Haunted Lands

[WarKirby]

I've played a few games as the Scions, and one of their most interesting mechanics, the haunted Lands, is disappointingly unlike the pedia entry. The abbreviation HL is used throughout this post. It means Haunted Lands, of course.

It implies there would be unique resources to be found there. Instead, haunted lands give +2 to the tile, which I would presume is meant to reflect increased commerce from trading such resources. However, I find this commerce bonus to be both overpowered, and boring.

I'd like to suggest adding some unique resources. Some of which could have a chance of spawning in HL tiles which don't already contain a resource. Others could transform existing resources which are not normally useful to the scions, like wheat, cows, rice, etc, since they don't eat, and have no issues with health after sorcery.

Adapted from the pedia entry:

Watchful Stones: Small intelligent stones which can be trained to keep an eye out for the enemy. Would give a small bonus to the city defence of all cities that have acess to it Say 5% or so.. And maybe a small chance (10-15% ) for asassin attacks to fail, and be intercepted by the strongest defender. Perhaps this bonus could stack with multiple sources. perhaps not.


Knowledgeable Darkness: Sentient darkness which is able to answer questions now and then. Would give a 5% research bonus in cities which have it.


Screaming Grain: would give a small commerce bonus, for the novelty ofit. Or would it be possible even, to trade to other players as normal grain, but instead have the opposite effect of lowering health. This resource would be transformed from wheat in HL.

Nightmare Brew: a resource created from breweries which have acess to screaming grain, could lower happiness instead of raising it. also give some commerce.

Stillborn Cattle: would provide commerce (instead of food and production) to the city that works it, and food to cities that have acess. Would not require a pasture on the tile. this would be transformed from normal cows

Honeywood: A delicious tasting luxury food, increases happiness. Not useable by scions, so good for export. Could possibly be created where HL claims a forest.

And an original idea of my own

Creeper Sap: A powerful, addictive narcotic, that brings ecstasy to the mind, even as it wastes away the body. Would give +1 happiness, and +1 unhealthiness.

Thoughts? extra ideas? maybe it would be good to reduce the natural commerce bonus to add such resources?

I just feel this would add much more to it than a bland +2

 

[Iceciro]

Not sure. I think the Scions get plenty enough of a bonus in HL that giving them anything, especially resources that other civs don't have access to.

 

[Tarquelne]

Short answer: If the problem is lack of flavor the amount of work needed is likely to be too much for quite awhile. If the problem is balance there are far easier ways to nerf HLs.

Long answer:
Very good resource ideas, and I'd love for the Scions to have a bunch of custom resources, but I see three basic problems:

1) There'd be a significant amount of work involved coding the system - I'm very leery about committing to such a project. (It's *far* easier to me to say "Use your imagination.") For the foreseeable future I'm in "fiddle" mode. I'd like to improve balance but would rather not add something elaborate to do so. There could also be CPU resource problems, though I don't think that's a major concern - I doubt it'd add much of top of what's already running.

2) Balance. On the one hand, the bonuses could be kept so low that there's little danger of being "OP." But then the danger is a lot of work for little effect - esp. compared to much easier balance schemes like chopping the bonus to +1 commerce/HL. If, on the other hand, the bonuses are allowed to be significant that's a whole new set of things that need monitoring for balance. Esp. anything that can be traded.

3) Any direct commerce, gold, etc. bonuses involved need to be kept very low: While the HL presently give +2 commerce per square the Scions tend not to work many squares. The average bonus of special resources would need to be well under +2 commerce/square to significantly lower the benefit.

Reducing the current bonuses for the HL seems like the best thing to me if they're overpowered. (Or perhaps making the pedia entry less interesting.) They might be barred from most/all of the capital's BFC - that's where many players are going to collect most of the commerce bonus.

A generic resource system would be far easier - most tiles with no commerce bonus while some do give a bonus. That'd be slightly more interesting, but not really more flavorful and still doesn't completely avoid any of the problems outlined above. The bonus could be fine-tuned to - on average - something between +1 and +2/square, and that's the only significant improvement I see.

 

[Iceciro]

Oh, I didn't mean they're overpowered now - as you said, Scions don't work too many squares.

My thing is that if they're getting custom resources in addition to the fact that they only need to work productive (hammer/commerce) squares, and the HL 1) bonus to commerce and 2) the fact that every other race hates the things.

 

[Sephi]

I would rather increase the bonus of HL than lower it. A specialist can give 6 which is better than the commerce from towns+HL.

 

[Tarquelne]

I was just thinking that the movement cost should - background-wise - be 2 rather than 1. I'm not sure why they aren't now.

BTW, WarKirby - Most of my objection boils down to the "work" thing. Balance issues can usually be ironed out - though often a matter of work, too. If, after looking into it more, getting a unique resource system running/balanced turns out to be easier than I think it is, I'm guardedly in favor. (Though a problem not even mentioned above might come into play: Adding more complexity to an already packed civ.)

 

[Iceciro]

If the movement cost is that much, would you tie a way for Scion units to move through it unhindered into The Gift's tech? I wouldn't want to see something making it harder for the scions to move through a terrain they created.