's just usually too busy to reply.

 

[dreiche2]

nature isnt always good, death is part of nature, so is a tiger who kills and eats other animals, so is a swarm of locusts.

yeah, but leaves still seems to be about balance with nature. So I think 'true neutral' is ok for leaves (in the sense that it changes alignment to neutral), but evil, destructive civs and the leaves don't fit so well in my opinion.

I also suggested switching the roles of runes of leaves... but on the other hand, Kael probably knows best what is good flavorwise, doesn't he...

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Hm... Leaves being active neutral instead of passive neutral sounds interesting. Maybe another passive neutral religion would be good?

 

[Silverkiss]

Runes... and another one that fits the Neutral-Good role....

 

[triangle]

How's this for a way to make the veil better (and different from other religions):

A decent use for a demon's alter!

At the moment, the veil unique building seems quite useless. -1 for a scourge promotion means that I'll usually have something better to build.

But what if it allowed you to sacrifice units? (and not for reasearch).

Every unit in a city with a demons alter would have the ability "revive" or whatever, which would allow them to sacrifice themselves and create a shade (a better name would be needed).

The shade would have whatever strength the unit would have at full health but no promotions. It would be a pretty terrible idea on casters and would probably be illegal for heroes and national units.

But imagine if the defenders of your city were pretty beat up, and then they all turn into shades. Suddenly you've got a full garrison again!

Alternatively, if it wasn't powerful enough, it could provide free "fanaticism" promotions which would allow a unit to sacrifice itself on the road to create a shade (fanaticism would be an AV only promotion).

It would make the religion cooler and more powerful, plus give it a decent building.

 

[Sureshot]

the ability to self-destruct their cities in a nuclear blast type effect (creating fallout all around and destroying nearby units) would be a blast

 

[Chandrasekhar]

If the Veil benefits involve some massive sacrificing that are only useful at strategically specific points, the AI will never use them properly. How about something as simple as this:

Temple of the Veil
+5
+1 with reagents
+1 with incense

Demon's Altar (or whatever name might be decided)
Available with Corruption of Spirit
+25%
+1
+2 Sage

Simple and useful. The Veil is a late game religion, there should be rewards for using it.