Esus+ Brainstorming

[Pazyryk]

Bah... Messrs. 6000 and 11000 posts have to throw cold water on it.

 

[Valkrionn]

To be clear: I like the idea. Hell, I'm tweaking HN to so that units with the bAnimal tag will display the animal civ's flag, to help make HN more useful.

The thing is, you have to decide exactly what units HN units will appear to be. You need to cover ALL the bases, even if you don't think a unit would have HN. You also need to avoid using too much standard art, or too much from any one civ... How would you feel playing Svarts, only to have most of your unique units look standard?

I'm sure it's possible to have a unit look one way to the player, and another way to others... But without that it's rather hard to implement correctly. And to be able to display two art types would take DLL work, and I'm really not sure how much.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I think one single model for an HN unit will be plenty enough early on. who cares if they look the same if the "HN is useless in multiplayer" issue is fixed. there'll be time to come up with art later on

 

[Valkrionn]

I think one single model for an HN unit will be plenty enough early on. who cares if they look the same if the "HN is useless in multiplayer" issue is fixed. there'll be time to come up with art later on

That alone solves nothing. Unless you have a different model for HN units of different strengths (and some HN units with that strength under Barb control), human players will still know exactly who it is. It may take a week to learn it, but they will.

This idea has been tossed around EXTENSIVELY in the FF forum. There are lots of factors beyond art to consider if you want to be able to make it effective in multiplayer.

 

[Pazyryk]

OK. Yes it is a whole new art group, on par with a whole new civ. Just doing the recon line would be 90% of the units, though (others could use placeholder art, like the Sidar which look HNish) There aren't that many HN units running around anyway. So it should not feel "standard". All depends on the artwork though.

 

[Pazyryk]

Valkrionn, I posted before I saw your post. I guess there are issues like visible promotions that make this not a complete solution. But I still like it better than current no graphic effect of HN.

 

[Imuratep]

I think one single model for an HN unit will be plenty enough early on. who cares if they look the same if the "HN is useless in multiplayer" issue is fixed. there'll be time to come up with art later on

I like everything that makes the Svartalfar worldspell better in MP, but you still have to stay fair. If you have only one unitart for all HN units you lose a lot of time by having to check the probabilities for each one instead of having a feel about how good your chances are by the unitartwork (because in MP during war times every second can be vital). Otherwise you could swarm your opponent with Scouts while a few good units are among them. Without looking your opponent does not know which ones are the good units.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Yeah, CoE was always a religion I was interested. RoK might be my favorite, but the unique mechanics Esus has are really interesting. As far as the topic goes:

Shadowriders need to be boosted in some form. I see a few possibilities:

1) Keep them at Warhorses, with the 4 unit limit. Boost Withdrawal chance to 50%. With Flanking III, that gives a 100% chance of Withdrawal(Which is actually fairly balanced now that units can only withdraw once per turn).

2) Move them to Stirrups. I'm thinking 5 strength with 1 shadow affinity. Shadow isn't a very useful mana(it can be helpful, but pales compared to Air/Body/Enchantment/Chaos/Fire/Entropy), so this sort of balances itself.

3) Move to Deception. They will essentially act like Horsemen with a higher withdrawal then, so they would need something else to make them special... I'm thinking a free Magic Resistance promotion, which soft-counters the Ratha's Blinding Light.

Outside of Shadowriders... well, I could probably update my mod to work with the latest patch(or does it even need to be updated? Has the SpellInfos.XML file changed since I made that mod?) I still want to find a way to make Shadowscry become exponentially more expensive, but I haven't figured out how yet. I also think Evade Death is too powerful. I either want to make it so the cost is proportional to both the unit's strength and level, or remove the immortality benefit.

I don't really like introducing Esus-specific spies. If the original spy missions are kept, things like Revolt and Poison Water would become just too annoying with no counter. It could be made so that the Esus religion gives +1 instead of +1 , so if No Espionage was disabled that would mean Esus civilizations are the only ones that can see enemy demographics. That alone might make CoE a worthwhile religion.

 

[Imuratep]

I don't really like introducing Esus-specific spies. If the original spy missions are kept, things like Revolt and Poison Water would become just too annoying with no counter. It could be made so that the Esus religion gives +1 instead of +1 , so if No Espionage was disabled that would mean Esus civilizations are the only ones that can see enemy demographics. That alone might make CoE a worthwhile religion.

Can you allow a unit to counterespionage without turning into a spy? For example Radiant Guard or a lot of other units would have a great flavor for defending against espionage. Also buildings could work as ways for counterespionage (as in Vanilla Bts). This way active espionage would be Esus only while counterespionage is available for everyone.

 

[Imuratep]

How about a (mid- to lategame)unit that gains permanent strength each time you pay a high amount of gold and temporary strength each time you pay a low to moderate amount of gold? Flavor: Either a golem that becomes more opulent and thus is infused with the divine power of Esus. Or a warrior (favorable a dwarf) that embodies covetousness like no other and thus feels himself blessed by Esus.

 

[Valkrionn]

Hell, I'm tweaking HN to so that units with the bAnimal tag will display the animal civ's flag, to help make HN more useful.

So... This may be a small step in the right direction?

Not sure how well the code would apply to Wild Mana, as I'm not sure how the different civs work here, but it's a VERY small tweak and should be reasonably simple.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=8855422#post8855422

 

[Jabie]

Re-enabling the passive Espionage missions and giving Esus civs and a large boost would work well with Esus.

 

[Brokenbone]

In the spirit of brainstorming, part of the Esus theme is "cash for miracles", if I get the lore right.

I wonder if a few Esus-unique rituals, repeatable ones at that, might make sense. Rituals to raise crime rates appreciably in other empires (perhaps with a set duration), rituals to maybe spawn some mistforms in "qualified" plots in enemy empires (maybe high 5 commerce plots, a HN invisible mistform appears under your control, they smell the $$ you're offering for pillage?). Again, just silly examples but meant to illustrate there's not necessarily a need to "catch up" to things like the healing / medic abilities of other priest types, more like give the ability to spread around some hurt and annoyance, for the hammers associated with rituals, which I suppose represent a cash donation to Esus which you can do over and over again. Ritual that provides a 5% chance for units you build in the next 20 turns to start with a good Esus themed promo? Anyhow, yeah, rituals are just something I see little use of, maybe this'd be something to explore for the strange Esus types. No messages though of "Faeryl Viconia has completed Crimewave Ritual", need to keep those hints on the down low!

 

[Ekolite]

I would have thought ''cash for miracles'' would be more in line with Mammon then Esus really.

 

[Rystic]

Above, there's a mention that "Tweakmod" gives promos based on crime rate... I'm not familiar with it,

I did a few things with Esus's mechanics, but the religious promos were probably the biggest. I'm at work right now, so I can't open up the file and look at the exact code, but the formula for promotions looked something like this:

max promotions a unit can receive = (city pop)/5
attempts to apply a promotion = (crime rate)/10
chance for a promotion = 7/15, (it choose a random number between 0 and 14, with 7 valids)

So if a city has a population of 15, and a crime rate of 60, then a unit could be born with at most 3 promotions (pop/5). The chance for a promotion would be 7/15 (~46%), and it will try to apply promotions 6 times (crime/10). The possible promotions were:

1) (Esus set to Unit's religion)
2) Hidden Nationality
3) Hidden
4) Poisoned Blade
5) Flanking I
6) Poison Resistance
7) Bounty Hunter

Every promotion granted stayed on the list, but reapplying it did nothing. So the chance for one promotion is 7/15, a second 6/15, a third 5/15, etc..., all relative to how many attempts at promotions you have. Note, for purposes of this example, a large city with a high crime rate was given. In game, most cities will never see more than one or two promotions per unit.

Then there was Aeron's Bounty, a new wonder added to Esus. It increased the maximum number of promotions units in that city could get by one. It also gave a chance for greater Esus Promotions, which were:

1) Aeron's Chosen
2) Sinister
3) Flanking I and Flanking II

The chance for one of these being applied was 3/10, and only one attempt was allowed on them.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Nightwatches could get moved to Deception so that one doesn't need superexpensive Bowyers for them.

 

[Goodwill]

I guess there's two threads going for Esus, and I'm not sure if this is the "live" one. I made a long description of my brainstorming ideas in the other thread, but I'm somewhat new to the forums and I'm not sure if it's appropriate to copy/paste it here, so here's the link, just in case...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=350517

Another thought I have is that it is kind of silly that the biggest advantage of Council of Esus is in being the one and only player who has the holy building, and doesn't even go to people who HAVE the religion. So I would suggest removing the invisible within own borders effect from Nox Noctis and making it a feature of the state religion. A lot of people may choose to convert now if they're attacked, but the trade-off is in losing any heros or tier 3 priests of other religions if they do. So there is some good strategic consideration there, and an innate layer of defense provided by converting.

 

[wapamingo]

I just went through your post Goodwill. Some really good stuff in there. I hope it is looked at and incorporated.