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I think new BM recruitment looks a bit boring tbh, though it might be ok with more casual players or just people that like OP stuff. The main problem with it in my opinion is that it's completely risk-averse because there's no way you can lose caps after increasing them and if you lose an army, you can recruit a new one just like the lost one very fast. With TK you have to keep control of the settlements to maintain your caps, which is a better model imo. In either case, I don't think it quite captures what the spawning pools are but it can be used as a satisfactory approximation.
That is fair. Certainly losing units should be possible with the Lizardmen. Their units are a one-and-done deal. They can't just choose to replace lost spawnings if they die in battle.
Maybe instead of upping a cap like Tomb Kings/Beastmen you just spawn a unit into a recruitment pool for later use, similar to your idea. That way if an expensive unit gets wiped out you can't instantly replace it without cost. You'd basically need to re-purchase it and then wait for it to spawn unless you'd spawned a replacement ahead of time.
I do like your idea though. I remember seeing something similar floated around before Warhammer 2 came out where Lizardmen would need to find their spawning pools rather than simply building them. My only concern would be early game before you have multiple spawning pools available. You'd end up with a pretty samey army every time you played with minimal ability to really customize it until you've conquered a few places.
I also wouldn't want a mechanic that encourages you to go to war with other Lizardmen to conquer their temple-cities. We'd need some sort of more robust confederation mechanic to let us expand through Lustria without putting a sword to fellow Slann.
Ultimately this would make it possible to build tall instead of wide, which I feel is a lot more fitting for the Lizardmen. They aren't expansionists. They just want to maintain the Geomantic Web and use it to defeat Chaos and bring about the Great Plan.
This is such a great point about how the Lizardmen think and act so differently than almost all the other factions in the Warhammer world. They are not concerned with conquering territory per se, they are concerned with following the Great Plan and managing their own territories. Very similar to the Wood Elves in some ways.
Before Game 2 was released I had some hopes that Lizardmen would have this different flavor of play and feel much different as a faction because of how alien they think.
I think a cool mechanic for Blessed Spawnings would tie into this alien way of being. Instead of just being quest rewards or simply purchasable units, like RoR; what if you instead received prophecies as rewards. These prophecies would then list the exact, or relative, locations and times of potential blessed spawning.
So you complete a mission or some rng quest event, and you receive some prophecies that you decipher. They tell you that in 10, 12, and 14 turns there will be blessed spawning at three different locations in Lustra or the Southlands. If you are able to get your lord(s) to these locations on time then you will be able to recruit these newly spawned blessed units. It would be very thematic and in line with LM lore. It wouldn't be overly complex as a "system" and yet it would be far more active a system for blessed units, as you would actually have to do things in the form of unearthing prophecies and traveling to spawning pools.
Another thing I had hoped for was some different way that LM would interact with the other factions of the world, which would involve the Great Plan. The slann aren't interested in diplomacy in the traditional sense, they don't care about personalities or who rules what faction. They only care about what they think the Great Plan outlines for the races of the world. So it would be great if there were either mission that called for the removal or relocation of different factions in the world. These actions could then be tied to a potential Great Plan objective or potentially affect the geomantic web.
So, for instance, the Great Plan calls for there to be no dwarf presence in the mounts of Araby. So you need to send a force to eradicate any dwarfs who control the Cobra Pass. Or the plan calls for the Wood Elves in the Heart of the Jungle to have a max tiered settlement, so you need to protect their enclave or outright donate to them to help ensure they build it. Doing missions like these could then reinforce the geomantic web and/or move along the Great Plan objectives, which open new objectives and potential rewards.
The Lizardmen should have motivations to affect the larger world but in a different way other than "defeat X"
I think new BM recruitment looks a bit boring tbh, though it might be ok with more casual players or just people that like OP stuff. The main problem with it in my opinion is that it's completely risk-averse because there's no way you can lose caps after increasing them and if you lose an army, you can recruit a new one just like the lost one very fast. With TK you have to keep control of the settlements to maintain your caps, which is a better model imo. In either case, I don't think it quite captures what the spawning pools are but it can be used as a satisfactory approximation.
That is fair. Certainly losing units should be possible with the Lizardmen. Their units are a one-and-done deal. They can't just choose to replace lost spawnings if they die in battle.
Maybe instead of upping a cap like Tomb Kings/Beastmen you just spawn a unit into a recruitment pool for later use, similar to your idea. That way if an expensive unit gets wiped out you can't instantly replace it without cost. You'd basically need to re-purchase it and then wait for it to spawn unless you'd spawned a replacement ahead of time.
I do like your idea though. I remember seeing something similar floated around before Warhammer 2 came out where Lizardmen would need to find their spawning pools rather than simply building them. My only concern would be early game before you have multiple spawning pools available. You'd end up with a pretty samey army every time you played with minimal ability to really customize it until you've conquered a few places.
I also wouldn't want a mechanic that encourages you to go to war with other Lizardmen to conquer their temple-cities. We'd need some sort of more robust confederation mechanic to let us expand through Lustria without putting a sword to fellow Slann.
The spawning pool ideas you're discussing seems great for a wood elves style rework where CA uses big brain energy on the lizardmen.
About confederation, one idea I had is using the same model as my skink avatar geomantic web idea "The skink priest avatar is a underused mechanic that's connected in lore to the geomantic web that could be easily expanded into a dynamic bonus for actually connecting the web. All lizardmen legendary lords should get it in their capital, not just itza and Hexoatl. Then, all settlements connected to the capital via the geomantic web could summon the avatar when defending settlements. If the web tier is 2-3 they only get one summon, if it's T4 they get two summons, T5 three summons" but instead of getting the avatar, you get diplomatic bonuses with lizardmen who have a province capital connected directly to your web. That way your goal is to link your web with that of other lizardmen. Maybe the longer you stay connected, the more your relationships improve.
One other idea I'd throw back into the ring from previous discussions is some mechanic for allowing Slann to cast spells into a battle from afar using telepathy. Such a mechanic would tap into the Web, thereby making it more readily available if you have a well-developed Web than if you don't. (The details are up for potential discussion, but the simplest approach is probably to just make a secondary currency that is generated by the Web.)
I think new BM recruitment looks a bit boring tbh, though it might be ok with more casual players or just people that like OP stuff. The main problem with it in my opinion is that it's completely risk-averse because there's no way you can lose caps after increasing them and if you lose an army, you can recruit a new one just like the lost one very fast. With TK you have to keep control of the settlements to maintain your caps, which is a better model imo. In either case, I don't think it quite captures what the spawning pools are but it can be used as a satisfactory approximation.
That is fair. Certainly losing units should be possible with the Lizardmen. Their units are a one-and-done deal. They can't just choose to replace lost spawnings if they die in battle.
Maybe instead of upping a cap like Tomb Kings/Beastmen you just spawn a unit into a recruitment pool for later use, similar to your idea. That way if an expensive unit gets wiped out you can't instantly replace it without cost. You'd basically need to re-purchase it and then wait for it to spawn unless you'd spawned a replacement ahead of time.
I do like your idea though. I remember seeing something similar floated around before Warhammer 2 came out where Lizardmen would need to find their spawning pools rather than simply building them. My only concern would be early game before you have multiple spawning pools available. You'd end up with a pretty samey army every time you played with minimal ability to really customize it until you've conquered a few places.
I also wouldn't want a mechanic that encourages you to go to war with other Lizardmen to conquer their temple-cities. We'd need some sort of more robust confederation mechanic to let us expand through Lustria without putting a sword to fellow Slann.
The spawning pool ideas you're discussing seems great for a wood elves style rework where CA uses big brain energy on the lizardmen.
About confederation, one idea I had is using the same model as my skink avatar geomantic web idea "The skink priest avatar is a underused mechanic that's connected in lore to the geomantic web that could be easily expanded into a dynamic bonus for actually connecting the web. All lizardmen legendary lords should get it in their capital, not just itza and Hexoatl. Then, all settlements connected to the capital via the geomantic web could summon the avatar when defending settlements. If the web tier is 2-3 they only get one summon, if it's T4 they get two summons, T5 three summons" but instead of getting the avatar, you get diplomatic bonuses with lizardmen who have a province capital connected directly to your web. That way your goal is to link your web with that of other lizardmen. Maybe the longer you stay connected, the more your relationships improve.
This, I definitely like. One of the issues Lizardmen have is that they're really awkward to get to confederate - having some means of boosting relations with friendly Lizardmen neighbours would go a long way to addressing that.
One other idea I'd throw back into the ring from previous discussions is some mechanic for allowing Slann to cast spells into a battle from afar using telepathy. Such a mechanic would tap into the Web, thereby making it more readily available if you have a well-developed Web than if you don't. (The details are up for potential discussion, but the simplest approach is probably to just make a secondary currency that is generated by the Web.)
I think new BM recruitment looks a bit boring tbh, though it might be ok with more casual players or just people that like OP stuff. The main problem with it in my opinion is that it's completely risk-averse because there's no way you can lose caps after increasing them and if you lose an army, you can recruit a new one just like the lost one very fast. With TK you have to keep control of the settlements to maintain your caps, which is a better model imo. In either case, I don't think it quite captures what the spawning pools are but it can be used as a satisfactory approximation.
That is fair. Certainly losing units should be possible with the Lizardmen. Their units are a one-and-done deal. They can't just choose to replace lost spawnings if they die in battle.
Maybe instead of upping a cap like Tomb Kings/Beastmen you just spawn a unit into a recruitment pool for later use, similar to your idea. That way if an expensive unit gets wiped out you can't instantly replace it without cost. You'd basically need to re-purchase it and then wait for it to spawn unless you'd spawned a replacement ahead of time.
I do like your idea though. I remember seeing something similar floated around before Warhammer 2 came out where Lizardmen would need to find their spawning pools rather than simply building them. My only concern would be early game before you have multiple spawning pools available. You'd end up with a pretty samey army every time you played with minimal ability to really customize it until you've conquered a few places.
I also wouldn't want a mechanic that encourages you to go to war with other Lizardmen to conquer their temple-cities. We'd need some sort of more robust confederation mechanic to let us expand through Lustria without putting a sword to fellow Slann.
The spawning pool ideas you're discussing seems great for a wood elves style rework where CA uses big brain energy on the lizardmen.
About confederation, one idea I had is using the same model as my skink avatar geomantic web idea "The skink priest avatar is a underused mechanic that's connected in lore to the geomantic web that could be easily expanded into a dynamic bonus for actually connecting the web. All lizardmen legendary lords should get it in their capital, not just itza and Hexoatl. Then, all settlements connected to the capital via the geomantic web could summon the avatar when defending settlements. If the web tier is 2-3 they only get one summon, if it's T4 they get two summons, T5 three summons" but instead of getting the avatar, you get diplomatic bonuses with lizardmen who have a province capital connected directly to your web. That way your goal is to link your web with that of other lizardmen. Maybe the longer you stay connected, the more your relationships improve.
This, I definitely like. One of the issues Lizardmen have is that they're really awkward to get to confederate - having some means of boosting relations with friendly Lizardmen neighbours would go a long way to addressing that.
Don't they actually have some special Tsundere trait that makes it so they may have warm relations with you but will be disinclined to confederate?
Don't they actually have some special Tsundere trait that makes it so they may have warm relations with you but will be disinclined to confederate?
I think it's just that the trait makes them practically ignore bribes and only consider relations, and their strategic position, when it comes to making agreements, including confederations. Problem is that unless a faction is very weak, it usually takes a really high relation to get them to confederate on relations alone. This is an issue for the other Game 2 cores as well, but High Elves have the option of spending influence, and all three can often get it to work through making relatively small bribes (still sometimes in the tens of thousands of gold, but still...) to make up the difference.
For diplomacy, wouldn't it make sense for the Lizardmen to have their relation go up the more connected their webs are. That would probably mean the more connections you have with other LM (neighboring settlements basically, obviously this requires different webs being able to connect) and the stronger those connections are (strength of links) the better relations get, as Telepathy between the Slann becomes more effortless. Maybe total web strength across your territory could factor into this too. I also love the idea of a vastly different spawning pool based recruitment system brought up by @SaurianDruid . I guess here Thrones of Britannia's recruitment pools would be appropriate, with recruitment buildings and pools (fixed characteristic of specific settlments, much like elven colonies, credit to @MadDemiurg ) factoring into it. Additionally I'm very much on board with the building tall idea thrown around. Imho there are several races around for whom it is rather fitting to maintain relatively small but strong home territories whilst projecting power across the globe through varying methods and for different reasons. Namely those are Lizardmen, all the Elves (Even Druchii), Dwarfs, Tomb Kings and Pirates. Common for all of them is that they certainly are capable of invading but rarely do so for territory. So much like for the Asrai reworks focusing on that would be much appreciated.
You know, Oxyotl's mechanics have a lot of the same flavor we've discussed here.
His entire campaign isn't about empire building so much as it is about intervening across the map to shift the balance of power in favor of Order. When I first read about his mechanics I assumed they were like Incursions and Quest Battles and didn't effect the actual map.
But they do! You actually teleport over and kick Throt's butt before returning home.
This fits Oxyotl really well, but more importantly it fits the Lizardmen as a whole very well. Oxyotl should certainly remain the best at doing this sort of thing, but I wouldn't mind if the Lizardmen got a more scaled down version where the game encouraged us to send our armies far and wide to shift the balance of the world map to favor Order and prevent Chaos.
Comments
Maybe instead of upping a cap like Tomb Kings/Beastmen you just spawn a unit into a recruitment pool for later use, similar to your idea. That way if an expensive unit gets wiped out you can't instantly replace it without cost. You'd basically need to re-purchase it and then wait for it to spawn unless you'd spawned a replacement ahead of time.
I do like your idea though. I remember seeing something similar floated around before Warhammer 2 came out where Lizardmen would need to find their spawning pools rather than simply building them. My only concern would be early game before you have multiple spawning pools available. You'd end up with a pretty samey army every time you played with minimal ability to really customize it until you've conquered a few places.
I also wouldn't want a mechanic that encourages you to go to war with other Lizardmen to conquer their temple-cities. We'd need some sort of more robust confederation mechanic to let us expand through Lustria without putting a sword to fellow Slann.
- Report
2 · Disagree 2AgreeBefore Game 2 was released I had some hopes that Lizardmen would have this different flavor of play and feel much different as a faction because of how alien they think.
I think a cool mechanic for Blessed Spawnings would tie into this alien way of being. Instead of just being quest rewards or simply purchasable units, like RoR; what if you instead received prophecies as rewards. These prophecies would then list the exact, or relative, locations and times of potential blessed spawning.
So you complete a mission or some rng quest event, and you receive some prophecies that you decipher. They tell you that in 10, 12, and 14 turns there will be blessed spawning at three different locations in Lustra or the Southlands. If you are able to get your lord(s) to these locations on time then you will be able to recruit these newly spawned blessed units. It would be very thematic and in line with LM lore. It wouldn't be overly complex as a "system" and yet it would be far more active a system for blessed units, as you would actually have to do things in the form of unearthing prophecies and traveling to spawning pools.
Another thing I had hoped for was some different way that LM would interact with the other factions of the world, which would involve the Great Plan. The slann aren't interested in diplomacy in the traditional sense, they don't care about personalities or who rules what faction. They only care about what they think the Great Plan outlines for the races of the world. So it would be great if there were either mission that called for the removal or relocation of different factions in the world. These actions could then be tied to a potential Great Plan objective or potentially affect the geomantic web.
So, for instance, the Great Plan calls for there to be no dwarf presence in the mounts of Araby. So you need to send a force to eradicate any dwarfs who control the Cobra Pass. Or the plan calls for the Wood Elves in the Heart of the Jungle to have a max tiered settlement, so you need to protect their enclave or outright donate to them to help ensure they build it. Doing missions like these could then reinforce the geomantic web and/or move along the Great Plan objectives, which open new objectives and potential rewards.
The Lizardmen should have motivations to affect the larger world but in a different way other than "defeat X"
- Report
2 · 1Disagree 2AgreeAbout confederation, one idea I had is using the same model as my skink avatar geomantic web idea "The skink priest avatar is a underused mechanic that's connected in lore to the geomantic web that could be easily expanded into a dynamic bonus for actually connecting the web. All lizardmen legendary lords should get it in their capital, not just itza and Hexoatl. Then, all settlements connected to the capital via the geomantic web could summon the avatar when defending settlements. If the web tier is 2-3 they only get one summon, if it's T4 they get two summons, T5 three summons" but instead of getting the avatar, you get diplomatic bonuses with lizardmen who have a province capital connected directly to your web. That way your goal is to link your web with that of other lizardmen. Maybe the longer you stay connected, the more your relationships improve.
Basic fixes for blessed spawnings and geomantic web:
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/293369/lizardmen-rework-suggestions/p1?new=1
- Report
0 · Disagree Agree- Report
2 · Disagree 2Agree- Report
4 · 1Disagree 4AgreeDon't they actually have some special
Tsunderetrait that makes it so they may have warm relations with you but will be disinclined to confederate?- Report
0 · Disagree Agree- Report
0 · Disagree AgreeI also love the idea of a vastly different spawning pool based recruitment system brought up by @SaurianDruid . I guess here Thrones of Britannia's recruitment pools would be appropriate, with recruitment buildings and pools (fixed characteristic of specific settlments, much like elven colonies, credit to @MadDemiurg ) factoring into it.
Additionally I'm very much on board with the building tall idea thrown around. Imho there are several races around for whom it is rather fitting to maintain relatively small but strong home territories whilst projecting power across the globe through varying methods and for different reasons. Namely those are Lizardmen, all the Elves (Even Druchii), Dwarfs, Tomb Kings and Pirates. Common for all of them is that they certainly are capable of invading but rarely do so for territory. So much like for the Asrai reworks focusing on that would be much appreciated.
- Report
3 · 1Disagree 3AgreeHis entire campaign isn't about empire building so much as it is about intervening across the map to shift the balance of power in favor of Order. When I first read about his mechanics I assumed they were like Incursions and Quest Battles and didn't effect the actual map.
But they do! You actually teleport over and kick Throt's butt before returning home.
This fits Oxyotl really well, but more importantly it fits the Lizardmen as a whole very well. Oxyotl should certainly remain the best at doing this sort of thing, but I wouldn't mind if the Lizardmen got a more scaled down version where the game encouraged us to send our armies far and wide to shift the balance of the world map to favor Order and prevent Chaos.
- Report
5 · Disagree 5Agree