New Civilization! Saevalfar, or sea elves

[Vorgen]

FIRST!! Please note that I just put in everything I thought to be cool. I plan to balance things by taking stuff out over time.

A long time ago I played this online game called Shadowbane. Actually, I formed a guild about two years before the game was released and me and my 40 closest online buddies eagerly waited for the game to come out some time within the next 4 months... for two years. We had a lot of free time before the game came out, and we spent most of that time fleshing out exactly what we wanted to do and be in that game.

It was sea elves. We were gonna be sea elves. Eventually the game did come out, we built a 13 city and 1,500 player empire, and accomplished all we ever set out to do. Eventually the game itself beat us. How does a game beat you? Well, server lag, bad graphics, and the non-profitability of the game itself caused our entire empire's citizens to not log on, and eventually our server was taken offline.

Nevertheless I still have gigabytes of information that we built up around the game, and after I saw Fall from Heaven II I wanted to include a hybrid version of the fake empire we had made in this game.

In the spirit of using old norse for the elven names in the game, such as Ljosalfar and Svartalfar, I translated sea elves into whatever old norse I could scrounge up online and came up with the name Saevalfar.

The Saevalfar use the Ljosalfar unit set. The Saevalfar palace includes Dimensional, Water and Enchantment mana. It increases the building of ships by 12%, half of what the Lanun palace does at 25%. It also increases the recruitment of adventurers by 1, half of what the Grigori palace does at 2. They start with Seafaring like the Lanun. Their leader, Vorgen (me!) is Agnostic, although he does have a firm belief in another pantheon of gods. He is also Philosophical and a Defender. The civilization can build Grigori Taverns, Monuments, and Trebuchets. Vorgen used a whole lot of trebuchets in Shadowbane, so he definitely knows how to build them.

Oh, I also made a new cityset for them. Its Oceanic Egyptians. (Also, i think it would be relatively easy to put line drawings of Cthulhu on the side of the buildings instead of the egyptian people, and make a cool new Octopus Overlords cityset. If anybody's interested I'll see if I can do it. I don't use Octopus Overlords myself)

The cityset is a re-colored version of the Egyptian set from EthnicArtStyles from the graphics mod forum. The leaderhead is a piece of art done for my own character by one of my friends during Shadowbane anticipation time.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Ha! I never played that game, but I did plan to at one point. It had a very good backstory. I liked the unstable aelfborn race in particular, and some of the gameplay elements sounded good. In fact, if I were to design a FfH mmo game, it would probably be most similar to shadowbane (or what I remember reading about it, anyway.)
Did you take a civ out to put in yours? I know some people have added leaders in before, and I seem to recall they replaced an existing one to do so, though I'm sure that there's a way to do so without doing that.

So are these mer-maid type elves that breath water, or pirate type elves that ride ships and such?

also, regarding

Agnostic, although he does have a firm belief in another pantheon of gods

Other than the undeniable presence of Mulcarn, the gods direct intervention the last serveral hundred years has been strictly self limited, more than enough time alternate religions to develop around the same gods, or entirely false ones to arise. officailly, and un-oficially you can add any story you like to your FfH.

 

[Vorgen]

I added another leader and another civ both. I didn't delete anything. I also added more graphics without deleting anything either.

Vorgen left the Shadowbane world with a magical ship that would slip through dimensions. He ended up here. He still believes in the old gods of the Shadowbane world.

Oh, and I'm having a problem. I can't seem to get the new Saevalfar palace to show up, at all, ever. I created a new building entry and linked it up with all the art files, and linked it with the Ljosalfar palace. But it just never shows up in the capital city like the other palaces do. I've followed the tutorial for adding a new building but it still doesn't work.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

Vorgen left the Shadowbane world with a magical ship that would slip through dimensions. He ended up here. He still believes in the old gods of the Shadowbane world.

That should fit pretty well...yet another plane of existence beside Erebus which the Angel-Gods visited...under different aliases. People who only played FFH and not Shadowbane (never heard of it...) can just leave it at that without knowing the details of the other plane. You should however, have a cool reason why or how he left with his trans-dimensional ship (The hero?)

 

[Love]

Sorry to mark words or something but since the elves is from the nordic language tree it should be sjoealfar or havesalfar

 

[Tiarilir]

Sounds cool, maybe they could implement it at some point even? ^^

also, if you were into Shadowbane, have you checked out Darkfall Online? It's based on Shadowbane and Old UO. It'll rock when the beta comes out, and the internal date is by this summer (summer ends in like 20 days).
www.darkfallonline.com

 

[Vorgen]

Sorry to mark words or something but since the elves is from the nordic language tree it should be sjoealfar or havesalfar

Hey, I appreciate it. I just found a nordic language dictionary which said saeva was sea. Sjoealfar looks pretty cool too. Does it exactly mean "sea elves" ? or water elves, ocean elves...

It'll rock when the beta comes out, and the internal date is by this summer (summer ends in like 20 days).

I hope you'll understand when I say that I'm done anticipating games. Anticipating Shadowbane for 2 years was enough for one lifetime.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

That's a good city set. I wouldn't mind it being the new OO city. Anyway, adding a new civ destroys the balance. 21 civs, 21 gods, 21 spell spheres.

 

[Love]

Now, take what sounds best

 

[Vorgen]

I updated the first post by changing the palace's air mana for enchantment mana. I think the scavenged parts of a dimension-sailing ship would give enchantment mana more than air mana. I took out adaptive, since it seems to be overkill. I also took out jewelers and tailors, since it was just too much money pouring into my cities.

The play style of the civ is shaping up to be fun. Since they are agnostic elves they cannot convert to Fellowship of Leaves, so no ancient forests, and yet they can still build within forests and can't chop them down. I am putting tile improvements underneath forests only and waiting for them to spread to the rest of my tiles before improving those tiles. The land part of my empire is almost exclusively forested coasts, sparse on roads. The sea is almost exclusively mine. Because I get so much food from the sea and no production my land tiles are all focused on hammers. Trade income is high and the pearls I can find with my Seafaring tech are very useful in negotiations. I love dragon ships, I wish I could use their art for the whole game. Hrm....

 

[daladinn]

just a few coppers to add...

honestly it seems like you created a very strong civ. i personally could overrun any current civ with this setup easily. so lets look at a few points.

- your trying to blend the grigori the elves and the lanun together
- from the grigori you picked up 1/2 of the palace initial adventurer bonus , all the special buildings that add adventurers, philisophical , and the penalty of being agnostic.
- from the lanun you picked up some of thier ship building techniques and there spcialized seafaring tech. here you gave up thier heros and thier bonus/penalty to food production
- from the elves you gained thier elven workers and allowed for the ability to use seige weapons.

adventurers are EXTREMELY powerful units, there is nothing stronger that your going to find. the elven workers allow for an extra hammer on every single worked tile, meaning you no longer have to choose between things like cottages and lumber mills. its a combination that is very very powerful.

from a purely grigori standpoint , your saying that if i give up a base 1 GPP i can gain the ability to use elven workers ... i would make that trade any day of the week. Additionally your allowing me to get seafareing AND build ships 12% faster.

from a purely elven standpoint , your saying if i foresake my gods i can make adventures and gain the knowledge to build seige equipment to aid my taking of cities? and i can also gain seafareing and build ships faster?

from the lanun .... damn , so if i give up my religion , i gain adventures AND elven workers ... who needs a god or a squid ....

now for a little bit of constructive advise...
- see what you can steal from sureshot on building water based improvements
- rework the elven promotion to give water walking , double move in water, and a low 10-15% withdraw chance.
- remove the adventurers. its broken as all hell in anyone elses hands.
- make some new unique units and some new unique buildings
- why is it that sea elves can build in the forests? if they could do that effectivly and easily why would they not have just moved onto land?

lets look at some ideas , brainstorming ...
- promotion : born of the sea , +20% heal rate in water tiles, -10% heal rate on plains and grassland , -50% heal rate on desert or tundra
- promotion : sea elven , double move in water tiles , +20% withdraw in water tiles , -50% vs fire
- building : corral market , +1 commerce on water tiles
- ship : tidebreaker , 0/3 str , move 6 , cargo 6 , sea elven "unit is designed to be a fleet vessel capable of moving troops to the battles faster then they could move themselves"
- unit : tidebreaker (replaces man o' war) , sorcery 3 , water 3 , 10 str move 2 , +2 water synergy , can bombard cities.

thats all i have for now ,

gl and have fun

 

[Rando]

Hi, very cool idea. Have you thought about adding custom units? There are some great "high elf" units in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles mod that seem like they would be a great fit for an aquatic race.

I think Sez may have even done them, I know he did a fair number of the Warhamemr units.

If I remember right, they may even have a 'sea shell' theme - design/insignia.

 

[seZereth]

Hi, very cool idea. Have you thought about adding custom units? There are some great "high elf" units in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles mod that seem like they would be a great fit for an aquatic race.

I think Sez may have even done them, I know he did a fair number of the Warhamemr units.

If I remember right, they may even have a 'sea shell' theme - design/insignia.

hehe, no. those (high elves) and norsca were actually made by Ploe, most of the rest are made by me
but you are right, they have some sea related symbols on their shields.

 

[woodelf]

Cool idea. Now for someone to make the Lizzie civ.

 

[Vorgen]

Daladinn, those are good points. As I'm playing my test game I find that I am also easily dominating everything myself. Usually I am about in the middle of the point list in games until the end of the game when I manage to shoot up somehow. But this time I'm 1st, 2nd, or 3rd easily without even really trying.

I guess I didn't think of the elven trait as being such a huge advantage by itself. Also these Ljosalfar archery ranges that give a +1 bonus to all ranged units are pretty powerful too. But since its a core part of the idea, I'd like to keep it. The main reason that I kept the elven units was because of their look. I realize that the elven trait synergy with forests mechanic is quite an advantage here. I could lose other things to keep it without a problem.

Out of all the things you listed, the grigori buildings could go entirely. What do you think if I just kept a 1 bonus to adventurers in my palace only, and eliminated the possibility of them spawning in other cities? I kinda had the idea of adventurers spawning, naming them after my own gaming buddies, and having them around. But they could be much more rare without problem.

I could eliminate the lanun shipbuilding bonus entirely. There's not a problem with building ships normally. I'd like to keep the seafaring tech tho. Otherwise, there would be no connection to the sea at all.

Those ideas that you brainstormed were nice, but they sound more like sea elves in the DnD sense, which would be more like elves or mermaids that live under/on the sea. The idea I was going for was basically pirate elves, elves that like the sea best out of their fellow elves but still live on land or strings of islands. We actually made a lot of pirate elf graphics, maybe I should dig those up and include them into the mod.

Making custom units would be cool too, and I took a look at the high elves from the Warhammer mod. They look awesome. But aren't their graphics in FFHII already as elven paladins?

 

[seZereth]

...

Making custom units would be cool too, and I took a look at the high elves from the Warhammer mod. They look awesome. But aren't their graphics in FFHII already as elven paladins?

At some point we will have to rework the elves anyway, they where the first ones implemented and not FfH specific. But, as they are not bad placeholders, it is of very low priority to replace them.
What this means for you is: I suggest you take the Highelves for your mod and dont care about the paladin (because you will have more fun with your Mod if it includes custom art)

Cheers.

 

[daladinn]

hello again ,

ok, if you remove any other source of adventurers via extra buildings i can see the 1 point from the palace. then yes remove the bonus to ship building as its not all that big or important. replace kithra with a more theme specific hero.

you mentioned a tend toward pirates, but you picked the homeland trait over the raider trait? why?

for piracy i could reccomend 2 UU's on the same trend. take a gypsy wagon and modify it so it only effects gold. have the first one show up with trade and take say 2 gold , then have the 2nd show up with guilds and take 10% gold.

if your looking for a flavor change and more use of trebuchets i would reccomend the removal of the beastmaster and the druid and possibly the berserker. replace all of these with variation on tier 3 or 4 with upgrades to the trebuchet but with different spcialties.

there are lots that you could alter and chance for balance.

gl and keep up with it

 

[Calavente]

without havng played, I would suggest you to allow for 1 adventurer GPP, not in the palace, but on the monument, or the harbor, or any other early building.

that way, all your cities may produce adventurer, not only your capital that may not be your GP farm or best GP city.
(for a sea-oriented civ, harbor may not be bad )

I think it balances itself with the palace adventurer GP :
-you build the building (harbor) later than the palace is created so your 1st adv will arrive later.
-as all cities produce Adv GP, you may have times where adv are created with less space between them than if you only had the palace.

but flavour-wise it may be funnier.

Just be careful : if you nerf the adventurer part of the grigori, and they are still agnostic, you will ever have only 1 or 2 heroes, maybe up to 4 if you never try to produce any gp other than adv. it is way less than the grigori. it won't compensate for the no religion happy + culture + priest +spying + heroes) as it does for the grigori.

I would suggest you to
_make no civ-specific hero,
_1 gpp adventurer for harbor (or a later building as tavern or shipyard or ...) (replace the civ-heros) (if it comes in the late-early game, (around tier II units) I think it won't be unbalanced.
_allow for religions... and the heroes that goes with it. (flavour wise, even if coming from elswere, you cannot say that the saevalfar may not be converted by their neighbours, or at least defend ideologies, so close to the existing religion that heroes join them) (or just allow for religion but not for priests or for temples)

 

[giddion]

Restricting Religion access?
Only allow OO as Religious choice?

 

[daladinn]

the problem with allowing adventurers from the other buildings instead of the capital is that you are now allowing for a greater number of adventurers. when kept to the capital , choices must be made on wether or not wonders are built or specialists are used.

given the economic power of the elves and the pure GPP push this civ allows for keep the adventurer rate low to rare and then shoring up with a few UU's or heroes in weak areas would be much easier to balance and still keep its flavor.