All right... Moved the Luchuirp discussion to the bottom so I can answer it all at once.
Idea for the Bannor in the "aggressive, organised total war" spirit: forts are weaker, but can be built faster and, most importantly, in enemy lands (not rival lands). The weak forts have a commander with a weaker ranged attack, but with access to promotions that allow him to give bonuses to friendly units in the 8 tiles surrounding the fort.
Might make a fort next to one of your own cities *very* powerful though... Maybe normal, basic forts + commanders in owned/neutral lands, and a seperate type of "offensive" fort for enemy lands...
Hmm... I could always make the bonuses require that you be in enemy territory. Not hard to do.
That said, not sure about the idea... I'll have to think on it.
Sheaim- Fort commander that has a couple of "Evil" spells, but more importantly, when they build a fort the Armageddon counter goes up by one for each fort, because inside the basement of the fort, they're probably doing some heart stealing, baby eating experiment.
How about having their commanders increase the AC? This way, there's no python check when they build a fort, and more importantly, it works when they capture a fort as well... And can be fought by wiping out their commanders.
First the idea of summoning a "hawk" with sentry 1 and 2 sounds like a great way to implement the idea. Would the relations boost ability work too? I essentially tried to make it so the boost would be limited to +1 per fort and then the commander could not also be used to spy.
The relations ability could work pretty well. There are promotion tags that affect diplomacy, and if I make it a summon of some kind, say 8 movement, ignores penalties, 1 turn duration so it can ONLY reach cities 8 tiles away, and give it a spell castable in friendly cities that grants it a promotion increasing relations by 1 to the city, granting it +1 duration, and a duration of 10 turns on the promotion, everything should work.
The summon will have to grant a 'cannot cast' promo to the Commander as well.
Not sure if This should be a Lanun specific idea or open to all civs but...
Can you make the top level of the fort allow ships to enter the square? Return to BtS type.
Maybe allow all civs but limit them to 1 deep, where as the Lanun can do 2 or 3 deep, i.e. longer canals.
I can't really prevent them from building a chain of them, unless I prevent forts from being built next to each other, but yes, I'm planning on adding the bActAsCity tag to Citadels and their equivalents.
Actually, it's one permanent summon from each spell. So the commander would be able to build one of each kind of golem.
That sounds a bit overpowered to me. A master sculptor would be able to provide six free golems at a time, some of them of national unit strength. And with feedback experience from summons, level 8 wont be that far away.
One free golem at a time seems plenty good enough, especially since it's type can be changed quickly. (By disbanding the old golem and summoning a new one.) Build forts on useless tiles and have a horde of Mud Golems during peace, and a horde of free fighting golems during war.
It's fairly easy to limit to one golem at a time, just have the master grant a promotion to slaves that in turn grant the master a no casting promotion. Or even just have the Golem race promotion forbid masters from casting spells.
I do like this idea a lot better than having the commander be a golem. Fort Commanders seem like leader types, and with one exception, golems aren't leaders.
To be fair, most Fort Commanders are unable to kill on attack.
I like the tweaks to my idea for the Luchuirp. I'm not sure a one summon limit per fort commander would be completely fair. The way I invisioned the sculptor is as a very limited combat unit. Like a strength 1 defense 2, incapable of taking ranged damage promotions. The commander would need his golems to help protect the workshop and possibly create a few extra golems. The more powerful the commander the more defense is necessary as they become more of a target. Plus there should be a way to make sure the national unit limit can't be surpassed using python. I know there is such a limiting factor for liches (even though it isn't a summon). If that method of maintaining the summons for as long as the master lives works and no national limits can be broken I think it would be fair. Plus the building of each unit takes a significant number of turns (Proportional to the normal production value)
As a side note. I was thinking that as the sculptor advances in power the lower level golems could gain a few free promotions like combat 1 and such. In fact the sculptor could gain additional promotions that could allow free promotions to the summons as well.
A city takes 20 tiles and an expensive settler to build, then you have to grow the population and build buildings and make improvements to be able to make golems. A fort takes one tile and a few worker turns.
Just imagine building one fort. That fort makes a mud golem that starts building new forts. Each new fort makes a new mud golem that starts building forts. It won't be long until the entire continent is covered with forts, each of which can build a wood golem in 9 turns. Even if you only set aside the area for one city, that's two free wood golems each turn, at a minimum. Every tile that happens to lie outside the working area of a city, that's a free golem. Why bother springing deserts when you can just cover them with forts?
Most forts wont need protection because they lie far inside your borders. Those few that are under threat of attack receive support from those that don't.
First off... I thought it was flat out one permanent summon in FF. Not sure though, so I may be wrong.
No unit limits will be broken... Pretty easy to make a prereq that checks that before allowing the spell to be cast.
For the most part, I agree with Odalrick. There has to be some kind of limiting factor... For example, I don't think I'll allow them to build Mud Golems, mostly because that could make for exponential growth.
I'm not quite sure how to limit it though... One golem per commander, one of each golem per commander, or just a set number?
I went with an archery theme, actually inspired by one of my favorite M:tG cards. The unit is called the Sagittar, and uses the Ljo Longbowman graphics instead of the regular FC graphics (I have zero skill at doing artwork, so...). Instead of the Siegecombat promo, it has a similar promo that does basically the same thing but additionally allows it to promote to the Archery promos. I also decided to have it start with Woodsman I; was considering allowing it to promote to Woodsman II, but that seemed too much.
Ranged combat wise, it loses the ability to deal collateral damage, but has the potential to get a much higher ranged attack power against single units, thanks to the Archery promotions. I also gave it a 2-square range, which adds another layer of strategy to deciding where to place them, since you want to put them somewhere where their full range won't be blocked by high terrain.
"What's their strike range, you ask? Let's put it this way: sagittars aim their bows using maps."
Otak, Tin Street shopkeep
Originally I was going to give them a unique replacement for the Commander I, II, III line of promotions that increased their range as they leveled up - starting them with normal 1-square range, bumping it to 2 at Commander I, and possibly even up to 3 at Commander III (in my version I enabled Commander III for everyone, instead of just the Kuriotates). However, I discovered that there is currently no way to increase ranged combat attack range through promotions, which struck me as a bit odd.
This is MaxAstro's Ljosalfar commander idea, from a different thread... Probably going to be using it.
