How about a religious option tied to Oghma?

[Cuteunit]

Hello. I would like to get a discussion going about a possible neutral religion centered on the Oghma angel in ffh. I mean, you have your druidic religion in the FoL or your hammers/coin religion in Runes, but the third option.. an arcane faith... is missing. Oghma could fill this gap.

There's not much in the pedia or anything on the subject, so why not entertain some ideas here and maybe kael will like a few?

 

[hossam]

well the av is arcan but its evil.

 

[Cuteunit]

AV is Agares I thought, not Oghma.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Ashen Veil is all about gaining knowledge. It was founded by wizards seeking power.

 

[xienwolf]

I'll have to dig around sometime and see if I can find it, but the short of the answer is that there are 7 religions and the main mod will never have more.

Reason is partially the love of the 3/7/21 sets for FfH, and a bit more because this particular 7 is tied in to another one. Events come in 7 flavors, and each religion is strong for a particular event type. As for precisely which ones tie in with which types, that is what I have to dig for. I think it is in the Shadow Release Schedule...

Anyway, 3 pure religions (Evil: AV, Neutral: FoL, Good: Order) and 4 Mixed Religions (Evil/Neutral: Esus/OO, Good/Neutral: Empyr/RoK) will be pretty set in stone, excluding mod-mods.

As for why Oghma didn't make the cut: Maybe it is because Metamagic wasn't ready to be put into the game yet (if it ever will be). I do wish we had more Lore about her though, especially since what we do have of the Lore states Erebus is her lair. Might not be the case for the FfH canon story, as this Erebus is VERY different from that one.... but still an interesting enough story.


In regards to wanting an Arcane option for the Neutral paths, Empyrean still lacks considerably for flavor, so maybe there is a window of opportunity to find a reason why they should be arcane oriented?

 

[Cuteunit]

Good thinking. If an 8th cult is out of the question, why not make Empyrean a place for the wise arcanist? It's really the "Malakim religion" right now, but not as applicable to other civs like the Order is. The hero in particular.. meh. sun mana affinity even if you dont have sun mana. Meh. Meh meh.

Gandalf would be empyrean then, and Saruman would be AV?

 

[Ekolite]

Yeah in a way the Enpyrean is already arcane. Its centerred around wisdom and seeking knowledge to become generally more wise. They just need some sort of bonus/synergie added in to make them more obviously connected with arcane. Maybe they could have a UU 3rd tier Mage with access to divine-sorcery or something like that. Or maybe they could have a new UB like for eg.

Hall of enlightenment.
- requires Empy
- Available at ?
- +2 xp for caster types built in the city
- half price upgrades for caster types.

Also, I think it would be cool if they got some new spells centered around enligtenment that require Empy to be cast. All new adepts built after conversion to empy would start with the religion.

A similiar thing could be done with AV too.

 

[Ekolite]

If something similiar to the Hall of enlightenment was added in it would give the Amurites a great synergy for the Empy. Players would have a choice of religions instea of always feeling that they need to go for AV.

 

[MrUnderhill]

I think the Hall of Enlightenment looks a bit too specific to mage archetypes.

I'd rather the Empyrean had more of a focus on increasing the effectiveness of specialists and/or the rate of Great People points, since, in my opinion, Great People are the best representation of wisdom and enlightenment in Civ besides pure research (which is of course the Veil's domain), and it's an aspect largely untouched in FFH (except for the Grigori, but they can't adopt the Empyrean anyway). It also syncs well with FFH lore, as the creed of the Empyrean is (from what I've seen) all about giving people the chance to find their own niche and flourish.

With an inclination towards Great People, the Empyrean could still sync well with the Amurites by giving them more Great Sages, but that aspect wouldn't be limited just to them. Every civ can put Great People to good use, from Dwarven engineers, to Elven bards, to Malakim prophets. I think it would make the Empyrean a much more versatile religion and nicely break it away from the "Order +" it is right now.

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, so far my favorite idea for changing the Empyrean temple is a +10% GPP (or some value, as balance dictates).

But something EXTRA to push them in the mage path would be quite enjoyable. With all the power that Esus gives to Recon it seems a viable concept to give Empy some extra buildings/functions to enhance magical units a bit.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I've been playing with +20% GPP, -15% military production from Temples of the Empyrean.

I like the idea of the Empyrean boosting GPP, but enhancing magic really doesn't seem to be their theme.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't really think Empyrean is "arcane" at all. That's more of an AV theme.

The whole Empyrean idea of using peace and diplomacy to solve problems, setting up councils and giving you special units doesn't sound like arcane magical powers. The real difference is that AV is about commanding powers to do your bidding, while Empyrean is about developing your martial and magical might to promote wisdom. I always imagined their religious units to be a little like Elohim monks, but with magical abilities that draw on their inner strength rather than drawing energy from their environment (read the pedia entry on Corlingdale, describing his fireball as drawing heat from air in the surroundings, versus blasts of chi from your own body). As such they are the religion of the Elohim and the Malakim. AV is for Sheaim, who draws sources of power from beyond Erebus to fuel their spells.

As for Oghma... I don't think anyone would worship such an abstract concept, nor have physically manifest powers directly correlated with her "realm". It's so abstract and fundamental to existance, the whole "metaphysics" of being so to speak. If you must, all their spells would either be "mana node destruction/protection" or "anti-magic". It's like dimensional mana, where it's hard to create spells from the sphere becuase time-space is so fundamental laws of physics and existance in general, metamagic is so fundamental to the physical matter that supports time-space, include thought, will and consciousness. Only the One is beyond the powers of Oghma.

 

[rusty217]

As for Oghma... I don't think anyone would worship such an abstract concept, nor have physically manifest powers directly correlated with her "realm". It's so abstract and fundamental to existance, the whole "metaphysics" of being so to speak. If you must, all their spells would either be "mana node destruction/protection" or "anti-magic". It's like dimensional mana, where it's hard to create spells from the sphere becuase time-space is so fundamental laws of physics and existance in general, metamagic is so fundamental to the physical matter that supports time-space, include thought, will and consciousness. Only the One is beyond the powers of Oghma.

Well i think i've read that the world of erebus actually has a religion for each of the angels, so that would include Oghma...

And i disagree that only the One would be beyond the power of Oghma, becuase Agares is the best angel.