Discussion about Illian rituals

[Bad Player]

I think the Illians have an interesting theme but have an underdeveloped gamestyle. My suggestion is to have more rituals that harm everyone in the game but less so the Illians to make them more unique. My suggestions are:

Samhain:
Make the frostlings stonger so they aren't just easy XP. Possibly another (prior) ritual to make barbarians stronger.


Stonger Barbarian Ritual:
Early game ritual which gives all new barbarians +50% strength.


The Deepening:
Make this repeatable. That should really annoy other civs! Each time you use The Deepening, it causes a permanent -1 diplomatic penalty with all other civs except the Doviello.


Winter of Our Discontent:
(OK the name is inconsistent with Shakespeare's meaning!)
Adds +2 unhappiness to all cities of all civs. Since the Illians will usually have slightly smaller cities than other civs, it will probably harm them less.

 

[Jarrema]

Interesting ideas, but:
1. Illians are now pretty strong civ IMO, so if rituals are more potent, something should be nerfed
2. Mod is finished. Move to the modmodding forum with that

 

[A Moon]

I bolded my replies and added this sentence so I could actually post.

Samhain:
Make the frostlings stonger so they aren't just easy XP. Possibly another (prior) ritual to make barbarians stronger.
Won't make the ritual less pointless.

Stonger Barbarian Ritual:
Early game ritual which gives all new barbarians +50% strength.
Don't know why I'd want to use this.

The Deepening:
Make this repeatable. That should really annoy other civs! Each time you use The Deepening, it causes a permanent -1 diplomatic penalty with all other civs except the Doviello.
Sounds interesting.

Winter of Our Discontent:
(OK the name is inconsistent with Shakespeare's meaning!)
Adds +2 unhappiness to all cities of all civs. Since the Illians will usually have slightly smaller cities than other civs, it will probably harm them less.
Since when do the Illians have smaller cities?

 

[Bad Player]

Yeah I feel the same way about Samhain. Maybe if you built up an invasion army they might distract??? It is kind of pointless I admit.


Elves/FoL have huge cities, if you build Illians in snow or tundra terrain they are perhaps smaller? Unless agriculture civic and farms??

 

[A Moon]

Yeah I feel the same way about Samhain. Maybe if you built up an invasion army they might distract??? It is kind of pointless I admit.


Elves/FoL have huge cities, if you build Illians in snow or tundra terrain they are perhaps smaller? Unless agriculture civic and farms??

One question mark is all you need. Really. And the frostlings are just as likely to attack you as they are anyone else.

Any Illian city with a temple of the hand gets pure grassland in its BFC. That's a decently high population right there.

 

[Selrahc]

I think the Illians have an interesting theme but have an underdeveloped gamestyle.

Certainly not. Illians in the early game use their extremely powerful Priests of Winter to carve out a good early empire.
Later on the Illians can make phenomenal horsemen due to Auric's leader traits. Defender gives bonus withdraw, Cha gives easy double promo for very high withdraw horses, something even the Hippus can't pull off so well.
Or rather nice mages due to Ice mana and charismatic. Particularly with a second Ice Mana from Letum Frigus, the Ice spells are pretty excellent at all levels and are almost a unique advantage of the Illians.
Economically, the early and extreme terraforming is a very interesting mechanic to play with, although it doesn't really offset the economic weakness from losing religions and having no economic traits.

Most of the rituals (except for White Hand) are of limited effect, but the Illians have a solid playstyle that works.

Adds +2 unhappiness to all cities of all civs. Since the Illians will usually have slightly smaller cities than other civs, it will probably harm them less.

The only reason Illians would have smaller cities than other civs is due to a lower happy cap thanks to not having religions and temples. With the Temples of the Hand creating lovely snow everywhere, they will generally be playing with more food than other civs and so should probably expect as high a population as the happy can support. This probably hurts the Illians more than their rivals.

Also, given the other Norse names in the mod, Fimbulwinter would be the clear title for a ritual like that. It refers to an eternal winter that brings out the darkness in the souls of men. "During this time, there will be innumerable wars and ties of blood will no longer be respected: the next-of-kin will lay together and brothers will kill brothers."

 

[Bad Player]

The other disadvantage of no religion is that I can't become good in my game where the most powerful people are good (Flauros converted to Order too). So no close religious friends and no ability to change alignment to avoid -6 evil penalties.

 

[Bad Player]

Ok then just make the deepening repeatable and with diplomatic penalties. But more useful rituals would be fun too IMO.

 

[Ringan]

Making the deepening repeatable is really easy. In the XML\GameInfo\ folder, edit the ProjectInfo XML file (probably Civ4ProjectInfo.XML). For THE_DEEPENING entry, set MaxGlobalInstances to -1 instead of 1. Good to go!

 

[magzhi]

You also can download master of mana mod. When you play as Ilians you can make any ritual as much times as you want to (however there is different mechanic involved in doing it). It makes Samhain useful even in mid game. here is the link: http://www.masterofmana.com/

 

[Goodwill]

For a modmod, Samhain could be more like a gathering and uniting of the tribal winter clans, so to speak. I would model them after the world spell of the fey in other mods - Wild Hunt. A temporary but intimidating force summoned to assault the x or drive out the invaders. Spawns units that last ten or twenty turns and are equivalent to the highest baseline military tech researched. Could make them spawn frostings on combat victory too I suppose.