Teaser
200 turns of Rooted Tear spreading with new interface.
Check the new elements on the interface and how they evolve to guess the new mecanic
To be redone with better balance
Turn 1
The first turn is Dagda's Tear falling from Heaven. You can control the landing (crashing!) site to select where the Tear will start.
Now let's focus on the interface. You can see several differences with the classic one, which I have enlightened:
- Current matter sparks : represents the number of matter sparks I own.
- Current matter stocks : represents the number of matter I own.
- Current XP for new Wilds : represents the XP new Wilds will have upon creation
- Sparks absorbtion : lists the number of each bonus which has been absorbed.
- Cost for new Rooted Tears : the cost a Love has to spend from its own matter collection to create a new Rooted Tear
- Cost for new Wilds : the cost a Love has to spend from the matter stock to create a new Wild, and in () the number of Wild which can be created this turns (stock /cost)
- Cost for new Loves : the cost a Hope has to spend from the matter sparks to become a new Love
- Current Global absorbtion : the percentage of the world which has be absorbed
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Turn 2
At the end of Turn 1, Dagda's Tear crashes. It creates a first Rooted Tear and a Love, as well as the civ hero, Dagda's Tear itself. The Love is by default in Expansion mode, meaning it will use all matter absorbed by surrounding Rooted Tears for its own stock to generate new Rooted Tear, which is a good starting strategy, as Rooted Tear have a limited life span, better get some more quickly.
On the details, the crash can set forest on fire in the area, and lower mountains into hills.
On the side notes, you can also notice that two other civs have been contacted and automatically declared war to.
At last, Dagda's Tear is now a 0/3 hero unit. It will gain strength by absorbing features like forest, flames, oasis and so on.
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Turn 20
After 20 turns, a new Rooted Tear has been created by the Love, and another one is on the way. It doubles the matter collected every turns and so Rooted Tears will be created faster and faster.
Dagda's Tear has absorbed Flames, Burnt Forest and New Forest, increasing its strength to 0/2 +1 death +1 fire for a total of 2/4 strength plus an increased healing rate. It also cumulated 4 matters (via promo) and will be able to start generating Wild minions.
In the upper part, you can see that 4 matter sparks have been also collected, 3 by Dagda's Tear feature absorbtion, and one for a won combat by it also (which resulted in the 4 matter collected as well).
In the details, you can see 6 Hunger units has been summoned by Dagda's Tear (left of the screen). 5 have been after the feature absorbtion (1 per Dagda's Tear level, currently 5) and 1 for the won combat. They are the sole mean of generating science, currently 6 beakers per turn. They are many other way to create Hungers, and so science of course.
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Turn 42
After 42 turns, I have many more Rooted Tears, of different colors. The brigther the Rooted Tear, the older it is, and so the closer to its own death. The middle Rooted Tear is actually dry and almost transparent, forcing the love to automatically move to an adjacent uncontrolled Rooted Tear. As there are no other Love, every Rooted Tear are free, but if there were, a Love can never move in a range of less than 3 from another Love (like cities). If a Rooted Tear dries and its Love have no adjacent Rooted Tear free to move on, the Love will die. Under the dry Rooted Tear, only bareland remains, every life and spirit having been absorbed.
About the Love you can see it is now 0/4, compare to its original stength of 0/3, as a Wild has been set as guardian, providing +0/+1 strength and improving the absorbtion rate (more matter generated by the same number of surrounding Rooted Tears). Also note that that Wild cannot move anymore (attached to the Love), and will follow the Love if it has to move due to drying Rooted Tears.
On a global note, I now have 16 matter sparks, generated by both Dagda's Tear feature absorbtion, won combat and Rooted Tears terraforming. I could change a Hope into a new Love if I had any. But I currently have no free Rooted Tears (they are all in less that 2 tiles from the Love).
At last, you can notice that the price for new Rooted Tears has increased from 13 matter to 14, due to the increasing number of living Rooted Tears.
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Turn 61
Turn 61 is interesting. As you can see on the screenshots, there are now 3 Loves in-game. 2 are in the initial development site, and one at some distance from it. What happened is that Dagda's Tear and its minions had some fights with the Clan and the animals/barbs until one of the Wild minions collected 5 personnal matter (it won 5 combats). It could then root itself anywhere and create a new Rooted Tear (= sacrifying). A Hope was then created as adequate and could be changed into a new Love providing a new development site.
Due to the increasing number of Loves, the cost to change Hopes to Loves has increased from an initial 11 matter sparks to a current 20.
On the side bar you can see that 1 mana sparks has been collected (by removing a mana bonus from the map with a Rooted Tear), and the mater stock is 18 (from the second site purple Love). Love can have 3 colors:
- Red : pure expansion, create only Rooted Tears
- Pulple : mixed between expansion and collection
- Blue : pure collection, will transfer matter to the common stocks
Concerning Dagda'sTear, it is now 3/6 (including some fire and death damage), and has 2 Wild Minions. One of them has been improved by Dagda's Tear (random lasting effect) and gained +1 death damage, +1 visibility and 10% withdrawal chance. These kinds of random lasting effects depend on the features absorbed by Dagda's Tear.
On the first scheenshot you can see that the absortion from Rooted Tears have progressed with more and more bareland visible.
2 Hopes are visible on each side of the screen as small white units. They are immobile, invisible, useless until converted to Love. They can be killed, but can also appear freely on free Rooted Tears.
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Turn 81
On turn 81, from turn 61, I suffered horribly on the main site. Indeed some hero Azer destroyed one of my Love (eq city!), its guardians (Wilds) and many Hopes. I changed my Loves to Blue mode (collection) to quickly amass matter in the global pool and create new Wilds (the stock is now only 17 matter and I need 30 per unit). I also added Minions to the Love in the new site to a grand total of 3, boosting its strength to 0/6, and improving its abortion rate greatly. I can add up to 5 guardian minions per Love. It will be needed if I want this site to develop.
Due to the "collection" mode, you can see that there are no dark Rooted Tears anymore on the iniial site (stopped expansion). It means there hasn't been new Rooted Tears created for a while, which is risky as the existing ones will die and new ones are needed to survive in the area. I still have some time left however to react to this consequence of my decision to focus on unit production.
On the side you can note that I have at that time 2 mana sparks, 1 animal sparks, 1 vegetal sparks and 1 mithril sparks. They were absorbed from a Sheep bonus, Mushrooms bonus and 2 mana bonus visible on turn 2 (and now disappeared). I can use none of these sparks yet as it requires techs in order to produce the special units associated with these sparks. As I will have KotE soon, I will be able to use the mana sparks soon however.
A detail, but you can check the global absorbtion rate in the lower right equal to 0.44% at the moment. Still quite low but progressing.
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Turn 101
That's it, 100 turns passed. KotE has been discovered and the two mana sparks used to create the associated unit, Joy (not visible on the screenshot, keep some suspens !). A Gold sparks has been absorbed.
The main site now shows how it suffured from previous decision. It lost a lot of its Rooted Tears, but it could still survive at least. In the middle you can see a big area of bareland, useless lifeless land. The road like things on it are Tears roots, which provides Tears a faster way of travel. Roots are created from Love randomly and spread under Rooted Tears each turns.
The new site has flourished but is now under attack by the Clan. Good thing the Love there has 5 guardians to a total of 0/8 strength. It will help survive until my hero can come to defend.
In the details, you can see the selected Love in the main site has a strength bonus of +7%. It comes from its accumulated personnal matter, giving each +1%. As every Tear accumulate personnal matter from won combat, it means that each unit gains +1% strength when winning a combat. Of course personnal matter can then be used to trigger some specific Tear abilities (like set a new Rooted Tear anywhere).
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Turn 120
Here comes Joy. I'm starting to harass the Clan but it seems I'm late on unit strength and so I can only harass units outside cities. I should either get Fears or Distress if I want to take over well defended cities. Meanwhile, I'm using my Joy to collect more mana (some chance each time it wins a combat to either cast a level 1 spell or gather a mana spark to build another Joy).
Below Joy is a set of 4 Lust unit. These are automatically generate by any Tear unit standing on Rooted Tear and with an enemy unit in range 2 or less. Lust are uncontrollable fireball type units which are born and attack in the same turn, weakening enemies close to Rooted Tear, so that they can be taken on by real units afterwards.
I'm starting to have many units, and so the cost of generating new Wilds is slowly increasing (from an initial 30 to a current 32).
Also the absorbtion rate is now more than 1% ! 99% more and I will have absorbed everthing
In the second site, you can notice that I'm slowly absorbing the sea, changing it to swamp first and then bareland. The same for mountains, which change to hills and then flatland.
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Turn 144
I finnally reached turn 144. Things are not going as good as I expected and the Clan seems to be too strong for me yet, and we have been looking aggressively at each other throat without one or the other gaining much ground. But my time is limited, my Rooted Tears are absorbing everything and they will soon die and stop providing backup and protection for my troops, forcing me to retreat.
The screenshot show you the overall situation including both development sites and the units involved. As for Tears, every unit is represented by a smiley. On the screenshot you can see the followings:
- The smileys with the big teeth are the Wilds, the basic military unit.
- The wicked smiley with its tongue sicking out is the Lust, the fireball like IA controled unit.
- The smileys with heart in its eyes are the Loves, the "city" equivalent immobile unit which control matter absorbtion, Rooted Tear spreading and Wild generation
The good news is that thanks to combat my research has increased, and is now 48 beakers a turn, sometimes more after a stack attack. I will soon reach festival and a new unit, Shame, which both serves as a commander and mobile unit generation Tear.
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Turn 160
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Turn 182
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Turn 201
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