I would keep the White Hand unique for the Doviello and Illians. It is IMO a nice characteristic feature for the two snow nations. I don’t even find it justifiable or useful for the others.
From the lore POV: Why would the nations who were almost annihliated by the freezing cold during the Age of Ice want to revere Mulcarn? Perhaps the Svartalfar would, as they are a somewhat winter race.
From the gaming POV: Since the Temple of the Hand spreads ice, it seems to me fairly suicidal for the nations that can’t profit from this type of terrain (it is a bit spoiled for the Doviello too). Not to mention that cold would cause damage to their own units.
I would definitely keep it a
mostly Illian/Dovillo thing, not letting the
AI players hurt themselves like that.
I was just wondering whether we should still limit
human players who want to play in unorthodox ways.
Have you considered using the spearman from the Charlemagne mode as Bannor’s warrior? Perhaps you could also utilise the light cavalry from that mode.
I had never really considered it before reading this suggestion.
(At first I was thinking it would not be worth borrowing art from another mod as I don't want to have to pack a new .fpk including copies of the new art, but it appears that Firaxis structured the paths of the art for the mods they included with BtS so that they are easily accessed. )
I just tried using the light spearman for the warrior and the light cavalry for the horseman. I really like the look of both units, but am afraid they both look far too advanced for the era of the techs for those units.
It would not be right for the Bannor warrior to look more advanced than their Axemen, and the more advanced units already have decent looking more heavily armored Bannor unique art.
I'm thinking that the light cavalry would make a much better Royal Guard. I'm not a big fan of the normal art for that unit, so I might just replace it for everyone (but the Calabim, who have the Broodguard UU instead) rather than just the Bannor.
Some other observations:
Personally I’d like to see Demagogs more like a permanent unit and not just temporary Crusaders.
I'm kind of disappointed with them too, but am not sure yet what I'd like to do about it. So far they are pretty much the same as in the base game.
I'm tempted to give them the recruiter ability, which seems thematically appropriate, but the Bannor hero already has that and Great Commanders aren't too hard to come by during crusades.
I think the Grigori should get some boost in their ability to gain Great Prophets. As far as I know the only way now is to build the the first level of the Altar and for that you need a Luonnotar(Arcane Lore) which is quite an advanced tech. In my experience the Altar of the Luonnotar victory is paradoxically the hardest to achieve for the Grigori.
It is still easier for them to get Great Prophets in this modmod than in base FfH2.
Many players would not want to corrupt their Adventurer point pools with Great Prophet points.
From a Lore perspective, the Grigori are not particularly accepting of the Luonnotar. They can practice freely in Grigori lands without persecution, but their neighbors are mostly disenchanted with the idea of following any religion. Most don't think this strange cult would be any better than the corrupt state churches they knew if given a chance. Cassiel knows that many of their claims are true, but he does not believe that The One wants any worship and so never even hints at supporting them.
I’ve noticed the Infernals can build the Great Lighthouse, even though the ordinary lightouse(required for the GL) is blocked for them. Is this intentional?
I blocked the Infernals from constructing many buildings which are of no use to them, to stop the AI from wasting
that have better uses.
The Infernals do not get any utility from ordinary Lighthouses, as Fallow players do not use food. They can still benefit from the Great Lighthouse wonder, whose main benefit is in trade.
It is default BtS behavior to allow wonders to be built without building prerequities if their prereq buildings are blocked in xml.
I definitely agree with the White Hand ritual except for the permanent alliance part. It could be more like the Infernals summoning than the Mercurians. Without the permanent alliance you could bring the Illians into the game or assist them, but not necessarily be forced to work with them.
I just tried switching it so that instead of a permanent alliance it grants peace, open borders, a defensive pact, and a diplomatic bonus. So far though, The AI does not handle this nearly so well, at least in cases where the ritual initialized the player.
In an earlier test when Auric was my permanent ally, the AI surprised me by playing as well as I'd ever seen any AI do. Being able to settle within my cultural borders and seeing all that I could see (but not having his units start in a city where they are tempted to just fortify like Basium's), he founded his cities smartly. He used the named priests well in war, while keeping his own avatar safe deep within my territory.
(Of course, he might have done so well largely because in that test I cheated to finish the ritual on very early, so there was a lot of good land still available.)
When not a teammate, he just seems to sit there. He doesn't move his settler out of my territory to found a city. He threw away his lieutenants immediately in suicidal attacks against the Azer summoned by my Tower of the Elements, which has Hidden Nationality Status from its Lair Guardian promotion. As a teammate, HN would not be a problem.
I don't think it's necessarily thematic for other races to FOUND the religion or perform the ritual, but I do think it should be a religion that can spread randomly and that anyone (besides Auric himself, I suppose) with a city having the religion can switch to...and from.
I don't think it makes any sense to let anyone have the White Hand as their state religion while at war with Auric, at least once he is Drawing near Ascension. After Ascension, I still think it makes sense to force the faith on his vassals and force his worshipers into vassalage. I suppose I could be more open about who may use it otherwise.
Doviello sort-of slave themselves to Auric, right up until the end when they realize possibly it is better to not let the crazy dead God pretend to live again, no? [I haven't actually gotten around to playing the last campaign mission yet; I'm just sort of assuming. :/] So I think it would be perfectly thematic for someone to temporarily ally with the White Hand, try to exploit Auric's power for their own ends, then [try to] betray him before the world ends.
Actually, Mahala remains Auric's teammate all the way through the final scenario. The Hippus mercenaries join his team only temporarily, until Auric betrays them by sacrificing Tasunke to his dragon, but the Doviello remain loyal servants all the way through his Ascension.
Were this not the case I would not have considered making the ritual forge such an alliance.
The points raised about everyone starving with Temples of Ice is a good one. It's a neat effect in the campaign, that you're sort of forced to put up with it as Doviello, but it is a little untenable.
The range of the Temple of the Hand's terraforming is determined by the Ice Mana supply, so you could avoid that by giving all that mana away.
There is also some passive terraforming though, from the Blizzard module. Tholal wrote it to apply to the Illians, and I changed it to players of this state religion.
Perhaps +food on snow can be a benefit of the religion itself? If so, the Illians need something more than just that to represent their cold affinity.
It would be very very powerful (but they often need a boost anyways, in my experience); could you give them production from ice in addition to food? Maybe food from the outset but then additional production for the Illians only when adopting the White Hand?
I would love to do that if I could, but it is unfortunately impossible without a major overhaul to the DLL. It seems like too much to ask of Tholal.
(I could use python to manually change the plot's yields, but it would be hard to keep track of when to change the yields and not too hard to exploit terraforming to keep the extra yields while changing the terrain to something more useful.)
I would very much like it if I could make buildings like the Temple of the hand change the yields of specific terrains, but unfortunately the schema only allows them to alter the yields of water or riverside tiles.
One thing I can do is make the temples store food (like granaries, but much more effectively), which makes sense thematically on account of refrigeration.
I could also make access to a bonus (like ice mana) increase the percent yields that the city gathers.
Even if you do have another civ founding the religion, I would again ask that it not lock them into anything permanently. I could see myself doing this just to get the Illians a bit of a boost, and maybe enhance my chances at getting to stab Auric with the Godslayer in a single-player game.
But that doesn't work at all if I'm allied to him.
What if I set it up to work through an event that lets you choose to whether to become teammates or not?
This is good, if you do insist on letting anyone perform the ritual.
I realize it's basically what the Infernals get, too; I don't suppose there's any convenient way to scale the level on the melee and ranged units based on average tech advancement in the game to that point? The ritual is completable relatively early and champions might be a bit unbalanced.
I was thinking I would make most of the units be whatever kind would be conscripted in the city that completes the ritual, possibly based on the size of the city.
Then again, Illians usually need all the help they can get...
I don't know the story with Braeden; I would think Minister Koun should have some leeway. Illians should certainly favor White Hand just as Bannor favor Order and so on, but I don't like the forced-religion mechanic.
The three named priests of winter derive their legitimacy from the Hand and should adopt it, but I guess I'll leave it for other Illians o choose or not.
Hi Magister,
I just played a game with the CoE, and I did not like the ability to upgrade shaman to mages. It was imbalanced, they got far too many mages. Effectively it gives the CoE the Catacomb Libralus and Warrens. Particularly Jonas can switch to high XP civic and spam shamans who quickly upgrade to mages. It also has the wrong flavor. Mass mages feels like the Amurites, the CoE should be lots and lots of regular troops.
My suggestion would be to give the CoE a national unit that acts like a mage. Then they would have 4 mages and maybe 4 Bahl Orcs. That would be enough mage power to support the army, but the focus would be on the regular troops.
The ability to upgrade Shamen into Mages is base FfH2 material. I don't want to cripple the Clan when it comes to magic.
I may however make Warrens not apply to Arcane or Disciple units, and make Bhall-Orcs upgrade into Archmages and Ritualists rather than Mages and Savants (which may upgrade to Mages).
That ought to be enough to prevent them from becoming an arcane powerhouse.
