Design: Traits

[Chalid]

Mage Guild for Arcane seems good. Maybe halve the cost for the Minotr Towers of Mastery too.

Colloseum has been removed, so something else might do for the barbarians.

Stable is halved for aggresive i think., but it would definetly fit for raiders, too. Problem will have Aggreseive-raiders.

Archery range would be mor fitting for Defensive as archers are the defensive untis. But the defensive buildings make perfectly sense as well.

 

[Kael]

I noticed that some of the traits here halve the production speed on some buildings, while others have no such effect. It'd seem to me that this is a bit of a problem, since it's effectively making some traits more powerful than others. To remedy this, some suggestions (though I couldn't come up with good suggestions for all of them).


½ cost Mage's Guild.


½ cost Colosseum?


½ cost Palisade, City Walls, Castle.


½ cost Stable, Archery Range.


EDIT: Also, not related to the halved costs, Industrious probably needs a boost...

I dont agree with the logic that all traits have to have the same bonus's. Just because the raider promotion doesn't a reduced cost building doesn't make it underpowered.

But I do think the reduced cost on mages guilds for the arcane trait and archery ranges for the defender trait makes good sense so I will add them in.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Seems that the traditional dwarves (Khazad, that is) are lacking a real "dwarven" flavor. Maybe a Stonescaping trait or somesuch could be added, one that would allow them to build hills, or chop them down like forests for a decent production boost, maybe allow working mountains as well. This could probably be handled like the seafaring trait, with a placeholder tech. How about it?

 

[Kael]

Seems that the traditional dwarves (Khazad, that is) are lacking a real "dwarven" flavor. Maybe a Stonescaping trait or somesuch could be added, one that would allow them to build hills, or chop them down like forests for a decent production boost, maybe allow working mountains as well. This could probably be handled like the seafaring trait, with a placeholder tech. How about it?

Yeah we are working on them right now. They are the last of the civs we need to fled out. We have talked about hill creation/destruction before and we havent been able to come up with a good way to do it (besides it seems to similar to the elves love of forests).

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I agree, it'd be better if the dwarves weren't "elves, but in hills"

 

[khanjackal]

you guys already seem to have focused the elves on things outside the city, and the dwarves with things inside the city, like the dwarvish forge

the differences are already there, but the elves are more distinct than the dwarves at the moment

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Maybe the creation/destruction of mountains, instead? If they could work these mountains, that might make things interesting, too. Of course, it would lead to some interesting issues with opposing armies trying to get to their cities, so maybe dwarven workers would have to build roads through the mountains for anything to get through them. Heck, maybe dwarves could even build cities inside mountains, for a production bonus like building on a hills/plains.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I like building inside mountains better than on top; Cities that only recon units can attack seems a bit cheap, but being able to build inside mountains wouldn't make them untouchable ideally, but would give a hefty defense bonus and unique locations where only they could locate cities.

Hmm-would it work if their mountian cities had, say, +150% defense + culture (but can't build wall/castles) but if the defense is bombarded to zero, then the city is destroyed and the mountian turned into a hill? (i.e., the enemy caused a cave in.)

 

[El_Raisuli]

I like building inside mountains better than on top; Cities that only recon units can attack seems a bit cheap, but being able to build inside mountains wouldn't make them untouchable ideally, but would give a hefty defense bonus and unique locations where only they could locate cities.

Hmm-would it work if their mountian cities had, say, +150% defense + culture (but can't build wall/castles) but if the defense is bombarded to zero, then the city is destroyed and the mountian turned into a hill? (i.e., the enemy caused a cave in.)

I really like the "build inside the mountain" idea, along with the defensive bonus. I don't think cities should be able to be destroyed solely by bombardment, though. In fact, I'd suggest something more toward the opposite end of the spectrum - making them more difficult to bombard. Perhaps one of the strengths of the dwarven civ could be highly defensible cities (if located in mountains, that is).

 

[Samuelson]

Maybe instead bombarding the city would damage the units inside by causing a cave in after a certain amount of damage was done by bombarding. The units would lose maybe 1/3 to 1/2 their health.

 

[Xereq]

What if Khazad defensive city improvements and forts raised the land around them a step (by raised I mean elevation; i.e. flat to hill, hill to mountain) and the land lowered when the improvement was destroyed, or the city defense went below a certain threshhold. You could create new mountains that could not be improved, but would allow for some rock solid defense.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

well, then if you built walls & castle, you'd have a city that would be impossible to get to, but could work no tiles!

 

[Silverkiss]

Hahaha, would be fun. =P

 

[eerr]

industrious works just fine....
or you could lower it to 40% and add an extra engineer slot to each city
(allowing them to generate more GE's than other civs)

an underground stream
+1 food in hills
counts as a scource of fresh water
(dwarves only)

 

[Nikis-Knight]

New trait idea, ideally for each Balseraph Leader--
Capricious
At the start of the game, the civ gains any one random trait (In addition to whatever other trait they have.)
Every 80-100 turns, they will lose this random trait and gain one new random trait.
If played by the AI, then at the same time they will randomly get from -5 to +5 diplomacy with each other civ.

This is to make the Balseraphs really unpredictable style wise and a bit crazy diplomaticaly.

 

[Chalid]

New trait idea, ideally for each Balseraph Leader--
Capricious
At the start of the game, the civ gains any one random trait (In addition to whatever other trait they have.)
Every 80-100 turns, they will lose this random trait and gain one new random trait.
If played by the AI, then at the same time they will randomly get from -5 to +5 diplomacy with each other civ.

This is to make the Balseraphs really unpredictable style wise and a bit crazy diplomaticaly.

We have discussed a something like that about three month ago. We came to the conclusion that we did not want it but i can not name the reasons right now. Maybe I'll search for it later today in our Design: Features thread (internal Forum) whre it was discussed.

 

[chocmushroom]

industrious works just fine....
or you could lower it to 40% and add an extra engineer slot to each city
(allowing them to generate more GE's than other civs)

an underground stream
+1 food in hills
counts as a scource of fresh water
(dwarves only)

I do agree that the Dwarven civs don't seem to have a better chance of getting a GE than any-other civ, and it also takes them a long time before they can produce anything that allows them to generate one.
I think they need a early building which will help them with this. You can genertate a GP, GS, GM and GB from almost your starting techs. The GE takes SOOOO much longer.
Maybe some type of workshop is needed, infact, why not be able to build it when you can a workshop, but for Dwarfs it has an extra ability. Build city Workshop: +2 basic production (+1unhealthiness) in the city, can turn one population into an Engineer.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

Perhaps give the dwarves a unit that can lower mountains into hills, but not raise hills into mountains. The dwarven Druid would be a good choice for that ability think.

I think this would give them a nice flavor ability of being able to create a path or tunnel through mountains that any unit can cross and becoming a substantial threat to anyone who treats the mountains as a safe border.

They can make a mountain range passable, but will then have to worry about counter attacks along the same path later.

This would also allow the dwarves to make use of the mountains near their citys by upgrading them to hills.

Being able to raise mountains I think would be too overpowered if they are the only ones who can do it. Imagine the dwaves walling themselves in untill they want to fight, breaking the wall, and building it up again after moving through to prevent serious counter attacks.

 

[Sureshot]

For building mountains it could be balanced with proper restrictions and requirements I think.
Like:
-can only build mountains where there's already a hill
-can only do so within your own borders
-level 3 earth spell that sacrifices the unit (for archmages so everyone can do it, and so it can't be done often or quickly - takes a long time to train archmages)
-can't be done in any tile next to water (to prevent complete mountains walls)

I don't think I like the idea of dwarvens ever making the ground flatter and less rocky myself, seems better if they use magic or divine assistance to make it more hilly or mountainy. It doesn't seem overpowered for dwarven priests to get a Bloom like spell but for Hills as a level 2 earth spell (adding forests is actually more beneficial, as they add +1 shield (and +1 food if they become ancient) and +50% def, whereas hills only do -1 food and +1 shield and +25 def).

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I still like the idea of dwarves being able to make roads through mountains, which anyone can pass through (though maybe dwarves can move more quickly through them). Then, maybe they could also work mountain tiles as if it was a hills/plains with a mine on it, which would mean that they'd want some mountains near each city, but not too many or they wouldn't have enough food. Making hills would be nice, too, but perhaps there could be a limit of a certain number of hills in an area before no more could be made.

Hmm, maybe dwarves need some way to get food from hills. Some sort of dwarf-unique improvement that gave +2 (+3 with some tech) food to hills could be added, but then dwarves wouldn't be able to build farms to make up for it. I'd almost say that it would be a good idea to do this for elves and forests, but we want to avoid the "dwarves, but in forests!" thing too. Dwarven civs being covered in workshops, hills, and mountains sounds perfectly flavorful to me!