Cultists, OO, and Mutate

[Immaculate]

Can cultists not mutate anymore?
I had never used the mutate spell and it would have been very handy in my current game. I bee-lined for OO and priesthood just to get drowns and i wanted to mutate warriors before drowning them like i had read on these boards, but i can't seem to figure out how.
What am i missing?

 

[rusty217]

The Chaos 2 spell is now mutate, so you will need mages and Chaos mana.

 

[Slvynn]

But mutation IS OO native spell, according lore as well.

 

[smjjames]

Mutate is available almost right away for the Balseraphs though because they start with chaos mana.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

And because Loki starts with Chaos II


I personally really don't like mutation as an arcane spell. I'd rather bring back one of the best summoning spells, summon Chaos Marauder (with its good chance to turn barbarian). Naturally, Loki would probably need to lose the choas 2 promotion.


My modmod will increase the number of Divine spells, but make them require a state religion. I'm letting you build priests of any religion, but they won't have access to their spells unless you convert. I could bring mutate back as an OO spell, but I'm leanign against it. Tsunami is already really good, and (since letting everyone have water walking priests) I'm probably going to make water walking a spell again (I'm probably going to make it give a temporary water walking promotion to all units on the tile). Hmm...I guess I could make Tsunami stringer and give make it Speakers' second spell.


I've moved Cure Disease to Medic 2 (from Divine/Channeling2) and Heal to Medic 3 (from Divine/Channeling 3), in part because I don't like Grigori Medics having Divine/Channeling (especially when combined with the the new "And Now for Something Completely Different" Grigori-specific, Hero spell) and in part because the mouseover for Divine is too large (and is getting larger in my modmod. I'm considering making the Evil religions' priests have different healing spells (probably replacing their medic promotions with something else) which also cause mutation, and make diseased units into disease carriers instead of curing them completely.

 

[Mewtarthio]

I'd also prefer to have Mutate be an Overlords-only spell, possibly strengthening Tsunami and moving it to Tier III and making the Kraken a national unit available only to the Overlords. Really, the idea of perfectly nice civs like the Amurites fielding armies of twisted abominations against nature is just really unthematic. Besides, the Overlords currently lack their flavor of "twisted monstrosities born from the nightmares of a madman" and instead look more like "angry sea gods."

 

[Muz]

I'd also prefer to have Mutate be an Overlords-only spell, possibly strengthening Tsunami and moving it to Tier III and making the Kraken a national unit available only to the Overlords. Really, the idea of perfectly nice civs like the Amurites fielding armies of twisted abominations against nature is just really unthematic. Besides, the Overlords currently lack their flavor of "twisted monstrosities born from the nightmares of a madman" and instead look more like "angry sea gods."

That game Dominions had the best 'mutation' effect . But I like mutation as it is, especially with all the freaks and clowns in Balseraphs. I think any "perfectly nice civs" going to all the effort to grab chaos mana and choosing a mage to specialize in them is unthematic in itself

 

[Alsark]

This'll sound stupid, but what does Mutation even do? I noticed once that one of my workers had "Mutation" and something like "Weakened", but nothing really ever happened to him. I looked up Mutation on the Civlopedia, and all it said was, "Marks that this unit has been mutated," or something like that. And... that wasn't very helpful at all.

 

[smjjames]

mutation gives your unit a random set of promotions, some good, some bad. AFAIK workers can't be mutated though, at least not foriegn ones, haven't tested on my own yet.

 

[xienwolf]

My manual lists them all, but it is an 8% chance of gaining each of 27 different promotions (so you could rather easily wind up with none, once in a million years get all 27, and typically get 2 to 5)

 

[Tarquelne]

This'll sound stupid, but what does Mutation even do?

Expanding on what the others said: Most of the mutations are positive, though often of only occasional value. (Cold Resistance, for example.) So on the whole Mutation is a net +. You'd want to think seriously, though, before mutating a Hero.


On where the spell should go:

I made it a Cultist spell and changed Chaos II to "Burning Blood". The Cultists kept Tsunami. We've been happy with it, though I'd like to work some chaotic marauding back into Chaos two, too.

(Lesser version of BB as Chaos I, C.Marauder as II? Dancing Blades as a unit-spell of Loki and some other unit?)

 

[PotatoOverdose]

And because Loki starts with Chaos II


I personally really don't like mutation as an arcane spell. I'd rather bring back one of the best summoning spells, summon Chaos Marauder (with its good chance to turn barbarian). Naturally, Loki would probably need to lose the choas 2 promotion.

Ironically, loki starts with spell extension 1 which gives all summoned units the ability to move one tile further.

I actually like mutate where it is now. It gives a justifiable reason to build loki even in multiplayer games or games where you're surrounded by creative leaders. Its a reasonable improvement all things considered; I mean wasn't there a whole thread about how loki needs an improvement?

As to the OO priests, why not just give them a second spell. The death sphere has two tier 3 spells. The oo priests have two spells that are very situational on a lot of maps (tsunami and kraken). Why not give them the mutation spell in addition to what they already posses?