Not really a bug, I guess... (Esus)

[xilr]

Not really a bug, but building the Council of Esus holy shrine (Nox something) made all my units invisible that arent in citys. I didnt know that would allow the enemy to walk right thru my units while we are at war even.

I suppose I should have guessed that would happen, but its game over now. No chokepoints on the map/difficulty I'm playing and this game is lost. I wish there was a way to turn the invisibility off on units you specifically wish to defend with.

I decided to play a game as Khazad and there are hills everywhere. Dwarven units fortified on units are great. Dwarven units attacking units already on my hills is not so great. I can not protect my improvements after building that holy shrine.

 

[Mailbox]

I posted this in the improvements thread but I'll repeat it here:

Citadels should "Act as a City" and that would get rid of the Esus Shrine complaints and give value to archery units. However the "Act as City" tag in the improvement XML should only refer to a city as defensive purposes and not let the citadel connect resources or let ships travel over them.

If you want to "salvage" your game then you can add the <ActsasCity>1</ActsasCity> to Citadels and then your units should appear as defenders in them.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Little offtopic:

This should be reported in the bug thread but here it will be more exposed. I saw a message that said that Falamar converted to Council of Esus religion. As far as I know all such things should be invisible to the player.

 

[Demus]

fall further has already added the choice of making units invisible or not, which imho should be impleted in the main game. Shame the FF team isn't finished with integrating 0.34 in FF though.

 

[civ_king]

the reason we can't give citadels "Act as a City" is because then AI workers put em on Mana

 

[EmptyWolf]

Little offtopic:

This should be reported in the bug thread but here it will be more exposed. I saw a message that said that Falamar converted to Council of Esus religion. As far as I know all such things should be invisible to the player.

Council of Esus religion can also be seen in the upper corner of the trade window when you trade with an AI.

 

[BlankVerse]

You weren't Council of Esus yourself, right? Because in that case you're supposed to know. Anyway, there are any number of things that a human can use to tell a civ is following CoE, nightwatch sitting in their cities for example is a dead giveaway.

As an aside, I thought the Lanun's Black Wind hero having hidden nationality was a bit odd: it has huge Lanun flags on it's sails. Who are people going to think sent it?

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

No, I was agnostic, playing Ilians.

 

[Demus]

As an aside, I thought the Lanun's Black Wind hero having hidden nationality was a bit odd: it has huge Lanun flags on it's sails. Who are people going to think sent it?

well, even turning it into a normal privateer with the hero promo would clearly mark it as a lanun ship.

on the CoE matter, truly making the religion invisible would be tough to do. Instead of nightwatches, you could have a T2-3 unit (axeman - champion - longbowmen) with 2 additional promo's, symbolising it's advanced training by the council. Instead of not showing any religion, it would have to pick the symbol of the most widespread religion in the civ, besides CoE etc. etc. Seems like an awfully lot of hassle just for 1 game mechanic.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Question for the coders: Is there any way to set it so that when you build the shrine, all units in your borders just have a standard unit model? IE maybe wearing a robe and hood sort of like in movies where you have those hooded monks that throw off their hoods at the last minute to reveal military units.

This way you can still block movement and stuff but you won't know which units are actually standing there until they attack.... I think that might have the theme of the council without the inability to block movement which is a little gamebreaking (if you're on the defense).

Now, if a player builds it, it probably won't make much difference except that maybe it negates Marksman which would sort of make sense since you don't know who's who. A little powerful but maybe not too powerful since it would only be useful on the council's own land.

Would also make it unique and interesting for players to attack an AI that has the shrine built since you wouldn't know who you're attacking until you're right up on them.

PS anyone know, if an AI builds the shrine currently, can you basically just walk right up to their capital?

 

[Keeper_GFA]

If you can stand the constant catapult bombardment, and still be strong enough that the AI won't risk actual combat, then yes.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

I found the shrine really helps the AI. AV Balseraph in the late game with 5 cities have it. . .Keep your stack defended and don't try a blitz. Unless you can snag their cities in a turn, revealing the enemy.

About HN and the interface showing promotions, would it be possible for someonewolfe to code it so that the details pop-up for HN units is something limited? You could also go as far as disabling those pop ups...

 

[zup]

A related thing is Svartalfar world spell. So I see a barbarian </yeahrightendsarcasm> amazon elf hunter/warrior/whatever coming to snack on my workers. I find it very difficult to tell who it belongs to.