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Heroes & Villains: Gwalo

So yesterday I promised I would show you an actual villain from the upcoming DLC. Here's Gwalo. He makes good money selling human beings, and he's happy to help you.



He slightly raises unrest in the city he's assigned to, but he also increases production by 50%, allowing it to churn out ships much faster.

And if that's too slow, he has a Forced Labour edict, which really speeds up production. It doesn't make your empire look very good, but if it delivers a defensive building in time before an invasion fleet arrives, maybe it's worth it.



And if you don't care about your reputation at all, he's happy to help you make some quick cash by enslaving the local population. There's some long-term consequences, but who cares about those - you have a world to conquer.



He'll become more loyal the more cities you pillage, giving him opportunities for his business, but he rather despises kindness, gentleness, and any kind of scientific or educational endeavour, which he does not understand.

So what does "the empire showing kindness to another" mean? Well, sometimes there are diplomatic incidents - another new feature in the DLC - and sometimes there are opportunity to be kind to another empire, such as rescuing their people from pirates, or giving them food when they're starving. Gwalo really hates it when you do that.



Anyway, that's all from me for TactiCon. I hope you enjoyed the DLC preview, and I'll just ask you one last time - to appease the Gods of Marketing - to wishlist Heroes & Villains.

Heroes & Villains: Vex

Today's DLC preview post is about Vex:



Vex is a druid who often appears at the same time as some spiders or gargoyles settling into your territory. They can be hired as an airship captain, providing a number of magical spells:

Sinkhole, which spontaneously produces a massive hole in the ground, causing whatever was standing there to crash down. Great for taking out small buildings or making landships lose their footing.



Crosswinds, which for a time entirely prevents a ship from moving, letting you move your ships into an optimal position.



Air Support, here in the form of a flock of eight gargoyles, which will tear apart the enemy ships with their acid spit.



So what does Vex want from you? It's pretty simple, really: wipe out pirates, mad scientists, cultists, machine cubes, and other such blights upon nature, and leave the animals alone. Even if they're giant animals that like to eat people.

And it won't be as simple as keeping your captains' and governors' loyalty just above zero. Even before they quit, low-loyalty characters can be amenable to persuasion from other empires...

As a design note, there's no magical abilities that do direct damage, because I felt that in a game that already incorporates cannons, the ability to cast fireball wouldn't be all that exciting.

Instead, many magical abilities are about battlefield control, and they're generally "plausibly deniable". Maybe the ground did just give way? Maybe there were some unfortunate winds stopping this ship from moving? Maybe some angry gargoyles just happened to fly past and decided to exclusively attack one side's ships because they smelled wrong?

We're pretty sure that was all Vex, but we can't be certain.

Finally, I realised that I have now shown you three heroes, or at least ambiguous characters. Given that the title of the DLC is Heroes & Villains, I will do one more post tomorrow, showing you a very bad man you might nevertheless want to hire.

Heroes & Villains: Viviane Garcia

So yesterday we looked at Commander Bertelli, an airship captain. Today it's the turn of Viviane Garcia, a city governor and ardent socialite.



When assigned to a city, she reduces the local level of unrest, makes it significantly cheaper to build upgrades such as universities and shipyards, but also makes the city much more vulnerable to enemy spies.

She can also be called upon to organise a fabulous masked ball, raising the spirits of the citizens and granting you a bit of reputation. Of course, while everyone is wearing masks, spies have an even easier time.



The masked ball is a city edict, a temporary event that governors can invoke. Other governors have edicts such as declaring martial law, organising a scientific symposium, or using the population for unethical experiments.


(Note to self: commission a version of her portrait where she's wearing a mask.)

She has two stats, loyalty and experience.

Her loyalty is direly tested whenever you perform a spy action, but the very worst thing you can do is hire a man called Pyle McMorley.

Who?



This is McMorley:



As you can see, the antipathy is mutual.

The other stat is experience, which she gains through diplomacy, signing non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts, and alliances.

Once she reaches 100 experience, she transforms into Dame Viviane.



Now she's less interested in masked balls, and she's learned to find out and stifle enemy spies in her city - though she still despises McMorley. And now she has a fame stat, which rises slowly over time, delivering victory after about seven years - if someone doesn't get there first, or sabotages her rise to fame...

So several readers have understandably expressed concern that winning the game through fame will be overpowered. A quick victory that bypasses much of the actual gameplay. That's not the intent here - fame victory should take time and effort, and other players should have the chance to resist it, much like with coronation and worm age victories.

With a DLC like this, I think it's important that the power level of the new features is carefully adjusted. If they're underpowered, the DLC ends up not mattering, and if they're overpowered, the DLC obsoletes the gameplay of the base game. If the power level is right, though, the DLC makes the game more complex and interesting. So that's what I'm aiming for. The heroes you see in these posts will go through plenty of testing and balancing before the release.

Tomorrow: Vex! Combat Magic! Gargoyles!

Version 1.1.8.2

Fixed a small graphical glitch with the new Suspendium Disruptor.

Heroes & Villains: Commander Bertelli

Heroes & Villains, the upcoming DLC, will introduce captains and governors with special abilities. Today we're having an in-depth look at Commander Bertelli:

He is a captain who may turn up for hire after you conquer a city or develop a new military training technology. As a captain, you can assign him to an airship or landship to use him in combat.



Due to his inexperience, crew actually move a bit more slowly under his command, but his recent education also makes his ship significantly safer, halving the chance of it catching fire. Plus, his ship is ready for new commands twice as fast.

He has a single activated ability, Flank, which he can use once per combat. Flank allows him to instantly move his ship to a location on the far end of the battlefield.



So if the enemy has one of those buildings with cannons sticking only out of one side, he can entirely circumvent them and destroy the building from its vulnerable rear.

Bertelli has two stats, Experience and Pride, which are influenced by events in your empire. He gains in experience from victories and defeats equally, but victories, and especially other empires submitting to yours, really inflate his pride.



If he hits 100 pride before 100 experience, he evolves into Commodore Bertelli, who does have more abilities, but does not especially inspire his men:



The commodore has three abilities:

Double Time, which rapidly increases crew speed for a while. Disarm, which lets his ship target enemy weapons with extreme accuracy. Cripple, which does the same for enemy propulsion:



And now he has a loyalty stat instead - victories, tribute, submission to feed his ego, and he'll be loyal and stay. But if your empire is humbled, he'll seek employment elsewhere.

(Tribute means paying a proportion of your income to another empire. Submission means you transfer some of your reputation to another.)

But if Commander Bertelli reaches 100 experience first, he turns into Captain Bertelli, a well-tempered heroic officer who can potentially win you the entire game:



Under Captain Bertelli, crew move faster and gain more experience after each battle, further strenghening them. He retains the flank ability and also has the cripple ability of his counterpart, and he also has Burst of Speed, which allows his ship to move much faster for a short while.

He too has a loyalty score which reflects his sense of fairness, as he wants you to refrain from tribute and submission, giving and taking.

But then he also has a Fame score, and this score has a little laurel wreath icon at the end, which means that if it hits 100, his fame is so great that he is able to unite the scattered nations under his command - winning you the game.

The road there is a long one - twenty-five combat victories, and every defeat, and every show of subterfuge and weakness makes it take even longer. But again, you will literally win the game, so perhaps it's worth investing in this man.

There are several heroes, both captains and governors, that can win the game. All of them have to evolve into a more powerful form first, and then build up a stat to 100. Any such contenders are also shown in the top right of the map screen, allowing you to keep track of who might be close to winning - so you can do something about it.



After all, if their empire is in ruins, even fame won't save them.



Tomorrow, we look at Viviane Garcia, a socialite and another potential game-winner. And if you enjoyed this, do wishlist Heroes & Villains.