Assisting Rituals

[MaxAstro]

This is just a random idea I had, no idea how codable it is. I'm a fan of rituals, but a lot of the rituals currently in the game take a ridiculous amount of hammers, and it's hard to convince yourself to dedicate a city to one thing that long. Even rituals like Elegy of the Sheaim are usually overlooked due to high hammer costs and more useful things that can be built for less.

So, I was thinking that it would be cool and kind of thematically appropriate if once a city started building a ritual, any other city could switch production to a "Assist Ritual: [Ritual Name]" production option. This would work sort of like Build Wealth or Build Research, but would add some percent of the city's hammers to the ritual your other city is currently working on.

This would allow cities to work together on rituals, which would really help make those high-hammer rituals be more reasonably achievable. Would also make Elegy of the Sheaim and Hallowing of the Elohim a LOT more useful, as you could actually complete them in resonable amounts of time.

Plus, and most importantly, it would be cool.

 

[Sarisin]

Or you could build the Celestial Compass which I think still reduces the time it takes to build rituals. Yeah, it is only a one-of Wonder, so your idea certainly has merit.

I'm just wondering though on some of the rituals if there needs to be a way to prevent the AI from building them so much - Curse the Lands, Chosen of Esus, etc.

 

[zup]

IMO rituals are too cheap. Birthright regained in 1 turn? Give me a break. How about multiply their cost by a factor of 10? Perhaps not Hallowing and Elegy.

 

[Vehem]

IMO rituals are too cheap. Birthright regained in 1 turn? Give me a break. How about multiply their cost by a factor of 10? Perhaps not Hallowing and Elegy.

700 Production (or 350 with Celestial Compass) in one turn at standard speed? Sounds like that city will build just about anything in very few turns. I don't think reusing the worldspell is worth 7000 hammers for most civs.

 

[Pike the Hands]

Question: Has anyone, ever, used the really expensive rituals like Bane Divine?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I used them a couple times back in Fire, but not recently.

 

[MaxAstro]

Glory Everlasting, yes. Bane Divine, no; I've never really seen a use for it. It doesn't exactly justify it's hammer cost to me; if you are getting slammed by priest units, you won't have enough time to build it from scratch, and if you aren't, it's hard to spend that much time on a ritual you aren't even sure will turn out to be useful.

 

[Lonan]

New to this thread and just recently discovered these wonderful mods. That said, I was reading your thread and thought that a sensible solution would be to give priest and/or adepts the hurry production ability, but have it tied to rituals only. I don't think it should be as useful as the great engineer's hurry production ability, but should provide a nice boost for any player willing to sacrifice adepts or priests. Storywise, the idea makes sense as you are using the magical essence or divine energy of the unit to build power for the ritual. I definitely think the ability should be tied to adepts, at least, so that the Grigori and Dural can play too. What do you guys think? Seem implementable?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

cool idea about adepts sacrificed to rush rituals, I approve

 

[Lonan]

Thanks Gekko. This feature would also help take some of the sting out of Curse the Lands by allowing a prepared player to sacrifice several adpets to quickly counter the curse. Alternatively, a player could build several adepts to prepare for a more offensive ritual and then quickly sacrafice them to rush production of the ritual so that the ritual goes off when the timing is to their liking rather than when the ritual is finished by normal production. I know that you can store some production (though subject to gradual erosion) by building and then switching from the ritual before completion, but this can be harder to manage in the thick of battle. I also think that the cost ratio should be fairly similar in that the cost in production to produce the adept should be similar (if not the same or slightly lower) than the bonus that is given to production when the ability is used. I think the ratio should be slightly in favor of sacrificing the adept since the player using the adepts aa sacrifice fodder must pay for the upkeep on those adepts until its to time to rush the ritual. The costs should definitely be balanced though.

 

[zup]

@Vehem

You haven't seen what a 100+ city can do? Also lots of settled gp. I could build anything in just one turn. Exception: Tower of Mastery took three turns. True it was my 1k slums capital with lots of grassland floodplains. And StW (FF style). And I was running God King. Yes it was late to future tech, some 30 or so. The rest of my core cities were in their fifties, and could reliably complete rituals in 1 or 2 turns.

There are some things that might be different for you Immortal masochists and this might not be perfectly accurate anymore because:
1. The game was only on Noble
2. I had spammed dozens of Blood of the Phoenix for my gp
3. Yes I changed rituals to be infinitely buildable (except bane divine and glory everlasting ... I hate them even though I have never seen one built)

But my capital still reliably pumped out over 800 production every turn for projects.

 

[Vehem]

@Vehem

You haven't seen what a 100+ city can do? ...
But my capital still reliably pumped out over 800 production every turn for projects.

I've seen it - but I don't think it's wise to be using that as a reference for balancing against...

 

[zup]

So such cities are not the norm but an exception? (except for me)

 

[xienwolf]

Cities over size 30 are abnormal. Reaching Future Tech at all is abnormal. In general, the game should be done before either of those, or at the point of being just about wrapped up. Balance of features will certainly not be done to assume Future Tech 10+ and cities of >100 population, except possibly to make certain such things are impossible (but if you are tweaking the XML already, that is a difficult thing to do)

 

[MaxAstro]

I don't know; I've had a 35-pop capital with the elves by turn 300 or so thanks to City of a Thousand Slums and Guardian of Nature. Admittedly I was winning (despite only have four or five other cities... XD), but it's still possible.

Not the mention the Infernals and their crazy city sizes if they get rolling...

 

[Sarisin]

|Yeah, I have to agree that it depends on which game speed you use.

I usually use Epic and often several of my cities are 30+ pop. As mentioned, building the City of Slums virtually ensures one.

Also, if I don't get one of the other victories (cultural, altar, etc.) and head to a Time Victory, I will definitely make it to the Future Techs.

I imagine with Marathon speed this is also true.