Elohim - How don't they suck?

[MagisterCultuum]

I was actually already planning a national wonder which requires fruit of the Ygggrasil, and also provides another source of the fruit.

Many unique features already provide other resources (mostly mana), and I don't think switching them to each provide a unique resource instead is a good idea. You know, it isn't hard to add a python block requiring the unique feature be in a city's radius (or worked tiles) in order to allow a city to build a woner there. You could also check to see if the civ owns the unique feature anywhere, but that could slow the game down considerably.


Each shrine only has a ~35% chance (based on map size) of being placed. I've never seen them all on the map at the same time (without placing them there myself using worldbuilder)

I personally don't consider it appropriate for the Elohim to want to protect the Broken Sepulcher or Maelstrom.



I'd rather add the victory conditions through quests. Controlling all unique features that are present for x turns could pretty easily trigger victory. It would be nice to have an option where each civ has a unique victory quest. Actually, the Scenarios of Ice will probbaly be that way anyway, but I mean that it would be nice if in a custom game you should have an option to allow victory quests on a random map.

 

[xienwolf]

I adore the idea of the unique National Wonders. Requiring that the feature be in their BFC of course, since only the Yggdrassil provides a unique resource, and it just makes them have to develop the area of the unique feature that much more. Each Feature could easily have a nice impact on the entire Elohim Empire.

I would add to each Wonder an elimination of Maintenance Costs in the City, at the least Distance Maintenance costs. Then if you find one on the complete opposite side of the world, you don't have to decide based on Economy whether or not to settle there and protect it.

The unique VC isn't really possible, since each Feature individually has a 35% chance to be placed per game. Your odds of getting a game with all Features are incredibly slim.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm not sure they should all be Elohim-only. That might be too strong.

Actually, I'm thinking it might be nice for unique feature national wonders to be available for everyone, but for the Elohim to have UB versions of them that are much more useful. A few other civs could have UBs for specific features too, like a Clan and Infernal version of the Pyre of the Seraphic's wonder and an Amurite/Sheaim version of a wonder for the Broken Sepulcher.

Is there really a reason why these should be national and not world wonders? It's not like two civs would be able to have them anyway, unless the unique feature is right between their empires and their borders shift.

 

[xienwolf]

National Wonder allows you to build a new one if you raze the previous controller's City, and if it doesn't remain in the city upon capture, which it shouldn't IMO.

I think it would be alright to allow each other Civ to have 1 or maybe 2 of them, but the Elohim should get access to all of them and/or have them be better. For most of the other people the Features are just an oddity, and they are reward enough on their own. But for the Elohim they are a part of their lives, and they are beholden to protecting them.

 

[Roghar]

The food from priests seems thematically too nice to discard altogether.. perhaps their settled great prophets could give the +1 food bonus? That would be useful without opening up to dramatic abuse

Wrt to spiritual hammer, perhaps that could be brought back as an Elohim specific spell? Either cast by a hero or autocast by a wonder/unique building.

 

[nealhunt]

I've been mulling over some strats and I think the real problem is that the Elohim just don't have many early game synergies.

They can build monstrously defensive cities with +55% from palisade/wall/chancel, plus culture. But to do that they need masonry and priesthood, which may not be the best techs for them until a little later.

The Priesthood tech opens up a lot for them, Chancels and Monks in addition to its normal power, but it's deep enough into the tech tree that an early beeline isn't feasible. Too many other needs take precedence early on.

Most of their nifty gadgets are on the religion path, but they still need other stuff as well. GP strats with Einion need techs with specialist and GP multipliers. Culture strats with Ethne require culture techs. Regardless of your main picks for military techs, it's pretty hard to wage war without cats and/or mages requiring another mini-path. Even a little bit later, the ability to upgrade Devouts to various kinds of Priests (to get them with the Life sphere) requires going down the Recon path that generally has little else to offer the Elohim.

Basically, they are a jack-of-all-trades civ in a world of specialists.

(Incidentally, it seems to be Defensive trait suffers from a similar multiple-personality problem in that it gives small bonuses all over the place, requiring a lot of paths to use it - withdrawal on mounted units, cheap archery ranges, masonry for walls. That certainly aggravates the Elohim situation.)

===

That said... I'm considering a culture crush strategy for Ethne. She won't be as good at it as the Balseraphs but she should be pretty good. The trick will be getting the "culture slam" cities placed and running fast enough without tanking the economy. I haven't tried it yet, but in broad strokes it will be...

Tech:
Mysticism (because having God King that early is too good to pass up)
Beeline to Festivals - Ag and Calendar on the way are important for early food and happiness, Festivals gives Carnivals for culture (bards) and Markets for economy.
Bronze and Education - BW to chop Obelisks and Carnivals. Education because you will need to switch to City States pretty quickly.

Build: Something like ~3 warriors, worker, Elder Council (finish growing while hooking up resources), settler.

Actions: Find neighbors and likely settlement spots for them. Load up the settler and build a city minimum distance from your neighbor's first settlement, positioned so that you will take out their main production tiles. Build Obelisk immediately. Flip the city. Repeat to box them in.

In fact, if you get lucky and can see a neighbor in the first turn (as sometimes happens), it might be worth it to jump over adjacent to their capital. With 2x the cultural output you should be able to hinder them significantly and influence where that first settler/victim city goes.

Longer term, going with OO would make sense, but any religion that can spam low level disciples for +20 culture pops would be helpful.

===

All that leads me to my suggestion - culture could easily be the Elohim's secondary feature behind strength in the religion path. Let the Elohim be cultural theologists. Stylistically, it matches up with a concept of defensive sheltering - guarding and expanding the flock, as it were. I'm not up on the world background in great detail, but it seems to fit.

Culture emphasis would work nicely with their ability to know where all the special items are, so they can plan to pick off extra mana or Yggdrasil or whatever. It has nice synergy with a builder outlook. They would be resistant to cultural disintegration by the worldly Balseraphs (the big culture monster in the game). Of course, it works with religion in a disciple-spam as well, using the low level guys to generate culture in cities that are close to flipping an opponent. Finally, it could fit with the "national wonder" concept under discussion as well; they almost all have culture boosts, and the Elohim could have larger ones in addition to any other improvements their nat'l wonders might have.

People seem to agree the Chancel needs a boost. It could generate culture or at least have a +% bonus.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't understand why Devouts require Poisons like the other assassins. I think I'll move them to Way of the Wise.

Hmm...what if the chancel removed promotions like Crazed, Enraged, and Enervated from all units that pass though?

 

[nealhunt]

I thought of another potential strat. Basically, it combines with the culture strat above.

The idea is a defensive FoL combo while executing the above. Grabbing Mysticism/God King first gives them a good jump on founding religions. They can to for Hunting and FoL. Hunters and Fawns provide good early defenders and can supplement a later offensive war. It's a short skip to Archery (if you want to pick it up) and Poisons for Devouts. Good defense and an early religion means a strong possibility of a religious victory. Also good in the short term is the possibility of ancient forests as basically free improvements, freeing up workers (or the hammers that would otherwise be used to build workers).

It diverts from the Festivals/Markets/Carnival tech line above, but Obelisks and Creative should at the very least slow down opponents even if it doesn't flip cities. Besides, a temple provides a good boost and a slot in which to run a Bard specialist, so that should go a long way towards making up for that.

Later unit paths are Recon and Disciple, with a brief detour to pick up Construction. Disciples are the core, with recon units as supplement and follow on (later picking up Poisoned Blade as you can afford to divert to some arcane techs and build a few Mages for support). Taking Devouts through Priests of Leaves allows upgrade routes to Ranger, Druid, Paladin, Beastmaster, and High Priest - all with Life sphere and Channeling 1.

 

[Yaotzin]

I don't understand why Devouts require Poisons like the other assassins. I think I'll move them to Way of the Wise.

While they're umm.. devout, they're still assassins, and assassins need their poison!

@neal that isn't an Elohim strategy though, anyone can do it.

Elohim need spiritual back

 

[nealhunt]

neal that isn't an Elohim strategy though, anyone can do it.

Yep. I mostly agree. There are several minor things that should make the Elohim slightly better - picking up techs related to Defender, the flexibility of the Devout upgrades, the Monk as a decent line unit in a tech you need anyway, etc. - but overall it's pretty general.

Elohim need spiritual back

I wouldn't argue with this. Cheap temples would improve their culture game and fast disciple units would enable a late-game blitz (with enough Life 1 units that they could clear hell terrain on any captured territory).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Civ that represents the Spirit sphere definitely needs to have spiritual back.

Monks should have their movement reduced to 1 (2, with the free mobility promotion the trait would give) though. While were at it, we might as well reduce their base strength and give them spirit affinity, and maybe some spells (like one that removed crazed, enraged, and enervated)

 

[EverNoob]

Say, do devouts really still upgrade to priests? If so...you can get priests with destroy undead and ressurection. That would be nifty, though obviously not game breaking.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yes, Devouts can upgrade to priests of the Order, Runes, or Leaves (or, like other assassins to Shadows) and this does allow their priests access to Life spells.

I really think that they should be able to upgrade to Vicars too (I was surprised to see they couldn't), since the Empyrean is the thematically most appropriate religion for the Elohim. I's also not sure that they should be able to upgrade to Shadows, since they are now the "priests" of an "evil religion." I also still think that Poisons in not an appropriate prereq tech, and plan to change it to Way of the Wise.

(I think I'll give lightbringers Sun1/Channeling1, so Malakim priests will have sun spells. I might also change them to Ecclesiastic UUs too though)

 

[EverNoob]

The Civ that represents the Spirit sphere definitely needs to have spiritual back.

Monks should have their movement reduced to 1 (2, with the free mobility promotion the trait would give) though. While were at it, we might as well reduce their base strength and give them spirit affinity, and maybe some spells (like one that removed crazed, enraged, and enervated)

I dunno about giving spiritual back, already the way they are now they're not significantly harder to play than any other civ in SP. With spiritual, playing the elohim would be a cakewalk. I remember playing them when they still had spiritual and I found them too easy to play even when I didn't use monks.

They probably just need some small tweaks here and there to give them more flavour. Moving the Devout to a more appropriate tech is an excellent idea though. Poisons makes no sense at all.

 

[Randolph]

The Elohim used to be one of my favorite civs, but they took such a beating in .31 that it's hard to play them. I used to love how you could just go down the religious line and pick up everything you needed. But without spiritual (no mobility for monks, priests, etc), with confessors nerfed, Chanelling 3 not as useful, and no spiritual hammer the civ that I was playing before just doesn't seem to exist.

I switched out defender for spiritual and it helped get the old feel back considerably. I think this is a good change that I would recommend, it gives the Elohim a nice niche in the religious line, but doesn't grant the absurdly good synergy from previous versions (good combat unity, good divine unit, good arcane unit, and great religious hero (the order angel, I can't recall how to spell his name sphe...) all from the same tech line).

 

[A_Hamster]

The Civ that represents the Spirit sphere definitely needs to have spiritual back.

Monks should have their movement reduced to 1 (2, with the free mobility promotion the trait would give) though. While were at it, we might as well reduce their base strength and give them spirit affinity, and maybe some spells (like one that removed crazed, enraged, and enervated)

A suggestion. Let the Monks remain warrior monks with Str 6, but open them up to priest upgrades. Basically, when they are young and strong, the monks fight physical evils. Assuming that they survive to middle age when they aren't so spry anymore, they become priests and combat moral and spiritual evils within society.

As for the Chancel, perhaps it could give resistance bonuses against various spells. Not as a permanent promotion, but to give units within the city protection against resisted spells. It would reflect a spiritual warding of the city by the holy rituals of the Elohim monks residing in the chancel. A small form of the Harrowing, if you will.

Alternately, if that's still not enough, have the Chancel have a 100% chance of giving a promotion to units built there, but it will be randomly generated from Resist Magic or Defensive.

 

[nealhunt]

Well, I tried several Elohim starts with the strat above and I have to say I can't get it to work. It takes too much away from expansion and econ to be successful.

 

[Ecofarm]

Well, I tried several Elohim starts with the strat above and I have to say I can't get it to work. It takes too much away from expansion and econ to be successful.

Education before mystic? I find that the hammer bonus is not so great early and the gold bonus is non-existant because I'm running 100% tech. So, I like to get education first then mystic to get the cottage spam nice and early.

Aren't the markets from an early festival run helping?

Why does it hurt expansion?

 

[onedreamer]

This is a pretty quantifiable thing. Compare that to Aggressive starting you with Combat 1, which increases your chances of WINNING a combat instead of your chances of surviving a combat you would lose. Generally, +20% strength gives a significantly greater chance of survival than withdraw 10% does

not really, this is true only in case of relatively equal strengths, but if your enemy has a much higher strength, the withdrawal bonus is much more useful. In particular, attacking fortified units with good withdrawal units means wearing down their resistance, they will not gain xp if you retreat while you will and you will be able to take that combat promotion later and actually kill the unit with less losses.

 

[nealhunt]

Education before mystic? I find that the hammer bonus is not so great early and the gold bonus is non-existant because I'm running 100% tech. So, I like to get education first then mystic to get the cottage spam nice and early.

Aren't the markets from an early festival run helping?

Why does it hurt expansion?

Out of 4 or 5 starts, I couldn't get all the way to Festivals and still double back to catch FoL. Someone would beat me to it. Going for FoL earlier meant I got it, but in the meantime my expansion was hindered by economic concerns. Most especially annoying was the game where my first flipping target founded FoL about 3 turns before I would have, effectively rendering it unflippable.