The Legion of D'Tesh (Civilization Module)

[Mailbox]

Yeah I am glad you agreed D'Tesh should be more isolated than other leaders, his game plan for the world is probably worse than Hyborem's/Agares (at least they have a use for souls).

Yeah, the end game for the Legion is a bleak Erebus. One without life and with only a few sentient beings left to herd the huge legions (heh) of undead. Honestly I don't know what D'Tesh would do at that point, although he'd probably be content to lord over the ruins of Erebus.

Well, svartalfar suicided their hero against him while he was out exploring [did an advanced start, so...]. It took me until a barbarian came and took the Mirror off the ground because I didn't want to declare war with them [I had a BIG ljos that hated me right next door, and I had my hands full] to fianlly take it from the barbarians. Once I did that, I waited a while... and finally casted Mirror just to see what it would do. My other units weren't able to use it, and I was actually surprised when the spell showed up at ALL on him [I'd been using it as a trophy. ] The very next turn... I noticed he was in the capital. When I clicked on him, I saw the illussion promotion, and noticed that there was still a full-health D'Tesh back where I'd left him. So I deleted the spare, thinking it was a bug. And then I cast Mirror again, same thing happened... the next turn when it expired it showed up at the capital. I left it there this time to see what happened, and next turn it "died" and popped back up, still injured. So I cast the spell on the real hero, and the next turn there were two. The next turn there were three, and so on until I stopped casting the spell every turn. I finally quit that game when I had thirty D'Tesh with combat 5, ready to spam either wraiths or skeletons if enemies showed up.

Yeah, that definitely sounds like a bug between the black mirror and bImmortal. You keep finding these exploits pretty quickly. Looks like I'll get my polish on sooner than I thought.

 

[deadliver]

Yeah, the end game for the Legion is a bleak Erebus. One without life and with only a few sentient beings left to herd the huge legions (heh) of undead. Honestly I don't know what D'Tesh would do at that point, although he'd probably be content to lord over the ruins of Erebus.

I guess that is what really makes him insane. Probably he would try to screw with the gods next, assuming they still exist after D'Tesh has sucked the soul out of Erebus.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

I see one VERY OBVIOUS flaw, but I didn't think it needed to be said...

Horses. They have a mounted line, but they don't have access to pastures. So they would have to trade for them.... and let's face it. Trade is NOT something that the D'Tesh seem like they'd be willing to do. Unless they got lucky and conquered someone with horses allready pastured, in which case they'd just have to not ash it.....

Oh and that reminds me, the workers? Don't automate worth a !@#!@#. In fact, I didn't see them build any graveyards or pyres on their own. And btw, graveyards don't seem capable of being pillaged, so if you later find a resource under one... tough luck, you ain't getting it without worldbuildering it off, which I had to do to get access to mana on more then one occassion with the easily exploitable repeatable Rites of Oghma... which I built once per turn in my HUGELY populated Spire for ten turns in a row. XD Had 20something death mana, pluss four metamagic mana just for the heck of it... not to mention that if I'm reading this right, my many Ashes ended up giving me a 75% discount on tech.

Oh, and that? Was on a SMALL map. I'd hate to see what mass spam Rites of Oghma could do on a big map.... 100/100 warriors anyone?

 

[deadliver]

I had pastures in my game for both sheep and horses using captured workers and slaves. It does bug me that you cannot later raise dead from graveyards (probably just an oversight or code snafu) as I could see D'Tesh *storing* corpses for later use. I have not had a problem with automated workers until I get a couple of cities, then they tend to mill around it seems. In my first game they automated graveyards but not mines as often.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

Oh wow I didn't think of that. Nevermind, no problem there then, that works fine and fits flavor-wise. And YOU need to find a few bugs now, don't make me do all the work deadliver!

 

[deadliver]

Yeah gives a use for all those slaves. Apparently people are not that interested in trading pearls for a pile of stinking ash (trust me, i've tried!) heh heh. Looks like D'Tesh may be lacking in certain people skills.

 

[Mailbox]

I could give the Palace nightmares instead of fire mana. Rites of Oghma spam + death spam is
perfectly fine in my opinion. It's late enough in the game to be fair game. If you have 75 resources under your control then you're definitely winning, although I admit that it probably doesn't scale that well with map size.

I didn't realize graveyards weren't pillagable, I can fix that easily.

 

[deadliver]

Naw Mailbox, I would require D'Tesh to have an economy of some sort beyond , the mana makes more sense IMHO. He already needs to mine metal, why not also include horses (and nightmares later).

If you are thinking about getting rid of Fire mana, perhaps replace it with law? Law mana is not necessarily only a Good mana type right? All it would really do is decrease maintenance. That could be relevant as D'Tesh strikes me as a God King kinda guy.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

HOLY... I just tested a... different approach.
City states, lots of little cities, then built ALL cities including the capital up equally. I had twelve cities at level ten pumping out their warriors one every two turns [except in high-production cities where it was every turn] and their Binders one every four turns... PER CITY. Twelve cities on a small map pumping out slavery-enabled warriors. Overran the bannor and Os-Gabbella on my way to the Khzad..... And that was before I even GOT necromancy. XD Seriously, these guys are both over and underpowered, depending on how you look at them. They require ALOT more micro then I'm ussually willing to use though because their workers don't build graveyards OR pyres while automated....

Oh, and my economy? Even with sixty combat units, I was still making nearly 100 gold per turn AND had about 200 science going....

On marathon game speed. That was without truly exploiting the slave thing, I just NOW got that passed in the undercouncil.... Aggressive barbarians smashing against my city walls to give me plenty of slaves.

 

[deadliver]

Mailbox, the AI tends to buff up their capital and then settle like crazy BUT does not settle their non-capital cities. It does use slaves to work the territory and also does build Watchers. Can you tweak the AI to use slaves to add to cities instead of working? BTW D'Tesh was still scary in terms of civ score,great people generation and total territory but each of his cities (except capital) only had a size of one. On a positive note the AI did have at least 5 warriors per city.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

is being able to build settlers a bug? i thought i read somewhere you intended for them not to build cities. I wat to build settlers, but not if its not the intention.
Also, I dont get it... is there a way to war before necromancy?
The infused ash effect is happening, but it is not displaying correctly in the city screen as a science multiplier.
binders are epic.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

Yeah there's a good way to war before necromancy... Spammed warriors. They are weak, true...... But if you have enough small cities you will be getting a killer amount of them. Especially if you keep the amount of population per city fairly ballanced. Then once you get enough slaves from conquest, or make sure your nearest enemies are a wasteland of 1 pop desert-filled cities... you can move all your population to your capital and start building up science or commerce like mad. Or hell, keep it spread out and just spread your workers thinner.

 

[Valkrionn]

I love the Watcher..... Hadn't even considered it at first, but because scorch now spreads floodplains, river Food resources are AMAZING for the D'tesh. Build a pyre, and you've got 7 without any of the techs to increase the yields.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

Valk, i believe that the pyre needs to be built on a food RESOURCE, not SOURCE. good try though.
Also, the spammed warriors werent enough, but thosee binders are EPIC. I quite literally beelined KotE (now searching necromancy) and they are just awesome. I scorched the cualli to nothing while waiting to ave enough binders to catpure their capital, and it was a race to the finish from there. Catacomb Libralus is a REALLY good idea right?

 

[Mailbox]

is being able to build settlers a bug? i thought i read somewhere you intended for them not to build cities. I wat to build settlers, but not if its not the intention.

They can build settlers now since I changed my mind from the older versions.

The infused ash effect is happening, but it is not displaying correctly in the city screen as a science multiplier.

This is a bug that is native to both FF and FFH2.

Mailbox, the AI tends to buff up their capital and then settle like crazy BUT does not settle their non-capital cities. It does use slaves to work the territory and also does build Watchers. Can you tweak the AI to use slaves to add to cities instead of working? BTW D'Tesh was still scary in terms of civ score,great people generation and total territory but each of his cities (except capital) only had a size of one. On a positive note the AI did have at least 5 warriors per city.

I'm not quite ready to do AI tweaks but I can give the Add to City spell a higher AI weight so that the AI will cast it.

Catacomb Libralus is a REALLY good idea right?

Yeah, it's definitely a wonder with a lot of synergy with the Legion.

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

Valk, i believe that the pyre needs to be built on a food RESOURCE, not SOURCE. good try though.

He said resource, not source.

Anyways, about the warriors, it's a difference of concept.. Use them to fight skirmishes, don't worry about the cities for a while. Once you get KoTE then yeah go for the cities, but only worry about, unless you WANT it for the resources nearby, 4+ cities. You have to leave at least 2 population in an enemy city so that they can recapture it without risking destroying it, then you just wait for it to hit population 4+ again... recapture, take a pop as slave, leave it at 2 undeffended. If you happen to find an enemy that's blocked inside a canyon... you have yourself a population farm. Just keep assaulting it's armies for slaves, then capturing it's cities one at a time... and if complete kills is on, capture all their cities, drain them to 2, then leave then repeat a couple "decades" later. I had a Calabim in a canyon my last game. With Loooots of food resources in there with them. I bottlenecked them in early, taking a risk that there might just be another entrance... And it turned out later I got lucky. XD

My capital is now 318 population, with a few pop 10 cities here and there... and I still don't have necromancy. And I didn't get kote until... Well, about ten turns ago.

 

[Valkrionn]

Valk, i believe that the pyre needs to be built on a food RESOURCE, not SOURCE. good try though.

river Food resources

Umm, what? I believe that's what I said.......

 

[BenjaminEmbarec]

That's what I told him.

 

[Valkrionn]

Haha, hadn't scrolled down all the way yet when I posted that.

Just tried them out. I was having a lot of fun with them, until I got to Undercouncil and could buy slaves... Too unbalancing after that point.

 

[Mailbox]

I'll upload my latest version, I need someone to test my undercouncil fix.

Got it uploaded.