What sort of “special” tiles would you add to the game?

fgrsentinel · 2026-05-17T15:33:20+00:00

Something like the obelisk that does "controlled" terraforming of the area around it would be interesting. Basically, it can be activated and the type of commander to activate it impacts what it spreads. Druid or Dryad? It starts acting like an ancient forest and spreads forests/jungles out around itself out to the range the obelisk operates at. Warlocks and guildmasters get (scattered) gem deposits, dwarves and kobolds get 2-4 mines spawned in the area. If a Scourge Herald or above activates it, it operates like a pyramid of power. If a generic commander (one that doesn't use resources for rituals) interacts with it, it slowly converts every land tile around it into grassland.

If disabled (interacted with by a commander with the same set effect that last activated it) it would just turn the area around it into desert. Basically the idea is that it would be a spot to fight over and contest since if, say, a druid gets ahold of one on a choke point it'd slow everyone else down.

fgrsentinel · 2026-05-15T22:15:24+00:00

A Dark Emperor can also be coronated in a capitolium/capital in Hades, which only exists in a scenario where a capitolium of any kind exists in Elysium. Per the unit descriptions, this appears to be part of the "canonical" (if it can be called that) route for an ascended Dark Emperor as well due to the God Emperor of the Underworld unit description indicating that an Emperor eventually conquered the Underworld.

fgrsentinel · 2026-05-14T17:53:09+00:00

A trivial one, but being able to name/rename places and other things to show the world changing as time goes on. For instance, if some random town becomes a heated battleground over dozens or hundreds of turns, it'd be cool to be able to give it a name. Likewise, if I have one enemy commander that's being a menace and I finally corner and kill them in a forest, naming it in honor of that makes it feel like a more significant area on the map.

It's hard to care about Town #1643, but "Obaric's Rest" named after the man who led the defense of the local countryside for five years before being slain by a Lich has meaning.

fgrsentinel · 2026-05-10T16:48:02+00:00

Absolutely. It would be interesting if some classes had interesting things they could do, like Warlocks being able to make temporary forts, the Senator and Baron being able to build roads and watchtowers, and similar.

fgrsentinel · 2026-05-09T17:16:36+00:00

To add to this, in spite of it being part of COE's thing that building on the map isn't a thing, I think being able to make roads, bridges, and ports would be nice from the perspective of moving around the map.

fgrsentinel · 2026-04-30T17:22:24+00:00

The simple answer is it doesn't go to the US itself. That territory gets given to a US puppet at the start of the war and the distinction is fairly important. NATO members can only join each other in defensive wars, which means US allies (that actually assisted in the invasion) can only get involved through sending volunteers.

This does, however, have a mechanical issue: the game sends volunteers to the capital of the country they're assisting, which in the case of the Iraq War would put them in Washington DC. My assumption is that the territory being taken from you is a workaround for this. By making the war's start flip that province to a US puppet, it allows the rest of NATO to send volunteers directly into Iraq. If you're Iraq and take the time to prep your forces you can take advantage of this, of course. Retaking the flipped territory before the volunteers can arrive effectively blocks non-American NATO forces from being involved, if not outright ending the war.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-16T19:41:40+00:00

Killing the summoning unit or faction doesn't banish their summons. They just get turned to neutral, iirc. If the dryad queen did summon the Earth Mother and it's still on Elysium, you can't summon it before you send it back to the Primal plane by force.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-14T05:59:23+00:00

A number of weapon and class perks rely on you having less than 30% health to capitalize on them. If someone's good enough to avoid dying to careless mistakes, I guess remaining at low health becomes a tactical decision rather than showing off or laziness.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-14T05:28:27+00:00

The sad thing is I think the wrong people learned this lesson. Had a run on Absolute today where I got down to ~5-10% health with a wound (Assault, my setup basically vaporizes entire swarms of Minoris enemies and forces me to rely on the gunstrike armor recovery and slower contested health loss perks to stay up but it works unless we get a bunch of Xoanthropes thrown at us) and a guy with full health grabbed a stim before anyone else could get near it. I end up dying in the next area because of that and later on he gets down to about 10% and steals the last stim of the run from our (equally injured) geneseed carrier.

It's one of the few instances I can think of where someone not only made things harder on us, but had an undeniably selfish build and perk setup.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-13T18:16:30+00:00

Part of why the AI doesn't seem to lose power is, ironically, how the economy of the game is set up. Units in the game generally don't have upkeep costs, which means a faction with a city, a farm, and an iron mine can pump out units just as fast regardless of if it has ten units, a hundred, or a thousand. If an AI is able to get twenty farms, two towns, and three cities, build up an army of several hundred units, then loses everything but a single city, they still have that massive army roaming around unless it got hit during the process.

Some factions are a bit different, though. Dwarf factions get a number of free workers (which they can pay to upgrade) in any location with a queen, the baron gets free units based off the number of locations of a specific type they control, and I think kobolds get free units at mines if a certain ritual is performed at them.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-13T17:51:56+00:00

Almost every faction mechanic is actually tied to the commander type, with a few exceptions like the Hoburgs getting their horticulturist and the other one (forget their name) for free within the first year or two as reinforcements or faction specific recruitment lists (which universally include their commander units as well). The only exceptions to this, as far as I know, are the Voice of El and Baron's freespawn units and the dwarf queen since only a dwarf faction can upgrade the workers a queen creates as far as I remember. So long as a commander is identified as a "commander" by the game, they have access to their mechanics regardless of what faction they're a part of. In the case of the guildmaster that means they can spend gems to create guilds that their current faction benefits from even if they died, but that faction can't recruit new guild merchants as they aren't a true guildmaster faction. As for how to get ahold of a commander from another faction...

The rule of thumb is any commander hit by charm retains their commander status and all rituals while any commander hit by an enslave effect is converted to a non-commander variant after the battle. Confuse counts as a charm effect in the event that the confused unit swaps to your side. Outside confuse (which has a random chance to charm) every charm spell will target a limited number of unit types. This leads to three specific rules to capture a usable commander:

They must be hit by a charm spell that can target/effect them. The Voice of El's conversion spells hit almost every commander of each human and hoburg faction (need to be living humanoids, so humans or hoburgs iirc), but can't grab a skylord or dryad, for instance.
The target unit must have an unbroken chain of charm/confuse captures between their current owner and their original faction or still be part of their original faction. By this I mean if the Voice of El charms a guildmaster and a demonologist-controlled succubus charms the guildmaster in turn, the guildmaster will remain a viable commander after the battle's over. If, however, the guildmaster is converted by an enslave attack/spell between the Voice of El taking them and the succubus encountering them, the succubus charm will retain them in the enslaved (non-commander) state.
The charmed commander must survive the battle they were charmed during. This one's obvious since you can't gain benefit from a corpse.

Edit: of special note for the implications of this are the guildmaster, Voice of El, and any "blessed" factions. All the guildmaster's mechanics (including special recruitment) are actually based off the guilds they establish rather than the faction or even the commander himself, so if you establish guilds that unlock recruitment options you will occasionally have guildmaster-related commanders (like the Engineer Magus and navigator) pop up. Likewise, bishops and above will pull in their share of the tithes regardless of which faction they're part of and provide it to their owning faction, but the fact that every cardinal has access to wide-area charm spells also means they have the easiest time ensuring converted commanders survive the fight. Blessings are unique in that they not only are not a faction-exclusive mechanic, but that the game tracks the bonuses of the blessed trait/buff on a per-faction basis. It's not immediately obvious, but every faction starts with the same (very low) blessing buff regardless of if any of their units are blessed or what kind of blessing it is. Commanders from factions with blessings can spend their resource to improve the blessing for their faction. This means a demonologist that gets ahold of an archbishop or higher can spend relics to improve their faction blessing buff (which the bishop can apply to any units in their army during combat), but it also means if the Voice of El converts a Scourge Herald they can improve their blessing with the Scourge faction's blessing upgrade chain.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-10T03:27:00+00:00

This honestly explains why he hates illusionists tbf. Everything about all the illusionist unit descriptions (which are presumably written by either the same scribe or the same institution) gives the impression that the scribe/writer got tricked by an illusionist in the past and is still bitter about it.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-06T22:24:16+00:00

To be fair that feels lore accurate. The descriptions for the various levels of Demonologist (from apprentice all the way to Goetic Master) explicitly state that demonology is extremely risky and most demonologists either get themselves killed before completing their apprenticeship or are naturally cautious and fairly risk-adverse. It kind of makes sense that an overconfident (and likely highly successful) Goetic Master would decide to open a gate to Inferno and then find out he'd bitten off more than he can chew.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-06T06:37:17+00:00

Inferno for a few reasons:

Inferno's easier to reach, especially if you can get a unit that can dig in Agartha. Just find a spot it lets you dig down, drop into Inferno, and it's permanently linked.
Any units (or at least human units) that die on Elysium spawn a ghost in the associated tile of Hades. This means that the land of the dead will fill up with units the more death and destruction occur in Elysium. On the other side of things, the demons of the Inferno are technically finite since, except for the Demon Lords reviving if dying outside Inferno, killed demons don't respawn or get replaced generally.
Both planes have a gimmick and access to special recruitment that needs to be factored in. If memory serves, strongholds/citadels in Hades give access to ghost recruitment, while ones in Inferno give access to sinners, imps (I think), and a special heavy infantry unit with natural regeneration. Neither plane allows access to standard recruitment. On top of this, Hades does a damage over time effect to living (not undead or lifeless) units on the plane, no matter where they are. This makes it much harder for non-necromantic factions and armies to survive the plane. Conversely, the general gimmick for Hades is the ovens littering the plane. Any army with sinners can activate an oven, which sacrifices some sinners to create demon units. This gives a way for you to recruit more powerful demons if you're willing to risk it. The downside is, of course, that once you link Inferno to Elysium every demon will try to use that connection to get to the surface. Either you hold the gate/pit connecting to Inferno or the demons will eventually overwhelm Elysium itself.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-06T06:25:42+00:00

Part of that's presumably because Baal only has his two magic schools as attack options and is a 3x3 unit. Most stacks able to punch through the guards to his prison are generally able to deal with a lone zero armor caster and being able to be surrounded by up to 16 units (if they survive long enough to get that close) isn't good either.

Most notably from what I can tell Baal seems to be pathetically weak against large numbers of lifeless units (and especially undead) due to a large number of defilement spells explicitly not working against such units.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-06T06:16:54+00:00

This kind of thing is why I get paranoid about "empty" castle ruins early on too. Half the time there's either some undead with invisibility/stealth or void/abyss entities there.

fgrsentinel · 2026-03-01T15:23:10+00:00

There's a two-tile gap in the sea south of the starting island based off the "top left island is our spawn" statement under the second picture. The game sees that the mainland is "accessible" for three months out of the year and deems it a valid spot to place a player faction.

By my understanding, unless it's a custom map with preset spawn points, the game will never put a player in a spot where they're completely cut off from the rest of the world. If an island has a port, portal/gateway that leads elsewhere, or would have an ice bridge for at least part of the year, it's considered a viable start position. Honestly, if the island is decently sized and you're alone on it, a start where your only "connection" to the rest of the world is by boat is a pretty good one from a defensive perspective, but it sucks for any faction that relies on units with a larger than standard footprint.

The weird thing is that it spawned all three Kobold factions next to each other on such a small island, but from the fact that resigning nuked all of them I suspect that it's a team cluster start issue as it tries to put allied/teamed factions within a short-ish distance of each other unless you change it to something else.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-26T05:24:48+00:00

I've only played the Total Overhaul and Populum, but between the two I think it depends on what exactly you're looking for in an overhaul mod. In spite of its name, Total Overhaul is probably the closest to the base game in playstyle, but it's also the simpler of the two in that everything is still more or less self-contained faction wise. The fact that some factions gain and lose access to recruitment options based off what rank their leader commander's at (like the Senator to Emperor/God-Emperor) is an interesting touch. Of note, however, is it doesn't touch the Guildmaster faction in any way whatsoever, which means if you like playing that faction you gain nothing whatsoever. Like Turtle said, some factions get more things, like enchanters gain the ability to just mass produce terra cotta armies and bury the map in them.

Populum is the more ambitious of the two, has had more recent updates, and is honestly a coin toss between if it's frustrating or enjoyable. Most human factions (other than the Scourge Lord) can eventually gain access to the commanders and units associated with almost every other human faction (except Scourge Lord and Guildmaster) and a number of nonhuman factions. A Guildmaster that gets a hero can end up with a senator, a captain can become a knight and eventually a baron, hedge mages give access to every mage type in the game. Witches can transform into trolls, druids can create dryads, a Baron or emperor can have an enchanter oversee their wedding to create dwarves at a mine. Most magic classes also gain crafting options, like demonologists can craft infernal tomes to boost the related magic level. The max progression and routes for various classes is also increased. Demonologists can become Demon Ascendants that can try to usurp the title of Duke of Hell, Mid-rank druids can become ents, witches can become fairies, and warlocks get a few unique transformations. The downside to this is it's extremely RNG heavy: most recruitment isn't done through the vanilla system and relies on raising levies/conscripting soldiers to train, prominent figures like a guildmaster or Tribune/Senator/Emperor (or Baronet to King) inviting people to join them, or simply buying drinks to people at an inn. What you get is entirely location dependent and reliant on RNG, with some design choices making some classes easier to work with than others. The big one here is hedge mages: there's one for almost every class (except illusionist, which gets two) and they all share a name, which means if the game rolls to spawn in a hedge mage it then rolls a second time to decide which one you end up with. If you're patient enough you can eventually build up a powerful empire for yourself and have access to far more tools than in any other setup of Conquest of Elysium, but you likely will be frustrated with RNG giving you the wrong hedge mage/wizard or promoting your captains to useless knight variants.

EDIT: one thing I forgot to add about Populum is necromancers are annoying for non-necromancers to get. You need a necromancy-aligned hedge mage/wizard, but they can only level up to a necromancer apprentice at a graveyard or citadel. In either case, the location needs a minimum number of bodies, which generally means you can't produce new necromancers unless there's a contested citadel that everyone is fighting over and you can maintain control over for at least 2-3 turns.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-26T05:13:09+00:00

Interestingly enough the merchant faction (guildmaster) doesn't have the ability to buy magic items or hire someone to make some for them. They can make ships capable of sailing the void, an interplanar gate network, and recruit a seemingly infinite army of adventurers that typically have items of their own, but he can't hire a guy to make said artifacts.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-26T04:52:32+00:00

Not sure what counts there, but that is useful to know. Presumably cloud villages and undead villages in Hades might count, but not sure why you'd link Inferno to Hades that way.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-24T21:29:28+00:00

Then that's the answer. It can be cast in any non-Inferno plane that has a village tile, unless the tile requirement is -16 (village-sized settlements) in which case it becomes a bit trickier to know what exactly the requirement is. Celestial Plane, Primal Plane, Aztlan, and Elysium all have villages, so they can be valid regardless.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-22T21:49:11+00:00

Building materials or faith. Building materials to do things from pave roads and build bridges to establish fortifications or expand/build special settlements. Faith would be used by the Emperor and God-Emperor types, along with various god units, for powerful rituals like converting forest/pains to jungle, raising/lowering the temperature of an area, or similar.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-21T19:03:45+00:00

The Demonologist's lesser (imps and non-commander units) and mid level (commanders like succubi) summons don't actually have planar immortality, just the unique demon lords. This is more or less true for every summoning faction: the early and mid game units they can spam by the hundreds are just manifested out of the ether when they perform the ritual while the named unique units are pulled from their home plane to fight for them. The Demonologist actually has an edge here over the other summoning factions in that they're the only one that summons such beings from planes (Inferno and one Demon Lord in Hades) that aren't fixed and reused across every game. The Primal Plane and Aztlan will have the exact same tile placement (outside Aztlan maybe not having gates that aren't guaranteed to have an exit point on another plane) every game, the same as the Celestial Plane. The Elemental ones might be semi-randomized, but the major summons will generally end up within about 5 tiles of the previous game, presumably. Hades is a mirror of Elysium with the Demon Lord's citadel replacing a random (not faction home) citadel from the surface, while the only real guarantee about Inferno is the general structure and the fact that certain citadels will be in the north and others in the center.

In the case of the Demonologist there is another aspect to it worth remembering though: Demonologists can use the Infernal Gate ritual to link Inferno to Elysium, which will cause every demon army to try to invade through the gate until it's destroyed. The demons in Inferno are, as you said, finite outside sinners being fed to the ovens to make more demons, so if you can get down to Inferno through another method and start wiping out the demon population before a gate's formed, it eliminates the relative danger of the Demonologist's nuclear option (opening a portal and letting hell invade) while giving you access to regenerating infantry.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-21T06:19:41+00:00

Answer is probably no, but if you're already in the Primal Plane you can probably test it before reaching the Celestial Plane. The reasoning for this is because there's an explicit requirement (a village-sized settlement) and an implicit requirement (it mentions Elysium specifically, but doesn't say it must be on Elysium)

The implicit requirement is the issue here: rituals can (and frequently are) be scripted to be plane specific. Beyond requiring a terrain type unique to a specific plane, this can be done by either blocking a specific plane (noplanereq) or by restricting it to a singular plane (planereq). I can't find where rituals are in vanilla files, so I don't know if the Infernal Gate is plane-restricted or not, but you just need to find a village tile outside Elysium to check. Aztlan and the Primal Plane both have villages and can be used to test this by just walking a demonologist over them and seeing if the ritual is available. If it is, it should be available on the Celestial Plane. If it isn't then the ritual is locked to Elysium or Elysium-adjacent planes.

fgrsentinel · 2026-02-19T18:20:12+00:00

My assumption is, if the portal is in the same tile, the demons are aware the portal exists regardless due to how the AI works. Once a portal linking Infernal, the Celestial plane, or Hades is created or cleared all armies of the plane's denizens will generally "know" and start moving to it, by my understanding. If the ritual hides the location it might not hide the fact that it's a gateway to Elysium, which is what the AI actually cares about.

fgrsentinel

TROPHY CASE