Empire of the Living and the Dead
The Empire Of The Living And The Dead – An Ashen Emperor Submod
This submod requires the Ashen Emperor mod by HSmasher to function.
I’d always been disappointed by the Ashen Emperor’s lack of interaction with the capital of the Empire. So I wrote my own modifications for it. Originally it was meant to give the Emperor a ritual to create a Triumphal Arch in the capital (haunted or otherwise), which would in turn enable the recruitment of living Imperial troops such as hastatus through the mercenary system.
Due to the way the game is coded however, and since after speaking with the original mod author he asked for me to create a submod rather than a tweaked version of his mod, I had to modify it.
This mod will create a Triumphal Arch when your Ashen Emperor, no matter his current level, sets foot in the capital and is present there at the end of the turn. As long as the Arch endures, a continuous trickle of living imperial troops will appear in the capital. It also adds two events, one which will spawn a small army headed by a centurion in the capital, and another which will cause every fortified citadel to spawn a small squad of soldiers. While both of these events have relatively low chances of triggering, it should be noted that they have no cooldowns per se, and can trigger back to back if you are lucky.
This mod also makes the Ashen and Lemurian Idols spawn in pairs in capital districts as if they were cities, a fix which I was told would be coming to the main mod momentarily(TM). Note that this may occasionally glitch out though I have attempted to implement failsafes.
Additionally, with the latest update, so long as the Triumphal Arch remains standing, an Imperial Herald will appear in the capital (maximum of one, another one will appear if the previous one dies). This new unit has a variety of rituals, allowing you to rebuild statues in cities if one has been destroyed but the other is still standing at no cost, or if, per se, something caused only one statue to appear in a capital district.
The Imperial Herald also possesses a variety of Empire-building rituals, allowing him to build up (or rebuild from ruins) human settlements and even, if the Emperor is Mighty enough, and if considerable amounts of funding and necromantic materials are supplied, construct an academy of higher magic by expanding a magic library. Of course, such a project won’t be possible if another academy already exists in the land.
The Herald may also renovate a city (or the ruin thereof) or repopulate a haunted city into an Imperial City, a metropolis where rituals normally meant for haunted cities can be conducted. An Imperial City combines the higher than normal hands income of a haunted city and the more mundane production of a normal city, and allows you to expand your ritual location and military presence without having to destroy the Empire, even allowing you rebuild it altogether in the Fallen Empire scenario.
The capital districts can also be renovated, each bringing unique benefits.
The Capitolium will allow the Triumphal Arch to produce a steady stream of empowered living troops, plus provide a 20% rebate to the Emperor’s ritual (bar those for levelling up) and increased unit count for ‘Join My Legion’ and ‘Guardian Colossi’.
The Slums will constantly produce longdead.
The Temple District will continuously empower and upgrade undead troops, free of charge, including upgrading longdead to bane fire archers and longdead horsemen to knights of the unholy sepulcher.
The trade district will randomly spawn wandering armies of Merchants and Rogue Traders who will try to expand the Emperor’s domain.
The Imperial Herald starts with all of its rituals unlocked, the levels are only for separation and readability.
Additionally, ashen idols can now be constructed in old battlefields and will produce a steady stream of Imperial longdead troops, as well as rarely a ‘Legion That Walks’ monster, an abomination made of the remains of a hundred legionnaires of old, wailing in eternal torment.
Special thanks to HSmasher for allowing me to create this submod, his invaluable help in getting it to work properly, teaching me a lot about modding this game, and authorizing me to use modified version of his images for the mod. My thanks also to Vorochi for suggesting a unit to replace lost/never built idols, as well as providing some of the code for it, which eventually evolved into the Imperial Herald, and last but not the least outright making a custom sprite for it. Finally, my thanks to Sturm, who allowed me to use the empowered living unit sprites from their Dominions Sprite Overhaul mod.
I do have plans to expand this submod eventually, but given the current limitations of editing modded classes in the game, such expansions will be vastly limited in scope. Still, if you have any suggestions, do not hesitate, I might not answer quickly but I will read every comment.
I hope you’ll enjoy the mod !
