Talents and Weaknesses

By KingHobbit on July 19, 2012 1:07:10 AM from

KingHobbit

Join Date 02/2010

Well since I finished my game last night I decided to start a new one. I decided to create a sovereign. Not too fancy but I made an Urxen from the Umber empire. I noticed something that didn't quite make sense. One of the talents is leadership, which gives you the ability to recruit champions for free. One of the weaknesses is cruel, which gives you a +1 attack, but makes champions 50% more expensive.

My question is if you take both of them doesn't that just give you a +1, with no cost champions.

I also think we need more talents and weaknesses.

Over Confident-- -2 Attacks for all units if Sovereign has a larger army

Wanderlust-- army with the sovereign travels at half speed (this is a bad one get 2 points back)

Easily stressed-- loses 1 to initiative for each unit that dies in sovereigns army

Zoophobia-- cannot use a mount, -2 to attacks vs animals (this is a bad one as well- get 2 points back)

Kleptomaniac-- -5% to income to kingdom/empire.

Tyrant-- unrest increased by 15% (maybe just add this penalty to cruel.

Glutinous-- penalty to food production

One of the weaknesses is cruel, which gives you a +1 attack, but makes champions 50% more expensive.

My question is if you take both of them doesn't that just give you a +1, with no cost champions.

I think it gives a champion who has +1 attack and a 50% discount on champion rates (the free champions comes from a -100% discount being applied, so when this is added to +50% it ends up as -50%). Not quite as awesome, but still abusable. When Natural Leader only gave -50%, it and Cruel cancelled each other out and just gave +1 attack for free.

I like these, but some for the penalties are quite severe. I think reducing speed would really hurt, especially at the beginning of the game. Overconfident & tyrant definitely have potential, though the exact penalties might have to change. I would see Overconfident as being either a reduction to initiative (being outmaneuvered & ambushed) or as a penalty to city defences (poorly prepared). Tyrant sounds great as is, but I'm worried a +15% to unrest might be too harsh.

In case you're interested, DsRaider put together a mod for making custom races here: http://forums.elementalgame.com/427703

It's focused on racial rather than sovereign attributes but might provide inspiration, or give you something to try out between now and Beta 4.

Successfully updated karma reason!