Oathsworn Subculture: Secrecy

This mod adds a new Shadow-affinity subculture for the Oathsworn culture: Secrecy. I tried to put something together that is unique and fits the themes I was going for, but constrained by what can be done with the devotion system (at least without too much difficulty). Secrecy is more defensive than the other subcultures, with their devotion-based unit effect making their units harder to hit when they enter defense mode. Their T3 unit is a shield unit with a defense mode halo that also makes units harder to hit (reminiscent of the Syndicate Enforcer and Mirage shields from Planetfall). They like building fortified cities to keep their secrets well protected, and they fabricate and trade grievances to manipulate their opponents. They don’t like Losing cities, absorbing cities, declaring unjust wars, or releasing prisoners.

• Pronouncements are 50% cheaper (like silver tongued, I haven’t come up with anything more unique yet)
• Defensive city structures give +1 imperium income, and cost 50% less production/gold to build (pretty strong, but I wanted them to have a reason to heavily fortify their cities, but couldn’t find a way to have fortification structures give devotion).

– Positive:

• Fabricating grievances gives +10 devotion
• Trading grievances (both buying and selling) gives +5
• Having cities and vassals of your own race gives +1 per turn per city/vassal

– Negative:

• Losing one of your cities gives -30 devotion
• Absorbing a hostile city gives -20
• Declaring an unjust war gives -20
• Releasing captured heroes gives -15

Gain +5/10/20/30% evasion against melee, ranged, and magic attacks for 1/1/2/2 turns upon entering defense mode – can be dispelled. Oathbreaker instead gives your units blind and distracted for 1 turn when they enter defense mode (very dangerous!).

– Sealbearer:

• Deals spirit and frost damage
• Silence Seal ability – affected enemy unit is blind and distracted for the duration of the link

– T3 Preserver (shield unit):

• Obscuring Shelter defense mode that grants +15% evasion against melee, ranged, and magic attacks, along with the other things the normal shield wall defense mode does
• Third melee hit in a turn triggers defense mode
• Paragon devotion grants Deceptive Veil, a 1-hex debuff/support skill that gives enemies blind/distracted and grants friendlies fleeting/slippery/swift for 1 turn (so you can reposition at the front lines and flank away, for example)

– Special province improvement: School of Preservation – gives flat mana/knowledge and fortification strength

– Unit enchantment: Pledge of Secrecy – gives non culture units Shrouded

– Culture_Oathsworn_Secrecy.rpk (depends on Culture_Oathsworn_Secrecy_ID.rpk)
– Culture_Oathsworn_Secrecy_ID.rpk

– Diplomacy_Alignment_Definitions.rpk (added dependency on Culture_Oathsworn_Secrecy_ID.rpk)

• Devotion – Base Settings (added secrecy to ‘Conditional Settings’ in ‘Alignment – Channel – Devotion (Oathsworn)’, along with all of the devotion gain/loss conditions)

– Diplomacy_Alignment_Definitions_WaysOfWar.rpk (added dependency on Culture_Oathsworn_Secrecy_ID.rpk)

• Devotion Settings (added secrecy to ‘Conditional Effect Description’ in all of the ‘Oathsworn Standings’, and to ‘Conditional Player Properties’ for paragon)

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• T3 Preserver unit shows up always mounted in the frontend scene modularity
• T3 Preserver unit has bad animations when mounted (doesn’t hold sword/shield right, attacks like a shock unit)
• Some unit enchantment visual effects are a bit off on the T3 Preserver unit’s shield (spell-tempered shields is the worst, but also legion of zeal and such)
• Pledge of Secrecy unit enchantment visual effect doesn’t always show up
• Vowkeeper’s staff swirl effect floats in the wrong place when mounted, so for now it’s turned off (fun fact: the other subcultures don’t even have their swirl effects when mounted for some reason)
• no events know about the Secrecy subculture yet (meeting first free city doesn’t have the unique text yet, and so on)

I haven’t made any new 2D art or 3D models at this point. If someone would be willing to help out by making some, that would be really cool and very much appreciated! I have no experience with 3D modelling, so unless I can grab some existing assets to use as the subculture symbol that the cities and units get everywhere, I won’t be making them anytime soon. 2D stuff however I will hopefully be able to do, but I haven’t poked around with extracting the images from the game yet. Anyway, here’s a list of the art that would make this mod complete, mostly for my own keeping track:

2D:
– main subculture icon in faction selection
– subculture tome art
– subculture symbol on shields
– subculture symbol on battlemage skirt
– school of preservation icon (the subculture symbols aren’t really that noticeable so this is super minor)
– a bunch of ability and status effect icons (not that important, the placeholders are good)
– purging staff weapon icon

3D:
– support unit helmet symbol
– support unit staff symbol
– add the subculture symbol to the new T3 unit
– add the subculture symbol to city modularity in a bunch of places
– school of preservation SPI blue symbol rocks
– the pfx for the seal link effect and the pledge enchantment are models and not just particle effects (for now I made some similar-looking effects)

I think that’s it! Thanks for reading if you made it this far! I’ve always liked making things for Age of Wonders games, though I haven’t released any of my mods until now 🙂 I hope you have fun with it and please feel free to leave any comments about bugs, balance suggestions, or anything else! I do intend to update this mod with the things listed above, and to fix any bugs that pop up from new updates from Triumph.

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This update focuses mostly on visuals, giving the Secrecy cities a lot of unique visual elements, and adding icons for their tome and such. The one gameplay change is to give a discount for the production/gold cost of defensive buildings to further incentivize actually building them. As always, I’m open to feedback and suggestions! Full list of changes below:

• Added unique visuals to Secrecy cities
• Added a 50% discount on production and gold for fortification structures
• Added subculture icon
• Added tome art
• Added Pledge of Secrecy icon
• Added Seal of Silence status effect icon
• Added School of Preservation icon
• Added unique visuals for School of Preservation SPI
• Added Secrecy symbol to battlemage skirt
• Added Secrecy symbol to Oathsworn shields