Design: Religions

[Kael]

I think that the Dragon cult is a little too weak.

A couple of modifications-
a) reduces by 2 culture instead of one. It is nearly impossible to find a city without culture unless it was just founded.

Will do.

b) If a unit with cult of the dragon is in teh same square or one adjacent to a dragon, it has a 5% chance to flip to that dragon's civilization. This works even if that dragon is not owned by the controller of the dragon holy city. This even works for the Barb dragon.

All dragons have a roar ability. That convets 100% of the untis within 1 tile to the dragons civ if they are cult members.

c) the sheiam and kuriotates can adopt the cult of the dragon as their state religion.

It would be a sucky state religion that shouldnt be anywhere near the power level of the "real" religions. So even if we made it able to be a state religion, why would anyone want to do it (we would just be weakning the ai).

d) 100% of the units built in the dragon holy city are part of the cult. Doesn't really matter except that if the holy city changes hands they might as well.

Game effect of this is pretty minor. Im going to skip it for now (just a lot to juggle at the moment) but keep it in mind and we might add it later.

 

[wilboman]

Question: what is the effect of slaying the dragon? Does that make the cultists disappear, or revolt, or convert, or possibly join your team (after all, you ARE stronger than their god) - a dragon-slayer unit that had the same effect as the dragon could be interesting...

In any case, there would have to be some strong incentive to go forth and kick draconic ass, regardless of alignment.

 

[loki1232]

Some more dragon ideas:
Much faster spread-It doesn't seem to spread at all. And since there are no missionary units...

There needs to be "cultist" units producable in the holy city.

The holy city gives a large bonus to encourage the owner to spread the religion. Not just +1 gold per city, but like +2 gold, +2 culture, +1 science, +1 GPP.

 

[loki1232]

Question: what is the effect of slaying the dragon? Does that make the cultists disappear, or revolt, or convert, or possibly join your team (after all, you ARE stronger than their god) - a dragon-slayer unit that had the same effect as the dragon could be interesting...

In any case, there would have to be some strong incentive to go forth and kick draconic ass, regardless of alignment.

Maybe the civilization with the dragon get riots in all their city? ANd the holy city is DESTROYED. (note that only happens if all three dragons are destroyed)

 

[loki1232]

It would be a sucky state religion that shouldnt be anywhere near the power level of the "real" religions. So even if we made it able to be a state religion, why would anyone want to do it (we would just be weakning the ai).

Then make it only available to the players. This way i can get the bonuses from the civic's that have to do with religion and still only have the cult of the dragon in my cities so that Religious Education works.
I would definetly convert any game i am playing as the Sheaim or Kuriotates.

 

[Gladi]

Bright day
Conquering cult cities is major pain in the bottom. You are at first going to waste severeal prophets . So please don't overdo it.

And I read in the othe thread how you are trying to differate religion by nation. PLease don't overdo it. If I am eevil vampire I will need a lot effort right now to convince neutrals to switch to veil. In my last game I had -4 heathen, -2 close borders and -2 Eevil mods from Lanuuns. I had to give them even my undergarments to have them switch.

 

[Kael]

Bright day
Conquering cult cities is major pain in the bottom. You are at first going to waste severeal prophets . So please don't overdo it.

And I read in the othe thread how you are trying to differate religion by nation. PLease don't overdo it. If I am eevil vampire I will need a lot effort right now to convince neutrals to switch to veil. In my last game I had -4 heathen, -2 close borders and -2 Eevil mods from Lanuuns. I had to give them even my undergarments to have them switch.

I agree with you 100%. Any of these mechanics overdone can spoil the flavor. I love the fact that you can turn the Elohim evil or the Sheaim good so I definitly want to keep that.

What we were talking about in the other thread was the ability to set some leaders to prefer a specific religion. We would only do it on a handful of leaders. Maybe just: Hyborem would prefer the Veil, Arendel would prefer the Fellowship, Sabathiel would prefer the Order, Hannah would prefer the Overlords and Arturus would prefer the Runes.

If we do do it hopefully we add an XML value that lets you set how much they prefer it so we can make them play a little differently from each other without making it impossible to convert them.

 

[Gladi]

I agree with you

Oh okay then

 

[kevjm]

Making the dragon cult promotion invisible could make things interesting when attacking the dragon cult empire and the dragon itself.

Or giving a promotion that hides whever or not the unit has the actual dragon cult promotion (like how you plan to hide lvl 1 & 2 'fire' if a unit has lvl 3), if this is easier to programme.

 

[Kael]

Making the dragon cult promotion invisible could make things interesting when attacking the dragon cult empire and the dragon itself.

Or giving a promotion that hides whever or not the unit has the actual dragon cult promotion (like how you plan to hide lvl 1 & 2 'fire' if a unit has lvl 3), if this is easier to programme.

That would probably be confusing to casual players.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Are any other Cult religions planned? Doing another with culture draining would be pointless and annoying, but other drawbacks could be used. Here's an idea for a cult:
Call of Anarchy--Can only be founded in barb cities or civs with barb trait.
If barbarians/minor tribes can't research to found religions, randomly assign it if there is a barb city >2 around turn 100-150.
Any city it spreads to gets gets 1 science siphoned off each turn. When enough science has been drained this way, the barbs will be able to build a special unit/wonder (provided they have any cities left at this point). Something cool but dangerous, like an undead Orthus
Melee units built in cities with this cult may gain cult of Anarchy promotion, have 50% chance to become barbs after killing other barbarians (unless they have loyalty promotion)

 

[DMN]

Are any other Cult religions planned? Doing another with culture draining would be pointless and annoying, but other drawbacks could be used.

I wouldn't want to have multiple cults to worry about. One cult is annoying enough, and as far as I know all possibilities to get rid of it destroy other non-state religions as well. I don't want to rebuild my temples of kilmorph every X turns in every city, so usually the cult will stay in the cities it spreads to. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, as it should be an annoyance; I just wouldn't like cults to become a major problem. A culture and research malus in every city might be too much.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Well, don't want to just annoy people, but the cult idea is cool, and I think 1 or maybe 2 more could be added if the spread rate on each was proportionally lowered. Their are no cult missionaries to deal with.

 

[Diminicius]

No new cults or religions are needed if you ask me, we should instead concentrate on improving that which we already have...
Going overkill whit this is generaly not a good idea...

 

[Thunderwing]

On a completely unnrelated note, shouldn't the fellowship have a unique combat disciple at at tiers 3 and 4, rather than none at tier 3 and both Paladins and Eidolons at tier 4? What kind of nature religion uses undead super-soldiers and goons in full plate? Or could Fellowship at least get a different skin on thier pallies and a Tier 3, because it's not fun having to train new big guns at that point in the game.

 

[pa12ick]

A quick question, Fellowship, Runes, etc. all have truly religious sounding names. "Octopus Overlords", to put it bluntly, doesn't. The religion is cool, but the name just sounds...lame.

Why not something like "Overlords of the Deep"? Or something along those lines?

I guess it's the "Octopus" that throws me.

 

[Jono]

A quick question, Fellowship, Runes, etc. all have truly religious sounding names. "Octopus Overlords", to put it bluntly, doesn't. The religion is cool, but the name just sounds...lame.

Why not something like "Overlords of the Deep"? Or something along those lines?

I guess it's the "Octopus" that throws me.

Kael took it from an existing... errm... eh, well something existing anyways. And to add, Overlords kindof makes it sound like the gods that are worshiped...

 

[Chalid]

He took it from here:
www.octopusoverlords.com

 

[Xyshi]

I was thinking that the owner of the cult of the dragon holy city should be able to see whats happening in other civs cities where the cult has spread. The other religions do this and I just think it makes sense that the cult members would report back to home about the goings on in their cities.

 

[Kael]

A quick question, Fellowship, Runes, etc. all have truly religious sounding names. "Octopus Overlords", to put it bluntly, doesn't. The religion is cool, but the name just sounds...lame.

Why not something like "Overlords of the Deep"? Or something along those lines?

I guess it's the "Octopus" that throws me.

Yeah its the only religion that didn't exist in the D&D game, and the only name I didn't make up. But its a tribute to my OO'er friends and although I agree that it doesn't quite match the rest I don't think its a particuraly bad name so it probably won't change unless the team members mount an effort to change it.