Balseraph Travelling Circus

[karma_virus]

I was playtesting this civ, admiring the sheer lunacy of their upbringing and brainstorming some ideas to help distinguish them better from the other civs. Firstly, it occurs to me that a civ entirely based upon carnival freaks should automatically already have a carnival in each and every one of their cities, or have it only take 1 turn as a freebie building, cost (0).

I was also playing with them and the Trojan Horse unit, and hatched up the idea of having a Balseraph custom unit, the Balseraph Travelling Circus.

This would, like the Trojan Horse, be able to innocuously penetrate and scout behind enemy borders. Furthermore, they could 'captivate' their audience... whenever in the same tile as an enemy unit. What they do is they charm the targetted enemy unit with hypnosis or madness during the course of the show, and then store them INSIDE the Trojan Horse/Circus. Then, the Travelling Circus sneaks back home and unloads the newly brainswashed enemy unit. Troop-stealing and mind-bending is a fun way to play a Civ, I remember doing these tactics in Warhammer tabletop with the Azazael the Demon Prince special ability. There's no look funnier on your opponent's face than when you grab one of his own troops and set them on him.

Also, unleash the FREAKS! Give them a hero named 'Fishboy' who runs full speed on water tiles in full aqua-mode and scouts with his own webbed toes. He should be weak as hell, but incredibly useful in that he's fast and that he doesn't need a ship to keep on scouting, maybe give him gills so he can submerge and avoid ship units in a hiding mode. Of course... the catch is he can't walk on land, just visit the cities and sit in a bucket at most. Replace archers with knife throwers, warriors with bearded ladies, regular scouts with midgets! Oh those little legs, see them scoot. Fortune tellers with that mystic eye spell would be a nice shaman variant, an Illusionist/Stage Magician would make a great 2nd tier. (perhaps a spell to cloak units in the same tile for 2 turns with invisibility, or another to make 0 power 'projections' of himself that fool enemy units into thinking its him and attacking it instead) And please pay homage to Lobster Boy. He kills...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Protests_for_Lobster_Boy.jpg

 

[soibean]

I dont think having a freebie building would be a good idea, first off if they have it automatically then they wouldnt even need the tech. If you required the tech and they received it automatically based on their civ being a freakshow, then following the same line of thought, you'd have to give dwarves free smithees because they're known for hammering, elves a free grove and other stuff like that.
A free building isnt the way to go there.

I never played far enough to get the trojan horse so I dont know how much that'd effect gameplay, but one of the team members shot down my idea for unit snatching, maybe if you altered something.

 

[karma_virus]

aye, now that I've played that civ a few more times, I did notice that carnivals were already coming pretty quickly as it is, thanks to their cultural focus. Also, the gypsy wagon is SWEET, (maybe overly so, I was making out like a bandit by halfway through the game) and the taskmaster kind of has the same troop-stealing abilities that I was thinking of.

Now, perhaps a Belseraph specific "Travelling Circus" WONDER would be a bit less unbalancing... having to spend 20-30 turns making a carnival in each town is a bit different than automatically getting one.

I like mixing this civ up with groves and beastmasters... kind of to have a 'lion-tamer' feel to the carnival crew makes it fun to stage troops. oh hey, dedicated Beastmaster unit? I also felt obligated to make camel archers and elephant riders inclusive with this civ, being a Ringling fanatic myself. Those animal crackers seriously had crack in them...

The trojan horse is a fun unit to play with, you can drop about 4 units/horse on a city's borders before the civ even knows you're at war. (which can lead to stack-of-dooms out of the blue, kind of cheap to pull... I recommend limitting them to 3/time like the uber units) Now, when you have a troop-stealing unit, it's overly unbalancing to have that same unit drop off fresh troops from the side as the war's going... you could stack of doom that regiment and make a neigh-unbeatable leech-victory. A way to balance this is to make the unit ONLY abduct Civ units during peacetime, AND only pick them up in 'enemy' territory and drop them off in homeland cities. Also, do not allow the circus into enemy cities... too unbalancing to have them steal units DEFENDING a city! In this way, the circus doesn't really come to town armed to the teeth, but its still useful in trapping, espionage and stealing minor units... though to bring back and not immediately unleash. Also, I would put a cap of about 4 power on the type of units they can seize... so no hypnotic dragons or aquebuses.

That way, the Belseraphs kind of have to maintain peaceful relations in order to corrupt Civs with their cause, since they can't blatantly be at war with somebody and STILL stealing their troops. (a carnival embargo of sorts!) Also, a diplomacy hit of up to -4 of "you subvert our troops!" would be funny to add to the diplomacy charts, -1 for each troop 'stolen'. Then, Belseraphs have to be in a continual butt-kissing diplomacy mode to co-exist with those they exploit, always bribing them or helping them to look the other way of their troop stealing escapades. It would be HILARIOUS to play them stealing troops, then suddenly have the civ-nation cut you off from all diplomacy, declare war and stop your supply of stolen troops; and equally so to be ticking off your main ally to the point of caution or annoyance by abusing the feature too much.

as for midget scouts and bearded lady warriors or pikemen... that's just unit-name icing on the cake! Ever since I played Clan of Embers and saw the goblin scouts... circus midgets came to mind.