The Council of Esus Guide

The Council of Esus Information Post

This thread was created to give new players some information on the Council of Esus. It is very different from other relgions and is thus very confusing. If you find spelling errors please let me know. Also, ther are two more threads, Synergies and Strategies. Remember, your input is valuable to making this a reliable source of information.

Esus
From The Design: Religions Thread we learn that Esus is the god of Deception, sacred to thieves and liars. His sphere is Shadow, and his alignment evil. Esus' is not like other gods, and thus his religion is very unique. He values subtlety, and thus has no temples or priests. Rather, they hide in the dark, ready to backstab the disciples of Esus' rival, Lugus.

The Undercouncil

The Undercouncil is much like the United Nations of unmodded Civilization IV. It is founded when the holy shrine, the Nox Noctis, of the Council is built, either by a Great Prophet or Merchant. The shrine signifigantly helps with your gold, as well as boosting you great merchant great people points. In addition to that, it provides you with one source of Shadow mana. To take part in the council you must be running the Undercouncil membership civic, which requires a neutral or evil alignment. Incidentally, adopting the Council of Esus chages good civilizations to neutral. After there are two players with the Undercouncil civic, a vote will take place, and randomly you will be able to take votes. All of the Undercouncil's resolutions cost money, and you need money to control it. For instance, the Enlist the Nightwatch resolution requires 25 gold per unit. Thus, there is little reason to turn down votes, unless you don't have money, don't want the unit, or want to deny your peers it. For the vote to take place at least to civilizations must be running the Undercouncil civic.

The Undercouncil & It's Resolutions
quoted from Shadow Schedule

Spoiler :

The Council of Esus is run by money, nearly all of its resolutions cost gold from its members. They can vote to declare war on a common enemy, and open borders to each other. There are no restrictive resolutions on the Undercouncil, they never vote to enforce a civic or outlaw anything. The Undercouncil also has several special resolutions:

Enlist the Nightwatch- all players to pay for the resolution gain a few Nightwatch units.

Develop Secret Codes- Technologies can only be traded with other Undercouncil members.

Fund Dissidents- Has a chance to create riots in non Undercouncil cities.

Gambling Ring- reduces the production cost of gambling houses in all your cities.

Slave Trade- All Undercouncil members can buy and sell slaves (in “shadow” the Slavery civic is open to all evil players and isn’t limited just to the Overlords).

Smuggling Ring- Allows access to a new building in coastal cities.

In addition to these resolutions there are the typical open borders, defence pacts, and declaration of war resolutions.

Spreading the Council of Esus

As previously stated, the Council has neither priests nor temples. This is the most striking features in the game. Instead, any unit with the Council of Esus religion can spread it to a city at the cost of 25 gold. To find out if your unit worships Esus, mouseover it's image on the panel in the bottom corner when he is selected. A popup will appear with the unit's information, as well as his religion. Take the unit to a city without the council and the spell should appear. Note that this action does not consume the unit, thus making the Council very easy to spread.

Combatting the Council of Esus

The Council is a formidable opponent. Any outsider, or a non Esus worshipper, cannot tell whom worships the god of Deciet. If you worship any religion other than the Council, you are unable to see it's members, or the cities it is in. The best way to find them is to spread your own religion to them and see if they convert. If not, they are most likley Esus' disciples.

The Sneak Attack

One of the most ipowerful aspect of the council is the Sneak Attack ability. For normal civlizations, when you declare war your units are expelled from your enemies borders. The Council of Esus, however, allows your units to stay where they are when you declare war. Be careful who you open your borders with!

Esus and Recon

Any Recon unit with the Council of Esus religion is given several abilities. Firstly, they are given the ability to steal equipment from other players. Using this ability in a tile with another civilizations' equipment will either give you the iteam or create an automatic declaration of war.

Recon units also gain the mask ability, which gives the caster hidden nationality. The uses of this are obvious.

Unique Units to the Council of Esus

This is an entry quoted from The Shadow Schedule

Spoiler :

The Nightwatch- Poison wielding archer that starts with hidden nationality

Shadowrider- powerful religious national unit (a player is limited to 3) with an affinity for shadow mana who ignores building and terrain defenses when attacking. Shadowriders start with hidden nationality.

Shadow- The shadow unit is no longer open to everyone, instead it is a Council of Esus only national unit.

Gibbon Goetia

The only hero for the council, Gibbon Goetia is arguably the most powerful summoner in the game. Gibbon's main power however, is his Impersonate Leader ability. The ability gives temporary control of the target's civilization to you. The AI takes over yours. You cannot make too drastic changes as Gibbon, but you can move trrops, make basic diplomacy, etc. This has two drawbacks. The AI running your civ will make lots of mistakes, and the duration can last tens of turns. Also, once you return to your original empire, yiou lose Gibbon Goetia.

The next post will describe synergies and strategies of the Council of Esus:

 

The Council of Esus' Synergies and Strategies

Aerons Bounty- The Aeron's Bounty is a guild founded by a level six assasin. It boosts recon experience. Many players find it hard to get a level six unit, but with the mask ability you can pick of your neighbors weak units in relative saftey. Once the guild is built you will have a very strong recon line. This, combined with the Esus abilities (Steal and Mask), allow you to dominate the world with assasins. In addition, the Shadow, a recon esus unit, gets boosted by the guild.

Svaralfar- The Svaralfar are made for Esus. They have the strongest recon unit in the game, thanks to the sinister ability. Imagine your recon starting with sinister, the ability to mask and steal, and the ability to spread your religion. Throw in Aeron's Bounty and your assasins are unstoppable.

Khazak- The Undercouncil is all about money, and that's what the Khazak have. Also, they cannot upgrade past adepts so Gibbon is important. Don't forget Dwarven shadows (Luchurip as well). They can deal collateral damage.

Lanun- Smuggling ports are awesome! They increase your money, and the Lanun should only have coastal cities.

If Neighbors are the Luchurip- The Luchurip World SPell, Gifts of Nantonsuella produces a golden hammer equipment in each of their cities. These hammers boost strength, hurry buildings, and allow units to settle as Great Engineer speacalists. Just think of stealing them all with your pretty recon units with the steal ability.

Balseraphs- The Balseraphs can settle slaves in their cities for happiness. The slave trade undercouncil resolution allows them to purchase slaves for 25 gold. SImply, 25 gold per one happiness. It's almost an exploit!

Archipelago Maps- Annoyed by moving workers to all you islands? Well, the nexus isn't the answer, the slave trade is! Workers in every settlement. Also, the smuggling port will give you a gold boost, and all of your cities should be coastal.

Barbarian Leaders- Ever wanted Acheron's horde but afraid of declaring war on your freinds? Ever wanted that Staff of Souls. Use your stealthy stealing lizardmen to take these artifacts, with much less chance of a war.


Fighting the Overcouncil -Fighting the good overcouncil people is usually rather hard and you will get dogpiled. However your fellow undercouncil members can be excellent targets to attack. The +2 bonus you share along with usually religion allows you to pay people to declare war on them a couple times and still manage friendly/pleased. If borders are forced open it is even easier to invade your comrades. Just watch out for vassals !

Once they are weakened or their troops are out fighting other powers, mask the shadows and cut off iron, horses, etc. Then get everyone in place and declare ! Make sure you do it from the diplomacy menu or you might have the initial attacker kicked out of the borders. After that it's just fun, watch out for adepts but your shadows/assasins can make quick work of them.
(From Ksi)

Amurites-Use their hero to give your HN units Escape. Helps get them out if people start dogpiling them. Their assassins come with it, also wonderful. (KillerClowns)

This section is incomplete! Help by telling me your strategies with the Counicl of Esus.

 

Just something extra nasty that helps me on the higher difficulties (above prince): Fighting the good overcouncil people is usually rather hard and you will get dogpiled. However your fellow undercouncil members can be excellent targets to attack. The +2 bonus you share along with usually religion allows you to pay people to declare war on them a couple times and still manage friendly/pleased. If borders are forced open it is even easier to invade your comrades. Just watch out for vassals !

Once they are weakened or their troops are out fighting other powers, mask the shadows and cut off iron, horses, etc. Then get everyone in place and declare ! Make sure you do it from the diplomacy menu or you might have the initial attacker kicked out of the borders. After that it's just fun, watch out for adepts but your shadows/assasins can make quick work of them.

 

You forgot the most important feature, which is your units don't get expelled from enemy territory when you declare war. Also, I haven't noticed any "mask" ability on recon units.

 

Err, I said the first might because if you first summon a unit and attack it gets kicked out unless you do it from the diplomacy window, bug or not. It might be because I had the summon in the city but declaring war kicked it out instead of attacking. I thought this was understood by "get everyone in place." I apologise if I skipped over it to quickly, i thought everyone reading would know it.

And you need CoE on a recon unit to use mask...I'm not quite sure how you missed it because it means you're missing all the finer aspects of CoE, although I myself have yet to try steal sucessfully.

 

If you are on the same tile as their units or in a city you get kicked (that unit), and the recon unit itself must be CoE, not just your civ (if built in a CoE city, chance to have the religion on unit)

 

Thanks for the replies

@Ksi
Your post has been added to Synergies and Strategies. Thanks!

@Onedreamer
Under Combatting the Council of Esus in the first post, you can find the ability to not be expelled. Hoever, I think it is important enough to garner it's own section.

@ Xienwolf
I like the signature

 

Fun Amurite tip: use their hero to give your HN units Escape. Helps get them out if people start dogpiling them. Their assassins come with it, also wonderful.
EDIT: More detail.
Normally, the weakness of harassing units with the Nightwatch and HN Assassins is that they'll be counterattacked. However, by training your HN units with escape, you can gnaw on the heels of your enemies, picking off weak soldiers, mages, et cetera, and escaping on the same turn, preventing your neighbors from killing them. With such hit and run (hit and teleport?) tactics, you can soon train up a level 6 Chanter for Aeron's Bounty... or soften up your "friend" before an official declaration of war.

 

for lurchip can you buy a slave in every city when you cast the worldspell pick up the hammer then send them to the capital to hurry stuff and hence get all the hammers there and then make them into engineers? This works..

 

one other synergy for Khazad (and Luchuirp too): Dwarven Shadows, only buildable with Council of Esus, deal collateral damage.

 

This may be a bug, but for me the slaves were 10 gold each not 25 gold. On marathon they were giving 45 hammers towards buildings or wonders. Yes I know buildings are not that great in FFH, but it actually became worth it to build up some infrastructure at those rates. I'm tinkering with a semi beeline to deception just to abuse this as much as possible, but I haven't got it down yet.

 

I'm playing the Sidar and I have absolutely no idea how to spread the Council of Esus into my cities. I got a Nightwatch that worships the Council when I researched Deception, and then another one from the Undercouncil. None of the two has the option to spread Council of Esus into a city. They are stationed in different cities and I even tried with declaring nationality with one of them but it didn't help. What am I doing wrong? BTW, the religion was not founded by me.

 

In order to spread the religion it myst be your state relgion

 

So that means wait for it to naturally spread to you, or go conquer a city that already has Esus in it.

 

It would be nice if there were an Undercouncil resolution to add the Council of Esus to everyone's capital city.

 

In order to spread it, you have to make it your state religion, and in order to make it your state religion, you have to have it in at least one of your cities. Doesn't make much sense to me. I hope they'll fix it in future versions. As it is, this is a severe throwback for Council of Esus. I suppose the AI is not capable of recognizing that its units that worship Council of Esus can serve as Disciples? In other words, has anyone ever seen AI spreading Council of Esus in foreign cities?

 

Being within reasonable proximity of the esus shrine can get you the religion unless all your cities already have a religion.

Spreading esus to rivals isn't smart anyway, they might convert. >_>

 

Well, it got spread to one of my cities although the shrine is on the other side of the world. Another problem that I just noticed is that one of my Nightshades lost the Council of Esus religion when I upgraded it to a Ghost. I'll wait for the other Nightshade to finish spreading the religion to all my cities and then try upgrading it into a Shadow to see if it will loose the religion now that Council of Esus is my state religion.

 

Upgrading a unit strips religion from them unless the upgraded form starts with that religion (in which case even if you upgraded from a non-religious unit you would now have it).

 

you forgot about upgrading nightwatches into assassins and rangers which forces CoE religion