Elohim Tweak Suggestions

Verdian

King
Joined
Aug 19, 2006
Messages
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I was looking over EverNoob's guide to the Elohim, and it reminded me of some things I dislike about my second favorite civ. I think the following could use a second look.

1) Elohim devouts not being able to upgrade to Empyrean priests. I am really hoping this is an oversight. The fact that the Elohim, the most peaceful of civs, cannot follow the most peaceful of religions as well as, say, the Order is frustrating.

2) Reliquary unhealthiness. This seems a bizarre balance mechanic. And unhealthiness for a Good, peaceful builder civ seems out of place. Why is a group that was created on the principle of helping the sick and injured creating unique buildings that make people sick? There has to be a better way to balance this.

3) The hammer cost of Monks. There are better, early units to build than monks, and that is a shame. I go out of my way to build them because they are a unique unit, and I frequently suffer for it. A lower hammer cost would make this a viable unit.

The above are simple changes that would help make the Elohim more enjoyable and less non-sensical. I know FF made some wonderful changes to the Elohim as well, and it would be nice if the FFH could take a look at them as well. Those are a bit more complicated, however.
 
A reliquary is a facility for storing of dead bodies, I believe. It's probably not a very healthy place to be, so I think that point is understandable.

That said, all of these are fairly simple tweaks. And if you can't get kael to agree in doing them, you could always just mod them in yourself. The monk and devout parts are in civ4Unitinfos.xml and I think the reliquary is in civ4buildinginfos.xml
Those files can be found in the /Units and /Buildings subdirectories respectively, under the /assets/xml path within the FFH folder.

Fall Farther has fixed the Devout upgrading issue. That's clearly a bug. You can fix it yourself by pasting in this code in the appropriate place:

Spoiler :
Code:
<UnitClassUpgrades>
				<UnitClassUpgrade>
					<UnitClassUpgradeType>UNITCLASS_SHADOW</UnitClassUpgradeType>
					<bUnitClassUpgrade>1</bUnitClassUpgrade>
				</UnitClassUpgrade>
				<UnitClassUpgrade>
					<UnitClassUpgradeType>UNITCLASS_PRIEST_OF_KILMORPH</UnitClassUpgradeType>
					<bUnitClassUpgrade>1</bUnitClassUpgrade>
				</UnitClassUpgrade>
				<UnitClassUpgrade>
					<UnitClassUpgradeType>UNITCLASS_PRIEST_OF_THE_ORDER</UnitClassUpgradeType>
					<bUnitClassUpgrade>1</bUnitClassUpgrade>
				</UnitClassUpgrade>
				<UnitClassUpgrade>
					<UnitClassUpgradeType>UNITCLASS_PRIEST_OF_LEAVES</UnitClassUpgradeType>
					<bUnitClassUpgrade>1</bUnitClassUpgrade>
				</UnitClassUpgrade>
				<UnitClassUpgrade>
					<UnitClassUpgradeType>UNITCLASS_PRIEST_OF_THE_EMPYREAN</UnitClassUpgradeType>
					<bUnitClassUpgrade>1</bUnitClassUpgrade>
				</UnitClassUpgrade>
			</UnitClassUpgrades>

Use ctrl+f to find the devout entry, and it should be fairly obvious where it goes.

For the Monk adjustment, in the same file, look for the tag <iCost> and tweak the value there to whatever is desired.


For the Reliquary, you're looking for BUILDING_RELIQUARY in civ4BuildingInfos.xml
scroll down that entry a fair bit, until you find <iHealth>-1</iHealth>
Change that value to 0
 
Great, thanks WarKirby. I am hoping they will get added, but it is nice to know it is simple to fix if they don't. My attempts at complex editing went nowhere.

My problem with the reliquary (lore-wise) is that every civilization has a way to store dead bodies to some degree. The Elohim should be able to do it humanly, skillfully and properly. Making a large section of a city sick does none of these. Non-lore-wise, health can be hard enough to get. I just don't see how adding unhealthiness balances this building. If it is considered strong enough to warrant a downside, slow down unit construction in the city (5% or so) or only apply the promotion to disciple units.
 
Wonky religious devotion has its downside. Ever do any research on the catacombs of the real world? These places are truly terrifying by modern codes of hygiene and body disposal. The stench was unimaginable, but there was no better alternative in the minds of the people. Burning was unthinkable, embalming blasphemous, and burying impossible due to land constraints. Bodies were just laid out in little nooks up and down long underground hallways, to rot. And what's worse, people went to visit them regularly, (and had to walk by them on the way deeper down to bury more people that might have gotten sick when they came to lay the last relative to rest, a vicious cycle).

Nah, the elohim are all goodness and light, sure, but I think one of the things FFH is best at is showcasing the failings of even the best of intentions and goals.

Or, you can just throw some magic at it, say there is no big sanitation problem, and call it good. Why not even have all the bodies of former fallen heroes lie in perfect condition with no decomposition, and it is the journeys of new units here to reflect on glories past that convinces that nifty little promotion to tag along back with them.
 
The Elohim guide helped me to play the Elohim much better; well worth printing and saving. These were some of the questions I too had about the Elohim - although at the time, I shrugged and went with it.
 
[...]
My problem with the reliquary (lore-wise) is that every civilization has a way to store dead bodies to some degree. The Elohim should be able to do it humanly, skillfully and properly. Making a large section of a city sick does none of these. Non-lore-wise, health can be hard enough to get. I just don't see how adding unhealthiness balances this building. If it is considered strong enough to warrant a downside, slow down unit construction in the city (5% or so) or only apply the promotion to disciple units.
The issue with that is that a reliquary tends to be public and visited by the religious masses, in this case in a primarily religious civilization. Tombs tends to be off limits, and in cemeteries you bury bodies six feet under.

Something I find a lot stranger is the health penalty on the public baths. Sure, there's a lot of people there, but health penalty for keeping people clean? Wut? :p
 
Something I find a lot stranger is the health penalty on the public baths. Sure, there's a lot of people there, but health penalty for keeping people clean? Wut? :p

Does plantar wart means something to you? Can you imagine thousands of people, covered with days of dirts, bathing in the same water?
 
The locker room is a nightmare! Plus everyone coming back from the reliquary washes at the public baths and, well, let's just say it's not all dust being washed away.
 
Does plantar wart means something to you? Can you imagine thousands of people, covered with days of dirts, bathing in the same water?

Imagine those same people, covered in dirt, without bathing at all! :crazyeye:
 
I find the Elohim to be OP honestly just because of how they can build anything a civ's city they capture could build. That alone makes them the strongest civ in the game imo.
 
Without bathing at all, they suffer their own diseases, but warm water is the best paradigm for microbian growth, so everyone in the public bath is bathing in a strange soup full of bacteria. It's like swimming in a sewage treatment.
Dietary suplement? I'm french and I eat very strange things, like frogs and snails, but I will never drink any oz of this kind of water. ( maybe it can offer +1food in the city?!)
 
Something I find a lot stranger is the health penalty on the public baths. Sure, there's a lot of people there, but health penalty for keeping people clean? Wut? :p

I always looked at the +3 happiness and thought that the funny part, I just figured that bathhouses were basically upscale brothels, and the 1 unhealthiness came from venereal diseases.
 
I mean think about what the Sheaim get from it :p you know there is something more then just "baths" going on in there
 
Does plantar wart means something to you? Can you imagine thousands of people, covered with days of dirts, bathing in the same water?

You're right, the Roman baths were a terrible invention, and thousands died from the diseases spread therein.

What?
 
Not to be some sort of definition-nazi, but I don't think there's actually anything inherently unhealthy about a reliquary, in the normal meaning of the word. A reliquary isn't a place where one would keep recently dead people - it's a place to store relics, and while that could mean the bones of a saint or something, it could just as easily mean some scrap of cloth or a holy hand grenade. It certainly doesn't seem to me like a place one would put recently dead or dying people.

Needless to say, holy hand grenades would indeed somewhat unhealthy, but I gather they're the exception, not the rule, in the relic business.
 
its in the pedia entry... doesnt anybody read the pedia when they're new?
A lot of pedia entries are outdated, so I'm not using it, I made too much mistakes.

You're right, the Roman baths were a terrible invention, and thousands died from the diseases spread therein.

What?

Roman baths were really a terrible invention, but the sanitation system saves their health: aqueducts for fresh water, sewer system to evacuate waste, latrines...
Have a look there and see what i mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_Ancient_Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_Maxima
P.S.:At the same time, so-called "Barbarian" Celts washed them in rivers, in the place where they drop the ashes of their deads relatives: early form of soap.
 
Not to be some sort of definition-nazi, but I don't think there's actually anything inherently unhealthy about a reliquary, in the normal meaning of the word. A reliquary isn't a place where one would keep recently dead people - it's a place to store relics, and while that could mean the bones of a saint or something, it could just as easily mean some scrap of cloth or a holy hand grenade. It certainly doesn't seem to me like a place one would put recently dead or dying people.

Needless to say, holy hand grenades would indeed somewhat unhealthy, but I gather they're the exception, not the rule, in the relic business.
Yeah, I know. It's just not the impression that I got from the reliquary of the Elohim. I got a lot more of an 'open holy catacomb' feeling from it.

A reliquary can technically be anything from a small personal shrine with a piece of wood in it, to a full-blown open chapel adorned with skulls and bones. I'd say that the impression I get from the Elohim reliquaries are much more of the latter.
 
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