There was a post in the general forum about major faction brainstorming. thought maybe this belonged here.



The Plaguebearers. An undead faction of flesh-bound corpses dedicated to the spread of entropy and decay, gearing them towards an expansion victory. Their affinity for spreading undeath makes them adept at crippling the expansions of competing factions, but makes them unsuitable for the assimilation of minor factions



Aesthetic - Northern British, Celtic, Norse and Irish influences. Steep, triangular wood roofs on districts. Exploitations ringed in hengeworks and headstones. An intermingling of runes and knotwork adorning armour, only slightly tattered from use by the boil-ridden, lacerated cadaver that is its owner.



Vector of Infection: All faction units and heroes disease immune

Starve a Cold: Does not use food to increase population.

City Sepulchres: Population increased by the deaths of the living. living units killed in combat are added as population to the nearest city. all unit production decreases population in the city by 1 (as it does with settlers). Settler production does not arrest food production

Body bags: population can be swapped between cities in the city management screen (disabled for a city under siege)

Feed a Fever: Food gathered is automatically stockpiled for propagation of rot and decay-based spells and effects

On city effect: Miasma - select a city to cause an outbreak of a virulent disease to ravage the region, causing 10x(number of stockpiles used) in damage to all non-immune units within the region at the end of each turn for 5 turns, including minor faction camps. Useful for pacification of new regions, breaking sieges, dissuading roving major factions without closing borders

On city effect: Outbreak - Enemy cities in adjacent regions suffer an epidemic of The Plague, suffering -10*(Tech Era of Plaguebearers) food on city -10 on Era 1, -20 on Era 2, -30 on era 3, etc. Starting in era 3 this ability should effectively prevent other factions from settling near The Plague, creating space for the faction to expand even in later Eras

On army effect: Biogenesis - Select an army to bestow 2 ghoul units. Ghouls are weak melee fighters which ignore army size limit, possess the "fast" as well as the "cannibalize" promotion, which heals the ghoul to full if they land the killing blow on an enemy. Ghouls cannot be retrofitted

During combat effects: Pollute the battlefield with a selection of noxious vapours, debuffing the enemy army with the appropriate rank of unsteady, exhaustion or slow within an area of effect for 3 turns. level 2 research modifies the spells with the addition of 10% damage to affected units per round. Possible Spell names: Plague Exhaustion, Lethargy of Undeath, Kalluf's Shakes, etc.

Plagued Caravans: Outgoing trade routes to other major factions reduce the health of those cities, giving -2 food per population



Let it Burn - cannot rebuild minor faction villages. (units killed in the village are already contributing to city population as cadavers)

No Love for the Living: Only 1 assimilation slot on faction, available at tech era 2 (with the exception of Haunts, Silics and SoM, use of minor faction units is almost unmanageable for this faction, since miasma and the censer effectively prevent their use in regional defense or use in faction armies)



Plaguebearer Questline: Unique questline for the Plaguebearers faction. Early in the questline, provides a unique faction-only trinket: Censer of The Plague. can only be used by faction units and heroes. Army self-inflicts 10 disease damage to all units if not immune (including if in city garrison). Army with a Censer prevents FIDSI on enemy terrain, including city tiles, within a 2-tile radius. Also prevents extraction of luxury and strategic resources within this radius. If on a road, army halves the output of all enemy trade routes beginning and terminating in that region. Later quest includes innoculation tech for hero units, granting disease immunity to all heroes



Unique Units:

Draugr - sturdy ranged unit (range of 2). High hit points and attack, low damage, defense and initiation. Equips 1-handed axes, shields, and crossbows. can use axes as throwing weapon

Dullahan - Quick cavalry unit. Has the "Fast II" and "Ghostly" promotion, which allows the Dullahan to pass through enemy units, ignoring zone of control, but does not ignore terrain like "Fly". high initiative, high damage, high defense, low hp and attack. Equips spears and 1 handed swords (it's off-hand is needed to hold its head!)

Plague Horror - Infantry unit. unsightly horror composed of many corpses cobbled together. the appendages of dozens of bodies have been fastened around the circumference of a gaping, toothless maw where its torso should be. Has the "slow" and "consuming hunger" promotions. The first non-hero unit attacked (must be on attack) is eaten whole, and will die if The Plague wins, but return if the opposing faction wins. The unit will return to the owner at half health if the battle is a draw. If the Plague Horror is killed during combat, any unit eaten reappears in the same tile as the deceased horror and will return to combat unharmed, but be stunned for that round. The Horror has very high hp, very high defense, average attack and damage, and 0 base initiation. Equips claws and Claymores



Hero Template: Lich - Support hero - Emaciated, mummified corpse. low hp and defense, high initiation and damage. Can cast reanimate on fallen friendly or enemy units 1 time per battle. Reanimated units start at full hp and take 50% damage at end of each round. The reanimated unit has "Shock 1" Promotion.

Faction hero skills - skills focus on +food %. +10, 30, 45% hp on units at tier 4. Ability to cast reanimation twice per battle unlocked tier 4. 1.5x effectiveness on city for effects of Miasma and Outbreak on tier 5.



Thought it would be good to have a faction with a hard crowd control, in keeping with The Plague's focus on debilitating other groups. Strategy would be to have Draugr soaking initial damage, and use your Dullahan to steal initiative from a target unit to prevent your Horrors from losing initiative on engulfing units

- You have much thinked here : the idea is good, and you worked too on some pratical aspect of it.



- I like the extreme things : A perfect good civ, a neutral nature civ or a devil civ. I love yours faction so. ^^



- I wish a modder will be interested to create it. And as a multiplayer player, I don't really care about the A.I performance I think it would be good to have in the futur, a multiplayer mod with several new factions, with or without good A.I performance in, because only human players will handle them.

Very Cool good job. Request !!! Now create the counter to them. The Cleansers Or Healers, ya the Healers (Sisters of Mercy)

reasoning for choices in faction design:

The faction uses cities as a weapon, creating space by placing penalties on settling adjacent to them. Right now, the Necrophage are militaristic, but are not in any way rewarded for settling and developping lands which they control. Similarly, cultists are as a faction are designed to "trim back" or "prune" the expansion of empires without settling themselves.



The Undead population growth mechanic allows for reasonably quick growth for cities and armies under optimal conditions, but is incredibly risky. you cannot build additional units for your main army at turn 1, so you need to kill minor faction camps using only ranged units (which as we know with vaulters and WW can be difficult). alternatively you can kill your first camps using miasma, but you will be lagging far behind other empires by that time, waiting for the food required to kill camps off outright. Furthermore, with the production of units costing population, losing an army is incredibly costly, and can really set back your empire population. An undead player needs to aggressively search for easy targets to kill quickly and at minimal cost, since a passive playstyle will result in population stagnation.



In mid and late game, with few minor factions left to kill, your continued growth and survival depends on picking fights with other players. Your FIDS and trade route debuffs make the Plague's siege and harass abilities much harder to contend with, forcing a reaction from other players. You just better be ready for them.



Countering the Plague is fairly straightforward. Killing minor faction camps yourself prevents them from acquiring that early population boost. With a playstyle focused on aggressive expansion and forward settling, Plague players can easilly be caught overextending, and punished for it. Settling desireable regions adjacent to the Plague may first require trimming the undead empire back, but if you are in a stronger military position than the Undead, there is very little they can do except drain a city of population, since an outright loss costs their empire more than it does yours. Militarily, factions with ranged units as their initial are at a disadvantage early because of low damage output. Early and committed aggression both to minor factions and the Plague itself can stop them dead in their tracks, even if you don't raze cities or kill armies outright.



No minor faction in its right mind would team up with living corpses (unless they aren't alive to begin with), and the undead would have no reason to team up with the living. With that in mind I made it difficult (though not impossible) to justify assimilation and proper use of minor factions

Since minor factions are unwieldly, the undead have to make due with mostly faction-specifics. The plague spells fill a gap in the army composition for support class' debuffing while ghouls are a cheap fodder unit. The Haunts minor faction fills a possible flying unit gap, and SoM would offer a cheaper alternative to horrors. Silics unfortunately do not compliment the Plague all that well. Reanimation effectively gives your army momentum, but can be countered by kiting easilly, since even reducing a reanimated unit to 1/2 HP is enough to make it last only 1 round.

pineappledan wrote:


Vector of Infection: All faction units and heroes disease immune

Starve a Cold: Does not use food to increase population.

City Sepulchres: Population increased by the deaths of the living. living units killed in combat are added as population to the nearest city. all unit production decreases population in the city by 1 (as it does with settlers). Settler production does not arrest food production

Body bags: population can be swapped between cities in the city management screen (disabled for a city under siege)

Feed a Fever: Food gathered is automatically stockpiled for propagation of rot and decay-based spells and effects

On city effect: Miasma - select a city to cause an outbreak of a virulent disease to ravage the region, causing 10x(number of stockpiles used) in damage to all non-immune units within the region at the end of each turn for 5 turns, including minor faction camps. Useful for pacification of new regions, breaking sieges, dissuading roving major factions without closing borders

On city effect: Outbreak - Enemy cities in adjacent regions suffer an epidemic of The Plague, suffering -10*(Tech Era of Plaguebearers) food on city -10 on Era 1, -20 on Era 2, -30 on era 3, etc. Starting in era 3 this ability should effectively prevent other factions from settling near The Plague, creating space for the faction to expand even in later Eras

On army effect: Biogenesis - Select an army to bestow 2 ghoul units. Ghouls are weak melee fighters which ignore army size limit, possess the "fast" as well as the "cannibalize" promotion, which heals the ghoul to full if they land the killing blow on an enemy. Ghouls cannot be retrofitted

During combat effects: Pollute the battlefield with a selection of noxious vapours, debuffing the enemy army with the appropriate rank of unsteady, exhaustion or slow within an area of effect for 3 turns. level 2 research modifies the spells with the addition of 10% damage to affected units per round. Possible Spell names: Plague Exhaustion, Lethargy of Undeath, Kalluf's Shakes, etc.

Plagued Caravans: Outgoing trade routes to other major factions reduce the health of those cities, giving -2 food per population



Let it Burn - cannot rebuild minor faction villages. (units killed in the village are already contributing to city population as cadavers)

No Love for the Living: Only 1 assimilation slot on faction, available at tech era 2 (with the exception of Haunts, Silics and SoM, use of minor faction units is almost unmanageable for this faction, since miasma and the censer effectively prevent their use in regional defense or use in faction armies)

I absolutely love the idea of having activated abilities using stockpiles. Well done!

It's actually similar to the ability of my proposed aquatic faction, but instead of food stockpile the Typhons use artifacts produced in the city and stored in stockpile section.

Overall, I think we need more ideas based around stockpiles and activated abilities, so your faction proposal is right on target.



I do want to raise some points though:

1- If your faction loses population every time you produce any unit, then losing battles will hurt the Plaguers more than any other faction in the game. I find this to be extremely risk-oriented. Even though I do enjoy risk-taking, this will also cause the game to be resolved very early. If the Plague player loses more than 3 units at any time he must make sure that he kills more than 3 units to recover that loss. Otherwise, this will immediately cause you to fall behind other factions, because you will have to lose that much population to replace the lost units.

So the Plague faction has a heavy snowball effect if they continue winning and picking their fights carefully, but also will quickly be considered on the "losing side" if they lose lots of units. Meanwhile, other factions can easily build cheap units and use them as cannon fodder for basic defense no matter how many units they lose.

In multiplayer, if the Plaguers get rushed early and lose their starting units, how will they recover?



2- On the thematic/lore side of things, when I first got this game I was under the impression that the Necrophages are supposed to be the plague/undead people. So this might create too much similarity in description and background. It will almost make the necrophages redundant... because your idea is so awesome!

To be honest, I find the current Necrophages to be underwhelming as an "undead horde" type of faction. Your Plaguers however are far more suited to this overall theme and their population mechanics reflect this.

I mean to say: Plaguers feel a lot like the Necrophages but with more overall emphasis. I would not mind if the Necrophages and the Plaguers got combined into 1 faction that serves as the "major antagonist" to the other factions, which is what the undead usually are...



Overall though, I like your idea. I just hope to see it more polished so that the devs will adopt it.

You seem to have hit the nail on the head there, Mr. Vagus. The idea was I wanted to build an aggressive civilization which was entirely dependent on warmongering and expansion. If you prevent their ability to do so with an early rush then that is simply the game.



I love 4x strategy, but if there is one thing I hate about this genre, it is that in multiplayer, even if a winner is clearly breaking ahead of the pack, it is still a 50-turn slog to finish the game. If someone is winning then let's be done with it. So why not make a faction that addresses this by either snowballing out of control or completely imploding?