Good day gentlemen,
I'm somewhat new to this mod, which I find really amazing. The work done is impressive.
I just have a few questions:
- Acheron, the red dragon, seems extremely shy, and never appears, whatever the configuration of the game. Maybe it is wanted? Do we have another way to get the "cult of the dragon" religion (excluding the Kuriotates)?
The Cult of the Dragon may be spread by constructing any Wyrmhold or by the Stir from Slumber ritual. The first city to which it spreads becomes the Holy City, but the Kuriotate World Spell may also move the holy city to the caster's tile.
Most of the Wyrmholds can only be constructed after Stir from Slumber, in a city with the Cult of the Dragon already present, if the city has a source of the mana type associated with a particular dragon species. Those restrictions does not apply to the Sheaim's unique Abashi's Wyrmhold, the Kuriotate's unique Eurabatres' Wyrmhold, or the Barbarian's unique Acheron's Wyrmhold. (Well, the Kuriotates and Sheiam still need Creation and Dimensional mana for their unique Wyrmholds, but their palaces supply those. The Eurabatres and Abashi Wyrmholds are also unique in not removing the Divine promotions from priests and causing problems for your state religion.)
If I get it right, for Acheron to show, a barbarian city must build the whirmhold of Acheron, then build Acheron himself ?
Acheron is the only dragon who can be trained before Stir from Slumber and without his Wyrmhold. The game should automatically place his Wyrmhold in his city, and spread Cult of the Dragon there, whenever he is trained. Acheron can be trained by the Barbarian State in one of their cities as soon as they know Mysticism, so it should happen earlier in Classical Start games than Ancient Start games and of course with the Barbarian world option active.
I just noticed that I had it set up so that the Barbarians can only train Acheron in a city with Fire mana though. It is harder for the Barbarians to get access to mana than other civs. They don;t have a palace to provide any, and if I recall correctly lacking a palace also prevents sharing any resources between cities. They can still get Fire mana in city near the Pyre of the Seraphic or Ring of Carcer if they build a road or are on a river, but need to research Knowledge of the Ether to connect it. They would further need to research Elementalism before building a Fire Node on an unimproved Fire or Raw Mana resource. In vanilla FfH2 they cannot build arcane units. I do let them train Shamans, but they don't tend to do so very often. Requiring Fire mana may thus be too high a barrier.
Acheron's Wyrmhold is the only Wyrmhold that still provides a source of the appropriate mana instead of requiring the city already have access to that mana. That should make it easier for the Barbarian State to train Acheron in a city where they have already built his Wyrmhold, but the Wyrmhold still costs four times as mcuh as Acheron himself.
For some reason I had the Disciples of Acheron and Sons of the Inferno set to require the default Furnace Dragon Wyrmhold instead of the Acheron version. I just fixed that
I'm going to play around with changing Acheron's Fire mana prereq to a Fire mana Production Bonus, and changing the cost of Acherons Wyrmhold to -1 so it is only added to the city when Acheron is trained rather than potentially being built in a far away city. That might make Acheron appear more often.
I may also play around with the alternate approach of making Acheron's Wrymhold much cheaper and requiring it before Acheron can be trained. That might result in the religion being founded sooner and in Disciples of Acheron or even Sons of the Inferno showing up sooner than Acheron the Furnace Dragon himself. The player would be able to try to capture the CotD holy city and prevent Acheron's entry into the world this way.
- Sidar are really fun to play, I wanted to try summoning Gyra through the Mercurian gate and a shade, but it didn't do anything (luckely, I got her with the Bradeline well). I got the same result in another game using the world editor.
I remember finding and fixing a bug in that spell, but cannot recall whether that was before or just after the last release. I'm guessing after. I just know it works now on my end.
- The Chainbreakers ability to provoke a revolt in slave cities, can be cast ad voluntatem in the same turn (I don't think this is intended)
It was like that for testing purposes and I forgot to change it until you mentioned it.
- The Matronae religion is the cause of multiple Crash to Desktop.
Can you explain this better? What is causing the crash? The religion being founded by one of the Archanges' abilities with their Masks? The Bane Divine Ritual? Spreading to a city? sing a spell like Kill Clerics?
- I am not sure of the strategy of the Calabim's "blinded brothers" unit. they seem pretty useless (maybe this is intended, accordingly to the lore).
It's unfortunately not listed on their civ page, but there is a spell called Pacify (that can be found on its own in the civilopedia). Only Blind Brothers can use it, and it has 3 effects: It quells unhappiness and revolt in an owned city, removes Enraged, Burning Blood & Rebellious, and finally adds (can be resisted) Pacified to all units within range.
I haven't tried them in a game yet, but they could be used to accompany an army of bloodpets, moroi and brujah and allow you more control over them. The Pacified effect (which only affects living creatures) also gives a negative affinity for spirit (devastating to the Elohim) and strips many morale effects (Valor, Courage, etc).
The only promotions it actually removes are Enraged, Rebellious, and Burning Blood, but it does make the unit unable to gain Valor, Courage, Morale, and Irabundus as well as those.
Nothrazim neglected to mention one of the most important parts of the Pacified Promotion: it makes a unit DefensiveOnly,thus potentially rendering entire enemy armies unable to attack you. Be careful when you use it though, since it applies to friend and foe alike; any of your own units within range who don't resist the spell will also be incapable of attacking your enemies.
The Pacify Spell has the same Python effect of Unyielding Order, setting the Revolution Index, Occupation Timer, and Hurry Anger timers to 0. It does not end all unhappiness, only that caused by sacrificing population to hurry production (or from Vampires Feasting, which uses the same counter). Unhappiness resulting from buildings, resources, overpopulation, war weariness, etc., all remain untouched (and if you have a Governor's Manor or Pillar of Chains will continue to supplement the city's productive capacity). The spell does not have an associated building to maintain these effects. (At one point I had it adding a building much like Unyielding Order which also granted Pacified to units in the city, but the game then made it impossible to use outside of cities and I didn't feel like having two completely separate spells.) One Blinded Brother can put down a revolt or the resistance in a captured city (without needing to be sacrificed for culture like ordinary adepts) but may need to do so again a few turns later.
Note that the Adventurer, the Aeron's Chosen, and most importantly the Vampire promotion all make a unit immune to the Pacified promotion.
Canonically the Blind Brothers are heretics/schismatics from the Brotherhood of Wardens who (like Pelain the Suffering rather than Sirona herself) preach Absolute Strict Pacifism. They do not permit any sort of self defense, which is why they have zero strength, but it would be too powerful to let them prevent enemy units from even fighting defensively.
Although The Blind Brothers help the triumph of evil by teaching good men to do nothing to resist it, they are themselves still considered Good-Aligned and cannot become Vampires.
- Speaking of lore, one word : Awesome (the 21 gods and their precepts is pure gold). However, it seems to have evolved for some time and I am missing some information (mainly the events taking place after the campaign, Auric threatening to become God of death ? , the age of invention, ...). What sources can you advise me to catch up?
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Those events are mostly from posts that Kael has made on Reddit during the past year or two, especially from his Character reveals last October.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fallfromheaven/comments/d8gj2u/october_character_reveal/
