Design: Religions

Well, the way I would have it work is that you only get full access to the death spells if you are the Sidar. All other civilizations might get access to the SorceryI death spell ( if they get to sorcery), and that's it, no divine or level 2. They'd have full acess to earth and enchantment.

Conversely, the Sidar get limited access to the earth sphere, and full access to death, and enchantment.

The magic spheres would only be loosely tied together, as limited package deals.

 

the way i see it, there would be non-divine death spells available to all, but through magic nodes and very slowly.
1 node = Sor I
2 nodes = Sor II
3 nodes = Sum II
4 nodes = Sor III
5 nodes = Sum III

The sidar would get all of this stuff, and the divine spells. Death would be only available through nodes, not religion.

I don't think that they would be packaged deals, except for the religions. Each civ has there own sphere and only its own sphere, each node has 1 sphere, but each religion has 2 or 3 spheres.

 

Updated the first post with the alignment changes.

 

I was more thinking of the alignments as on a 1-9 scale. 1-3 are good, and 1 is uber good. 4-6 are neutral, with 4 leaning good and 6 leaning bad. 7-9 are evil, and 9 is most evil.

The order would give like -5 points, runes -3, fellowship nothing, OO +3, AV +5. Other things could also effect this.

 

The problem with scales from a game design perspective is that unless you scale the entire system it becomes very herky jerky. And scaling the entire system evens things out so much that they become bland.

So for example Good civs give +4 attitude to other good civs and -8 vs Evil civs. A civ could be sitting at 6 (neutral) because of a good bonus they get for having public healers, then switch to a lesser compassion option, lose the good bonus and suddenly be disliked by all their good allies.

It makes it complex. Interesting for us from a design perspective, but confusing for casual players. Especially in a strategy game (as compared to a RPG) you want to have clear differientiated options, which scales take away from.

So instead of a scale we should tie alignment directly to something else. I would recommend having it initially set by the Civ and then changed according to the religion. Is there a better way we could do it?

Other options:

1. We could make it fixed by the Civ and disallow religions that don't match the civs starting alignment (the Bannor could never follow the Veil, the Sheaim could never worship Kilmorph, etc).

2. Alignment is set by the Civ and independant of the religion, such that the Bannor can worship the Veil and still remain good.

I tend to prefer the origional recommendation, but what do you guys think?

 

A combination might work.

Keep the alignment relations modifiers.

All civs have a starting alignment that gives them points on a scale that doesn't do anything but determine their alignment.



All good civs + 1
All neutral civs 0
All evil civs -1

This is their starting alignment.

You then add in a religion modifier.

Order +1
Leaves, Runes, OO, +0
Veil -1

To get the final alignment. Any positive integer value is counted as good, any zero value neutral, and any negative value as evil. No scale, a good civ at +2 is the same as one at +1.

So a neutral civ that adopts a good religion becomes good, and evil if it adopts an evil religion, and stays neutral if it adopts a neutral religion.

A good civ stays good if it adopts a good or neutral religion, and goes to neutral if it adopts an evil religion. That way the evil guys still mistrust them, but not as badly as if they were good.

An evil civ would always be looked upon with suspicion by the good civs. So it could bump itself up to neutral by adopting a good religion, but that's about it.

 

I think a slight modification of this should distinguish runes and OO from fellowship.
Otherwise good idea.

 

All three of those are neutral. I guess it depends upon how complicated we want it to get. The elves might not like the smelly dwarves, who can't stand the stuck-up elves, and neither can stand the crazy OO. But even if that's implemented, it should be done seperately from alignment.

 

I think that the god of air is a little weak. What if he was also the patron of all Angels? Since now we are using angels.

 

Tali isn't good so he wouldn't make a very good patron of angels. We would really need to have flying creatures in the game to do justice to a religion worshipping Tali.

 

Griffins, dragons, air spirits, angels, "cloud-walkers", flying lizard, Wind knights, etc? Why not once we have models?

 

Well, air spirits are easy.

 

I really think that we should add in a religion for Lugus.
The Eye of God. A very expansive religion that wants to spread lugus' influence throughout the world. Expanding in open places mostly, where he can see them. They fight little because what do they have to fear? Lugus is watching out for them. They build new ways of focusing the power of the sun everywhere. If threatened they can use lugus' gaurdians, a military force that can stop any invader in his tracks.

 

I don't think that the order should be in the spirit sphere. Instead I think that they should have the air sphere. The idea i get from them is iron-fisted ruling, which airborn enforcers would really help with.

 

I've always associated air with Chaos, not Law-too much D&D perhaps? But the wind blows this way and that, and cares not for the rule of law.

 

The order does have a fairly commanding spirit based group in their diviners (who see the future) and their confessors (who would have felt perfectly at home in the spanish inquisition). The order is about control, and their armies are just the physicl manifestation of that, they are also just as concerned (if not more concerned) with controling the beliefs and desires of their citizens. Besies both of the spirit divine spells are perfect order spells, they help the many/weaker mobs that the Order loves. If anything the Veil will probably lose the sphere.

 

I think that the Veil should get Mind, Death, or Ice instead. I can imagine that they would like ice as the solution to life.

 

Chalid had the idea to add yield bonus's to the mana resources based on the owning players civilization. I don't want to lock players into certain religion/mana combinations by making the bonus's to strong, but I could defintily see the advantage of doing something like this.

There are several way we could implement a religion/mana synergy bonus, we could:

1. Have the religious units of the appropriate type have a production bonus if that resource is available.

2. Have the religious units gain starting xp/bonuses if the correct mana types exist.

3. Have the mana resource grant happiness in the temples.

4. Have the mana resource grant a yield bonus in the temples.

For each of the religions think about their relationship with mana and what their primary and secondary mana types would be and what kind of synergy they should recieve. These need to be kept very minor, this is a flavor mechanic not a strategic mechanic.

The Order- (pri: Law, sec: Life, Spirit, Fire)
Runes of Kilmorph- (pri: Earth, sec: Life, Body, Enchantment)
Fellowship of Leaves- (pri: Nature, sec: Life, Creation)
Octopus Overlords- (pri: Water, sec: Mind, Body, Chaos)
The Ashen Veil- (pri: Entropy, sec: Death, Fire)

Ideas:

The Order- Order specific units (not all units for order civs) are +10% production with the Law sphere and +5% for life, spiit and fire.

Runes of Kilmorph- Runes temples grant +1 hammer for earth, body and enchantment resouces and +1 health with life

Fellowship of Leaves- temple bonus: +1 health from nature, +2 food with life and creation

Octopus Overlords- Asylum produced in half the time with mind, overlord specific units get +2 xp with water and +1 xp with chaos, +1 health in temples with body

The Ashen Veil- veil specific units get +2 xp with entropy, +1 xp with death and +1 xp with fire

 

I like options 1 and 3 the best, but after seeing it all spelled out for each religion every idea is sound.

 

I think the happiness bonus makes the most sense, though they all can work. The dwarves should be at least slightly happier if their leader has them worshipping Kilmorph than if they were worshipping something else, for example. And since a happiness bonus usually equals more population, there will be a slight production and commerce bonus as a side-effect.

XP bonusses seem a bit too much to me. It might have the effect of "locking in" the best choice.