Anyone think that Auric Ascended isn't really THAT powerful for the price you pay? Think about it, the meshaber of dis probably hits much more than auric through promotions, auric is unable to gain promotions. 60 strength and a blizzard spell doesnt seem to cut it, especially since you are locked in a permenant war with everyone when you gain him.
I do. That is one reason why I proposed that Avatats should heal 100% after winning a battle. I also think that it would be cool to let everyone build/use Ice nodes, and let him capture units that use Ice magic.
Also seriously consider giving earth elementals the bombard ability, that seems SO fitting for them.
I concur, this is one of many changes to summons that I've been pushing for a long time.
And if you haven't already done so in the change log, doviello need much more synergy with tundra terrain, and someone proposed some ideas for the doviello in a thread, keeping their citys small for more of a tribal feel, I really liked the whole idea and I hope you do more with the doviello than whats already in the change log.
They could use something, and those might be ok, but its not what I'd focus on. Thematically, I really think their units need to be able to challenge each other to one-on-one combat, to get free xp and probably end up killing at least of the units in this fight. I also like letting them steal weapons promotions from units they defeat in combat, and maybe getting yields/commerces from winning combat too.
Forget flavor for a second and think about design. The ability to reduce city defenses is a significant ability. Right now its owned by siege equipment (which the Khazad have a strength in), available with fire magic (fireballs and to a lesser extent with gunpowder and shadow magic (units there can ignore city defense when attacking). And of course naval units on coastal cities.
We gave the ability hill giants to make them an alternaitve to siege equipment, since they are wonder produced im fine with that. But outside of that I hate to keep handing out the ability, otherwise everything starts to feel the same. People have requested that a lot of units get bombard, and from a flavor perspective they all make sense, but we look at it from a different perspective.
I never really thought that letting Hill Giants made a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense for several other units, like Earth Elementals and Treants.
We try not to look at the units and ask ourselves what abilities they should have. We look at the sphere/civ and try to give abilities that match the strengths of that area. In earths case its supposed to be a defensive sphere. Thats tough to make exciting. I have no problem with a perk for Earth Elementals, I just dont think that bombarding city defense works from a function perspective.
Why not? I don't think that Earth should be purely defensive, as Kilmorph is also responsible for Earthquakes and that great weapon of destruction called The Mithril Golem. I don't see why earth elementals shouldn't be able to cause such destruction too. (I've also thought it could be cool Earth Elementals' deaths to (have a chance to) cast Earthquake)
Also they are supposed to work well with the khazad, and giving another bombard ability to the best bombarders in the game doesnt help them. It would be better for them to get a different elemental, which is not a situation we want to create.
This makes very little sense to me. The Khazad can't have Mages, much less Archmages, so how are they supposed to get the Eath Elementals. (Edit: Oh yeah, I just remembered about Dwarven Druids...)
Pointing out that the Earth Sphere civ is the best at siege to me just makes me think that is would be appropriate for the earth spell sphere civ too.
We are doing a lot of talking about design and why we make the inscrutable decisions that we do. Its really not just a magic eightball deciding everything, and although I certainly make tons of mistakes every version (both in bugs and in design as we see from the numerous patches) we typically consider 3 things when thinking about a change. They are listed below in priority:
Fun: would that change be fun, would be get excited about it ("drool factor") and want to try it out?
Function: is their a design need for this change? Is there some problem we are trying to solve? Does this change conform with the rest of the mods design?
Flavor: Is the change intuitive, does it make the unit/civ/sphere more interesting without being overly complex.
If its not fun it doesnt go any farther. We have some fun things int he mod that have very little flavor or function but they will probably never leave because fun trumps everything. Function is the real decider for the wide range of fun things we could do. If it fills a functional need it probably going to happen. But it has to be considered from the perspective of the object being changed, the effect on performance, ease of implementation, effect on the objects the changed object is balanced against, effect on the game in total, behavior it rewards, effect on the civ, etc. Lastly if it has passed all the other tests flavor isnt to hard to find. Flavor is really taking the mechanic and mapping it to the imagined resource in the players mind in a logical way.
The Doviello are a bit tougher. Xienwolf had some really cool ideas that I played around with. But I dont know of a way to change them so significantly this late in the process. Obviously reducing their city size by limiting their improvements, blocking health and happiness buildings, etc would be a huge disadvantage for them. Which would require a significant perk to compensate. We are trying to wrap up and finish the mod, starting some civs over in design is a trap door toward a never ending project.
And sadly you are going to see that answer more and more often as we get closer to the end.
I still think that my suggestions for the Doviello (letting them steal weapons promotions from defeated enemies and to fight amongst themselves) would be quite fun, very thematically appropriate, and not hard to implement using python. Stealing weapons would probably require you extend <PythonPostCombatWon> to promotions instead of just units (although I guess it would be ok if only thier UUs could steal weapons), but this change (which FF did a long time ago) is a very useful one.
Balance on strengths I agree with. But some civs are always goign to be flashier than others. The Doviello and Bannor are good civs power wise, they just dont have flashy mechanics. Thats fine, we need a mix fo flashy civs and more normal civs and I reguarly recommend people try the doviello ro bannor when starting play in FfH.
I still think these need some sort of special mechanics. You've probably read my Doviello ideas recently enough. I'm thinking that giving the Bannor a default race like Courage or Valor could work nicely. I'd also really like to see Bannor Confessors/Priors demonstrate their civ's old sphere by being able to call down holy fire like everyone's Order priests could a few versions ago. This would create extra incentive to follow the thematically correct religion (I'm thinking it would be nice for several civs to have thematically appropriate advantages with specific religions), and would justify keeping some of the old pedia entries like Amelanchier's.
But the Malakim do need something. I dont know what it is. I dont want to give them super cities, so yield bonuses dont seem right. They are supposed to be our religious priests and nomad but they are pinched between the flavor of the Elohim and the Bannor and having trouble finding their own feel. And FfH is all abotu making sure every civ feels differently than the others. So definitly something need to be done there.
I still think that my idea of making Desert Shrines give more disciple xp based on the amount of desert in the city radius (even 1 xp per desert tile in the city radius together with command posts, dies diei, any level of the Altar of the Luonnatar, apprenticeship, or theocracy could let them upgrade priests to high priests immediately) would work very well for their desert mystics theme. The hardships and isolation of the deserts forces them to focus on spiritual matters. Cities stuck way out in the wilderness would be a training ground for the strongest disciples in Erebus, but they would have to stay as essentially small molestations rather than thriving cities, and their production would never be all that good. You'd have to strike a balance between the spiritual power of the desert fathers and economic concerns.
Some other nomad/trader mechanic could be added too, but I consider the desert mystic theme to be more important.
)
So unless i see proof (sucky doviello when Ice-Phase will be finished) i won't be convinced that the doviello stay as sucky as they are.)
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
