Thank you for your responses and your time! And for considering and implementing my opinons.
This sounds great and appropriate. What exactly are the benefits of their holy city compared to just religion being present?
I was thinking that Holy cities got the extra <HolyCityCommerces>, but it seems those are only applied when you own the holy city and have the religion as your State religion. Since I was not planning on allowing the cults to ever become state religions, I guess the only extra benefits are from the Shrine. The Shrine, as I said, adds Light, removes Heavy, provides +1 Air mana, some culture, and +1 Adventurer GPP.
I'm thinking I might allow the shrine to move to a city that does not yet have the faith too, if it has enough air mana.
Right now I am trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that buildings that spread a religion during normal gameplay do not seem to do so if purchased in an advanced start game. You could build the shrines that way and never get the faith started. I guess I could make the wonders unavailable in advanced starts, as no wonders can be purchased that way in vanilla civ or vanilla FfH2, but I don't really want to. It wouldn't work so well for the Chancels of the Guardians or Planar Gates founding the Brotherhood or Chainbreakers either, although I am now starting to wonder if maybe giving the Elohim and the Sheaim that much of a head start on those faiths is too much anyway.
I'd love to hear from them, in general stability system is weird, but it is also one of my favorite features. I would love if it could be made more interactive, intuitive and balanced.
Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about this. If Melee/Disciple distinction was based on how unit fights, then Paladins (and paramanders, crusaders etc.) should be melee units and not disciples. They use melee infantry tactics, weapons and equipment and should get access to their promotions. Disciple units should be ones that fight with spells and prayers I guess, making them similar to arcane units. But I'm also not sure what other implications on game this has.
It doesn't even seem that there are that many promotions available to disciples that are not available to melee. Maybe they could be tied to "Disciple" promotion, and Disciple unit combat could then be done away with. But again this may have other implications I'm not aware of.
Regarding this specific problem, I think that in the worst case, priests using enchanted weapons is not that bad after all. I guess that they would indeed use some enchanted equipment rather than mundane, and it probably still wouldn't make them overpowered in close combat. Alternatively, you could make two versions of the promotion: enchanted weapons (heavy) and enchanted weapons (light), giving heavy version with bigger bonus to melee, and light version with reduced bonus to disciples.
Thank you. What about giving foreign trade unlimited merchants? This is already tied to guilds, but guilds also allow unlimited sages and so does scholarship. So this would be an alternate source of unlimited merchants for those who do not have guilds. It is useful and also thematically appropriate. Civ running foreign trade could expect many great merchants, which sounds nice. Or, maybe allow Caravans only to those who use foreign trade and make them stronger?
I actually added unlimited Merchants to Foreign trade between the time of my previous post and your reply.
I don't really end up using Caravans much, so I think maybe I will make them require Foreign Trade. I'm less eager to do the same for their naval counterparts, the merchantmen or smugglers ships, though I will consider having merchantment require Foreign Trade and Smugglers require Mercantilsim.
Regarding Mercantilism, it also isn't very powerful compared to Agriculture, and comes in the late game. In our would and probably in the lore, mercantilism is based around accumulation of physical wealth in the form of precious metals, by exporting as much goods as possible in exchange for gold and importing as little as possible. So this is basically a Khazad ideology. Ideally, Mercantilism should be such that dwarves want to use it. Could you make it so that Mercantilism allows a better version of wealth, which converts 100% of hammers into gold instead of 50%? This would allow industrial powerhouses like Khazad to use their industry to amass even more gold. Alternatively, it could give +1 hammer or gold to towns.
I'd be more likely to say that Mercantilism is an exploded fallacy that continues to be advocated by the Stewards of Inequity in order to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
(In case you cannot tell, I am a supporter of true free trade. I even decided to make the economics tech juxtapose a pro-Mercantilism quote from a Steward of Inequity with a line from my favorite economist, Henry George.)
I did make it give lots of happiness from the Bazaar of Mammon, but and not sure what else I want to give it.
What about extra gold from Workshops, Plantations, and Wineries?
Guilds civic shouldn't really give national instability. It is not as if guilds are hated by the population. Plus, for balance reasons, we don't need more late game instability anyway, and guilds aren't overpowered to need a penalty.
I thought I had it set up so that Guilds made the nation more stable, not less. Is this one of those tags that seems to do the opposite of what I assumed?
Conquest prompt that appears when you discover its tech says that it provides extra gold on city capture, but that it also makes cities lose extra population. Is this still true? Maybe add it in the civic description or remove the info from the prompt.
I was not aware whether it was ever true. I'll have to look into it.
I just now decided to make Conquest increase the rate of Great General generation
Lore-wise I guess it would be appropriate, because Angels of Death would basically send their souls off to Arawn. Game play wise, I'm not sure, maybe it isn't a good idea because the only unit that you'd use to find the souls would also be the unit that forces you to destroy them.
How do you know who can be resurrected? I was curious and used world builder to find the soul of Baron Duin and managed to resurrect him. It was very cool, but without worldbuilder I wouldn't know where to use the spell. For non heroes, it can be even worse as you don't even know if you can find them, let alone where.
The Mouseover PyHelp String should show you details of who can be resurrected by a given caster, including their unit type, promotions, and proper names.
Maybe losing an unit that turns into sluagh should teleport sluagh in some graveyard near owners capital city, or in capital city itself if no graveyard is available, with a popup saying that "legendary warrior was buried in X"? So that you can know where to look at?
This is also where the "reverse hidden nationality" would come handy, one that makes units peaceful to everyone instead of hostile. That way you could find sluaghs without having to kill them.
The code to place a sluagh is complicated enough without it trying to find or create a new graveyard.
Reverse hidden nationality just is not possible, as nice as it would be. I guess I could see about adding a new civ that is always at peace with everyone just to handle Sluaghs and maybe dropped pieces of equipment, but that would likely add a bunch of complications I don't want to deal with in the next release.
I also have been toying with making Angels of Death start with Hidden Nationality recently, so having Sluaghs belonging to a peaceful civ visible only to HN units would be no better than having them still as barbarians.
Sounds nice. In my games, every graveyard had one sluagh inside, so I guess that they spawn and disappear constantly, Does it mean that hallowed graves can eventually collect many sluaghs, if they keep appearing but not disappearing?
Yes. If you have an adept Hallow a grave early on, and go back to hallow it again whenever the Hallowed Ground feature expires, then you will probably have well over a dozen Sluaghs in the graveyard before you get an archmage able to resurrect them.
Note that Life 3 allows resurrecting your civ and religious heroes wherever they are and will let you resurrect a unit on a graveyard, but Life Affinity + Channeling 3 lets you use Mass Resurrection to raise every single sluagh (except heroes not allowed for your civ/religion) on the same or adjacent tiles without any regard to whether there is a graveyard around. It also resurrects Undead units belonging to your rivals. (I decided it was too strong to let you spam Death casters to spam Skeletons and Spectres and let you then resurrect all of them as permanent living units. You can turn your enemies Undead summons into a permanent army for yourself though.)
Also, Undead units summoned on Graveyards will have a Sluagh from that tile converted to the Skeleton/Spectre/Wraith, significantly increasing the potency of the spell as the summon gets the Sluagh's duration, level, promotions, name, etc. That prevents them from being resurrected later. (Since Undead units automatically rob a graveyard when summoned there, they may also destroy the Graveyard improvement.) You cannot do this on a Hallowed Graveyard though, as Hallowed Ground blocks necromancy on the tile as well as making the tile impassible to undead units.
Thank you. Just consider that targeting Air elementals and Chaos marauders first could make them less useful, as they are usually summoned units that you do NOT want to target, as they disappear on their own. Instead, maybe give them bonus against units with Air and Chaos spell promotions, like the Slaying promotions give bonus against racial promotions?
I just made it so that Paramanders do not attack such units first anymore, but they do defend first against them. I also gave them immunity to Lighning Damage and let them start with a new "Elemental Slaying" promotion as well as demon slaying.
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Is it ever possible to spread Order in the Veil or Undertow holy city? Would doing so make the holy city disappear? I wasn't able to spread it, cultists always won in the street clashes, so I gave up :/ I wanted to keep the city for its wonders, but maybe I made a wrong choice.
Yes, they can spread to each other's cities, although it is not common. Only The Luonnotar (or capture by the Infernal) can cause a Holy City to loose its religion. In the event that the conflict would normally remove the holy city's religion type, they should be able to coexist.
This reminded me that I was meaning to add new events and onReligionSpread code for conflicts involving the new religions.
The Foxmen and Stewards of Inequity are both bitter enemies with the Runes of Kilmorph. The Emrys/Chainbrekers would be viewed just like the Ashen Veil by the good religions. The Order would have a huge problem with the Circle of Gaelan, which might translate to issues with the Laeran Cord in general.
I don't know if it's possible but what do you think about putting the foundation and spreading of the Foxman with the Tali's constellation event ? The event itself doesn't give nothing besides information about the god and its followers. I think, if possible, is a good way to spread a cult that is disorganized and doesn't have hierarquical structure or a holy city. The first civilization that receives the event will have it spread in their cities first. And every time it appears in another civilization or in the player's, the religion is spread in some cities there and in a few turns it changes its place. Or the first event could be the initial spreading and in a few turns the Foxman randomly changes and spread in other cities and civilizations. Also, it's possible to disable the creation of one holy city's faith and only spreading the religion ? I think this would make more sense some cults that doesn't have/need of shrines.
I already added options for each the constellation events for the gods who have major religions grant a Disciple of that religion with Evangelist if the player knows the tech needed to found the religion anyway.
I think I will do the same for each of the minor cults. I cannot make the events have the religion founding tech (Never) as a prereq, but I can give them the prereq a of the techs that allow founding the wonder that founds the religion or training the priests thereof.
I'm thinking that maybe the events that give you a disciple of the minor religions should require you already control a source of that religion's patron Mana. That would give, e.g, the Elohim an advantage at starting the Brotherhood of Wardens, but not a huge of one as the Kuriotates, Sheaim, or Grigori could get from the start too. (I guess I should probably forbid the Grigori from getting such disciples, though I may need to give them some sort of extra bonus to make up for their loss.)
Now that you are speaking of minor religions, what is know about the orcish cult of Bhall ? Because would I suggest to create a unique pagan temple based in the faith of the clans in Bhall (to represent her cult amongst the orcs) and make it a requirement to train Bhall-orcs, that are a powerfull unit to have in the beginning of the game without requirements. It could be named sacred fire, sacred bonfire or sacred flame and could give +1 happiness to fire mana instead of the incense and +1 of culture, instead of the 10%. Or could be +20% instead. What do you think about ?
I'd want more canon lore about this faith first, at least including its name. I know Kael called Bhall's faith in the Age of Magic "The Sanctus Inquisition" (which sounds wrong to me, as Inquisitio is a feminine word so its adjective should take the from "Sancta"), but I doubt that the Orcs would keep the same old name after Ball's fall. I could make it the Insanctus (Unholy) Inquitition, but that does not seem right either. I'd want Kael to confirm an official name.
To be honest the main thing stopping me from implementing that cult is a lack of space in which to display the religions in the city screen.
Now that I have 18 religions displayed in 2 neat rows I am reluctant to change things. I could alter the spacing to allow one or two more per row, but would prefer to keep the same number per row and leave the top row those that can be state religions. (I'd consider adding a third row of minor religions if we had lore on enough, but that would be much more awkward to code and I don't think the tga files can handle that many religions anyway. )
Edit: I just realized I read your post wrong. Adding a new religion for Bhall is not likely, but a new Clan of Embers Unique Building like Sidar's Shrine of Arawn seems like a good idea.
I was kind of viewing the Eternal Flame as their only temple, but I suppose each of their lesser Bonfires or Tophets which get extra happiness from the Eternal Flame. Would it be too much to make this grant Fire Resistance and decrease the unhappiness from sacrificing population too?
(I know that Jonas Edain's pedia entry uses the term Sacred Flame, but I think I'd kind of rather keep that term for the holy fire of the Sanctus Inquisition rather than its evil embers. I'm leaning towards the term Tophet, after the sites where Canaanites performed human sacrifices in fire, often killing their own children to honor a Baal or Molech. I just realized that I already used that as an Infernal city name, but also that I accidentally gave them too different names with the same number so one of them was not appearing in the game anyway. I think I'll repurpose it for Bhall's pagan temples. )
