Since Demeter is officially joining the Greek roster (focusing on farming and economy), I wanted to pitch an idea for a unique passive ability or a minor god trait that fits her theme perfectly.
The concept is a proximity buff based on your economy. Basically, military units would gain a small attack percentage increase for every Villager nearby. For example: +0.2% attack per villager. If you are defending your base with 10 villagers nearby, your troops get +2% attack; with 20 villagers, it goes up to 4%. It simulates the soldiers fighting harder to protect their home and the harvest.
The idea came to me during a match where my base was surrounded and I was losing. My soldiers were fighting with all their might, but the enemy simply had the numbers. I started imagining that these soldiers should fight a bit better since they were cornered defending their homeland, much like the 300 of Sparta. Thatâs how I came up with this idea.
The idea sounds kinda Cool until you think about not just the scenario you describe.
Imagining forward fortress spam while your villagers are empowering the army that defend them doesnt sound like a fun experience to deal with or them taking a forward TC and defend it. Being able to fend of raids better Just because also.
I think you might be overestimating the numbers vs. the economic cost.
To get a noticeable buff (like 6%), I would need to drag 30 villagers to the front lines. That is economic suicide. No player would idle 30 villagers just for a small damage tick; the loss in resources would lose you the game regardless of the buff.
Realistically, a forward base might have ~10 villagers on a Gold Mine. Thatâs only a 2% increase. Itâs a thematic flavor bonus, not a game-breaking stat that encourages pulling your entire workforce to the front.
Itâs a subtle, thematic buff that rewards defending your economy rather than brute-force aggression, making fights near your base feel more meaningful and emotionally grounded without breaking balance.
Dont tend to take the numbers of this type of posts too serious because more often than not they are no thought out and Just acompany the idea which is the main thing. And when ideas are implemented then dont usually follow this original numbers.
Thats why im talking about the design itself. Yes you can tune it to be meaningless. On which point it becomes kinda like the current loki bonus, its there but you dont really seek to interact with in any meanigfull way and you would rather have something else that you actually care about.
It also depends on how big this villager radius is for how clustered they would have to be for it to be anything useful at all, or any sort of effort on microing back and forth takes you out of the empowerment zone and Just makes it less worth it. Make it too big and you cant have 30-40-50+ vills on your base empowering units
The goal isnât to force players to micro-manage villagers like a military unit, but to provide a passive safety net.
Unlike the Loki bonus, this has a clear purpose: punishing raids. If an enemy jumps into my woodline or farms, they arenât just fighting my army; they are fighting an army that is naturally âenragedâ by the proximity of their workers.
As for the radius, it could simply match the Town Center or Watch Towerâs LOS (Line of Sight). This way, you donât have to âthinkâ about itâŠit just rewards you for taking fights where your economy is established. Itâs a flavor-first design that strengthens Demeterâs identity as a defensive/economic goddess without being a balancing nightmare.
Thereâs a contradiction in that argument. If vills are too spread out for the bonus to be strong naturally, then a âforward cheeseâ would also be weak unless you send 20+ villagersâwhich is an all-in move that leaves your main base completely vulnerable.
If a player sends 5-10 villagers to a forward base, they get a tiny 1-2% buff. Thatâs hardly a âcheese,â itâs just a minor situational advantage. To get a game-breaking bonus, youâd have to sacrifice your entire economyâs safety.
The design is meant to be a deterrent against raids, making the home-ground advantage slightly better, not a tool for offensive dominance.
Thats not true thou, theres plenty of other uses like i mentioned. Which is why i said, its a nice concept if you only think about it in the way you intend it to interact.
Each vill having thst big a radious as a TC range means you def can have 50 vills empowering units.
If you want to look at your numbers. 4% for 20 vills is not stopping any raid what so ever or helping it in any kind of way on which you would see the difference of having it vs not having it.
But i see with differ on concepts. Im not much into flavor first designs since i like things i can actually use and feel a difference between having it and not having it and not just have my hoplite deal 10.1- 10.4 damage instead of 10 because im demeter and not zeus and call it a bonus.
This is also not true, since theres a big difference early on to defend raids when you max villagers are in their 20s to the late game where that many are on a gold mine alone.
If you want to actually feel a difference in it you would either have to make it small so its bad with small amount and good with a sustancial one or have it be good with a small amount and very strong with a bigger one unless you cap it (which would be a resonable thing to do imo).
The Loki bonus comparison its not for its intended purpose. Its that it was a buff that was very strong as it was originallt and after tunning it it became something thats Just there, but not something you seem to interact with.
All the points of criticism have only shown so far that this passive would be really cool to include in the game. I plan to play with Demeter when it launches, Iâve already bought the DLC, and I would be very happy to have a Greek civ focused on defense, which is the way I like to play.
I agree that a cap is a reasonable and necessary solution to prevent the â50 vills snowballâ in the late game. If the bonus is capped at, say, 10%, it remains a flavor-oriented defensive help without breaking the scale.
Youâre right that 4% wonât stop a raid alone, but in an RTS, every bit counts when you stack it with Town Center fire and Minos/Hero buffs. Itâs about the synergy.
Regarding the âLoki effectâ, the difference is that my proposal is a passive aura. You donât need to âinteractâ or micro itâŠitâs a home-turf advantage that rewards Demeter for being an economic powerhouse. Itâs not meant to replace Zeusâs raw power, but to give Demeter a unique âDefensive Farmerâ identity. We can disagree on âflavor-firstâ, but a cap definitely solves the balance nightmare you mentioned.
No so much no. The âany buff is a buffâ mindset only. Works o a vacum.
You dont scrape small numbers in hopes they do something sometimes. Specially since you have other god bonuses to compare to.
Except you do. You place villagers together, you micro army to be in that zone. Later on it empowers fortress crawls, you dont spread around in different resources. Etc Etc. I think you are looking at your idea from a chill time only pov and under that mentality sure all designs are good designs. The issue is thats not the only way to play with it and you cant ignore those other uses.
Think of it like Nuwas clay paesants. If you think it chill âits a god power that gives me vills for some extra ecoâ
What it became on release was âi get free villagers that enable me to tower Rush my opponent without needing to invest on walk time and at the same time keep all my actual villagers safe and gatheringâ.
Sometimes when you look at an idea with Just your intended use in mind you Will not see all the other options that maybe you wouldnt like.
Eitter way the the design can work, its a matter of restrictions and numbers tunning.
Thatâs a very fair point, especially the Nu Wa comparison. Itâs a classic case of unintended consequences in RTS design.
However, thereâs a bit of a paradox: if a 4% buff is too small to be felt or to stop a raid, itâs unlikely to be the core reason for a successful âfortress crawlâ or a âtower rush.â A player wouldnât compromise their entire positioning for a marginal gain unless the numbers were much higher.
I agree with your conclusion, though: itâs all about restrictions and tuning. If the bonus is capped and perhaps linked to specific structures (like Granaries or TCs), it prevents the âwalking buffâ abuse while keeping the flavor.
Iâm glad we agree the design can work with the right tweaks. Itâs always a fine line between making something feel impactful without making it exploitable!
Yea, those scenarios become the 2 end sides of the spectrum. On one end its great enough for you to base your playstyle around it like for example poseidon bonus is. On the other its not felt so you feels its something thats just there but you rather have some other tool that helps like current loki.
Theres an in between line, but is one of those tunning things we wont know until theres gameplay and we get to see what happens and many extra things we currently cant know. For starters, what unique upgrades will demeter minor gods have? What god powers do they bring? How well does she scale? etc etc.
Honestly, the issue here doesnât seem to be the idea itself, but the way youâre choosing to engage with it. _MarakuJa addressed your criticisms point by point, bringing up valid comparisons, edge cases, practical limitations, and even suggestions for restrictions and tuning. Yet you keep repeating the same arguments as if they hadnât already been addressed, always falling back on the âitâs either useless or brokenâ framing, even after several replies showing that a workable middle ground does exist. Thatâs not really a debate, itâs just refusing to move the discussion forward.
On top of that, thereâs a recurring contradiction: first the bonus is supposedly too irrelevant to justify any use at all, then it suddenly becomes strong enough to allow 50 villagers empowering units and breaking the game. Either it makes no difference, or it makes too much of a difference â but itâs never allowed to exist as a situational defensive advantage, which is the whole point of the proposal. It comes across as if, regardless of the suggested tweaks, caps, or restrictions, the idea has already been dismissed from the start. At that point, itâs not constructive criticism of the design, just a closed-off position against it.
I dont think you got the point i was making which i guess is bad on my part. At least im aware OP understood.
I was looking at the idea without the numbers and telling him what could happen in uses besides the one hes describing. Then suggested a cap so its easier to balance to low number of villagers without making it way stronger when you would have bigger mass.
Then i look at the idea with his numbers and said those numbers wouldnt really amount to much and compared it to the Loki example, of its a bonus that ofc is there and aany number buff is a buff but compared to other gods bonus its lack luster. If you share OPâ s opinion that flavor passive are good even if they arent useful then kudos to you, i simply think different and its not right/wrong, its different perspectives on design.
Im talking about the design elements like the are each villager applies its effect in and how that matters.
Because its not been adressed. Theres no way to adress it. For neither of us. If the god is similar to freyr in design, theres 3 minor gods you dont know about, i dont know about them either and that shifts a lot how strong/weak something can be.
Thats simply a limitation of designing around the unknown. Since we are not designing the whole civ we cant synergize everything. You can play around what we know greek has. Which currently is very strong late game and a weakness of being stopped before getting there and taking the game.
If you are into the space of âfun flavorâ and âevery idea is a good ideaâ then im not the Best person for it, i like to focus on the details and branching out outside of its intended use and see how it compares to other things from a design stand point.
I guess i didint make myself clear to you. What i mean is this type of powers that stack based on X amount of units, without a cap are balanced around either being decent on low numbers and very strong on higher ones. Or not so good at low numbers to be balanced around bigger ones.
So either end point can happen.
Well im sorry you took it that way, here, allow me to illustrate it better:
Im quoting myself so you can better understand my position on it.
I think this is where the disagreement really sits. The proposal was never meant to compete with peak power bonuses or define an entire playstyle on its own, but to offer a situational defensive advantage that rewards fighting near your economy. Judging it primarily by whether it can match high-impact bonuses misses that core intention. It also feels like the middle ground is being understated.
A lot of existing bonuses in the game already live in that âin-betweenâ space you describe â not game-defining on their own, but meaningful when combined with positioning, timing, and other tools. That doesnât make them pointless, just different in design philosophy.
