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[ArKFallen]

Oh, you're using Ba'als?  Pffft, no worries then.  Just send them off on a blood feast if they get some injuries that actually mean anything.

...or, hell, get a couple acha to sneak alongside them and automatically heal all their afflictions for free, including the stuff like dementia or feebleminding which can make blood feasting difficult.  You have precisely zero worries.

This is a good point that I hadn't considered. Thank you.

[Kagus]

It's easy to forget healers, especially the ones for Hinnom/Gath because there's generally so much other flashy stuff going on that you're focusing on instead of them.  Still though, they're really really nice to have around...  Especially the Acha/Abba, because they're stealthy and can follow armies without ever having to be on the battlefield and thus exposed to danger.  The nature magic also provides supply points, should anyone ever happen to care about that.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, healers can heal their own afflictions. 

[ArKFallen]

EA Hinnom's Acha actually aren't stealthy but with a D booster (can't get natively) or an empower that can be fixed. Thankfully on that front I am way ahead of myself.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, healers can heal their own afflictions. 

Nifty.

[Kagus]

...huh, weird.  I could've sworn they were stealthy.  Ah well, must've just been mixing them up with the LA Abba.


And yeah, I noticed the healer thing when trying to make an SC out of the Bodhisattva (got a hell of a lot going for her, but no fear and terrible protection/health bring her back down.  Also expensive as hell)...  Was trying to use her for expansion actually, where she'd cast air shield and then just sit in front and tank while the humies did the actual killing.  Wasn't half bad at it, despite the fact that she can't kill a damn thing on her own without gear.  She wound up getting a couple booboos, and then suddenly no longer had them since she'd healed herself.

I guess performing open heart surgery on yourself isn't completely ridiculous if you're an enlightened demigod, but still...

[E. Albright]

...or, hell, get a couple acha to sneak alongside them and automatically heal all their afflictions for free, including the stuff like dementia or feebleminding which can make blood feasting difficult.  You have precisely zero worries.

FYI, Dementia is for keepsies ATM. It's bugged, such that neither healers, nor Blood Feasts, nor Gifts of Health, nor even the Chalice can cure it...

[Kagus]

Oh glory, more buggy features...  Y'know, sometimes it feels like I wound up getting the game with some pre-installed community modpack, with all the unprofessionality that entails.


Just reading up a bit on blood magic.  I'd still really really like to put Yomi in on that action, but bootstrapping into blood seems more than just slightly painful...  If only blood had some kinda B1 summonable early commander like the revenant for death, then...  Well, then everybody would use blood, probably.

[ArKFallen]

Oh glory, more buggy features...  Y'know, sometimes it feels like I wound up getting the game with some pre-installed community modpack, with all the unprofessionality that entails.

Probably because (IIRC) 1 programmer (screen name jk.illwinter) and 1 assembler (Kristoffer puts the nations together and tweaks). Also a ton of mechanics built on an old engine and the whole thing isn't their only job.
Personally I probably wouldn't even be willing to play test the dev versions because of how opaque bug-spotting is.

Just reading up a bit on blood magic.  I'd still really really like to put Yomi in on that action, but bootstrapping into blood seems more than just slightly painful...  If only blood had some kinda B1 summonable early commander like the revenant for death, then...  Well, then everybody would use blood, probably.

Maybe. I have my doubts though.
It'd be a whole new tree of research and getting in to it would be expensive income and slave wise. You'd have no native blood crosspaths to access important features. A lot of those crosspaths take B2?1 or B2?2 so that is either go regular blood or double empower a national (60 slaves? 50 for B1, 10/20 B2).

There would be a lot of folks taking blood pretenders and strapping themselves into it I agree. The majority of them will probably get stomped early game though.

[Kagus]

In my recollection it's 50 to empower from 0-1, then 30 to go from 1-2.  And if you can get the hunters taken care of, then empowering other mages really isn't that big a deal, which is probably why they made SDR's only work on commanders who had blood access to start with, since anybody could shoe-in a blood income to start with.

And you can get a lot of usage out of blood even without researching anything in the school.  Construction 2 lets you suit up some soul contracts, which while a bit expensive can be quite handy in some situations, particularly considering the fact that you're gonna hit Cons. 2 anyways for your own reasons.

Oh glory, more buggy features...  Y'know, sometimes it feels like I wound up getting the game with some pre-installed community modpack, with all the unprofessionality that entails.

Probably because (IIRC) 1 programmer (screen name jk.illwinter) and 1 assembler (Kristoffer puts the nations together and tweaks). Also a ton of mechanics built on an old engine and the whole thing isn't their only job.
Personally I probably wouldn't even be willing to play test the dev versions because of how opaque bug-spotting is.

Used to be one guy doing graphics, and one guy doing everything that wasn't graphics.  Is it even the same duo?  I thought I remembered seeing some different names mentioned aside from Kristoffer.  It just seems like the design direction has taken some different curves, stuff like Xibalba and Berytos still really just look like mod nations that some fan put in.  Then again, I thought Agartha was an oddball when they put them in...

[tompliss]

In my recollection it's 50 to empower from 0-1, then 30 to go from 1-2.

Yeap, it's *[new level], except for the first

[E. Albright]

Used to be one guy doing graphics, and one guy doing everything that wasn't graphics.  Is it even the same duo?  I thought I remembered seeing some different names mentioned aside from Kristoffer.  It just seems like the design direction has taken some different curves, stuff like Xibalba and Berytos still really just look like mod nations that some fan put in.  Then again, I thought Agartha was an oddball when they put them in...

That would be the aforementioned JK/KO duo, though they did get someone to write the manual (Eddir) and events (RandomEvents/Erik something). I find the newer nations entirely unsurprising when you consider that the graphics/content half of the team (KO) teaches world religions for a living - Xibalba is firmly rooted in Mesoamerican myth and no more odd than Bandar Log, really - just more exotic to a western audience.

Agartha is totally artificial, though. At this point, they're the only one since Abysia has absorbed trace Zorasterian influences.

[Kagus]

It's more just how Xibalba functions and how ludicrously unbalanced it is at times, and how thematically they're basically just Mictlan again.  I recognize most of the different mythical influences, and I think it's a pretty awesome thing to pull ideas from.

I mean...  Of course I see how Vanheim and Jotunheim are both centered in Norse myth, but they represent two distinct sides in Norse myth, namely the Ęsir/Vanir vs. the giants.  The details are of course quite a bit more complex, but those two sides are specifically and distinctly represented in the original myths.

Xibalba, meanwhile, is...  Mictlan.  It's the mesoamerican underworld, which Mictlan: The Nation already represents with its demonic influences/summons.

I'm less up-to-date on celtic myth, but I believe Fomoria/TNN are another perfectly reasonable pair founded in the same root myth, as they both represent different "sides" and thus embody different aspects of the whole.


It's more the pairs like Vanheim/Helheim that I don't understand, because I don't see how the end nation is really distinct enough from the other to be interesting and I at least can't recall any particularly distinct factions or powers in nordic mythology that Helheim would serve to represent...  Hel was a half-giant daughter of Loki and she pretty much had full say over whatever went on in her domain, so reasonably she'd be associated with Jotunheim (as newly represented by the Draugar summoning spell available to them).

Pangaea/Arcoscephale is another pair I can "get", seeing as they're representing the civilized versus the uncivilized aspects of Greek mythology.  Actually, it's more of a kind of split between Greek myth and Greek history, but still...


Berytos are pretty clearly Phoenecians, and while they're the only ones specifically based on that, there are a lot of overlaps between (what we know of) those beliefs and the other mediterranean legends, and as an in-game nation I really just don't see how they're supposed to stand out.  They're really just Gath with some palette swaps.

[ArKFallen]

Vanheim/Helheim are a little too similar.
EA Xibalba is pretty much Mictlan+Caelum, MA is completely different, and I don't even know with LA. To me Xibalba getting Onaquis (+jaguar unit line) is kind of weird as I think they are jungle-jaguar demons. It is supposed to be a subterranean jungle but I figured a subterranean jungle would be completely different wild life wise.

Berytos are pretty clearly Phoenecians, and while they're the only ones specifically based on that, there are a lot of overlaps between (what we know of) those beliefs and the other mediterranean legends, and as an in-game nation I really just don't see how they're supposed to stand out.  They're really just Gath with some palette swaps.

Gath in the EA. They might play the same (haven't got to them either) but the EA is a whole different ball game compared to LA.

[Il Palazzo]

Agartha is totally artificial, though.

I don't think so. Significant liberties have been taken with the concept, but a world of underground cities and tunnels inhabited by spiritually, technologically and magically advanced beings guarding ancient sleeping entities/ancestors, is something that has been played with in the occult writings of the past century.
There hasn't ever been an established religion related to Agartha, so it fits more into the group of occult/fantasy-based nations similar to the Lovercraftian ones. Still, that's not a thing entirely made up from scratch by the Illwinter guys.

[E. Albright]

Well, it's not an idea created entirely from whole cloth (what is?), but it has no specific parallel in either myth or fiction.

[Kagus]

Similar arguments could be made of Atlantis and Oceania; the idea isn't new, but there's no direct parallel (except, what, The Little Mermaid?).  EA R'lyeh I think takes some inspiration from one of the D&D editions.