[Xtended] New Civs (re)design

esvath

Apprentice of Erebus
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
Messages
1,403
I want to use this thread to gather feedback, ideas, opinions on the new civs: Austrin, Dural, Jotnar, Mazatl, Scions and Aristarkh.

For Scions and Aristarkh, the creators already put some deep thought on them. I guess what left is to make them competitive and unique enough in Xtended. They also rely heavily on python so I don't think I want to change them too much.

For Austrin, Dural, Jotnar and Mazatl, I want to refine their theme; make them even more unique than now and do that in simple ways (as much as possible in xml).

So let's begin our discussion!
===

Austrin

I imagine Austrin as a group of wanderers. They prefer the vast wildernesses instead of cities. They are quite independent and more of a peacelover than warmonger. They prefer recon units but have good assortment of other units in their roster.

Thus, I want to make them as follow:
  • Wanderer trait gives Mobility 1 and Sentry to Recon units, makes their recon units as the most mobile recon in Erebus.
  • Wanderer trait gives good result to Recon units exploring dungeons. For epic lairs (Pyre of Seraphic etc), Austrin recon unit can still get bad result but Wanderer will help them to achieve better result.
  • Austrin settlement (automatically built in any city) will give -50% maintenance, effectively making each city costless.
  • Austrin settlement will give -50% culture as malus, to represent their independent and disunited tribes.
  • Deidra's traits are Trader/Expansive, losing Adaptive. She'll be good for spamming settlers.
  • Sorah and Ecks are Defender (temporary)/Exotic/Adaptive, losing Emergent since with -50% culture, they will have less culture to spend on trait, anyway.

Points to discuss:
  1. Will -50% culture cripple them in early game?
    • maybe change this with city population is limited to 6 or 8?
  2. What's the special point of Exotic? Do you find it useful to create another civ as your team?
  3. I want them to not requiring road to reflect their wandering nature, but that would take Malakim's special characteristic.
------
Aos Si

The idea from @Linvega is to move Summer/Winter split from civ wide mechanic to local cities. So:

  • Aos Si will be able to build Summer Court/Winter Court building in their cities, like District.
  • Leaders will have Summer Lord/Winter Lord trait.
  • Leader with Summer Lord trait will give extra benefits to Summer Court buildings but Winter Court buildings will have penalties (unhappiness?). The same with Winter Lord.
  • Summer/Winter units are tied to their respective Court. So you can build Summer units in Summer Court cities etc.
  • Leader can complete Restoration ritual, losing their Summer/Winter Lord trait and gain Eternal Lord trait, with less bonus from Summer/Winter Court but no penalty from the opposing Court.
    • to complete Restoration ritual, you have to have certain numbers of both Summer and Winter cities, maybe 3 and 3?
  • After achieving Eternal Lord, Leader can build Eternal units and spread Nevernever terrain.
Points to discuss:
  1. Inherent benefits of Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer: turn surrounding tile to grass and forests; extra food and culture; more commerce?
    • Winter: turn surrounding tile to ice, like Illians' temple; extra hammer and mana; more unit support and stronger units?
  2. Summer Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer Lord - Summer Court: happiness.
    • Summer Lord - Winter Court: unhappiness, chance for Winter unit to turn barbarian?
  3. Winter Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Winter Lord - Summer Court: double unhappiness.
    • Winter Lord - Winter Court: extra yield from Winter Court, even stronger units?
------
Dural

Thanks fo @Psychodad's post on the other thread, I have some imagination on Dural. They are seculars, the true liberals like in our world -in the sense that they study and allow any religions in their empire but do not care enough/commit enough in the religious doctrines. Thus:
  • Durals are Agnostics and can not accumulate Faith.
  • Dural will get all religion's Tier 1 techs when they acquire Priests Chapter.
  • Automatically, all religions will present in Dural's capital after adopting Priests Chapter.
  • Because of the inherent conflict between Order and AV, only one will prevail in the capital. This will allow some randomness in Dural gameplays.
  • College of Theology is unlocked at Priests Chapter.
  • Various religious schools are unlocked at Priesthood.
  • Professor requires College of Theology and Dogma.
  • Dural will adopt no State Religion and benefits for each religion present in their cities, so +1 culture from FOL, +1 science from Empyrean etc.

Points to discuss:
  1. Still have no idea on the proper unit roster, though.
  2. I think with the tremendous benefits gained through multiple religions, Students of... should require their respective school. This will give incentive for Dural player to go deep in Priests Chapter.
------
Jotnar

Jotnar is a civ of giants, so it does not make sense that their cities have 1 ring only. I understand that this was to reflect their limited city growth but, again, it just doesn't make any sense. So:
  • Jotnar will have these mechanics:
    • 3 radius cities.
    • Limited or unlimited number of cities?
    • Jotnar citizens consume more food (4? 5? 6?) per population. That will slow their growth.
    • They won't be able to build settlements, though.
 
Last edited:
Jotnar:
I rly like the Jotnar in all Mods where they are implemented. The small Cities, with the spawn of Citizen.
  • The Thing with the small Cities(only radious of 1) should stay. Maybe with more Buildings like "House of the Ancestors", so all cities influenz all other cities. More cities = better cities :) (Spam of many small cities)
  • The Big and Mighty Units should only be availible with spawned Citizen(Or citizen can get on other ways?), but some smaller and weaker units can be build fast maybe for Defence or a war.
  • The Jotnar should be completet Agnostic and with a own Religion of their ancentors maybe.
  • No Siege Engines, only their big Units can Bombade a City
  • The Real Jotnar big Units should be Stronger when they live long.
  • Maybe the small units are rly weak, but dont need the army Support(Dont count as Units), but the Big Units counts and the Jotnar can have less Units total? So that they have some rly scary Big Units and an little army of weak canon food units.
That are my Ideas, hope some will help you.
(Sry for bad english)
greetings from germany
Drackzahn/Aiblis
 
Aristarkh

As someone who has played two Aristarkh games (one from the start, one after switching from Calabim to Aristarkh) in relatively recent versions, I found it interesting to note that the addition of a religion made a -big- difference. Admittedly, the religion in question was the Ashen Veil, which has excellent synergy with fallow civilizations in general.

Regardless of synergy or not, I feel that, as it stands, the Aristarkh's unique features aren't good enough to make up for the lack of a religion. I'm presently not really able to come up with an idea (I need to reinstall the game, for starters!) that grants them some compensation , but I figured it is something I could bring up since I don't recall anyone mentioning this particular aspect before.
 
Last edited:
I want to use this thread to gather feedback, ideas, opinions on the new civs: Austrin, Dural, Jotnar, Mazatl, Scions and Aristarkh.

For Scions and Aristarkh, the creators already put some deep thought on them. I guess what left is to make them competitive and unique enough in Xtended. They also rely heavily on python so I don't think I want to change them too much.

I agree. The core features are already strong, as their backgrounds. The units, buildings and mechanics are very uniques. Scions and Aristarkh (with Jotnar) are one of the best civ creation of the whole FFH2 game in my opinion.

The needed changes would not be important, it's about changing numbers, values, cost etc. I only fear the most interesting changes would not been possible, as it may need technical work that is beyond the possible things.

For exemple, on Aristarkh I think more buildings should rely on having souls, and I think gathering souls should be crucial for them.


For Austrin, Dural, Jotnar and Mazatl, I want to refine their theme; make them even more unique than now and do that in simple ways (as much as possible in xml).

I agree with you, except maybe for Mazalt. I think they are already good and balance as they are. It could be better off course, but it's not far from a very playable civ.

So let's begin our discussion!
===

Austrin

I imagine Austrin as a group of wanderers. They prefer the vast wildernesses instead of cities. They are quite independent and more of a peacelover than warmonger. They prefer recon units but have good assortment of other units in their roster.

Thus, I want to make them as follow:
  • Wanderer trait gives Mobility 1 and Sentry to Recon units, makes their recon units as the most mobile recon in Erebus.
  • Wanderer trait gives good result to Recon units exploring dungeons. For epic lairs (Pyre of Seraphic etc), Austrin recon unit can still get bad result but Wanderer will help them to achieve better result.
  • Austrin settlement (automatically built in any city) will give -50% maintenance, effectively making each city costless.
  • Austrin settlement will give -50% culture as malus, to represent their independent and disunited tribes.
  • Deidra's traits are Trader/Expansive, losing Adaptive. She'll be good for spamming settlers.
  • Sorah and Ecks are Defender (temporary)/Exotic/Adaptive, losing Emergent since with -50% culture, they will have less culture to spend on trait, anyway.

Points to discuss:
  1. Will -50% culture cripple them in early game? No. Guilds are not so much importants.
  2. What's the special point of Exotic? Do you find it useful to create another civ as your team? Fun but useless. Loosing one city is not good. I don't understand the lore idea behind this. I am not opposed, I just don't really understand. At contrary, letting devils invade the world is usefull, as make coming the Angels.
  3. I want them to not requiring road to reflect their wandering nature, but that would take Malakim's special characteristic. Yeah. Their core mechanisms are already very interesting (setting a city from a recon unit, and transfering buildings from a city to another. It would be good if you could create another mechanism : transfering population points from a city to another. Can you ?

Aristarkh :

- About Aristarkh I proposed ideas here. Some would require unpossible technical work, but some are just about balancing (as giving them the science district at Mysticism and not Philosophy) : http://forums.civfanatics.com/threa...rkh-total-war-as-main-ouput-ressource.547873/

Dural :


- No idea. I don't understand their core background. What is the difference between Grigoris and Dural ? Without the background, propositions features is not possible, only balances are.

Jotnar :

- I got ideas about them. I love their background, and I see it well (contrary to Austrin, Malakim or Dural for exemple).

- First, I hate the reduction of city radius. I think it's stupid because giants should take some spaces (are they a hobbit race who cultivate apples and melons ? lol), I don't like to have to spam cities to exploit more land. You build some city altrought you are a hord of giants... bah. I think Jotnar should be a kind of Kuriotate, but without limit on their cities, except that their cities need some space between them, so it would not been possible to really spam cities. Something like cases minimum between each city.

- Settlers should cost a lot more of hammer (double more hammers).

- I would find interesting if Jotnar could have stronger fortress (with more defense value inside). It would help them controling the map.

- The conquered city should be transformed in pure advant post, as the Kuriotate do. For the simple reason that Jotnar cannot exploit and live in the buildings, in the streeet, of these tiny beings called humans. These city would only give trade bonus, and strategic/luxuries bonus (as the Kuriotate do so).

- What do you think of these ideas ?
 

As someone who has played two Aristarkh games (one from the start, one after switching from Calabim to Aristarkh) in relatively recent versions, I found it interesting to note that the addition of a religion made a -big- difference. Admittedly, the religion in question was the Ashen Veil, which has excellent synergy with fallow civilizations in general.

Regardless of synergy or not, I feel that, as it stands, the Aristarkh's unique features aren't good enough to make up for the lack of a religion. I'm presently not really able to come up with an idea (I need to reinstall the game, for starters!) that grants them some compensation , but I figured it is something I could bring up since I don't recall anyone mentioning this particular aspect before.

I agree that Aristarkh need some small buffs. But allowing them to found a religion wouldnt make sense lorewise in my opinion. I have a hard time imagining some undead skeletons worshiping any god. Religion is more a thing for humans.
Just making some building be unlocked with other techs, giving +1 of something to a thing here and there would make them a competitive and flavorful civ.
 
I haven't played them so far, but from lore one idea I had about the Dural was tech-sharing. Basically, if you're Dural and you have open borders with another civ, you automatically have an easier time researching their techs and vice-versa. Maybe even set an auto-research into techs. It really fits their lore very well imo as they emphasize "the achievements of all"/"glory of mankind", etc. . After all, they have free colleges from lore.

The main problem I see with that is that Durals have so many tech bonuses that they probably are faster than the other anyway, so the others profit more from it. But this can be balanced of in a way that even turns it into a playstyle: Just let the Dural create gold in their capital which is proportional to the tech research other civs get from them. That way, the Dural are especially interested in finding all other civs as fast as possible and are interested in staying friendly with them, even the far-off ones you'd normally not care about.
 
For Austrin, the -50% culture will really hurt them in getting guild techs. If you're set on the mechanic, is there any way to keep the 50% only on city culture while empire cultures remains unaffected?
 
For Austrin, the -50% culture will really hurt them in getting guild techs. If you're set on the mechanic, is there any way to keep the 50% only on city culture while empire cultures remains unaffected?
I agree that -50% culture will hurt them, especially in cultural expansion and guild. I am not set on this mechanic, I just want to put their "scattering, wandering tribe" flavour to gameplay but have not found anything useful or interesting.

Here is another idea for Austrin:

City has population limit of 8. Thus, it is better for Austrin to have lots of cities but they will never grow them big.
  • I can make a "spell" which "export" food from one city to another but I am 100% sure that the AI won't understand it, so I don't think I will.
  • This feels similar to Jotnar (small cities scattering all over). But maybe Jotnar should have Sprawling trait instead? It does not make sense for Giants to have tiny cities. So, maybe limited population and 1-ring cities for Austrin and Sprawling but lower growth for Jotnar (they consume more food)?
 
- First, I hate the reduction of city radius. I think it's stupid because giants should take some spaces (are they a hobbit race who cultivate apples and melons ? lol), I don't like to have to spam cities to exploit more land. You build some city altrought you are a hord of giants... bah. I think Jotnar should be a kind of Kuriotate, but without limit on their cities, except that their cities need some space between them, so it would not been possible to really spam cities. Something like cases minimum between each city.

I play Jotnar almost exclusively recently.

Assume the Jotnar do not like crowded places, bustling cities etc. They have a big capital, but other cities are more like settlements, with not more than a few big 'uns living there (hence a limit of 8 per city). I would say that limit might be a little too high (6 would be fine imho).

- Settlers should cost a lot more of hammer (double more hammers).

After a couple of Jotnar Citizens are born, you cannot produce any units (as support is lacking), so any settler has to come form your limited pool of citizens (costing money and losing potentially experienced giant). Limiting Settler production any more would serve no purpose imho.

One of the valid strategies is keep pumping settlers out until you reach unit limit (thus saving your citizens).

- I would find interesting if Jotnar could have stronger fortress (with more defense value inside). It would help them controling the map.

- The conquered city should be transformed in pure advant post, as the Kuriotate do. For the simple reason that Jotnar cannot exploit and live in the buildings, in the streeet, of these tiny beings called humans. These city would only give trade bonus, and strategic/luxuries bonus (as the Kuriotate do so).

Great ideas and make sense! Conquered cities should become settlements, with all buildings that survived the conquest intact?
 
City has population limit of 8. Thus, it is better for Austrin to have lots of cities but they will never grow them big.
  • This feels similar to Jotnar (small cities scattering all over). But maybe Jotnar should have Sprawling trait instead? It does not make sense for Giants to have tiny cities. So, maybe limited population and 1-ring cities for Austrin and Sprawling but lower growth for Jotnar (they consume more food)?

Great ideas!

Tiny cities (normal 2-ring worktiles) for Austrin
Big cities with 3 worktiles but slooooow to grow (as them giants have big appetities).

Soo many options :)


PS. I just love that MoM is alive!
 
What
I agree that -50% culture will hurt them, especially in cultural expansion and guild. I am not set on this mechanic, I just want to put their "scattering, wandering tribe" flavour to gameplay but have not found anything useful or interesting.

Here is another idea for Austrin:

City has population limit of 8. Thus, it is better for Austrin to have lots of cities but they will never grow them big.
  • I can make a "spell" which "export" food from one city to another but I am 100% sure that the AI won't understand it, so I don't think I will.
  • This feels similar to Jotnar (small cities scattering all over). But maybe Jotnar should have Sprawling trait instead? It does not make sense for Giants to have tiny cities. So, maybe limited population and 1-ring cities for Austrin and Sprawling but lower growth for Jotnar (they consume more food)?

- Your idea to take the limited city radius from Jotnar to Austrin is great. It make sens. It's not a city, it's more a campement. But Austrin should be limited in these campement, because spamming campement near from each others, it's not campement (it's the phenomen I always hated on the Jotnar). 6 cases to separate each cities at minimum it's ok for Austrin (they are humans).

- As you know, to me Jotnar should have access to +1 city radius in all of their cities. With a minimum distance between cities of 10 cases. I think playing with less cities is funnier. Easier. That's why Kuriotates are, I think, loved by players for their simplicity.

- I regreat that you don't plan to make population transfear available, because the A.I don't know how to use it. The A.I do not need it to be competent with Austrin. As the A.I does not need to use "Prepare Expedition" ritual to use Austrin well. It's hard to reflect the nomadic nature of the Austrin if you cannot transfear buildings from a city to a new, or citizens. I like this idea for the lore, and I find it great for the fight, as you could imagine you empty a city which is under threat of on ennemy : you leave the buildings, then the pop. It would require few turns to do it off course.

- Your idea of more food consumption for Jotnar is very logical. +2 consummed per population (maybe +1 only ?). It may be too much, I don't really realise. But I think it's possible, farm give some food.
 
I disagree with distance limits. I don't like this concept at all.

the issue with forcing small cities with small pop is that MoM works heavily on cultural level... and thus on population.
to focus gold, or spellresearch or beakers you have some buildings that works on the pop/cultural level.

alternatively, a way to balance cities of limited size would be to propose that Austrin get 50% on district buildings (or on other district-like buildings)

random ideas to compensate minus culture on city (which seems interesting):
why not have Austrin settlement start at 10 culture (so it's as long as other to get to 2rings),
have Austrin gain global culture through exploration ? : by killing units (aka bard) / by exploring lairs / by exploring unique features.. ? / map trading etc + or get +5 global culture/turn/unit outside of border ??? (etc)
or they get stable city /global culture income for the following actions : peace with a country /contact with a country (+1/turn/city/known country) / +culture per external trade route / + culture by knowing/owning unique feature

An interesting effect for Austrin would be to transfer pop : use the old civ2-3 settlers features a specific settler (or spell) removes 2 pop from a city and can resettled it into another city as a +2pop, works only for city size smaller than 8. (so you can push for cities size 10, but not push megalopolis)

another thing for Austrin re-"many small cities" would be to allow a special road: "trail" : buildable by worker or by scout : connects ressource / connects cities : doesn't change movement (or it might be a special spell, auto casted if needed-so that it doesn't consume movment points)
Or allow Austrins to get an early "aerial commerce" with gryphon/hawks/whatever to make contact between the cities.
 
The idea of distance limit is crucial to feat with the settlement, nomadic, idea. If you don't do that, you will have one city radius but spammed everywhere, so your civ will look like any other civ, with close cities, but with one radius.

It can look extreme but I see only that. As the one city radius is pretty logical too to reflet the idea of a settlement.
 
I played an Aos Si game recently and imo while their court mechanic is great in theory, in practice it plays out a bit bland.

The main culprit is fast to find: The winter court sucks. Well, there are fringe cases were you temporary MIGHT want to change into it, but in the average game, you won't change into it except for the eternal court. So since you'll play Summer/eternal court most of the game, this makes your games turn out very similar to other civs, except that you don't need to care about terrain because everything turns into flowers and unicorns.

The reason for this is that being fallow without other ways to grow is such a huge disadvantage that almost nothing can make up for it. Any civ wants to grow, that's just the best way to play. On top of that, +20% maintenance hurts a lot, too. There are thus three propositions I have for them: The easy way, the cool way and the awesome way(the names might be somewhat subjective).

The easy way:
Intuitively, one might consider simply buffing the winter court. However, everything that doesn't allow growth will still be meh, and allowing growth goes against the lore. So, I won't allow growth, but otherwise buff it tremendously & give the faeries a "mini-spiritual" trait that allows you to change between the courts without anarchy.
I'd take away the +maintenance, give the winter court +mana per city culture, fitting into the lore of both the faeries and the moon being tied to magic, and allow the ice to spread even beyond your borders into enemy terrain, so that it allows some indirect warfare and makes direct war easier.
All in all, this will make the winter court overall stronger than the summer court, but if you want to expand and grow, you will have to use the summer court. This way, on almost every turn, changing between them is an important gameplay decision where it's often not 100% obvious which one is "the right one" in the current situation. Even in war, it might be smarter to choose the summer court if your opponent is using lots of fire magic and/or is so far away that the spread of your ice doesn't affect them and even in peace, the winter court might be better if you don't expand anyway and need some extra mana.

The cool way:
This is obviously harder to implement, but make the winter/summer court per city instead of per civ. This also fits the lore well with both "tribes" being torn with each other, in some cities the winter court is in power, in some it's the summer court, and it can change. It also makes choosing where to put which and when to change courts in a city an important decision. Making the eternal court city-wise wouldn't fit lore though, so that should stay a civic.

The awesome way:
If the other ways make the Aos Si more interesting, then what makes them even more interesting? Right, both!
Make them start with the "War of the Courts" civic, where you need to have at least 30% of your cities with the summer court and 30% in the winter court. Upon building the restoration of the respective courts, you can choose the "old" civics which work as descripted, maybe slightly buffed so that people don't permanently stay in "the war of the courts" civic. At any point, you can change between these three civics with your "mini-spiritual" trait. Of course, in the end, the eternal court will be best, but that comes late enough. I especially like this because right now the restoration of the winter/summer court is something you only do to get access to the eternal court, this way it would be something that is good in it's own right.

And now for something completely different:
Nobody likes tech sharing for the Dural? :(
 
Last edited:
For Dural:
Two kinds of units:
1) Buildable in cities - 1-2 units for defence and scout. Simple, weak - conscripts or militia.
2) UB - some like "Guild of the nine" in other versions of this mod - offer to you some random units of other civs like mercenaries.
 
have Austrin gain global culture through exploration ? : by killing units (aka bard) / by exploring lairs / by exploring unique features.. ?
This is doable and I think fits their flavour as explorers.

The idea of distance limit is crucial to feat with the settlement, nomadic, idea.
I think the distance between cities is global, for all civs. It is impossible to make unique restriction to a civ.

make the winter/summer court per city instead of per civ.
Actually, this is very easy to implement. Just make two buildings: Winter Court and Summer Court respectively, each with their own unique effects. Then, tied all faeries units to their respective courts. Done.
Now, what are the effects of Winter and Summer Courts as buildings?
- Winter Court
--- transform surrounding to Ice, like Illians' White Hand temple.
--- gives extra mana and hammer per population?
- Summer Court
--- transform surrounding to Grass.
--- gives extra culture?

If this is the route that I will take, I tend to make Winter Faeries stronger than Summer to compensate the fact that Summer cities will be better cities than Winter ones.
This idea from the other thread is nice:

maybe Winter court could get a further bonus / incentive ?
(+spell research ? +faith ? increased culture ? can summon frostling/ice-golems/yetis/cyclopes ? / access to GE "freezing" ? / all units have a "frost aura" : give to ennemies sensitive to ice damage + chance of slow to the stake + chance of "frostbite": -10health/turn) ...Etc :
something to compensate :
-the fact that you don't get any growth at all for none of your cities (even Illians, the civ of immobilism grows better than winter court !).



Then, after completing Restoration, the courts will be automatically changed into Eternal Court and the cities will be able to build Eternal units and spread Nevernever.

And now for something completely different:
Nobody likes tech sharing for the Dural?
Personally, I am not sure if that is doable code-wise and I am pessimist that AI will understand it.
 
Last edited:
Actually, this is very easy to implement. Just make two buildings: Winter Court and Summer Court respectively, each with their own unique effects. Then, tied all faeries units to their respective courts. Done.
Now, what are the effects of Winter and Summer Courts as buildings?
- Winter Court
--- transform surrounding to Ice, like Illians' White Hand temple.
--- gives extra mana and hammer per population?
- Summer Court
--- transform surrounding to Grass.
--- gives extra culture?

If this is the route that I will take, I tend to make Winter Faeries stronger than Summer to compensate the fact that Summer cities will be better cities than Winter ones.

Then, after completing Restoration, the courts will be automatically changed into Eternal Court and the cities will be able to build Eternal units and spread Nevernever.
If you're tying it to buildings, then you can't change it after you have already build one, or am I wrong? I'd like being able to change both for gameplay reasons and for lore reasons. And is something like fallow even possible for a single city?
Also, making summer cities stronger and winter units stronger sounds balanced, but I fear it might pigeonhole the winter court exclusively into unit-producing cities, while for everything else, you'll still want the summer court. Though if you combine that with some hostile ice spread or an war aura around the cities it might end up equal, where both your unit-production cities and your border cities will be winter court. Extra mana/spell research is also a good idea, since spell cities aren't based on pop anyway, which is obviously synergetic with the winter court.
It would be really too bad if you end up having only one winter city in your entire realm or something like that.

Personally, I am not sure if that is doable code-wise and I am pessimist that AI will understand it.

I actually have that idea from another mod, so it should be doable in principle, though I unfortunately don't know anything about the coding myself. One of the nice things about it is that the AI doesn't need to explicitely understand it since it's happening automatically, it just needs to be adjusted so that it is strongly inclined to explore & have open borders with as many civs as possible, and that it has a strong focus into scientific advancement.
 
If you're tying it to buildings, then you can't change it after you have already build one, or am I wrong? I'd like being able to change both for gameplay reasons and for lore reasons. And is something like fallow even possible for a single city?
  • Fallow in a city is impossible.
  • You can not change the existing building, so once City A is a Winter city, it remains that way. But, coding-wise, I can change the cities by python only on special occasion to prevent lag.

Aos Si


Aos Si will be able to build Summer Court/Winter Court building in their cities, like District.
  • Leaders will have Summer Lord/Winter Lord trait.
  • Leader with Summer Lord trait will give extra benefits to Summer Court buildings but Winter Court buildings will have penalties (unhappiness?). The same with Winter Lord.
  • Summer/Winter units are tied to their respective Court. So you can build Summer units in Summer Court cities etc.
  • Leader can complete Restoration ritual, losing their Summer/Winter Lord trait and gain Eternal Lord trait, with less bonus from Summer/Winter Court but no penalty from the opposing Court.
    • to complete Restoration ritual, you have to have certain numbers of both Summer and Winter cities, maybe 3 and 3?
  • After achieving Eternal Lord, Leader can build Eternal units and spread Nevernever terrain.
Points to discuss:
  1. Inherent benefits of Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer: turn surrounding tile to grass and forests; extra food and culture; more commerce?
    • Winter: turn surrounding tile to ice, like Illians' temple; extra hammer and mana; more unit support and stronger units?
  2. Summer Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer Lord - Summer Court: happiness.
    • Summer Lord - Winter Court: unhappiness, chance for Winter unit to turn barbarian?
  3. Winter Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Winter Lord - Summer Court: double unhappiness.
    • Winter Lord - Winter Court: extra yield from Winter Court, even stronger units?
 
Last edited:
  • Fallow in a city is impossible.
  • You can not change the existing building, so once City A is a Winter city, it remains that way. But, coding-wise, I can change the cities by python only on special occasion to prevent lag.
Aos Si

Aos Si will be able to build Summer Court/Winter Court building in their cities, like District.
  • Leaders will have Summer Lord/Winter Lord trait.
  • Leader with Summer Lord trait will give extra benefits to Summer Court buildings but Winter Court buildings will have penalties (unhappiness?). The same with Winter Lord.
  • Summer/Winter units are tied to their respective Court. So you can build Summer units in Summer Court cities etc.
  • Leader can complete Restoration ritual, losing their Summer/Winter Lord trait and gain Eternal Lord trait, with less bonus from Summer/Winter Court but no penalty from the opposing Court.
  • After achieving Eternal Lord, Leader can build Eternal units and spread Nevernever terrain.
Points to discuss:
  1. Inherent benefits of Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer: turn surrounding tile to grass and forests; extra food and culture; more commerce?
    • Winter: turn surrounding tile to ice, like Illians' temple; extra hammer and mana; more unit support and stronger units?
  2. Summer Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Summer Lord - Summer Court: happiness.
    • Summer Lord - Winter Court: unhappiness, chance for Winter unit to turn barbarian?
  3. Winter Lord trait's effects on Summer and Winter Courts?
    • Winter Lord - Summer Court: double unhappiness.
    • Winter Lord - Winter Court: extra yield from Winter Court, even stronger units?

I like the Summer/Winter Lord idea! Though the penalties shouldn't be to big, so that every leader still has reasons to build the opposing court.
1. Summer: I don't think the Summer court needs much extra, gaining grass tiles already is a huge boon. Maybe a bit extra culture, but that's it.
Winter: without fallow, you'll need some big advantages to make up for the low amount of food. I'd give +1 food, +1 mana per ice tile or something like that so that your cities can grow at least a little. Just something, ice tiles are just so damn bad. Otherwise, +1 unit support and a small amount of free hammers sounds good, though I still like hostile ice spread and/or war auras that buff your units around the city.
2. Happiness vs Unhappiness sounds good, turning winter units barbarian doesn't since building units is one of the main draws of winter cities, if you interfere with that summer lords can easily end up having no more reason to build winter cities. Maybe give the summer courts some extra culture from the summer court.
3.Unhappiness is already bad enough since you specifically build summer cities to make them big. I'd give winter lords extra hammers and mana from the winter court itself so that winter cities can compensate better for being smaller.

And while we're talking about leader anyway: Make water and mind mana more useful for the faeries. Right now, they just have so much synergy with nature mana that it's clearly superior, making both other leaders somewhat weak. Winter courts should give extra mana and hammers for each water mana, summer courts extra food and culture for nature mana, and the eternal courts extra food, hammers, culture AND mana for each Mind Mana. That would make them balanced.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom