In Disciples series, each capital city has a special defender unit(eternal guardian) whose power is equivalent to FE wildland boss, guardian cannot leave capital city.
My idea is:
Remove the settle ability from sovereign. Have each game start with already built level 1 capital city on 4 food and material tile. Capital city has only eternal guardian as a defender, other cities that player builds with pioneers will have normal militia defense.
How would this improve the game?
1.Equally starting conditions for all players(4 food and material)
2.No more bad starting conditions(4 food and material)
3.No more early defeats by monsters(eternal guardian)
4.You can release much nastier monsters in the world knowing that at least capital cities will survive(eternal guardian)
5.All players become immune to early rushing(eternal guardian)
6.Epic capital city battles, to take an enemy capital city you'd have to have enough firepower to take out a wildland boss
7.Increased faction differentiation, each faction should have a different eternal guardian. For example: an enormous black onyx spider for Resoln,
giant golden golem for Gilden...
8.More competitive AI, no more cheesy AI surrenders while their capital city remains
9.Non military victory conditions become more viable. Currently, easiest way to win is to rush and crush AI players. Eternal guardian slows down rushing and crushing, giving more time to AI players to become stronger thus making other victory options more viable.
10.Capital city would become something very special, a beacon of hope in a very dangerous world...
I was thinking along the same lines in regard to starting city quality. The splash screen says you've been searching for years... so give us a city spot that will let your main city get to level 5 regardless of starting spot. That will be good for the turtler strategy.
Let the capital city be a prize any vassal sovereign brings with them... as well as a random chance for 2-3 techs or access to that races special weapon or armor type.
It would be great if unit traits could be unlocked by quest or research as well, to create cooler advanced units later in the game.
Or an Elite troop level that unlocks a fourth trait spot... could be part of a Sov ability.
An guardian the strength of an ogre would be enough. If not its gamey in my opinion.
Great idea it is. This would prevent AI faillure to defend their capitol citiy, early problems with monsters, give a lot of originality to every faction and prevent AI factions to be totally wiped out before mid to late game. I would see these guardians like demi-gods protecting their factions and they would fit into the lore (after the fall of the world, 8 demi gods rose and put their trust into promising lords to rebuild the world!). Even better, this idea would lead to more original diplomatic choices: after crushing a faction and grabbing their outskirt cities, you would need to turn to diplomacy until you are truly ready to finish them, or even seek their help later in the game to crush more developped factions. I hope this gets implemented!
The guardian could scale somewhat with the city you are defending. Imho, it needs to scale with the city to make sure that players that choose to focus on 1 city instead of 10 are not punished for that.
I kinda like the fact that you are in danger early game, and a demi-god defender would be over the top. A guardian unit (maybe one pr level of the city) is ok, but not a unit that makes you certain that the city is safe.
To be honest, i don't want an "eternal guardian".
i would much rather have some militia units that scale with the tech i have unlocked. They should have the appropriate blunt weapon, armour and group size that I have researched. It would be nice to have a choice of milita buildings that could add an additional unit or two that use different weapon mixes such as piercing or cutting melee and a ranged option for elemental or piercing damage. Some factionss couls have a special unit such as spider or ogre squad, gilden could make some golems etc. Anyways, its impossible to say anything until the next beta iteration when they change the city landscape.
I would also much rather see Militia scale by a combination of buildings and tech. Nothing is free in 4X games.
Thematically the story could go:
A nameless hero had managed to gain control over a lesser elemental spirit(similar to a wild-land boss) by merging his soul with the spirit. Hero became the sovereign, a living demigod, then he used his power to create a new civilization and he bound the spirit to become the eternal guardian taking the physical form that reflected sovereigns soul, eternal guardian was tasked to forever guard the heart(capital city) of his civilization. Sovereign/Guardian/Capital are one...
More mechanics:
1. Guardian could rise in power with level of the city.
2. City level up perks that give new traits to the guardian.
3.When a player defeats a wild-land boss his guardian absorbs some of his power. For example, after defeating Vetrar, guardian gets cold resistance and more hit-points.
4.There could be a high level spell(in the magic tech tree) that enables the player to summon his guardian when he is attacking another sovereigns capital city. Imagine two wild-land bosses duking it out and mix with that normal units, heroes and spells....you get epic awesomeness.
Sounds like an idea that is worth dwelling on.
Granting a 4/4 city to all players at the beginning sounds in the right direction. Making this prime piece of fertile, productive urban land a tough nut to crack is also desirable. I'm not sure the eternal guardian is the perfect solution - I'd lean more towards the ideas of this sister thread - but the issue is totally to the point.
I'm with those who favor improving militia and more options for improving them than some "Eternal Guardian". The EG simply doesn't fit with the game as well, imo.
As for the 4/4 start... well, there are other ways one city can be better or worse, such as access to a river or forest. I kinda like how things stand where I get to drop the city where I please. Perhaps instead the first city would increase tile Grain and Material to a minimum of 4? Since the highest is 5 there would be a scant few locations slightly better than the average, but overall the game would start on even ground compared to now.
If I recall correctly, it's not very hard to spawn a specific resource near a start location, at least it wasn't in EWOM. If you really want to, I'm sure you could mod it so the start loc always spawn with a food resource and a clay pit nearby, which essentially turns it into a very good city. I just don't think they (Brad & Stardock) want to over emphasize the capitol. There are some who likes it that way, and there are some who prefers being able to find prime real estate and claiming it (fighting over it), instead of having it handed to them right at the start. If you've played any of the GC games, I think you'll agree that Brad and Stardock feels the later (your homeworld is usually only above average, while you can find worlds that are waaaaaaaay better in game). It's probably also why this idea, regarding eternal guardians, won't see the light of day.
Completely onboard with this idea.
The game desperately needs some structure. Right now it has a ton of elements, but they are all scattered into the winds going in different directions, at different times, and ... well, concluding randomly. I think this idea would help a lot; I would also look into adding some bones to the city-expansion part of the game. It's still way too much of a land-grab that conflicts completely with the adventuring and general sense of 'epicness' the game otherwise tries to impress.
I really think an eternal guardian would be the wrong choice. The sovereign has lost much of his uniqueness already, to give the defense of the capitol over to some god-like being would make him just some kind of glorrified errand boy for said being. Improved defense and uniqueness could just as well be handled by a palace guard unit per lvl. Those would essentially be militia but with some defensive traits and +2 lvls, possibly clad in some shiny armor or wquipped with some shiny gear to make them feel more elitist.
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