How to make negative diplomatic modifiers for death/entropy not arbitrary!

[Bad Player]

Currently good AI civs will give you a negative diplo modifier if you have death or entropy mana. However this doesn't happen with human players and anyway it seems a little arbitrary.


My idea:

Each entropy mana source in the world causes degradation of the world (e.g. a low % chance each turn of a random improvement or building being destroyed).

Each death mana source in the world similarly has a low % chance each turn of causing death (e.g. killing a random living non-hero unit).

This would give non-death/entropy civs a reason to hate those who use death/entropy magic. People would use death/entropy anyway if the benefits to their civs outweigh the damage it does to themselves. This fits in with the Ashen Veil theme of damaging all other evil/neutral civs more than themselves and therefore is still beneficial even though it does some damage to themselves.

 

[Blakmane]

I think it'd make more sense (and be less annoying) for it to be something like:

each entropy node in the world has a small % chance of allowing a low level demon to enter reality (random placement barb ownership)

each death node in the world has a small % chance of raising a killed unit as a barb skeleton

 

[Bad Player]

But you need to make it so that the units raised on the node don't attack the owners of the nodes otherwise it is pointless for negative diplomatic modifiers. Also the units would have to be powerful enough to actually annoy the other civs - skeletons and low level demons are not powerful enough by half.

 

[Blakmane]

really, the positive bonus of having those nodes is that they are two of the best spell spheres in the game. If there wasn't a negative modifier we'd see things like skele rushes by the elohim, which wouldn't make any sense.

 

[sixs_monkey]

In one of my games, I experimented with the worldbuilder, 'rewarding' my civ with the palace of my defeated enemies. Soon I peeved my friends and they claimed I was "using evil magic" or somesuch wording, simply because I had access to the various manas. I had neither promoted nor cast based upon them, so I found that mildly annoying, but I knew that I was in uncharted avalanche territory by having multiple palaces.

If it turns out to be not a Huge pain in the butt to check for the actual 'use' of dark mana, then a small 'punishment' per use would seem like the way to go.

 

[bebematos]

I really like that idea. It contribute very much to a dinamic gameworld. But I think it should not be limited to the Death and Entropy spheres. It would create a excellent design space to balance the spheres. Some suggestions:

Fire: Each Fire Mana create and increase a chance of a desert be spawned somewhere in the map, normally near another desert square.

Entropy: Each Entropy Mana on the map create and increase the chance of a temporary summon don't go away when the summon ends. It gains the Ravager promotion,which causes the creature to become barbarian and attack the nearest creature, ignoring any alliance with the barbarians. Creatures summoned by entropy mages don't suffer this effect.

Law: Each Law mana decreases the chance of a city in the map to culture flip.

Chaos:Each Chaos Mana creates and increase the chance of each produced unit receiving a mutation,good or bad. (as a side note, a think doviello beastmen should have a small chance to start with a mutation and the level 3 Chaos Summon should always have one).

The nodes would change global values for the mapor for your civilizations. One node should createonly a small chance but three should be a important strategic element. This should affect the possibility of mon-mana strategies. In the above suggestions, a mono Fire strategy is really damaging to the World, but for the Malakim it would be great. The reactions to the mana should be individual, depending of the civ and the religion. A Leaves civ and the Llojalfar should have problems with fire heavy-users and non-entropy heavy magic civs should be annoyed with a civ with too much magic warping Entropy Nodes and the Balseraph with stabilty-lover civ with many Law Nodes.

 

[kenken244]

chaos mana dosent have a negative diplo modifier

i think the diterioration effect should increase expodentially so if theres one entropy node in existance these things will be rare but if theres even just a couple more then things will get chaotic. but if we were to implement this maybe we should add a similar effect to good manas and have their mana cancel out the oppisite mana?
to explain

say there were 2 law nodes and 3 entropy nodes there would be no chance of a law effect happening and a chance equal to if there was only 1 entrophy node of a entropy effect happenning

but if there were 3 life nodes and 0 death nodes the chances of a life effect happenning would be normal since there are no other nodes cancelling its effect out

 

[ShiftyDave]

I'm not sure that I really like the whole concept of mana types affecting diplomacy. If you are using these and you are evil, it's just another reason for good civs to hate you. If you have an evil religion, then the good civs (probably with good religion) will also hate you. And now in v 2.1, it seems that good civs will hate you even more depending on your contribution to the armageddon counter. The net result: good civs hate evil civs, and there's just a few ways this can be contributed to. What might be interesting would be if you didn't start out as good or evil, but your contribution to the armageddon counter determined whether you are good or evil. Just my thoughts, and possibly they aren't even in the right thread, but hey......

 

[Bad Player]

I suddenly thought of this today:

Each death node or entropy node raises the AC by 1 point (or .05 points on large and huge maps). Therefore human players will hate you if you build death or entropy nodes since you are destroying their world and bringing badass enemies into it. This means that the negative diplomacy counters for using death and entropy mana will actually mean something.

 

[Calavente]

or even 2-5 points... that would mean something.
so you would have to destroy the mana node..

 

[vorshlumpf]

Entropy nodes already do that (according to the Wiki).