EA Bethel She'em, Litany of Cinders v1.15

[ÆtherNomad]

Hello again, everyone! :D

Today, after nearly a full year of efforts (yup, I started working on it the 28th of march 2018, even before Zun!), I am extremely happy to finally release (as first seen on this thread[dominionsmods.com]) one of my most ambitious mods so far: the angelic nation EA Bethel She'em, Litany of Cinders[drive.google.com]!

Although it certainly isn't the biggest of my mod nations in sheer volume, it certainly is the most innovative one mechanically (as can for example be illustrated by its huge number of events - 137, which is even more than any of my other nations! - and dummy monsters - 22, more than a quarter of all my other mods COMBINED!), and it does have its own copious share of lore as well: heavily inspired by Ancient Palestine, the jewish Kabbalah, Dionysius the Areopagite and both the Ancient and New Testaments, it mixes up jewish and christian angelology with great efforts to make them as compatible as possible with the rest of Dominions' universe! Let us see right away what it has in store for us :D

Isolated in an immaculate land of sand, rock, silence and solitude, the humble town of Bethel She'em was mysteriously chosen by a great deity as the place of her Awakening. As a result, celestial heralds of splendor known as Angels have descended upon it to prepare the world for her Glory and purge it from both sin and mankind. Now, from this Holy City in the desert, an Empire of light and cinder is expanding at an alarming rate, promising bliss to the faithful and eradication to everyone else.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1689483581
As you can see, there is not much to recruit around there! But do not panic: there is much to summon instead! That is of course because Bethel She'em is not a human nation - and indeed, your ONLY non-angelic national unit will be that poor little pilgrim accessible in all non-forted provinces with a temple. And that is, just as well, because Bethel She'em IS a popkill nation - just like MA Ermor, with the very same apocalyptic popkill stat: 5% per candle per month! However, with Bethel She'em, you shouldn't expect to get thousands of undead soldiers in your armies; instead, your angel troops will be much more powerful, but also much less numerous. So, a wholly different kind of apocalypse!

But what are these innovative mechanics I was talking about earlier, you ask? Well, let us make a little summary:

• In Bethel She'em, your pretender god is a resource of its own. Ten unique rituals called Sephiroth (actually eleven, but shhhh, it's a blasphemy...) are available to the nation, and although all of them have extremely powerful effects, all of them also require the self-sacrifice of your God in order to function! An interesting fact here is that you'll have to think hard about how and WHEN to use your 8 bonus bless points, since non-incarnate blesses are probably not gonna be very useful on your unusual sacreds... Should I sacrifice my god now, or get a boost from my incarnate bless? That's a question you're hopefully going to have to ask yourself more often than not!
  
• Not only that, but Bethel She'em's pretender must be called back from the dead TWICE in order to truly return to life, instead of just once like for all other nations. So, instead of your usual 50 combined priestly levels of performing the Call God order, about 100 are necessary this time, making it even more challenging to cast Sephira rituals!
  
• Sephira rituals have very unique effects as well. For example, one of them changes the way ALL your future Sephira rituals work by making them summon a free Virtue in addition to their regular effects! Another example: one of them forever sacrifices the very ability to cast Sephira rituals, in exchange for a HUGE number of gems!
  
• The most emblematic of the Sephira rituals is also extremely frightening in power: it purely and simply summons a Seraph, its only cost or requirement being the sacrifice of your pretender god. Yes, it actually means that, by sacrificing your pretender, you CAN have one Seraph on turn 2. Do not fear, however: a number of mechanics unique to the nation were implemented to ensure that this isn't as OP as it sounds. For example, you absolutely cannot afford to lose that Seraph before the end game comes, because only him can use the Crown of Names created by another Sephira, which is absolutely necessary in order to get your research going! Another example: as Bethel She'em has an incredibly low number of troops, you absolutely need that Seraph to expand, and in the end it doesn't behave much differently than a monster expander pretender. Still freaking awesome though, especially if you succeed in building up your Call God economy and succeed in summoning other free Seraphs that way!
  
• Let us also talk about troops! Unlike other popkill nations, your troops aren't true freespawn. Indeed, in order to appear they don't just need a temple, but ALSO a summonable Tetragrammaton, which costs its own weight in gems and then can be killed! By the way, Bethel She'em's freespawn is vastly dependant not only on dominion strength but also on Order scales, making of it the first popkill nation that doesn't want Turmoil!
  
• As if this wasn't enough, Bethel She'em also has unique prophet mechanics. Just like your god, your prophet should sacrifice himself as often as possible for the Greater Good! Although this only works with pilgrims and requires them to make a long journey of evangelisation back and forth to enemy territory and then your capital, by being raptured (and dying) they will let you receive a large amount of gems which will be increased for each temple you own!
  
• Do you want a REALLY awesome end game spell? Then let me present you Withdraw the Veil, a ritual that literally kills everyone. Yup, everyone in the world just melts down in an ocean of blood, not unlike the ending of a pretty famous anime with angels and robots. There actually IS some way to prevent it from happening, and this spell is incredibly hard to complete, but I won't spoil the mystery... for now, just know that it exists :D
  
• Just for the record, Bethel She'em also has a number of national items (4 forgeable ones at the time of release) as well as national rebates on generic items - including, of course, several highly thematic artifacts: the Ark, the Armor of Virtue, the Immaculate Shield, the Sword of Justice, the Forbidden Light... and for non-artifacts, Banner of the Northern Star, Flambeau, Holy Scourge and Wall Shaker.
  
• Did you think this was an exhaustive list? Ha! Believe me, there is much, much more to discover here! :D But if you want a little tip: the Annunaki of Growth is a much more interesting pretender than it appears to be...

As usual, I must also say that this nation is extra-enjoyable when combined with my other mod Pantheon Reborn[dominionsmods.com], that balances out vanilla pretenders mostly by buffing Titans. However, the nation shouldn't be unbalanced without it, so don't worry and just try Bethel She'em already if you don't want to use that other mod!

Finally, let me say that I can't wait to know what you think about the nation! Your feedback will be instrumental in balancing it, and any suggestion will, of course, always be most welcome!

And now, if you are ready for the End of Times... DOWNLOAD EA BETHEL SHE'EM V1.15![drive.google.com]

Note: All of this mod's used IDs (and more!) can be found both on top of its .dm file and in the Mod Compatibility Project[dominionsmods.com].

[Mormacil]

Oh it's finally out! I need to give this another spin. Great mechanics as always.

[ÆtherNomad]

Thanks Mormacil :D

[ÆtherNomad]

Just released v1.01, a small update that simply fixes a bug preventing the Infinity Blade item from dealing damage.

[transgender succubus]

With an Annunaki of Growth and Rebirth, Call God isn't an option. I'm guessing this is because of its Spring Immortality, is this intended? It seems fine as a trade off, I'm just not sure if it's been costed to account for losing the ability to build a god-calling economy in the late game.

[ÆtherNomad]

Originally posted by Axebird:

With an Annunaki of Growth and Rebirth, Call God isn't an option. I'm guessing this is because of its Spring Immortality, is this intended? It seems fine as a trade off, I'm just not sure if it's been costed to account for losing the ability to build a god-calling economy in the late game.

Yes, it is intended! Three interesting points are worth considering with this pretender in Bethel She'em:
1. As you said yourself, since he has Spring Immortality, you don't have to Call God in order to make him come back from the dead. One of the reasons why this is great is that it means you'll be able to cast a Sephira every single year, even in early game, which seriously quickens Bethel She'em's game plan.
2. However, this also means that, even in late game, you never will be able to cast more than a single Sephira per year, unless your god somehow gets soul slayed. This is a pretty serious drawback, given that other builds can eventually cast a Sephira every other month.
3. But another huge benefit of the Annunaki of Growth is that you can just wait for late winter to sacrifice him, thus letting him come back from the dead in a single month. This means that, unlike other pretenders, the Annunaki of Growth can fully benefit from BOTH Sephiroth AND incarnate blesses at the same time. (Let us however note that, regardless of your pretender, you WILL benefit from your incarnate bless during the turn where you sacrifice your god, except during the event phase; so, regardless of your pretender, as long as you are able to call him back from the dead over the course of a single turn, you WILL benefit from both Sephiroth and incarnate blesses at the same time; but for most pretenders it requires a huge Call God economy.)

[transgender succubus]

I'm really enjoying playing around with Bethel She'em! Looking forward to running them in a multiplayer game with some friends when I get the chance. They have a lot of significant advantages going for them (just like their popkill cousins), but I think there's also a lot of room for counterplay- especially since they have very little room for variation in their unit deployment without heavy summoning, and nameless angels have serious vulnerabilities without buffing support (they're hit HARD by projectile spam and are almost helpless against enemies with magic weapons and/or high morale- and their melee attacks have little killing power without a weapon bless).

I found one error, though. The fire version of Etch Tetragrammaton has design notes in its description instead of the flavor text in the Astral version.

[ÆtherNomad]

Ah, thanks for the report! Thus, just released hotfix v1.01b to fix that mistake.

Hope you'll have fun in multiplayer! :D

[Jiven]

What a terrifying nation. The Angel Apocalypse is an attractive concept.
Reminds me of Avacyn in Shadows over Innistrad, in a sense.

[ÆtherNomad]

Originally posted by Jiven:

What a terrifying nation. The Angel Apocalypse is an attractive concept.
Reminds me of Avacyn in Shadows over Innistrad, in a sense.

I don't know Innistrad's lore very well, but, after a quick look at her wiki page, I think I get what you mean :3 And although Bethel She'em's angels aren't obviously corrupted (and may actually not be corrupt at all), I tried my best to keep very ambiguous that part of the nation's lore!

[ÆtherNomad]

Just released v1.02, a small update that only fixes an important bug which caused Bethel She'em's pretender to immediately die upon awakening regardless of his chassis if he was picked as Dormant or Imprisoned.

[Honor]

This sounds awesome. I will definitely check Bethel She'em out on my next relapse into Dominions.

[ÆtherNomad]

Just released v1.03, a minor update that reduces the required experience for nameless angels to promote from 120 to 100, changes the nametype of national pilgrims and fixes a minor incompatibility bug with Zun (Sacrifice under the Sun and Sephira of Kingship interacted weirdly).

[Devin]

I think Bethel She'em gets wrath of god way too early.
Sure, it's thematic, but a global that kills even outside their dominion is very powerful.

In my current game, I'd be having a great time if the angels weren't ruining everything.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1708723274

[ÆtherNomad]

Was it a single-player game? If so, I doubt that Bethel She'em (as an AI) will be able to represent any real opposition. In any case, the Wrath of God, in and of itself, is practical but I don't think it's too strong here; you were rather unlucky to lose a commander from it (unless you were invading Bethel She'em in high dominion provinces?), and there are many much more concerning mechanics in this nation. To be honest, in MP, it isn't even clear that the player should cast this global early; gems are really, really precious in early game, as are Seraph turns. Still, I can't wait to see Bethel She'em in action in multiplayer, which should happen very soon! This will definitely give me more data to balance the nation!

[Devin]

I don't know what the chances actually are, but yeah, I lost a lithomancer, and before that I lost an onyx sorceress, and before that I lost a bone tribe reader who happened to be holding my dwarven hammer. All in my capital.
So maybe I was extremely unlucky. But in year 2 there just isn't much I can do about it.