Protector of Éa victory discussion

[Pazyryk]

This won't be ready for v3 or maybe not even v4 (it's kind of complicated) but here's the plan and ideas for discussion.

This one is tougher than the others because it depends on what other players do - someone has to go evil so you can save the world from them. That presents at least two problems: 1) at least one AI has to go evil, and 2) we have to guard against an accidentally very easy or very early victory (e.g., your neighbor goes evil and you wipe them out by turn 100 ... or the same happens for an AI civ, thus terminating your game). My autoplay observations suggest that that issue #1 may already be solved: the AI system seems to be working pretty well so that usually one civ goes evil at some point, sometimes early but sometimes late (e.g., after turn 200). These civs are either fully committed Aŋra followers or purely arcane civs researching the Maleficium enabled techs. When this happens late, then issue #2 isn't so bad because they are already strong (or in any case, we are well past turn 100). If your neighbor goes evil early, then I think #2 will be avoided by the various "hoops you have to jump through" below.

I want this victory to be achievable by a player through totally conventional (non-magic / non-religious) means. That doesn't mean magic and religion aren't important. You will have to depend on an AI player to do something (e.g., prophecies) but in these cases you can be assured that those events will happen.

It's a point system (like Armageddon and One with Nature) so you have to have the most points toward this victory when all conditions are finally met. The quickest way to victory is if >1 civ are helping to achieve conditions and you happen to contribute the most.

Here are the conditions:

1. Prophecy of Vâ can be made by any Devout after any civ has learned Maleficium. The making of this prophecy is neither good nor evil, but is prerequisite in determining Éa's fate: either destruction in fiery Armageddon or an everlasting protection from that end. The making of the Prophecy of Vâ causes all civilizations that know or subsequently learn Maleficium to "Fall" (this will found the Aŋra religion if one of these Fallen civs was the Azzandarayasna founder). The Prophecy of Vâ must be made before any civ can research 4th or higher tier techs downstream of Maleficium. [note: the AI valuation for this action goes up with turns, so they will certainly do it at some point]
2. Prophecy of Mâ can be made by any non-fallen Devout after any civilization has learned a 4rd tier tech downstream of Maleficium. It prevents any civilization that does not already know Maleficium from learning it. It must be made (by anyone) for the Protector of Éa victory condition to be enabled. [Notes: I may change the condition to %mana consumed rather than tech achievement; say 10% reduction in Sum of All Mana which means that one or more Fallen civs are doing pretty well (a better measure of success than the tech one above). Also note that any non-fallen AI Devout will be highly motivated to make this prophecy - it isn't ambiguous like the prophesy above.]
3. All civs that know Maleficium are either destroyed or forced to renounce it. Renounce Maleficium will be a trade item. It will be valued similar to a very large city, so that the AI will only do it if beaten up very badly. When a player does this, they loose Maleficium and all downstream techs and are blocked from learning them thereafter. All Sorcerers will desert the civ (see point below).
4. All Sorcerers have been tracked down and killed. "Sorercer" here really means any Fallen spellcaster. These individuals will go rogue if their civ renounces Maleficium or is destroyed. They may wonder about as barb units for a while, but it is very common for them to join another Fallen civ even of a different race. This will especially be true for Heldeofol (why you ask? well, because high-level Sorcerers joining and leading Heldeofol civs is just cool ).
5. All evil Artifacts and Wonders have been destroyed. For now this only includes a Lich's Tower and any of the Aŋra Temples. I'm not quite sure what I mean by "destroy" yet, since these wonders are already ruins if not owned by appropriate civ. Perhaps there could be a Sanctify spell or the Druid Purify spell cast on them (if so, it will be highly valued by AI so you can count on it being accomplished even if you don't do it yourself).
6. No Aŋra followers in the world. Conversion is one way to do this. Razing these cities to the ground is another (but that means you have to conquer them). I was thinking also of a new Purge action that can be done by any military unit in any city, even a foreign city if you have open borders. It's like a forced Raze that causes the city to be useless and loose population points, with each population point lost favoring (but not guaranteed) to be an Aŋra follower. It should add unhappiness to civ for a while, especially if it is not an occupied city. The cost for doing it in a foreign city would be a strong diplo hit for each population point removed. (Note to self for AI coding: A player needs to delay this action in foreign, full civ cities until all sources of Aŋra pressure have been removed, and then to do it quickly and decisively. It will wreck the player's relationship and make subsequent open borders agreement very expensive or impossible.)

There will be points for each of the items in list above, but #3 will be a (or maybe the) major source so that a conventional or pure arcane/non-religious civ can get the victory in a sort of brute force way. Only the prophecies and #5 have to be done via religion, but these can be done by other player's Priests, Paladins and Druids (and you can count on them to happen). So it should be achievable in a variety of ways.

 

[BrokenSky]

So what did you want to discuss? whether this is a good idea? How to do it? Suggestions?

I think it looks pretty cool, although I'm not sure about making it impossible to get maleficum after a certain time; maybe make it possible but come at some heavier cost?

I would like to discuss the whole research maleficum -> be evil thing;
considering the senario I can think of about 3 very seperate "archetypes" who would go for it and I'm not sure how well the system represents them at the moment; the first is the whole generic evil guys; I mean what the mod models at the moment, but aside from that theres also the gain all the magic tech, regardless of morality type guys, and I'm not sure how well this represents them at the moment. Then there's also the dangerous radical type guys who study the dark magic to better understand it's weaknesses and strength; the whole fight fire with firepower thing.
Also it would be nice to be secretly evil; if you don't know right away that a civ is fallen, but can find out if they are really open about it (raising armys of the undead and conquering the world) or from word of mouth type thing but also from having your great people do actions in their city. Or you can find out when an Ai civ tells you / you tell them. (share intrigue! )

but yeah I mean ...

This is what we're meant to be discussing right?

 

[Pazyryk]

I'm soliciting suggestions/critique/loopholes/questions I guess. Feel free to start a "Discussion of Evil Archtypes" thread if you want.

Your point about "secret" evil does impact this victory though, since a player has to identify evil to destroy it. There's no explicit indication of evil now, unless you have (willingly or not) gained Aŋra as dominant religion. The indirect indications are a little unreliable at least at first. Yes, you can see up to 3 civs that have consumed the most mana in the victory screen. But a civ can get on that list for simply having one Aŋra follower (these burn mana for your civ even if you are not Fallen). The presence of the "Renounce Maleficium" item in the trade screen would be an indication, but I can solve (or delay) that by not having that option until after Prophecy of Mâ. Of course, seeing demons and undead belonging to a civ is irrefutable evidence.

There's a sort of "low grade" evil that a civ might follow, just taking Maleficium for some spells and buildings and the ability to generate a Witch or two (and when really added, Lycanthropy). It wouldn't necessarily be very obvious who these players are, at least for a while. Werewolves won't be proof because a civ could have gotten that from spread (ie, being bitten by one). Witches are not proof either, since there are ways you can have these without Maleficium.

One thing I want to do that isn't really working now (in practice or concept) is extend out the "period of innocence" where players can mess around with tier 2-3 Maleficium techs without even being Fallen. I.e., before anyone makes the Prophecy of Vâ. The problem now is that there is no reason not to make that prophecy - you get a nice xp bonus and why not do it when someone else will anyway? Perhaps there should be some "price" to pay. Not gold...but what?

I think that as long as Prophecy of Mâ is properly delayed (which I think it would be with the mana depletion criteria) then it is OK to seal off these techs. The AIs more or less commit themselves to being evil or not early in game (although evidence for this may be delayed) so AI players should never be cut off by this prophesy. A human player may delay their own fall for strategic or role-play reasons. The possibility of this prophesy adds some time pressure for that, but only if there is another very strong evil player already consuming mana at a large rate.

There's another kind of evil which is just the power hungry arcane civ that isn't really concerned with good or evil and denies the whole Armageddon thing (which is reasonable since you really have to work to destroy the world this way). But these civs basically are evil in the mod's system even if they don't recognize it themselves. They should be able to play for quite a while without being harassed for it - since the diplo penalties are mild until the mana depletion really gets going.

There is a "neutral" Arcane path built into the tech tree, which is simply to progress up to Greater and Esoteric Arcana without ever learning Maleficium. It's not really viable now due to missing spells. And the currently too-fast tech progression needs to be slowed so that pursuing this path seriously will take up an entire game. But this should be every bit as powerful as going for the evil arcane techs with spells like Time Stop and Wish. You can certainly conquer or dominate the world with those, or use them toward the Protector victory.

 

[BrokenSky]

Oh right that makes more sense. I was operating under the assumption that the current behaviour, where it just gets made as soon as possible because ... well its a free 100xp in one turn! build it right now before the AI does! So if building the prophesy of Va is meant to come later the whole system now makes more sense. Also I was as much as anything referring to how the Ai instantly know's you're evil and gives you malus for it.

I did the full good guy style game start and that plus the other early prophesy on my founding priest got me some pretty strong early game bonuses, especially after I built the first temple with him.

So if you're going for the power hungry arkane civ is evil for basicly the magical equivalent of causing major climate problems an not recycling then that makes sense, especially when what you're not recycling is the very fabric of reality. Maybe magical recycling centers? Reduces mana depleted and gains a diplo bonus with good civs, so you can research some bad stuff without them getting too annoyed. Just put your broken and charred fabric of reality in a green box and leave it by the side of the road - collection on mondays and thursdays.
[in case it's not now completely obvious that suggestion was more a joke than anything else.]
But yeah it does make sense really.

 

[Pazyryk]

Yeah, I was editing text above exactly while you were posting. Maybe there needs to be a "price" to pay for Prophecy of Vâ. But what?

I'm sort of waiting for comments on diplo effects. My impression from autoplay is that they may be rather weak next to other game effects (based on seeing friendly relationships between civs despite these hits). But the diplo penalties really pile on later with mana depletion, so maybe it's ok.

Edit: yes we could have "Mana Offset Credits" . I'm really not trying to analogize to that. I knew someone would bring it up eventually.

 

[BrokenSky]

Well I guess you could make the prophesy of Va require more than just anyone has researched maleficum; for example you could make it require world mana depletion to be above a certain amount? e.g. 5% depletion. That should be enough for either one very dedicated evil civ or several unfocussed ones. You could make it require a certain number of evil techs worldwide researched. You could make a thing attached to maleficum (a prophesy or something?) and make it require that having been done maybe something that reduces the amount of mana you use up by say 90% and you need to do this thing to get rid of it, but it goes when anyone does it (then it will be removed by a dedicated to destruction civ - guaranteeing that at least one civ must be actually going for the end of the world victory before the counter-ragnarok victory starts)? Then if you make the thing, anyone can out not only you but every evil civ. Something like that. I would probably opt for the mana depletion though.

 

[Pazyryk]

I would probably opt for the mana depletion though.

That doesn't work because spells don't deplete mana unless you are Fallen. But you aren't Fallen from Maleficium alone (not until someone makes this prophecy and you have Maleficium). You can Fall or consume mana from Aŋra, but the Prophecy of Vâ shouldn't depend on that religion existing. So in other words, the Prophecy of Vâ has to be possible with 0 mana depletion.

I'm still gravitating toward a "price to pay", but it has to be at a level such that deciding whether or when to make the prophecy (versus waiting for someone else to do it) is rather difficult. Or, conversely, a benefit to not doing it, but that's even harder to think of. Perhaps a mana (& divine favor) discount as you suggest (though to be honest that doesn't quite draw me in yet) or maybe just a high mana or divine favor cost for making the prophesy (we do need things to use this stuff on anyway). I'm still open to suggestions. I know penalties are kind of undesirable, but they can be fun if there is an interesting flavor to it or difficult trade-off to contemplate.

Remember that civs will need this to progress past tier 3 Maleficium techs (so they can get to Sorcery, Reanimation and Lycanthropy but no further) so that motivates some civs to do it although it might be best for them if it is delayed until they are ready to really focus on this tech branch. A civ going for Protector also benefits from the delay in that it delays mana consumption and advancement of these evil civs. (That made me just think of those indoor bike races where competitors almost stop while waiting for someone else to initiate the sprint.)


Edit: Here's a price that is at least interesting. The Devout that makes the Prophecy of Vâ ages 30 years (if already mortal) or becomes mortal (if Sidhe). That's a pretty hard hit, even if they are gaining an instant 100 xp. Note that I can put any deciding function I want on AI. For example their valuation of this action can be depressed but then start going up after some turn number, maybe with a random modifier added in (something I'm opposed to in general but this is a special case).

 

[BrokenSky]

... wouldn't the sidhe then just die instantly? I mean al that age catches up to you in a few days ... it won't be pretty.

Maybe go for something like "GP changes to Devout: Madman/oracle" type thing in stead? then you lose any benefits you get but recieve the following buffs: Oracle promo - can't cast spells, occasionally recieve positive oracular effects. Reincarnate: On death (the turn after) a new GP is born of this GP's subtype; the GP gains all the promotions this GP had (except for attribute levels and spells). Then the oracle gets promotions unique to them.

For this you'd need a whole oracular effects thing though. I had an Idea about something like this a while back but I thought it was a lot of stuff to do and I wasn't sure if it'd really work all that well but anyway:
1. The Star cycle
Every (2D10+20)? turns a new star configuration is generated: probability is weighted based on how recently the sign fired and each give different buffs. E.g. +10% growth, 5% income, 50% trade route value, 20% science etc.
2. Astrology tech: an alternate route to astronomy which requires writing?
lets you see what the current star sign is and get a notification when it changes (this is normally not told to the player, although it might be deduced as they still get the bonus - they just aren't told about it.)
leading to some more stuff where you can get a "forecast" (it just generates the result in advance and tells them what it will be) and even alter it to get a sign you want (mana cost is high but with a reduction based on the weighting from how recently it last fired). Type thing.
Maybe some more stuff too...

Anyway the reason that this is a negative is that it means that the GP becomes an oracle which means that it loses most of the bonuses for having a GP and counts against their GP limit, potentially for the rest of the game (although there may be ways to avoid the reincarnation... disbanding perhaps?). On the flip side oracles are hard to get, aside from having a devout (of any type) build the oracle wonder (which also acts as a tower for them and every subsequent reincarnation).

Anyway this is one idea.

Another is maybe make it so that in order to do the prophesy of Va, the number of evil techs researched has to be at least the number of players, instead of just 1?

edit: oracles can't lead, nor can they take residence in a city and they cannot sit in a city and produce a bonus (culture, science, mana etc), though they can sit in a city and gain experience; they just produce zero mana or something? Sorry I forgot to say that. So doing prophesy of Va with your first leader means you suddenly lose diplomacy capabilities. as after, your leader is a bit too insane to lead.

edit edit: maybe have one civ who gains an oracle as eader and their thing is having their leader be an oracle and all subsequent leaders are the oracle's reincarnation.
btw here reincarnation is a seperate promo form being an oracle, but unless otherwise stated, all oracles get the promo.

 

[Pazyryk]

It's an interesting idea - having a sort of "mad prophet" GP. So instead of losing a GP too early from aging/mortality you are stuck with one you don't really want. It's quite a bit worse actually since you are one-down in GP count (forever? for two lifetimes?). In very early documentation/planning I had Prophet as a separate subclass. But I couldn't think of things for them to do that I could reasonably implement...

 

[Calavente]

I have 3 questions/remarks.

-I know it is a core part of your mod since the very earliest, but do all civ with maleficium need to fall after prophecy of Va ? couldn't there be a secondary factor : number of witches/lycantropes/anjra followers... amount of consumed mana ??? etc (but after prophecy of Va, witches/ lycantropes/sorcerers WILL consume mana... so a maleficum civ can refrain from falling only by not using those units after prophecy of Va..., and seeing those units will not mean their owner has fallen)

-If you renounce Anjra : what is your real loss : a few sorceres? a few techs ? thoses GP and Tech do not count toward your GP pool and tech maintenance anymore, so you just took a few step backs, without losing anything permanently. plus you managed to get lycantropes, witches, and maybe even managed to counquer a bit of land with help of those sorcerers.

I think it needs a bit more :
maybe lose so populations: half of the anjra citizens ?
+ get revolts in all cities ? or "angry" pop with a value of 2 per anjra citizen (reduction of 1 angry per 2-3-4-5 turns?)
destructions of all "sorcerers" towers : (even mage towers);
loss of some "non-maleficium" techs : magic... whatever??
still get the tech maintenance of the removed maleficium techs...
...etc

-could there be a way to "fall" even without having researched maleficium ? even after prophecy of Ma is called?
like : a civ renounced anjra : sorcerers flees.... and proposes to join a civ.
when the sorcerer joins: the civ gets free maleficium tech, + a few other "fallen techs" and falls (otherwise, Hedelfod will have a hard time falling, unless they already got maleficium.... ).
or
Fallen civs try to convert other civs... but I don't know how
(in the same way that fallen civs can renounce anjra, maybe fallen civs could convert non-fallen civs they dominate to anjra... even without having to give them the maleficium tech.)

 

[Lord Yanaek]

For what it's worth in the discussion, i got a AI Civ found Anjra around T40 in a test game. Some 30 or so turns before Azandara ... thing .

I'm not sure placing a very high price on prophecy of Va is the best move as it might end up delaying it too much. The mad prophet system seems interesting as long as it does not make your GP useless. Maybe an option would be to have more prophecies available (not a whole lot more, but 2-3 more for a 4-5 total). This would allow some Prophet sub-class for any devout that makes such a prophecy. This sub-class would have both positive and negative effects such as making the GP slightly more powerful than a regular devout, but less reliable to account for the deranged nature of someone who predicted a possible Armageddon (exact mechanisms to be determined).

Also, a civ might not fall completely after the first prophecy thought their spell-casters could become mana eaters right away. Maybe there could be some "salvation" for those, that would allow them to remove the sorcerer trait from their mages while still being able to cast weaker dark spells (through SPs, other techs, rituals, mix of all those) but no longer if they progress too far in the Maleficium tech tree or someone makes one of the later prophecies.

 

[BrokenSky]

I actually like this idea a lot. Maybe the second step to out and out evil allows increased undead and demons summuning, as well as increasing the ammount of mana destroyed by spell casting.

The idea with the oracle thing I was trying to get across before is that the drawbacks would be that they wouldn't have magic attribute improvements, wouldn't be able to lead (your civ, reside in a city or a temple*), wouldn't be able to just sit in a city and provide a trickle of any useful thing like other GPs do and have their own spells; and oracle abilities would be as much random as helpful, like FFHs chaos spells and other similar random effects, for example being able to bestow promotions like the Mystic Blade promo kris swordman get, as well as a capacity to do fortune telling type magic.

*exception to the not leading a temple was the oracle wonder which would be like a tower for the oracle, which increases it's oracular abilities in some beneficial way.

Maybe with astrology, oracles might be able to produce trickle happiness, but at a much lower amount/level than other GP resource trickle.

 

[Pazyryk]

I have 3 questions/remarks.
-If you renounce Anjra : what is your real loss : a few sorceres? a few techs ? thoses GP and Tech do not count toward your GP pool and tech maintenance anymore, so you just took a few step backs, without losing anything permanently. plus you managed to get lycantropes, witches, and maybe even managed to counquer a bit of land with help of those sorcerers.

I think it needs a bit more :
maybe lose so populations: half of the anjra citizens ?

I agree it should be bad, and very bad if you are Aŋra follower. I want to leave the Aŋra followers though because cleaning them up is a separate obstacle for the victory.

The 3 posts above suggest a sort of "half-Fallen" state. But we already have that before the Prophesy of Va. Before that, civs can have Maleficium, Sorcery and Reanimation (and Lycanthropy), which means they are reanimating skeletons/zombies and summoning abyssal creatures (and getting Werewolves when added) all without being Fallen or consuming mana. Doesn't that serve for the intermediate condition? Or I guess maybe what you are thinking is making that a state that can last indefinitely. Maybe they only fall after they proceed further down these tech branches? [Being Fallen and consuming mana go together for mechanistic reasons. It's how the code knows to deduct mana used from the Sum of All Mana.]

I agree the mad-Prophet is too much penalty, and a bit too much work for me now anyway. Fun to consider though... For now I'm falling back on the aging/mortality penalty (for Sidhe, they will just start aging as if they were 45 regardless of actual age).

-could there be a way to "fall" even without having researched maleficium ? even after prophecy of Ma is called?
like : a civ renounced anjra : sorcerers flees.... and proposes to join a civ.
when the sorcerer joins: the civ gets free maleficium tech, + a few other "fallen techs" and falls (otherwise, Hedelfod will have a hard time falling, unless they already got maleficium.... ).

There is already another way to become Fallen: either founding Aŋra or having it become your dominant religion (which could be imposed on you by another civ).

On the Heldeofol (or any race) getting another civ's Sorcerers, I haven't worked it out exactly. Edit: well, worked out a lot of logic just writing this:

I think the way it will work is that you get this wondering GP as substitute for your regular GP spawn. So you have to generate points for the Thaumaturge class somehow to attract a wandering Necromancer (for example), or Devout points to attract a wondering Fallen Priest. You will have to be Fallen already (by one means or another) since these GPs may have high level evil spells. But you won't have to meet the subclass req (so you don't need Necromacy to get Necromancer). To to generate Thaumaturge points you will have to research at least Maleficium and build a Pharmakeia for the adept specialist (I'll make that one buildable by H). It's two techs which is not a big deal even for Heldeofol.

This means that you can play a conventional war game as Heldeofol without Sorcerers knocking on your door. But if you want to go the "Mordor" play style then you are committed to at least two techs and a building to generate Thaumaturge points (and most likely to become Fallen if you don't happen to have Aŋra). Even then, it only works if there are some wandering Sorcerers. Of course, you could make that happen by knocking off a neighboring evil civ. Or it might happen late game from other civ's activities. The good news is you get to use that Sorcerer's spells without bothering to learn those techs.

Edit2: Well, for Heldeofol only I might allow it to happen without the tech. But then the civ learns Writing and Meleficium and Falls automatically when they accept the foreign Sorcerer. It won't work that way for human player (human player has to work for it). But it is a useful mechanic for AI Heldeofol civs because it gives these fleeing/deserting Sorcerers a place to go. So when an evil arcane civ (Man or Sidhe) is destroyed or renounces Maleficium, you suddenly have a surge of Heldeofol civs "going Morder" on you.

Edit3: Having all kinds of fun with this concept. One thing that is actually not hard to implement are active player changes (I do it sometimes when troubleshooting). Perhaps one way to play Heldeofol will be to start as another race, generate an evil Thaumaturge (you would want them to already have some high level spells), then abandon your civ and take over a Heldeofol civ. Perhaps this option would come up if you have an appropriate Thaumaturge already and some Heldeofol civ is currently leaderless.

(But now I stray into another topic. Heldeofol have to wait until after we get the Protector victory working. Although Edit2 above suggests that Heldeofol may be more integral to this victory than I thought...)

 

[Lord Yanaek]

The 3 posts above suggest a sort of "half-Fallen" state. But we already have that before the Prophesy of Va. Before that, civs can have Maleficium, Sorcery and Reanimation (and Lycanthropy), which means they are reanimating skeletons/zombies and summoning abyssal creatures (and getting Werewolves when added) all without being Fallen or consuming mana. Doesn't that serve for the intermediate condition? Or I guess maybe what you are thinking is making that a state that can last indefinitely. Maybe they only fall after they proceed further down these tech branches? [Being Fallen and consuming mana go together for mechanistic reasons. It's how the code knows to deduct mana used from the Sum of All Mana.]

Well, the fact is : once you research Maleficium, you know your civ will fall, you simply don't know when.
What i was thinking was for falling to be more gradual. Something like this :

1. Prophecy of Va : All spellcasters from civs who researched Maleficium will fall and become Mana Eaters but not the civ (Theism won't be replaced by AntiTheism, priests if any stay priests, very small or no diplo hit). Just because you have a rising cast of dark mages doesn't make your entire civilization evil-crazed cultists of a world ending religion.
2. Prophecy of dontknowwhat : As soon as a small amount of mana (maybe 2-3% of the total) have been consumed this one becomes available. Sorcerers of civilizations that have researched Maleficium but not more than a few techs/tech levels down this path can undertake a ritual to loose the sorcerer promotion and no longer burn mana, but if they cast dark spells, they will be weaker (you might be able to control a minor demon and force it to fight for you, you won't control a demon prince if he doesn't want to help you). They can no longer research any maleficium tech.
   Fun for those grey "fight fire with fire" heroes.
3. Prophecy 3 (the vengeance) : When more mana have been consumed or some other trigger (possibly several options whatever comes first) this prophecy will cause all civilizations that have mana eaters to fall completely.

So you could research Maleficium and even a few more techs down this path and hope your civ won't fall completely. You can't be sure as it would depend on other prophecies but hey, you are walking a dangerous dark path so don't come crying because you didn't have time to finish your research and rituals before the third prophecy. (BTW, those could simply be called first prophecy of Va, second prophecy of Va ..., not very creative but it does work)
No idea how easily this would fit into the existing mechanisms.

BTW, another test where Anjra was first religion founded at T29. Some of those AIs are really fast of it.

 

[Calavente]

Edit2: Well, for Heldeofol only I might allow it to happen without the tech. But then the civ learns Writing and Meleficium and Falls automatically when they accept the foreign Sorcerer. It won't work that way for human player (human player has to work for it). But it is a useful mechanic for AI Heldeofol civs because it gives these fleeing/deserting Sorcerers a place to go. So when an evil arcane civ (Man or Sidhe) is destroyed or renounces Maleficium, you suddenly have a surge of Heldeofol civs "going Morder" on you.

that's exactly my point
thus, being heldeofol you (but more easily the AI) can fall easily, and those fleeing sorcerers can find some refuge more easily...
maybe they could even go BARB if no-one wants them, not even heldeofol civs, and create "evil city-state" in place of some far-away barb camps.

For the intermediate-fallen state:
what I mean is a bit like what Bob Morane says:
once you research maleficium, you KNOW you will fall, sooner or later.
this determinisms is a bit to forceful ; so the human player will never take maleficium UNLESS he intends to fall.

(a comparison with FFH would be that you get infernal terrain in your lands as soon as you research AV... even if you never convert... however, in FFH, even having researched AV.. or even having converted to AV you can take stances to not have infernal terrain in your lands.)

so what if you HAD to get maleficium in urgency at a time ? but now you repented, and the witches tries to leave the evil spell alone and try to upgrade to normal mages, or maybe you even burned the witches.
do you really need to fall ?

So, well, I really like that Prophecy of VA "triggers" the fall.
but maybe not as brutally as that for everyone.

I'd like a way that when the Prophecy of Va is announced, you can still "not fall", if you do efforts: not use the sorcerers (penalty for sorcerers until you are fallen), not research any more "evil tech" ...
(for example, only the sorcerers fall.. into dark sorcerers)

however, it you continue in your evil ways : getting one more evil tech makes you fall, getting a necromancer, using dark sorcerers spells / having dark sorcerer as civ leader or city leader for more than 5 turns (cumulative)...etc

but you can fall directly after prophecy of Va : if you have 3 evil techs, if you have more than ... X gray-zone units (witches / lycantropes, sorcerers), if you have at least one dark-evil unit : necromancer - demonist...etc

any other ideas.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

But maybe we are just overly concerned about all this mana eating stuff. Not everyone does evil just for fun, sure there is Richard but ... I still have to be able to play a test game further than about T100 with a fallen civ to see whether or not it's possible to actually win a domination game using undead and demons before mana depletion becomes a real issue. Maybe it's just fine now. I still think a more gradual way to fall would be (even) better but the most important point is to be able to win another victory than destroyer while using dark powers.

Speaking of this, if mana depletion threatens to be a real issue, is there something you can do as an evil civ to reduce it (apart from not using your spells, but if you are evil you won't do this). I remember a very fun FFH game as Calabims where i sent an entire army of Vampires to raze the Ashen Veil holy city because armageddon was rising and i wanted to protect my food reserves
Translated to Ea this would mean being able to act against Anjra even if you are fallen, but don't worship Arhiman such as desecrating the archdemon temples (as you said somewhere in the manual, most sorcerers would deny any connection with the Destroyer) Of course no truly evil civ should win a protector victory, but preventing or delaying destruction of the world you simply plan to conquer should be an option (not necessarily an easy one, but it should exist).

 

[BrokenSky]

One of the main problems I have with the forced fall, having maleficum for ... 3 turns or something before the AI did Va, is actually the loss of healing spells and buffs from priests. I was using them as a support role for my army; dispensing health and buffs to improve my trained soldiers. Then the fall came and they lost heal and gained hurt. This was not helpful. Perhaps one improvement then I might suggest is giving evil buffs and healing, and good some hexes and stuff. Maybe just make the evil stuff better at debuffs or make the "healing" more like raising the fallen of the unit than healing the injured; slowly turning the unit undead over time as the raised dead begin to outnumber the living. This would allow evil to keep healing, while still keeping the significant distinction between good and evil magic. Undead don't get moral bonuses do they? Do they inflict moral damage to enemies?

 

[Pazyryk]

I still have to be able to play a test game further than about T100 with a fallen civ to see whether or not it's possible to actually win a domination game using undead and demons before mana depletion becomes a real issue. Maybe it's just fine now.

This is exactly the intention. That you can play a very strong evil magic game (Conquest or Domination) without ending the world. By very strong I mean you have Necromancy, Soul Binding, Invocation and maybe Greater Arcana. Maybe by turn 280 - 300 you are pushing 40% or 60% Mana depletion and bad stuff is happening, but not Armageddon ... unless you are very slow to wrap up the game. For Armageddon, you are supposed to have to work for it. Breach and/or a strong Aŋra push should move you in that direction quite a bit, and Armageddon Rituals is sort of the finisher if you get to it.

That's the goal. But, to be honest, the starting Sum of All Mana (100000) is a total guess. Probably that value will be raised as I add a couple more "massive mana drains" to Breach and Armageddon Rituals (the latter needs one that doesn't depend on Aŋra).

But someone has to provide evidence that the current value is too low. (And I want screen shots. Not because I don't trust you, but because it is supposed to be ... well ... "visually interesting" as you approach Armageddon.)

One of the main problems I have with the forced fall, having maleficum for ... 3 turns or something before the AI did Va, is actually the loss of healing spells and buffs from priests. I was using them as a support role for my army; dispensing health and buffs to improve my trained soldiers. Then the fall came and they lost heal and gained hurt. This was not helpful.

This is another balance issue. But don't try to balance the spell with alt spells one-to-one. Hurt is certainly weaker than Heal. But Turn Undead is stronger than Banish Undead. Try to balance as a whole rather than on an item-to-item basis.

Maybe we need a divine spell that physically damages Undead/Demons (in its normal form) with the alt spell healing them. For living armies, we should be looking at things like making them undead or profiting (somehow) from them being killed - rather than support.

 

[BrokenSky]

Maybe. I was basicly thinking something similar, where you get a "healing spell" which represents raising the dead so you end up with partially undead units (both living and dead soldiers fighting along side each other) but this might be difficult to deal with. Another thing I thought of a while back for something a bit different, but really fits maybe even better in here, is a spell which provides a temporary promotion to all adjacent units for a turn (with a casting time of one turn) which raises undead when the unit kills an enemy in combat, or when the unit is killed, under control of the caster. Not sure what would happen if two different civs cast the spell at the same time though; probably just 2x the undead as written.

One other thing on this matter- demons and undead currently cost unit upkeep. Maybe switching this to mana upkeep might be a good idea? Especially given the fact that many people say that they have too much mana; if it starts getting used for summon upkeep, that would work out pretty well I think?

Sorry if this is getting off topic from protector of Ea, but tbf I could point out that doing this means that you burn more mana as a fallen civ if you have a large undead or daemon army.

 

[Pazyryk]

One other thing on this matter- demons and undead currently cost unit upkeep. Maybe switching this to mana upkeep might be a good idea?

Not supposed to cost gold. I'll fix that. (There is the separate issue of "unit support" where Civ5 hits your production - I need to deal with that too but that's more of an early GP problem.)

There is already a mana cost. Each time these units engage in combat a certain number of points of mana are drained and xp gained by associated caster. (Well, that happens for all called, summoned and raised units, but not reanimated dead - the latter are not linked to any particular GP so they consume mana but not from player.) But I suppose I could add a mana maintenance on top of that. I know there is a big mana/divine favor accumulation problem now.

Vampiric Touch (arcane spell; necromancy modifier) could be a spell that sets a promotion on your living units that heals them from damage they do.

Feel free to make up any spells that you think are useful to fill any gameplay need. Just give me something like the above line to work from.