Dev Diary #34 - Ways of War - Oathsworn
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Hello everyone, my name is Luis Ferreira and I’m a senior designer at Triumph Studios. It is with great joy that I get to talk to you about the first content pack of our new expansion pass, Ways of War!
Today I will be showing you a new culture included in this pack, the Oathsworn.
The Oathsworn are an Order affinity culture that then gain another affinity point based on an Oath they take.
Their main mechanic is the Devotion system, which tracks their actions and measures them against their Oath. The higher their Devotion to the Oath, the stronger their units become and the happier their cities are.
Each Oath has a preferred playstyle. They have preferred actions that when taken increase the Devotion level and prohibited actions that lower the Devotion to the Oath when acted.
The Oath of Strife, for example, gains Devotion by making wars and proving themselves in combat, but losing Devotion if they make peace or enter diplomatic treaties.
At the start of the game, the Oathsworn are Neutral to their oath, yet to prove themselves. But as they follow it they can become Adherent, then Devotees and at the pinnacle they become Paragons of the oath.
There’s also an Oathbreaker state which means your Devotion is low enough to break your oath, incurring heavy stability penalties on your cities and the Oath’s boon on your units actually becomes a detriment. Following and acting on what the oath requires from you can bring the Oathsworn back from this disgraced state.
The Oath of Harmony is all about seeking cooperation and ridding the world of discord. They gain Devotion to their Oath by having cities or vassals of other races, clearing infestation and ancient wonders and making truces and forgiving grievances. They dislike starting wars, destroying or migrating hostile cities and fabricating grievances.
Their Oath boon is Harmonize, their connection to their oath and their secondary Nature affinity allows them to heal in combat when they go below a Hit Point threshold.
Righteousness is a straightforward oath that cares about doing what’s right and good. They gain devotion equal to their alignment value. They despise evil actions and receive double the evil alignment if they ever commit such an act which in turn rapidly brings their Devotion level down.
Nobility is their unit mechanic. They gain an amount of Spirit damage scaling with their devotion on their non-flanking attacks.
Strife is all about war and forging themselves in the heat of battle. Their Oath encourages war, winning in combat, especially if you are the underdog, and razing enemy cities. They dislike making truces or any kind of diplomatic alliance and even reject vassals.
Their Warrior’s Soul triggers when the enemy is overwhelming them, giving the Strife Oathsworn an edge in combat when they need a push.
Now that we know what their oaths are, let’s talk about the units that will help you fulfill them.
The oathsworn start with two melee units, the first being the Sworn Guard, a polearm unit that will defend your backline units while applying Sundered Defense with its attacks.
The other starting unit is the Honor Blade, a fighter which has extra defensive stats but it has a more costly drafting cost for its tier. Its Defensive Strike, a single action ability, deals decent damage while placing this unit in Defense Mode, making this unit a great frontline striker who can take a beating and give it back!
The Vowkeeper is a strong and versatile support unit. Vow of Purification removes all Negative Status Effects from a friendly unit and grants them Status Protection to ward and protect them against further detrimental effects. Vow of Healing is an area of effect heal and its Purging Blast base attack removes a positive status effect from enemies it hits.
The Sealbearer is a Tier 2 Battle Mage unit that carries powerful seals, marks of their oath, with them. Their Seal Bolts base ability has different damage types according to their Oath and their Seal ability changes in effect according to it. All Seals last 3 turns.
Resonance Seal (Harmony): Deals 30 Blight damage and all attacks against the unit deal an extra 4 Blight damage.
Transference Seal (Righteousness): Deals 30 Spirit damage and all attacks against this unit heal the attacker for 5 hit points.
Fire Seal (Strife): Deals 35 Fire Damage and applies a strong burn effect, dealing 12 Fire damage to the enemy each passing turn.
All Tier 3 units are different depending on the Oath! Harmony’s is a strong Ranged mounted unit called the Peacebringer. Its special attack is a Line Shot that strikes units in a 3-hex line and it even has a Quick Stab ability like ranged heroes do to deal with enemy melee engagement.
Something all Tier 3 Oathsworn units share is their Oath Paragon abilities where they gain an extra ability when you are at Paragon level Devotion. The Peacebringer’s ability is the Arrow of Harmony, which deals damage and applies Pacified, disabling an enemy’s ability to use damaging abilities for a turn.
The Righteousness Tier 3 unit. A Shock unit that after charging into melee engagement, its strategy is using its full action attack Helmsplitter to obliterate enemies. It deals massive damage and ignores half of the target’s defenses.
At Paragon Devotion, it gains Radiant Slash, a single action ability with an area of effect that deals Spirit damage and Blinds units hit.
Last but not least, the Oath of Strife’s Tier 3: the Warbound. Like the Avenger it is also a Shock unit but this one prefers rushing through the battlefield with its Bulldoze ability, which makes the unit rush in a line, damaging all enemies in its way and then still enabling the unit to attack afterwards.
Flaming Charge Strike works differently from other charge attacks, where instead of gaining a percentage of its damage as the unit moves, it gains a flat Fire damage increase, +5 per hex moved up to +15 damage.
The unit gains the Infernal Blaze ability at Paragon Devotion, a single action that deals Fire damage to all adjacent units and grants the unit Infernal Might stacks, giving it even more Fire damage on its Charge Attack.
This concludes our dive into the Oathsworn, a culture who strongly follow their own values and ideals no matter what. Hope you are as excited as I am for the release of this content pack and hope to see you next week when I go over the new Tomes and Wildlife.
The Ways of War content pack releases on the 5th of November so hope to see you and your creations then!
Get Expansion Pass 2:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3181480/Age_of_Wonders_4_Expansion_Pass_2/
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