A civilization is most defined by its favour system. Every civ has its unique way of worshipping their gods, giving us a good insight what their believe is all about. There are a couple more civs i would love to see in this mythical world and i want to share how each could please their deities.
Starting of with the Celts: The Celts would gain favour by sacrificing animals at the altar or bringing gold as a tribute to it. Workers can build up to three altars. The altar attracts wild animals, like poseidons Lure does. Any meat or gold placed at the altar converts into favour and the more the altar is used the more trees around it become sacred, giving a little passive favour income as long as their not chopped down. The altar converts one resource into 0.5 favour. If a druid inchants the altar the rate of which animals spawn and sacred trees spread increases.
Next up are the Babylonians and for them i have two ideas: The first idea is a pilgrimage system. You can build one holy site. Your workers travel from one town center to it and when they return they drop of favour. It’s like caravans for favour, the longer the journey the more favour you gain. Additionally if you move to the next age you can upgrade this holy site, providing more favour when the journey is completed. ___ The secound idea is a relic system. You spawn with one relic and with every new constructed town center comes a new relic shimmering red, blue or green (depending on your major god). If the relic is placed in a temple it will automatically generate favour. These relics can not be stolen or moved by another player. After the fifth relic spawns no more will appaer when constructing a new town center.
Last but not least are the Turks/Mongols: I shared this idea already in another thread by the user @hasansan. If you haven’t go check it out, it’s very thougt through and well made. The idea goes something like this. The Kams (Shamans) are strong melee hero units carrying a drum. These devoted man can enter a trance like state by sitting down and beating their drum while singing or chanting. The more of your warriors surround them while they hold their ceremonie the more favour you gain. This ceremonie has one downside. After you started it you can’t stop it, leaving the kam defenseless and immobile for a certain amount of time. The total of Kams you can have at once is seven and you can upgrade things like ceremonie range or duration via god technologies.
I think these are done neat ideas, but the Celt one in particular needs some more thought. Perhaps it could work more like the Aztec villager sacrifice mechanic, whereby sacrificing animals would kick off a permanent trickle. Otherwise you’ve created a system where Celts cannot generate any favour in the late game.
But the Aztecs have alternative ways to raise favour, and I actually think your Celts would need alternatives even more. Otherwise, you might be able to gain favour late game, but would have no way to control your rate; nothing you can do to increase it later on. Because unlike villagers, you run out of animals available to sacrifice.
For the Babylonians I always thought the following would be a suitable mechanic for favor generation: Ziggurats. These are in addition to Temples and might sever a secondary purpose. Basically, the player can build a limit number (maybe 5 to 10) and can place a relic inside each. Placing the relic inside doesn’t give you the benefit of the relic but changes the favour gain rate by a factor of x. Too boring?
One of their Major God’s power is to create a new relic randomly on the map, and their bonus is to have the location of all relics visible through Fog of War.
Celts: Maybe have altars that are tended by a Druid. If the altar is tended by a Druid (garrisoned inside) then x% of all resources dropped off are converted to favour instead??
Something with houses; I don’t have any particular pantheon in mind.
All houses can be individually upgraded (cost+research time similar to Calpullis) to generate favor passively and provide god power blocking at a small radius. The upgrade cost could increase the more of them you already have. Or their radius can’t overlap for the favor generation (similar to Atlantean Oracles).
Animals constantlly spawn at the altars, meaning if you dedicate a few villagers/ workers to it you gain favour throughout the match plus if you deposite gold there you get additional favour. Basiclly trading resources for favour. Druids don’t tend to it for favour but for the rate of which animals spawn and trees spread, else they would by a miko copy.
I believe special relics for favour would be better. Imagine your opponent collects half of the relics on the map and you secure the other half but have to use them for favour. In that case you’re worse of then your opponent just for playing as that civ.
Always knowing where every relic is sounds a bit op i think. Maybe a GP like this could show you where one is, for a minute maybe. A GP connected to relics is a good idea though.
Your Celt proposal is what i first had in mind but i changed it, because i think it comes to close to the japanese favour system, just with more work.
I like the idea of upgrading buildings for favour. Maybe the temples could be upgradeable to generate favour and maybe the further away these temples are from the next town center the faster you generate. I could see this being used for a Roman civ, spreading their believe around the map.
Sounds like an interesting idea. Would need an inbuilt system to keep spawning hunt, kinda like quetz can have extra herdables to keep his unique tech going, otherwise you hit a point where theres no favor. Gold also runs out.
This sounds very interesting having a trade of sorts that gives favor sounds very unique. Wonder if there could maybe be a tech that allows tou give favor to allies if you trade with them.
Sounds cool as a concept, like praying but for military units
After doing a little more more research I see the main ways real Celts gathered favour with their Gods was through animal sacrifice and festivals. What about a two-way system similar to the Aztecs. They can sacrifice herbables for instant and trickling favour, but then to make them stand out they have a second very unique mechanic. Similar to Ying and Yang, there is a timer in the top corner. It cycles through 2 ‘seasons’, one every four minutes (Light and Dark). In the Dark season they passively gather favor from farming (if you’re over a certain threshold). For example, maybe it requires 30 villagers to farm in order to trigger the favor gather rate. In the light season, Druid (Heroes) light and tend fires. Fire cost wood to maintain, so additional wood supplied needed. You can only gather favour of each type in their specific season. For example, druids can’t light fires unitl Light season has come. Too clunky?
If there is going to be Scythians and if i don’t make them into a mod first then i would imagine them with a totally different nomadic playstyle. And they would gain unit upgrades through fighting. And with that they can upgrade their units each individually. Like in real they used enemy armor to change their own armor and to increase their horses armor. Those upgrades would give favor. Or they could consume the enemy. Or make a sacrifice at a designated altar or tree.
why not make a mix between china and japanese? let them place menhirs and around the placed menhir is a sacred area which slowly gets converted like the trees for japanese and lure in animals (and “produce” animals maybe via upgrade?) and the more animals get killed in these area the more favour is gained?
but maybe too complicated.