Design: Traits

[Kael]

Just now i noticed you changed the Arcane Trait.. It was my favourite, now its pretty useless... Mages usually dont fight, their spells do, since they have strengh 3 or 4! The 1.0 Arcane gave them a very usefull spell extention, now, when are mages supposed to get that extra xp? From the weakened enemies their spells dont manage to kill? Not fun.. Arcane wasnt overpowered, but i really like mages, and being able to hit enemies one square further away was very usefull.. I played a quick game and couldnt use the Arcane trait bonus more than two or three times.. in the end game, units move in mass, its hard to pick one weak enemy alone to level up your mage.

I propose you change arcane back to the way it was! Or teach me to do it, at least..

Arcane allows mages to gain xp faster and level higher before there xp gain starts to slow. With those levels they can now buy spell extension (giving the addtional range) or spheres as you prefer.

 

[Brancaleone]

"Arcane allows mages to gain xp faster and level higher before there xp gain starts to slow."

I dont get what you mean.. I never used my mages to attack, they always cast a spell or buff another unit, and they dont get xp by killing someone with a fireball, or do they? Am i using them wrong? How Arcane help you? I know now mages actually get something by leveling up, but how will i level up if its their spell who kills the unit, and not them? They have such low strenght!

And do you think if i search on the 1.0 files for the Arcane description, and Effects, and paste them on the apropriate 2.011 files, will i have some trouble? Man this mod rocks, but my favourite trait is just.. yknow... not the same.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

magic units gain xp automatically now, like heros, but with different rates and limits.

 

[Brancaleone]

ooooooh

 

[Chalid]

Actually thei gain XP dependen on three factors.
Namely:
1. The Amount of XP they already have.
2. The Arcane Train/or Not
3. The Tier of the caster (Mages gain XP faster than Adpets. , Archmages faster than Mages)

There is no Maximum for the XP but the more you have the slower you get them. Therfor an Arcan Archmage will get a much higher amount of XP in the same time as an NonArcan Adept.

Please keep in mind that an Adept has to be level 3 to be upgraded to a Mage and a Mage has to be level 6 to be upgraded to an Archmage.

 

[Samuelson]

Every civ should have at least one negitive trait.

Another negitive trait idea- Revolutionary. Gives 1 unhappy for the first 25 turns without a revolution then 1 unhappy for every 15 after that.

 

[Kael]

Every civ should have at least one negitive trait.

Why should they?

 

[loki1232]

I don't think that "Barbarian" is a negative trait...

Could spiritual also give temple upgrades allowed with 5 instead of 7?

 

[Kael]

I don't think that "Barbarian" is a negative trait...

Could spiritual also give temple upgrades allowed with 5 instead of 7?

Thats actually hard to do. Let me think about it.

 

[wilboman]

To be quite honest (I know this is the wrong thread, but bear with me), requiring seven cities for upgraded temples is an invitation for city spamming. I rarely have more than five before I go on a killing spree late-game.

 

[woodelf]

Barbarian is the most positive trait I know! I love the Doveillo now.

 

[Fader55]

Not sure if this is the right place for this or not.
I was thinking about the Agnostic trait & thought that maybe they could have a unique upgrade path to replace the religious one.
Something more along the line of philosophy/ethics divorced from religious aspects, there would be schools instead of temples, & monasteries instead of cathedrals, etc. Monks (which are kinda worthless/redundent) could be a whole different path (iniatate/monk/????) or somesuch.
Just a thought.

Fader

 

[Kael]

Not sure if this is the right place for this or not.
I was thinking about the Agnostic trait & thought that maybe they could have a unique upgrade path to replace the religious one.
Something more along the line of philosophy/ethics divorced from religious aspects, there would be schools instead of temples, & monasteries instead of cathedrals, etc. Monks (which are kinda worthless/redundent) could be a whole different path (iniatate/monk/????) or somesuch.
Just a thought.

Fader

I dont like designing the same thing and giving it different names. It is the easiest way to balance things but I would rather have civs that are very different from each other, and the fact that the Grigori are missing a section of their upgrade tree makes them very different.

Instead if they are underpowered because of the lack of these units I would rather address that in other ways and force the players to adopt new strategies to deal with the different civ (but as designers we have to make sure those strategies exist and are effective).

 

[CurtisC]

. . . the fact that the Grigori are missing a section of their upgrade tree makes them very different.

Instead if they are underpowered because of the lack of these units I would rather address that in other ways and force the players to adopt new strategies to deal with the different civ (but as designers we have to make sure those strategies exist and are effective).

My take on this:

I think the Grigori are pretty underpowered. At the very early stage they are awesome, but as your GPP increases the great adventurers (GA) just stop coming. The only way to deal with this is to give up on all other great persons, which means no wonders. . . .this is ok, and kind of balanced, but with no religous buildings and no wonders it is hard to come up with the cash for those upgrades to keep your GA current. Plus for an industrious leader it is pretty much a slap in the face.

I have a few suggestions to make them more viable, probably implementing them all would make them broken. . . give Agnostic a + %research bonus (maybe scalable with pop/per city?). This would overcome the financial hardships imposed by having no really money makers and having to spend more to upgrade their GAs. Instead of hero give the GAs hero2 which would give them +1exp pt/turn to 200. I'd say make some sort of specific building that could increase your GA points, but maybe you could just make all +commander points GA points for the Grigori. Let the Grigori build command posts (meh, I don't like that one, not really in line with agnosticism). Give all GAs the divine promotion free (I kind of like that the power of god is in their hands).

Also, (this is all asthetics) please, please name some of the GAs after our founding fathers, it doesn't have to be overt, but a late game Tomijay would give me no end of pleasure. Also, give them an aura, a grey aura would be cool. And, instead of calling them Great adventurers call them the illuminati, or great agnostics or something.

 

[Corlindale]

I think the Grigori are pretty underpowered. At the very early stage they are awesome, but as your GPP increases the great adventurers (GA) just stop coming. The only way to deal with this is to give up on all other great persons, which means no wonders. . . .this is ok, and kind of balanced, but with no religous buildings and no wonders it is hard to come up with the cash for those upgrades to keep your GA current. Plus for an industrious leader it is pretty much a slap in the face.

Nothing forces you to focus on GA's. You can choose to get other kinds of GP if you think you need them. I usually end with about 4 adventurers, rest other GPs. 4 is still a pretty great deal, considering most others will probably have only 2 heroes, a civ-specific and a religion-specific.

I have a few suggestions to make them more viable, probably implementing them all would make them broken. . . give Agnostic a + %research bonus (maybe scalable with pop/per city?). This would overcome the financial hardships imposed by having no really money makers and having to spend more to upgrade their GAs. Instead of hero give the GAs hero2 which would give them +1exp pt/turn to 200. I'd say make some sort of specific building that could increase your GA points, but maybe you could just make all +commander points GA points for the Grigori. Let the Grigori build command posts (meh, I don't like that one, not really in line with agnosticism). Give all GAs the divine promotion free (I kind of like that the power of god is in their hands).

There are special buildings that increase GA points, the Adventurer's Guild and the Grigori Tavern.
A small research bonus might be a good idea.
Why should adventurers be divine? They don't have godlike powers just because they defy the gods.

Also, (this is all asthetics) please, please name some of the GAs after our founding fathers, it doesn't have to be overt, but a late game Tomijay would give me no end of pleasure. Also, give them an aura, a grey aura would be cool. And, instead of calling them Great adventurers call them the illuminati, or great agnostics or something.

You can name them yourself if you feel like it, but I personally don't see why they need to change.

 

[CurtisC]

There are special buildings that increase GA points, the Adventurer's Guild and the Grigori Tavern.

Oh good, I must have missed the tavern/ guild effects.

A small research bonus might be a good idea.

Yay, I liked that the most.

Why should adventurers be divine? They don't have godlike powers just because they defy the gods.

Agnostics really just ignore the gods. I was just saying that real agnostics went out and figured things out, while others turn to churches. It's just that in the absense of the clergy they'd figure out how to heal/ cure disease. It was more of a balance issue (allowing the GAs to heal).

Mainly I was comparing the GAs to the Hippus leader with raiding, I was playing a monarch game and had several 100 exp raiders before any any others had much of anything, I pretty much decimated three civs before I even encoutered an axeman. It just seems that compared with the rate of advancement that raiding civs get just as many protoheroes (although using GAs as archmages would be pretty cool) that the GAs don't make up nearly enough for losing ~40% of your final tier units.

I'll give grigori another shot soon.

 

[darkonion]

maybe (just an idea) agnostic should:
1. allow no state religion

...maybe even have it so that it enables the "free religion" civic wouldnt be a bad idea...

2. allow no spead of religion

...i like this cause if i found a majority of the religions as the grigori, then other civs have no basis to get better units...

3. +2 science and/or culture per Great Adventurer

...this would be interesting becasue it would FORCE the ai to build GA and adds a reason to make them in the first place (aside from their diverity) and so that cheaters (people who use the world-builder in single-player) wont get the bonuses of the GAs' they gave themselves...

4. cannot accuire Great Prophets

...this is because they're agnostic. they wouldnt get a religious person if they have no religion...
that's it...

...i also think the grigori should beable to found the cult of dragons because its a religion that you cannot have as a state religion...

EDIT: its a cult... not a religion... thats why they should beable to found it as well...

 

[loki1232]

Also, (this is all asthetics) please, please name some of the GAs after our founding fathers, it doesn't have to be overt, but a late game Tomijay would give me no end of pleasure.

I like this, but can't you rename then ingame anyways?

This would only really be neccesary if we were getting lots of "Great Adventurer was born in a far away land".

 

[Sisonpyh]

I'm not a big fan of the scorched earth trait. I mean, auto razing a town that has 4 wonders with a holy city included doesn't make sense. I'm sure Orcs would have enough sense to save that city and use it to boraden their war efforts.

What if instead of autoraze, 100% of the tiles that city was using becomes 'scorched and unworkable', sort of like a different version of a fallout. The titles could be fixed, but it would take a LONG time to do, making the city somewhat unproductive for years after the war.

 

[Corlindale]

I'm sure Orcs would have enough sense to save that city and use it to boraden their war efforts.

Orcs inflamed with bloodlust are not known for their capacity for rational thinking

But there's talk of allowing them to retake their own cities.