Just to expand, I think if you hid (from other players) the promotions that Esus units have it would be very intimidating during wartime - mostly due to hidden mana promotions. E.g. does that stack have the ability to haste with that mage's promotions hidden... that would mess up an opponent's defense strategy!
nightwatch require CoE as a state religion, shadows don't. mass access to HN units that can use mithril and attack and defend pretty well is a good boon.
Compared to, say, cultists that can "SPLOOSH!" all the enemy coastal cities into oblivion? Not so good a boon then. On Gibbon: Early archmage? Good stuff, I certainly won't knock that. He does have the issue of rather low . Any concerted effort to attack him with assassins has a good chance of success. Then there's his special ability. Not only does it consume him (taking away your early archmage advantage), but you leave your own empire vulnerable to the AI's bumbling. Side note: Chalid's special ability is being Chalid.
How about a unit with Medic I and II, Divine and Channeling II (like all Priests) but no predefined religion. That way it would be able to cast a Priest spell of wichever religion it would happen to get.
In that case it would need to have a VERY low chance of aquiring a religion, otherwise Esus would rise up to being the "best" religion quite fast. Even so, would be great to fix your cure disease needs. You could call the unit "Rogue Prophet" or something, since he is almost like a quack-priest that is being paid off by the Esus agents, as opposed to being directly tied to the Esus religion.
I'm a fan. I want Horseback Riding fairly early anyway because I'd rather have Mobility on all my troops than an extra Combat promotion. I want Writing early because I like building the Great Library to give my research that massive boost from Great People and free+enhanced Sages. I want Way of the Wicked for Slavery even if I have absolutely no other reason to consider Evil(ish) stuff. From there, it's just Trade and Deception to get me an Archmage. I'm pretty sure I can find something to do with Mind III at 10XP. I actually consider Gibbon Goeta to be the only real reason to switch to Esus in the first place. The game is generally over before I can get Shadowriders, so that's not a factor. I don't care too much about getting kicked out of borders when declaring, so that's not anything special unless I plan an invasion entirely around taking a city or three and then using the Peace Trees to end the war before my turn ends. Archmage before KotE is my big reason for Esus.
how so ? Gibbon goetia gives you lvl 3 spells way before your "friends" have mage. and maybe before your friends have priests. (SP or MP) for the rest divine 3 ?? wtf ? that's no religion tier 4 !! well , it is.. but almost no interest ! I'd rather have druids upgraded from the adequat priest to get that wonder tier 4 spell ! you don't have to stockpile an insane amount of xp, that you lose the next time you switch religion and that is somehow weak : how do you subvert strong units with a 8 unit ? (some of my prefered are confessor upgraded druid ! -for the 80% command or stonewarden-updraded druid for the earthquake. but you only need one of those.) . but on the whole I agree with you. shadowriders and gibbon goetia are not sufficient to forget Yvain or Sphener or sacrifice the weak, or tsunami, ring of fire...Etc + cure disease) so maybe the issue about COE is mostly that so much of the COE boni are available without having the state religion (invisible units with the holy city, shadow, mask, participation in the undercouncil -buying nightwatchs, and what is limited to the state religion is not so powerful or comes too late) Maybe it would be better if any "COE" recon unit gets another -useful- spell when the state religion is esus. and maybe that not only svart can get steal , but any shadow of with esus as state religion.
...considering that the Council of Esus effectively lets people live their lives how they want, what about if having CoE as state religion it granted 4 happy faces in each city with CoE? ("We enjoy our personal freedom"), but lost 1 for each other religion ("Someone stole the donation tray again")
Spoiler : They do : Kidnap is Svartalfar-only, but that's not associated with or limited to following CoE.
well... your right. Haven't yet played svart nor gotten as high as shadow on my last COE game maybe I can reformulate : "give kidnap to any shadow with COE state religion ?" or give another spell available only to nightwatchs under COE state religion ?
How about make any unit that has the Esus religion the ability to cast stealth if the player has council of Esus as their religion? Then you are starting to get to the point where you have a pretty powerful advantage. You can slowly build an entire army that can surprise attack a city. One of my favorite things to do with Esus is make a whole bunch of Hidden Nationality units, (except you cant group them when they are HN... :/ ) It would be cooler if you could make them all invisible too.... then sneak all the way around in the ice and tundra of the southern areas to attack a city in the backside of your enemies empire. And it really chaps my hide you cant build priests of leaves unless you practice FoL, etc... but for some reason you don't need to be practicing Esus to build shadows.
perhaps something else is that you dont spend lots of beakers to research the expensive tech of theology (assuming that the other stuff esus has is comparable to high priests). also i thought ppl loved OO because of the early archmage hemah iirc?
That's certainly one of the reasons I love OO. I just had a ton of fun with Govannon + Hemah in my last game. I still think that Gibbon Goeta is better than Hemah at what he does, though. He comes in a completely different section of the tech tree. He doesn't require any magic investment at all. His summons are illusions - this is both good and bad, but it does mean in particular that you can make easy XP for your assassins during an invasion. I generally just try to make something useful with the starting mana + Unique Features that I started with and he turns out to be an amazing unit. I just have to give him the proper support. In that way, he's kind of like the Baron VonWolfenstein. If you're heading toward Druids or Beastmen anyway, you can pick up something that is completely outside your area of concentration and it's good enough to complement your existing strategy. I generally try to concentrate on doing one thing well in any particular game. I'd rather be extremely good at one thing and then use that to dominate my neighbors instead of trying to do all things well and finding that I'm not the best at anything. Units like Gibbon Goeta and the Baron let me do that and still pick up a powerful toy in a strategic area that I had chosen to ignore. Does that make Esus better than other religions? Certainly not. I rarely stay under CoE for much of the game. In the games that I do make the move to CoE, though, the time that I spend with Gibbon Goeta does me quite a lot of good.
I still would have to go for Theology if I wanted divine essence for the blood of the Phoenix or Immortals, not to mention dragons.
i really like having CoE as state religion. but i miss a way to heal units from disease. imo the infirmery building should be able to cure that over a period of time. like 3 turns for disease, 5 turns for plagued. but you would still need healing magic for withered
I think Rystics Tweaksmod's changes to Council of Esus are fantastic. One main drawback of Esus imo is that it gives no economical benefits (as in happines-bonuses etc.), Rystics fixes that in a sensible way, and also has alot of other interesting buffs that are helpful but not game-changing. Rystic's Tweakmod I never got the Esus-miracles-mod to work, but some of them sounded very interesting. I even tried to merge the two mods into one, but failed.
