I wanted to share an idea I've had for the Elohim that I have been attempting to refine it the last couple of hours. I hope you find it useful.
In vanilla FFH, there are three problems with the Elohim:
1) Their traits encourage warmongering and don't reflect their theme very well.
2) Monks are too expensive at their current tech and not very useful late game.
3) The Elohim gain nothing from protecting unique features, an important part of their lore.
I would like to suggest an alternative to what you have changed to fix those problems. My main problem with what you have done, as I mentioned earlier, was that the gathering of unique features throws a wild card into the game and encourages war. My solution encourages the Elohim to create cities near unique features, without requiring it or benefiting the Elohim outside of the specific city next to the feature (in other words, the only thing the Elohim gain is the unique feature itself). Here is how it would work.
In regards to point 3
Modify Defender and make it an Elohim specfic trait called "Guardian". This would have the same effect as Defender, but also the following:
- Any city the Elohim build in which a unique feature is within the first ring of their city has no maintance from distance and does not add to the maintence created from the number of cities. (this would have to be the first ring, or else the Elohim could get multiple cities with no maintence from one UF)
- Any unique feature in Elohim borders cannot be explored. (to prevent your allies from destroying your UFs)
- When a unique feature falls within Elohim borders, a guardian is created. This guardian cannot leave Elohim borders. If the unique feature leaves Elohim borders, the guardian is destroyed. (I really liked your guardian idea, but think this would give them a bit more use.)
In regards to point 1
Make Ethne the White: Guardian, Creative, Expansive
This enables Ethne to quickly create settlers early game and with fast growing cultural borders, to expand to the UFs before anyone else gets to them.
Make Einon Logos: Guardian, Spiritual, Philosphical
This enables Einon to create powerful monks and priests, through increased movement and free experience granted by the altar.
If those combinations are too strong, go with Guardian, Creative, Spirtual and Guardian, Expansive, Philosophical. A mix of the best of both worlds.
In regards to point 2
I think the easiest way to fix monks is to lower their hammer cost and enable them at philosophy. Priesthood already gives you a unit to concentrate on (your priests). Making monks available earlier and cheaper lets you get a good unit fast, that can later upgrade to your clergy. It also helps the Elohim avoid the metal and archery tech paths, so they can concentrate on religion more. It also encourages a more mobile army, which the Elohim will probably need.
With these changes, the Elohim are encouraged to spread out their empire to the unique features of the world and keep a hold of them. It would create several power cities for the Elohim, but in many cases the spaces in between would be a weakness that could be exploited (and thus balance it out). The guardian unit would enable the Elohim to protect themselves despite being spread out, but the fact that it cannot leave their borders means it is purely a defensive mechanism.
I think these changes would work really well while keeping the intent of the Elohim in check. I also believe they are fairly minor changes that would work well with the intent of tweakmod.
Thanks for reading.
, so the bonuses shouldn't overpower them.
