Design: Civilizations

[loki1232]

I was personally thinking of having a civic: Vampire aristocracy.
It would give most of those effects you were talking about earlier.

 

[Kael]

Added themes for all the civ's that I have.

 

[Kael]

@ Kael:
I think that calling the horse civ Hippus is a bit obvious (latin word for horse). IMO you should call it something like The Horse Lords.

Now I would say "The Horse Lords" is even more obvious.

The reason I went with the slightly more obscure Hippus is because even though they are the best civ for mounted units they aren't going to be all mounted.

I added pics for all the leaders.

 

[Kael]

While out skiing today, I did some thinking about the Celabim (well, the skiing pretty much does itself, and when you're on your own on a track you've skied dozens of times, you can put your mind to other uses).

I know you said you had ideas about the Celabim using humans (i.e. population) as a resource, but if that should turn out to be unworkable, I have some ideas that may achieve a similar effect.

Units: I thought of two spells the vampire UU should have. The first should be the ability to spread a kind of "vampirism light" to units as a promotion. It would give strength, first strike and perhaps LOS (nightvision or summat) bonuses to the "affected". Insofar as vampirism is a form of gift the vampires are unwilling to share, it makes sense to dangle it infront of powerful warriors as a reward.

I agree with this, how about we put a minimum level on the action to show that the Vampires only gift the finest of their human servants.

The second was a regeneration/sacrifice spell (akin to Warcraft's "Devour"). This would allow the Vampires to "Sacrifice" units to drastically speed up regeneration for a turn/fully heal wounded units in a stack. Perhaps you could link this to the "Lite Vampirism", making the promotion extra useful. This spell would lead the Celabim to adopt a rather unique battle tactic of a handful of very powerful units along with hordes of weak units (warriors, workers, slaves and old, expensive-to-upgrade units) to be used for quick regeneration of the main force.

I definitly like this!

I have a mental image of the vampire as a rather weak, but immortal unit with a high movement rate and LOS, but more importantly, powerful spells like these and perhaps some more. They would turn out as a form of dark healer/scout. After all, they are an aristocracy, who rule not so much by their own strength as by using the strength of "lesser" beings.

Cities: If you cannot work humans as a resource, I suppose you would have to go for food and unhealthiness to achieve something similar, people sacrificed for gold and production. First of all, military units would have to use food to build. Sacrifice for production should ALWAYS be an option for the Celabim, perhaps even a bit cheaper than for others, to encourage their use.

Finally, I had an idea for a new specialist, either one you can assign as a result of a building ("Manor", "Spooky Old Castle", "Dark Palace" or similar), or who appear thru the sacrifice of a Vampire UU (like the Super Specialists). They'd represent the Vampire Aristocracy in the cities, and would provide large production, money and research bonuses, but cost food in addition to the food they use by merely existing (I was thinking -2 food/unhealthiness).

Particularly the Aristocrats would lead to a civilisation with small, but incredibly powerful economic cities placed in the middle of fertile areas. A Celabim/Veil civ would have enormous research capabilities, but small cities. A Celabim/Fellowship civ (who says vamps can't get along with elves) would perhaps be able to cancel out a bit of the negative effects, allowing even more vampires.

Just my two cents on the Celabim. They fascinate me.

So we have the fact that the vampires can:

1. Devour population to gain xp.
2. Devour other units to heal themselves.
3. Can gift vampirism to units of a high enough level.
4. Take increased damage from certain sun spells.
5. Have the undead promotion, making them vulnerable to anti-undead spells, minor strength and healing boost.
6. Possibly gain some minor spells with the ability to learn more from promotions.

Anything else?

 

[Kael]

I was personally thinking of having a civic: Vampire aristocracy.
It would give most of those effects you were talking about earlier.

Ill probably add a building to do it. I was thinking of a few calabim specific buildings.

1. Breeding pits (boosts pop growth, causes unhappy)
2. Govenors manor (increases production, reduces food)

 

[Lunargent]

Undead should be immune to poisons, meaning they'd not be as vulnerable to assassins. ( you can't backstab undead traditionally to boot)

 

[loki1232]

Giants- (Chalid) Some time ago using FfH 0.9 i created a giant civ (as the Giant Slaying promotion was quite useless until that moment). The idea was that the civ should be quite pure so that there is a straightforward way of playing with it. I therefore disabled nearly all buildings for them (giants are not good at doing craftmanship or building cathedrals) and replaced their units with 7 unique giant units (Settler, Worker, warrior, axeman, macemen, berserker and a giant catapult - no fancy waepons or beliefs for giants) that were about 30% to 40% stronger than their counterparts and much more expansive. They got a small set of available promotions.

As you can imagine they are really strong at the begining but their power fades when others get the more complicated things. Of course this was only a very done fast hack but it gave quite a feel running around with the giants and triing not to get outproduced and completely outteched.

I dislike this idea. IMO giants should stay as they are, wild animals the same as dragons and minotaurs. However, that doesn't rule out the possibility of a civ that plays totally different from the others.

What about having each civ play extremly different from the others? I know that this would take a lot of work, but we should be able to come up with all of the necessary ideas. IMO even civ should play very different, with many unique units and buildings (and wonders). Civs would be able to cross spheres only in a few ways. a) find a different sphere's magic node. these nodes would appear throughout the map and have levels 1,2,3,4,5. at level 5 you would be almost as much in that sphere as the civ of that sphere, but not quite. IMO you could not get more than 12 magic nodes at the most, so each player could chose their extra spheres carefully. b) convert to a religion. each religion will have its specific spheres, so you could be very branched out.
--However, you can also get maic nodes of the same sphere as yourself. Each one would increase your special attributes, with a maximum of 6. You could also chose to convert to a religion mostly of your sphere, and end up being uber your sphere. Balance or specialization? Your choice. Civ's that end up choosing similar spheres will have similar play styles, but no two civs will ever have identical play styles.

 

[loki1232]

So we have the fact that the vampires can:

1. Devour population to gain xp.
2. Devour other units to heal themselves.
3. Can gift vampirism to units of a high enough level.
4. Take increased damage from certain sun spells.
5. Have the undead promotion, making them vulnerable to anti-undead spells, minor strength and healing boost.
6. Possibly gain some minor spells with the ability to learn more from promotions.

Anything else?

Ignore movement costs as they are fliers?
Conduct limited espionage? Assination missions/ stealth attack?

 

[loki1232]

Ill probably add a building to do it. I was thinking of a few calabim specific buildings.

1. Breeding pits (boosts pop growth, causes unhappy)
2. Govenors manor (increases production, reduces food)

1. Also unhelathy?
2. Increases gold and gives undead units a 25% defense bonus. Do you know how hard it is to take over a vampire's secret lair? Have you ever seen Van Helsing? (really bad movie btw)

 

[loki1232]

Undead should be immune to poisons, meaning they'd not be as vulnerable to assassins. ( you can't backstab undead traditionally to boot)

Well they already would be fine against assasins, because they aren't melee type. OR are they?

 

[Lunargent]

Not all undead will be vampires, so even if vampires aren't melee, there might still be some melee undead-who shouldn't be weak against assassins.

 

[loki1232]

Not all undead will be vampires, so even if vampires aren't melee, there might still be some melee undead-who shouldn't be weak against assassins.

I see what you mean. But i dont' quite agree. Isn't the only way to kill a vampire to assasinate him? A silver bullet in the back works much better than a regiment of infantry.

 

[Lunargent]

Silver bullets and such imply a promotion or holy spell ability, not poisons and backstabs. In lore, the best way to defeat a vampire has always been to confront them with holy power. Besides, assassins don't seem to be the type to carry around silver bullet loaded guns and holy symbols.

 

[wilboman]

1. Also unhelathy?
2. Increases gold and gives undead units a 25% defense bonus. Do you know how hard it is to take over a vampire's secret lair? Have you ever seen Van Helsing? (really bad movie btw)

1. Initially I would agree that the pits also should add unhealthy, but adding unhealthiness while increasing population growth seems a bit self-defeating.
2. I thought it was an excellent movie. I saw it with some friends and we laughed all the way through from start to finish. Oh... What do you mean it isn't a parody?

 

[loki1232]

How many UU's are you expecting for each civ? I'm hoping for armies of them, but probably you'd just want one of two.

Also, how many unique buildings?

 

[loki1232]

1. Initially I would agree that the pits also should add unhealthy, but adding unhealthiness while increasing population growth seems a bit self-defeating.

Maybe added unhealthy, but whenever city grew it gained two population instead of one? This might cause lots of starvation, but also give many victims for the vampires.

 

[Lunargent]

Instead of unhealthiness, reduce culture by 50%. The people aren't going to be singing any ballads or painting many canvasses in a city where people are bred as cattle.

I think the vampire lords would take great care to make sure that their food is as healthy as possible. They'd kill anyone who got too bad of a case of the sniffles, and subject everyone to rigorous health examinations. People would become little more than blood bags, but they'd be kept in as good a physical (but not mental, the vamps won't care about that) condition as possible. I don't think they'd want to drink the blood of filthy vermin if they could help it.

I'd give the breeding pits +4 healthy, -4 happyness, -50% culture.
Change the name to the Blood Pens.

 

[loki1232]

I'd give the breeding pits +4 healthy, -4 happyness, -50% culture.
Change the name to the Blood Pens.

Okay, but also have it give double pop growth when food bar is filled.

 

[Lunargent]

That works. With the reduced culture, most of the extra citizens will be forced into becomming citizens or specialists -until they starve that is.

Maybe the proposed vampire civic could do something with all these extra citizens.

Maybe +2 defense per citizen- they are used as fodder.

you'd have to make Vampire Aristocracy disable cast system though, or the combination of unlimited specialists and gargantuan populations would be overpowered IMO.

 

[loki1232]

Okay, some bannor UU's:
Enforcers: Warrior replacements that reduce maintenance in cities they are stationed in. +50% versus barbarians.
Cavalry of Law: Horseman replacement with the same abilities as enforcer. +1 movement on roads.

Malakim:
Desert Nomad:
+100% on desert. Chariot replacement. Double movement on desert.
Glowing Golem:
Golem type with bonuses against undead, demons, and shades. Requires sun altar but no metals.