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Gonna vote for the Cordyceps Hive Mind, it sounds kinda like playing Alpha Centauri as the worms. Ophanim and Mammon are too real, they're the Elder Evils that are coming for us IRL.
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Mar 26, 2024 06:07
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The Evil Below because it gives me pleasing Darkest Dungeon vibes.Blenderkitty posted:OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...? Sigma Theory might be your jam, you send agents on missions to monopolize a world-changing science paradigm which only a handful of scientists understand.
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Mar 26, 2024 19:23
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(Thanks, folks above!! I'll definitely check out all of those options! I'll stop derailing now.  )
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Mar 26, 2024 20:53
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I'll throw in a vote for Vinerva.
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Mar 26, 2024 21:22
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I don't mind seeing you start as Vinerva even if her optimal strategy is pretty ridiculously powerful.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:01
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Hoooooooooooooo boy have I spent too many hours playing and modding this game. I'll throw one in for Evil Beneath. Destruction as a strategy is sort of hard to come by for a game about destroying the world, and noodle boy does it very well. Blenderkitty posted:OOC, anyone aware of any games with the exact opposite premise? I'm one of those weirdos who just can't play evil, but the gameplay idea here sounds awesome! Maybe there's a mod scene...? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 22:41
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Alright acolytes, as of right now, Ophanim has the most votes. This is probably the god that I have the most trouble with, but it should be fun either way! For this run I don't plan on using any mods, mostly because I haven't spent enough time with them to be totally comfortable teaching with them, but the suggestions upthread sound rad as hell. I'll also be playing without the DLC since I'll most likely have my hands so full with the surface world that I won't be giving the underworld proper attention. I'm going to try and have a post up tomorrow night to lay down the basics and figure out where to put our new megachurch. 
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Mar 27, 2024 00:54
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Hell yeah, looking foward to it!
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Mar 27, 2024 00:56
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I'm excited about this LP. I never backed That which Sleeps but the concept enamored me and I followed it closely. I was sorely disappointed when it came out thar the "game" was basically a scam but got really excited when I read about this game. Tried the demo but had a really hard time getting into it and feeling like I was accomplishing something. So I'm really looking forward to seeing a more experienced and reasonably confident player have a go at it and see what I can learn and try in the demo. Maybe see about actually buying it.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:23
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IthilionTheBrave posted:I'm excited about this LP. I never backed That which Sleeps but the concept enamored me and I followed it closely. I was sorely disappointed when it came out thar the "game" was basically a scam but got really excited when I read about this game. Tried the demo but had a really hard time getting into it and feeling like I was accomplishing something. So I'm really looking forward to seeing a more experienced and reasonably confident player have a go at it and see what I can learn and try in the demo. Maybe see about actually buying it. It can feel like you're not doing a lot at first, because a lot of the bigger things you can do are about slowly building up influence and not being too flashy because then John Adventurerman stats holding a grudge. Once you figure out what you CAN build up to, though, and a good way of doing that is just trying out a slash-and-burn campaign where you steal, assassinate, etc. like crazy, it can be satisfying watching your agents set things up for a big surprise for the forces of good and watching the agents of good blunder into your prepared traps and surprises.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:29
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Kaiju15 posted:Alright acolytes, as of right now, Ophanim has the most votes. This is probably the god that I have the most trouble with, but it should be fun either way! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF0AO5tC6WQ
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Mar 27, 2024 01:38
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This game sounds interesting.
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Mar 27, 2024 02:36
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I'm certainly intrigued by the premise. Looking forward to seeing where this is going.
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Mar 27, 2024 03:34
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Too late to vote for our impending doom, but I'm sure it'll be awe inspiring.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:23
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Someone’s doom will be impending, let’s hope it’s not ours.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:25
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Looking towards to this.
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Mar 28, 2024 00:11
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will admit I don't really dive into grand strat games, the most complex I can handle is like, nuXCOM.
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Mar 28, 2024 00:21
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Fundamentals of Forbidden Gods Before we get started on our Ophanim run, I think it's best that we go over some of the fundamental mechanics and UI elements that will be important for literally any run with any god.  In the upper right corner of the screen are three counters that will determine whether you win or lose the game. There's the turn counter that by default ends your game in a loss at turn 500.  Then there's world panic which determines how hard the forces of light will fight against you and acts as an incremental difficulty modifier. By default this goes up over time no matter how well or poorly you're doing, but some actions you take part can make it go up quicker.  And finally there's your victory percentage. All gods have the objectives shown above by default while others (Ophanim for instance) might have additional goals. 200 points wins the game. 200 points. Great. How do we get those points? We use our godly powers and agents of our cult  Whichever god we choose, we have a constantly increasing pool of power points that can be used to further our goals. Some gods have powers that help spread shadow and infiltrate cities for instance. There is also a "Seals Broken" counter that represents our god's reawakening and power growth throughout the game. Most gods will awaken naturally over time (Ophanim is one of these), while others will require some use of agents and powers to reach their full potential. Most importantly, we have our agents responsible for the majority of the dirty work required to conquer the world.  Agents Have four primary stats that help them complete challenges across the map. Might for violence and combat, Lore for magic, Intrigue for subterfuge and infiltration, and Command for leadership and controlling minions. Agents level up and increase these stats as they complete challenges. They also have two very important stats called Profile and Menace. Profile and Menace increase as agents complete challenges and represent how far away enemies can see them and how likely those enemies are to interfere respectively. These stats can be lowered by taking a "Lay Low" action, but they also have a minimum value that increases over time. Some crimes will never be fully forgiven. Most of the gods available in the base game (once again Ophanim is included) have an agent called The Supplicant that has access to a helpful god-specific trait at game start. There are a bunch of other agents that can be obtained with recruitment points which replenish over time and your maximum number of agents increases as your god awakens.  The primary targets for your agents' challenges are settlements controlled by Humans (and sometimes elves and orcs).  Each settlement has a ruler whose personal preferences will affect which local actions (taxing citizens, reducing unrest, etc.) and national actions (if that settlement is the capitol of a nation) the government will prioritize. There are also a bunch of statistics that help simulate the settlement's behavior, but most of them are only useful to us under special circumstances. The ones we'll need most are Security which determines how difficult infiltrating the city is, Enshadowment which tracks the spread of our eldritch corruption, and Infiltration which tracks how many of that settlement's points of interest our cult has control of. Higher infiltration grants access to new actions for our agents to take and also increases the flow of shadow into a location from its neighbors.  Throughout the game, settlements will gain and lose modifiers that have some effect on the settlement. Banditry, shown here, reduces the prosperity stat of the settlement which can pressure the ruler into taking certain actions and even cause a cascade of other modifiers that harm the population of the settlement. In many cases, our agents can create, destroy, increase and decrease these modifiers to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, the forces of good aren't going to take this infiltration and enshadowment lying down. There is always a Chosen One and dozens of heroes to thwart us.  Heroes have stats just like our agents, but they also have likes and dislikes that determine which quests they prioritize. We can take advantage of those priorities by causing distractions that they are more inclined to investigate and thwart than our primary objectives, and sometimes we can even trick them into fighting amongst themselves.  The biggest threat to us is always the Chosen One who starts with 100% awareness of our impending conquest and is inclined to warn the world and form an alliance against us. Ophanim Overview  Ophanim's central gimmick revolves around spreading faith across the map. This faith can be seeded in a partially infiltrated settlement using a free god power and will increase based on proximity to other faithful settlements, shadow (nearby and worldwide) or being part of an already established theocracy.  Unfortunately when there is a population of high faith near a population of low faith, there is a chance to generate doubt. Doubt increases over time and slows and eventually reverses the growth of faith if the doubters can't be eradicated. Another thing to be wary of is ruler awareness. If the ruler in a settlement is aware of Ophanim's true nature, they will also quickly reverse the growth of faith in that location. Awareness is to be avoided at all costs in strategically important locations.  Ophanim can score victory points for population in Ophanim Controlled Society. That requires using one of Ophanim's god powers to declare a theocracy in a city that has more than 150 points of faith. Any nearby cities with more than 100 points of faith will join in and start a civil war against the other cities in a nation. Ideally we won't pull the trigger on the theocracy until we're absolutely sure to win the civil war. Now that we've got some of the basics out of the way, I can generate the map and see what kind of mess we've gotten ourselves into.
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Mar 28, 2024 01:09
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So is the Chosen One basically the functional equivalent of Ophanim (assigning followers, directing overall strategy, taking specific actions, etc) except for the side of light?
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Mar 28, 2024 01:45
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MagusofStars posted:So is the Chosen One basically the functional equivalent of Ophanim (assigning followers, directing overall strategy, taking specific actions, etc) except for the side of light? I've not played for awhile but iirc, not really. Chosen one acts more like an agent. Chosen one just do things based on desire weight and has no overall plan.
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Mar 28, 2024 02:36
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The Setup Here's the game options I'm going with for those who want to try and follow along. Can't promise I'll document every single step, but you'll get the broad strokes and my thought process. The only mods I have enabled are the ones that come with the game by default: Chinese Cultural Scheme and Insect God(Not that we're using it) World Size: 40x40 Heroes%: 100 Custom Seed: 1135652583 (I clicked Random World) Custom Difficulty: 0 Turn Limit, Orcs, Deep Ones, Elves: On Alliance: Humanity Vigilant Mid-Challenge and End-of-Turn Events: On Holy Orders: On Number of Witches: 1 Everything else is unchecked Ophanim is ready to be reborn!  We have one agent, one power, and 0 seals broken for the next 34 turns.  Our two starting powers are: - Start Faith: Starts an Ophanim's Faith modifier at an infiltrated location with 1% charge. We won't be using this for quite a while. - Sleepless Labour: Increases the task completion progress of one of your agents by 20 at the cost of 2 HP. A really neat ability that lets us get a lot more mileage out of our agents in the early game. Here's our new world.  Not super readable, but luckily there's some handy map mask options you can get by clicking the magnifying glass in the lower right.  So here's a better representation of the nations at play (View 1).  Looks like the biggest, strongest nation in the world takes up most of that Eastern continent. We can pull up the social groups screen by clicking that flag in the lower right.  That nation is called the Kingdom of Nghuai and it has twice the population as the next biggest nation.  Yikes. If the Chosen One decides to ask Nghuai to join the alliance we're screwed, so one of our primary goals this run is going to be to carve that up into more manageable chunks. Speaking of the Chosen One...  This is Wayfinder Beng Chen, the Chosen One. Looks like despite being an Elf, he really loves Humans. He also likes some guy named Banbu. We can potentially take advantage of this friendship later. If we click on Family on the left there, we can find some more potential targets.  Daaaaaaang, Beng! Married to a Queen. Queen Gnan rules the Elves of Feng, which is the light green nation on the East side of the map. They've also got a daughter who rules over another Elven settlement in Feng - all useful info if we want to distract him later in the game.  Another thing to note is that our Elder Tomb, the seat of our worldly form, is just North of Feng. Not super comfortable being this close to the Chosen One's homeland, but he can't fulfill the prophecy and defeat us for several hundred turns. In the meantime, our tomb is going to pump Shadow through the City of Danjiao into Beng's homeland. I anticipate that Beng and his allies are going to waste a bunch of time pushing back that Shadow while we work elsewhere. We can see the world's Shadow by hitting F4 or finding Location Shadow in the map masks.  The Elder Tomb starts at 100% Shadow and can't be reduced for any reason. Danjiao is going to take 0.4% Shadow every single turn and also spread shadow into Feng. That doesn't sound like much, but it adds up over several hundred turns. The Forces of Good™ are almost certainly going to waste time stemming the flow while we work elsewhere. There's also an orc horde next to Feng, but it looks like they have no army and Danjiao is already burning down their fortress. But enough about Feng. What about Ophanim? Outside of the Elder Tomb, what does the world have to offer us?  We could try to make a play for Nghuai, but it's massive. Plus it's right next door to the Chosen One, so he's bound to stick his nose where it doesn't belong. I don't think we'll be able to spread Faith to the whole nation before being pressured to pop the theocracy by threats of Alliance, Awareness and Doubt. The ensuing civil war and border gore could get really messy.  The Kingdom of Gfen in the Southwest is the second largest nation on the map, and it's about as far away from the Chosen One's house as you can get. We could make a substantial foothold there before growing our theocratic empire. Of course we'd need to send agents to weaken Nghuai while we do it, and we don't get another agent slot for another 34 turns. Speaking of agents...  Here's our Supplicant. Since we're Ophanim they have a white robe and wings - very stylish! They also have to choose between three Ophanim-themed traits which are going to set our strategy moving forward. We have - Duality: "When completing an infiltrate challenge, alternately add 30 shadow or automatically start an Ophanim cult with charge 20%, or add to an existing one" (the trait description tells you which outcome is next on any given turn) - Leader of the Faith: "Increases any existing Ophanim Faith by 2% per turn while in the same location" - Inquisitor: "Decreases any existing Ophanim Doubt by 3% per turn while in the same location (net -1% after Doubt's usual growth), but costs 1 population per turn" Duality is an interesting one. Alternating decent sized chunks of Shadow and Faith gets the ball rolling immediately, but we run the risk of the Faith spreading in ways that make us much more likely to encounter Doubt. We also run the risk of having one of the cities we've already spread Faith to becoming aware and undoing some of our hard work. Inquisitor is nice because we can infiltrate all or most of a nation and then use our God Powers to start Faith in every single settlement at the same time. Doubt is less likely if there aren't major imbalances in Faith and the Doubt that does spring up can be quickly stifled by our Supplicant. It's a really slow start though, and seeing the world panic creep up while our victory percentage stays low for most of the game feels kinda stressful. Leader of the Faith seems... kinda bad? We have the option of a slow start like Inquisitor, but instead of helping with Doubt, we park on a settlement and potentially cause more Doubt by creating an imbalance. There's also the issue that the settlement we want to boost might not have any useful tasks for the Supplicant so it'll feel like wasted turns while they just sit and nest. I'll leave our first target and Supplicant traits up to a vote and then tally the results Sunday night (in North America). Target: - Nghuai: The massive nation in the East - Gfen: The more modest nation in the West Supplicant: - Duality: Alternating Faith and Shadow - Leader of the Faith: Boosting Faith generation in a location - Inquisitor: Crushing Doubt at the expense of population
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Mar 28, 2024 04:16
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Go big or go home Nghuai, Inquisitor is nice, if the chosen one was far I prefer duality, but Inquistor will help.
AtomikKrab fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 04:28
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Let's enshadow Gfen, I like the idea of the heroes rushing halfway across the world to challenge a rising evil empire, when the tomb of the elder god was in their own backyard all along, and I remember picking Inquisitor myself since Doubt is annoying at times. I also love our Chosen One. It's somewhat interesting that he's married to a queen and has noble children, while himself not being a noble. It gives a mental image of some sort of hero who married the queen after impressing her with cool quests and stuff, but refused to be tied down to the throne, wanders the world, saves people, then returns every so often to his own civilization, his children, his wife, etc. Being a fan of humans also gives some weight to that interpretation, him going among the shorter lived races, the "mortals" and helping them out with their troubles, either because he's fascinated by them in a scholarly sense or because he genuinely cares about them.
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Mar 28, 2024 04:30
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PurpleXVI posted:Let's enshadow Gfen, I like the idea of the heroes rushing halfway across the world to challenge a rising evil empire, when the tomb of the elder god was in their own backyard all along, and I remember picking Inquisitor myself since Doubt is annoying at times. Yeah, this seems the most narratively delicious. Gfen/Inquisitor gets my vote. Could we somehow cause a civil war in the big empire or something?
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Mar 28, 2024 04:56
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Absolutely Gfen and Inquisitor. Getting and keeping the chosen one on the fast side of the world is vital, and reducing doubt is fantastic.
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Mar 28, 2024 05:00
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Spawning almost next door to the hero's family feels risky. This isn't a jRpg, the starting town and/or the chosen one need not be low level. How are the relations (does the game account for the relations) between the elven nation and the big empire//the chosen one himself and the big empire? I assume trying to corrupt the elven nation would be a fools errand because the queen or the daughter are gonna listen to their husband/father when he tells them how E: assuming I understand faith/doubt correctly, I'd pick duality if the plan is to target small nations first and inquisitor if targeting big nations first. Omobono fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 05:46
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Gfen Inquisitor
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Mar 28, 2024 05:55
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lol, that's a remarkably spicy starting layout Gfen, Inquisitor. I haven't played non-megacontinent maps in some time, hopefully having a separate landmass from the chosen one and his elves and the massive empire helps us get off the ground. Sorry, orc buddies. You're all going to die.
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Mar 28, 2024 06:50
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This game seems pretty cool, even if the interface looks a bit janky. I'll parrot everyone else by voting to enshadow Gfen and picking Inquisitor for our agent, since both seem to be the most logical choice.
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Mar 28, 2024 07:16
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Yeah I like Gfen and Inquisitor. Looking forward to seeing some techniques to distract the heroes, that mechanic sounds really unique and interesting.
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Mar 28, 2024 07:23
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Also going to be following everyone's suggestion and saying Gfen, Inquisitor. Is there some sort of tech tree or magic tree?
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Mar 28, 2024 07:31
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Gfen, Inquisitor No tech tree as far as I know. As far as magic progression hold off until we at least get another agent. Magic and mages do exist. Mages can advance in their chosen school(s). But they won't for now...
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Mar 28, 2024 07:56
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No tech tree, you just get new god powers as time passes and seals break.
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Mar 28, 2024 08:00
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By default trying to gain magic for yourself will cause an arms race, the wizards of the world can tell when you try that poo poo and they WILL fight back hard if the world is not on utter fire preventing them. Part of that is that high level magic quite frankly can do more damage than the strongest god powers. I've literally won games I was behind on by setting up a bunch of magical loot for a certain later game agent, getting them set up and stealthed and calling down the nasty with my remaining agents disrupting attempts to stop them. The Heros can't win if literally everyone around them is dead.
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Mar 28, 2024 11:23
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Gfen, Duality. I'll cast a vote for Duality; Gfen is both far away from the tomb and also only a starting point, not the end point like Nghuai. The Chosen One might clean up Gfen at some point, but by then the Ophanim religion should hopefully have fractured Nghuai and setup a foothold on the eastern continent.
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Mar 28, 2024 13:34
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AtomikKrab posted:By default trying to gain magic for yourself will cause an arms race, the wizards of the world can tell when you try that poo poo and they WILL fight back hard if the world is not on utter fire preventing them. Part of that is that high level magic quite frankly can do more damage than the strongest god powers. I've literally won games I was behind on by setting up a bunch of magical loot for a certain later game agent, getting them set up and stealthed and calling down the nasty with my remaining agents disrupting attempts to stop them. The Heros can't win if literally everyone around them is dead. It always feels good to pre-split the map at the beginning of the game and be able to follow up on that, improvisation is fun too but a nicely executed apocalypse in which the heroes are completely boxed in is something else. This is shadow country, this is the plaguelands, this is the orc invasion festival, this is the war of the five queens continent and over there, this is the almost pristine (plague ships own too much) place where I'll cast volcano.
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Mar 28, 2024 15:26
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I could never get orcs to work well for me so I'm excited to see them in the future. Any force I make would be quickly slapped down by local towns.
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Mar 28, 2024 15:31
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I want to see a quick and dirty strat with a lot of problems instead of a slow and safe start. So: Gfen, Duality.
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Mar 28, 2024 15:38
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SettingSun posted:I could never get orcs to work well for me so I'm excited to see them in the future. Any force I make would be quickly slapped down by local towns. Orcs got a buff with the dlc, you can expand underground with them if you can get the money together, and once underground theres... really nothing in your way to just flop out an entire continent spanning orc civilization that you can unleash later.
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Mar 28, 2024 16:00
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| # ? May 2, 2024 01:20 |
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AtomikKrab posted:Orcs got a buff with the dlc, you can expand underground with them if you can get the money together, and once underground theres... really nothing in your way to just flop out an entire continent spanning orc civilization that you can unleash later. This fantasy world needs dwarves
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Mar 28, 2024 17:43
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