Arabs and Carthaginians

[DrPraetorious]

The game already has Phoenicians. Phoenician culture is so heavily intertwined with greek culture that it's hard to distinguish the two - greek letters are actually phoenician, as are greek naval techinques, at least originally. Furthermore, following the conquest of the levant by Alexander, the phoenician city states Hellenized almost completely. Now, given that ME Arco has elephants (which you ride over the Alps to attack Ermor), as well as Sirrush, it covers both. Thumbs up to Kristoffer.

Arabs, on the other hand, are different, and are not well covered. Furthermore, the Phoenicians (Greeks too) were definitely a maritime culture.

Also, it turns out this didn't actually happen, but there's an urban legend that Rome salted the soil around Carthage so that nothing would grow there again. A mid era nation where the land was cursed with death magic by the Ermorians would be pretty cool.

So, how is this for a national arc -
In every era:
Lots of cheap light cavalry (like the T'ien Ch'i horseman).
Sailing.

In the early era, has no blood magic directly, but has priests who can perform blood sacrifices and a douse bonus (I need to check if douse bonuses work on a unit with blood magic 0), and has national spells that conjure blood mages. No sacred warriors, but powerful and diverse magic off of cheap national summons.

In the middle era, has been cursed by Ermor. Maxage on all units is 20, your units are cheap, but old. Nation struggles to survive, should somehow reward you for taking the Death scale. Sacred warriors are child-cavalry (size 3, resource size 1, hoburg profile). Cannot recruit mages, but gets a crazy good deal when summoning them - summoned mages slowly free others from the curse (have a domsummon ability that makes units who aren't dying,) and are immortal.

In the late era, muslim arabs. Religion is universalist - so you have sacred versions of literally every unit you can recruit, and you make most of them everywhere. Sacred units benefit from Sakina - they are all Morale 30. Other units -
* Dervish. Capital only berserking sacred.
* Ainsarii. Capital only stealthy sacred.
* Murshid. A priest/mage, H1. WSN plus 100% from WSN plus 10% from WSN. Capital only, berserker (like Dervishes.) You get a hero version who is bigger.
* Hashshasin. A priest/assassin/mage, H1. Capital only, has DN, is crazy bad-***.
* Imam. A priest/general, mounted, H3, has a standard, large leadership. Capital only. You get a hero version who is H4.
* Ulema. A priest/philosopher, H2, makes research.
* Mufti. A priest/judge, H2, has a patrol bonus. Capital only, maybe has a chance of death magic?
* Qadi. A priest/judge, H1, has a patrol bonus.
* Alchemist. A mage. FED, 100% FED, 10% FED. You get a hero version who also has blood and astral - he's eeeeevil.

[HoneyBadger]

Just a couple of thoughts to add, because I really like what you have so far (good work, by the way):

If the Devs will allow it-and it'd probably require some sort of coding in: a bonus to EA "Carthage" to recruiting mercenaries, since they and the Phoenicians did that a *lot*. Say every gold EA nation spends translates to 2 gold from everybody else. It makes them both different and very powerful, in a new direction.

Secondly, what if in MA-to go along with the death scale-the sacred child calvalry all had a "twice-born" type ability, that only functions under a Death scale? So that, if you kill them, they come back, preferrably more powerful the stronger the Death scale-this would probably also require some coding, but the coding ideas wouldn't have to be incorporated into the mod until/unless they become doable. And, I'd give them crossbows, personally, since the idea of a sacred child-calvalry reminds me of parts of Stephen King's Gunslinger saga.

LA seems really interesting, powerful, and complete.

[VedalkenBear]

Well, for me, it all really depends on what you mean by 'arab'. LE is clearly Muslim, which is actually missing from the game. So go all out on that.

Earlier Iranian/Persian realms can quite easily be represented by MA Arcoschephale.

[Sombre]

Hmm. Actually it strikes me that there's no Australian aboriginal inspired faction in the game either, unless you count the endurance and whatnot of Machaka.

[llamabeast]

All sounds excellent to me, except:

- I don't really like the idea of child cavalry. Winning a battle against them by slaughtering the children wouldn't feel so good.
- Wouldn't sacred everything be a bit crazy with a strong bless? Or maybe not, because you're still restricted the Holy resource.

Sounds like a very cool theme though, I like it.

Oh, I don't suppose it's possible to create a spell that reduces the age of other units, rather than the mage himself? If you could make a ritual that reduced the age of all units in the province by 1, you could use your mages to actually cure people of old age, rather than increasingly relying on domsummoned troops, which might feel a little odd.

[HoneyBadger]

Llamabeast, I'm assuming you don't play a lot of blood-nations?

I'm currently working on a Middle Era Aboleth nation influenced by the Mamluk culture, so hopefully we'll soon have several Muslim-influenced nations. Moors would be nice to see, though, as would Turkish dervishes.

[llamabeast]

Well, the thing with blood slaves is you forget what they are after a while. And, well, they are adults at least. Children just seem a bit wrong to me.

[HoneyBadger]

I thought they were naked, 13 year old virgin-girls who were blinded and then kept in prison, isolated from human contact their whole short miserable lives, so they could be sacrificed by being flayed alive and then have their eternal souls ripped from their bodies and eaten by demons in a profane, unholy ritual?

[Sombre]

Well in some societies it was (and still is) considered quite the honour to be offered up to god or for king and country.

So maybe they live splendid lives of luxury then are given a sweet, sweet sendoff into the glory of the afterlife, safe in the knowledge that their family has gained honour and status.

[HoneyBadger]

Nah, I'm pretty sure they just carve the skin off of them with barbed whips and red-hot razor blades.

Their families they probably burn at the stake.