The Maogata are a race of magically engineered anthropomorphic cats. They were created during the age of magic as soldiers, guards, hunting "dogs" and prestige objects. They were made to be strong, resilient and nearly immune to magic. During the Patrian civil war and the Age of Ice that followed it a lot of them could escape from their wizard masters and formed the first Maogata settlements.
Over time they began to ritualize the process of hunting, since it was the only way to survive during the cold of the Age of Ice. It became so important to their culture that results and effectiveness during hunting determines most of the social standings and even political positions.
A few Maogata have begun to hear strange whispers or voices, which seem to come from the mana crystals themselves. These few chosen ones are the closest thing they have to mages.
Leaders
Rishakim - Major Leader. He doesn't have much background. This will change in the future.
Kirbasfen - Minor Leader. He was one of the first to understand the mana voices and dedicated himself to their mission.
Tasanny - Emergent Leader. She wants the Maogata to break from tradition, to stop their seclusion and become more open to new ideas.
Civilization Trait
Teeth and Claws - This is a purely negative trait, since it gives every Maogata the unarmed promotion which prohibits them from using weapons.
Main Mechanics
- Maogata can't use weapons. They have a few things that balance this out. Mainly there is the Great Hunt worldspell and additionally they have a number of innate abilities that the gain at certain levels.
* Level 6: Fearless and immune to enrage
* Level 8: 15% magic resistance and the ability to destroy hell terrain on the plot they are standing on at the beginning of the turn.
* Level 12: Additional 15% magic resistance and the ability to destroy hell terrain on the plot and surrounding plots of the unit at the beginning of the turn.
- Maogata heal from most diseases without help in a couple of turns.
- Maogata get +1 Food from Forest and Jungle and can build improvements over Forests (but not jungles).
The Food represents their superior hunting skills.
Why maintain Forest but not Jungles? To show that they can survive in Jungles but really have adapted to living in forested regions.
- Their recon line is hidden and gets an additional poison strength while in forests.
- Their mages don't gain the usual spells. In fact, Maogata don't have any normal spells at all. The mages can destroy improved mana nodes inside your borders instead. Based on what node they destroyed they gain a rather strong promotion.
Spoiler :
- Their palace doesn't have any starting mana, but stores some food after growth instead.
Hero
Chearsul. He starts with Hero and the water infusion (was born with it) and is a ranger/mage hybrid. He can only destroy Water and Ice mana nodes to gain a stack-able promotion.
I'm not really satisfied with him at the moment. He will probably change.
Worldspell
The Great Hunt - This Worldspell doesn't do much on his own, but is repeatable every 50 turns (modified by game speed). It gives a number of barbarian (animal, demon or savage) units equal the number of units you have the Prey promotion. This doesn't do anything either. But if one of your units kills one unit that has been marked as prey it gets a stack-able promotion that adds strength and first strikes.
Don't worry, you can locate prey units via city spell.
Credits
Most button and other 2D art is from Magic: the Gathering.
Manavoices concept is based on an idea by Onionsolider and found HERE
A lot of thanks go to the #erebus regulars and Swinkscalibur for some productive brainstorming sessions and ideas.
Download
Newest version is always attached to this post.Newest Version is 0.33
To install, extract it into <Path to civ4>\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Rise from Erebus\Assets\Modules\NormalModules\
