Sheaim and Blight/Pestilence

[SwampCow]

I have been tinkering with Sheaim as my civ and was getting increasingly frustrated by blight and pestilence. If the entire driving force behind the civ is to raise the Armageddon counter it seems screwed up that blight and pestilence still smack them right in the teeth. I know that the Blight Event won't destroy all of their improvement but the blight still cripples all cities. In fact, I was still reeling from the blight unhealthiness long after some of the good civs had rebuilt their improvements.

Then you add in pestilence and it it becomes too much to deal with. Why on earth should the civ that revels in blight suffer so severely from the effect? Is their lemming blood in their veins?

 

[Yaotzin]

How do they suffer "so severely" from it? They don't suffer any more than any other AV Civ, which is less than non-AV.

And they benefit from it too, in the form of planar gates and probably other things I'm forgetting.

Also, due to planar gates, the optimal Sheaim strategy is probably lots of closely packed cities, making the health effects hurt them less, since the cities tend to be small.

 

[Mewtarthio]

You say your cities are smaller? That's hardly an issue, given that you get your units at a continual, random rate via Planar Gates and only use your citizens to build the necessary buildings. Don't worry; by the time your ready to eat all their souls in a dark ritual that will send an entire army of pit beasts to crush your enemies, they'll have recovered.

 

[SwampCow]

I understand the benefits but don't understand the drawbacks. Why on earth would the Sheaim suffer the same blight level as other civs when their primary function is to cause it? I just played a game where i had +80 blight for my main cities, choking each one down to a few people. Of course they need to suffer some to maintain game balance, but as I said in my first post, it was worse to have the unhealthy faces than to lose my improvements since I was unable to to do anything to mitigate the damage done since it was all in the form of blight unhealthy faces as opposed to removed improvements. My enemies seemed to recover faster than I did.

It just seems contrary. I have played hundreds of games and I found it curious that I have seen some of the worst damage done to my civ when playign as the people who should be thriving on it.

Granted, I may be missing something but as I said, I am no novice to this game (although I have only begun to explore the Sheaim).

 

[SwampCow]

You say your cities are smaller? That's hardly an issue, given that you get your units at a continual, random rate via Planar Gates and only use your citizens to build the necessary buildings. Don't worry; by the time your ready to eat all their souls in a dark ritual that will send an entire army of pit beasts to crush your enemies, they'll have recovered.

I suppose using slavery could help with infrastructure as well, eating down all cities that are suffering from drastic famine.

 

[rusty217]

Well the Sheaim are about hurting others more than themselves, blight also causes death? damage to all units, so with a demonic army and being able to make it come sooner it can make a good start to a war since the enemy economies will be bad aswell while you will still be getting troops....

So just have an army ready for attack a few turns before blight and you can come off a few cities better than the opposition...

 

[Yaotzin]

I feel pretty confident there isn't a section of the blight code that goes

If ((player.civ == sheaim) || (player.name == SwampCow))
blightBadHealth*2

So I don't see why your opponents would be hurt less..

Sheaim are hurt less from the AC rising than others, which is functionally equivalent to thriving, though perhaps they need to suffer still less. I doubt it though, with their skeleton/spectre mages.

 

[Ringtailed]

How are your cities choking to death? Are you running AV and Sacrifice the Weak? They'll only require 2 food per citizen, the same amount as a normal non-AV healthy citizen, even if you have infinite unhealth.

 

[SwampCow]

I never said they are hurt more. I stated that they are hurt on the same level, which is contradictory to their civ credo, if you will.

I also stated that it seems that other civs can actually recover from the blighting faster because they have the immediate ability to begin construction on improvements again, whereas you have no such ability. Your improvements are all still in place but you have a very large blight counter attached to each city for unhealthy faces. All you can do is watch the city choke.

Usually I am able to brace for an oncoming blight by creating a nice army of workers, positioned around each city. Once it hits, I quickly begin rebuilding, mitigating most of the damage in a few rounds. As a Sheaim so far, all I have been able to do is sit and wait for the blight meter to tick down, taking huge chunks of my population with it.

Simply put, it seemed a bit extreme considering their tac to victory.

 

[SwampCow]

How are your cities choking to death? Are you running AV and Sacrifice the Weak? They'll only require 2 food per citizen, the same amount as a normal non-AV healthy citizen, even if you have infinite unhealth.

Ah, I have not been using Sac Weak, come to think of it. That far into the game I usually have bumped it to something else. I would imagine that would make a big difference. Thanks.

 

[xienwolf]

Blight hits the AI with unhealthy as well as you. Pretty sure it doesn't touch anybodies improvements at all anymore. So check that their cities are also losing 1 population per turn due to massive unhealthy points. Though I am pretty sure Pestilence triggers per Civ, so you may have just been hit more frequently by it than they are.


Sheaim should be hit less (as it is written now) because you ought to have your cities built close together and small. The health is based off your city size, so if you have small cities you get less unhealthy points against you.

In addition to that, the Planar Gates ensure that you continue to get Military Units pouring in at the same rate you did with larger cities, even if you are taken down to 1 Population point. This is the main area in which you are hit less by Blight. It doesn't cripple your war effort.

 

[SwampCow]

Blight hits the AI with unhealthy as well as you. Pretty sure it doesn't touch anybodies improvements at all anymore. So check that their cities are also losing 1 population per turn due to massive unhealthy points. Though I am pretty sure Pestilence triggers per Civ, so you may have just been hit more frequently by it than they are.


Sheaim should be hit less (as it is written now) because you ought to have your cities built close together and small. The health is based off your city size, so if you have small cities you get less unhealthy points against you.

In addition to that, the Planar Gates ensure that you continue to get Military Units pouring in at the same rate you did with larger cities, even if you are taken down to 1 Population point. This is the main area in which you are hit less by Blight. It doesn't cripple your war effort.

Thanks xienwolf, as always a beacon of light in muddled posts

 

[Yaotzin]

I never said they are hurt more. I stated that they are hurt on the same level, which is contradictory to their civ credo, if you will.

I also stated that it seems that other civs can actually recover from the blighting faster because they have the immediate ability to begin construction on improvements again, whereas you have no such ability. Your improvements are all still in place but you have a very large blight counter attached to each city for unhealthy faces. All you can do is watch the city choke.

Usually I am able to brace for an oncoming blight by creating a nice army of workers, positioned around each city. Once it hits, I quickly begin rebuilding, mitigating most of the damage in a few rounds. As a Sheaim so far, all I have been able to do is sit and wait for the blight meter to tick down, taking huge chunks of my population with it.

Simply put, it seemed a bit extreme considering their tac to victory.

This doesn't make sense. Did you play Sheaim after the change to blight or something? Everyone gets the bad health now..

And why wouldn't you use StW??? It's the main reason to use Veil!

*mutters at xienwolf*

 

[Tarquelne]

Against the Sheaim credo? I don't think so.


Three short illustrative plays:

Setting: The Sheaim palace.

Characters:
Os-Gabella: Sheaim high muckety-muck and general home wrecker.
Skeletor: Os-Gabella's ADC. No relation to the famous Skeletor.

Play 1:
Skeletor: With the sacking of the Amurite capital the Blight begins! And we can ride it out better than anyone!
Os-Gabella: Destroy the city!

Play 2:
Skeletor: With the sacking of the Amurite capital the Blight begins! We can ride it out as well as anyone!
Os-Gabella: Destroy the city!

Play 3:
Skeletor: With the sacking of the Amurite capital the Blight begins! But it will hurt us more than anyone!
Os-Gabella: Destroy the city!

 

[Tirailleur]

Is anyone know how works the pestilence ?

Playing Svartalfar FoL, with very huge cities (Population : 46, 37, 35, 21 etc.) the pestilence caused me an infamous blight malus and all of my cities declined, hopefully with the ancestral forest i lose only one or two population point. I waited 30 or 40 turns before blight disapears...

I open the WB and saw that Ais has just a unhealthy smiley but be continuing to grow, size of there cities are around 10...

When i declared war all others civ was good and another pestilence touch me more criticaly than before...

But never duriong the game the blight appears, i mean the blight that destroy many improvements and food resources. Strange that i was touched two times by pestilence but never by blight, no ?