Gorgon Queens (rulers, Mother Serpents)

[grand heath]

Gorgon Queens: A New Myth for Age of Wonders**

The idea for the Gorgon Queens was born from a fusion of inspirations: the graceful, tree-bound dryads of classic myth; the sinuous, serpentine nagas from Indian legend; and the cultural collision sparked by the campaigns of Alexander the Great in India.

I wanted to imagine what kind of rulers would emerge if these myths were blended into something new—powerful, regal beings who are both feared and revered, both nurturing and deadly.

--- Who are the Gorgon Queens?

The Gorgon Queens are nature’s ultimate matriarchs. Wherever they rule, abundance follows. Fields bloom, forests flourish, and even stone buildings seem to pulse with life. Under their rule, all cities—not just farms—produce extra food, reflecting their role as mothers of the land.

But their blessings come at a price. Gorgon cities are lush and vibrant, yet more vulnerable to siege and especially to fire, as their organic, living infrastructure is harder to defend.

They are new type of jungle ritualist variant with pharmacy effects and summoning fly trap plants with thorns as teeth.

---

Why Gorgon Queens?

The name Gorgon draws on the mythic power of Medusa and her sisters, figures who blend beauty, danger, and serpentine strength. While Typhon or Echidna were tempting names, Gorgon Queens felt right—it captures their regal and deadly essence without tying them to water or chaos themes.

In the world of Age of Wonders, they would offer a fresh playstyle: abundant resources, powerful buffs, but a constant need to protect your vulnerable, blooming cities. It’s a beautiful dance of risk and reward.

---

Aesthetically would be all six armed female with naga tail; eher head could have options like, human , simian like, elephantkin like, bird like(garuda) or feline (rakshasha) like. This dlc would include the elephantkin race as race form.

Gorgon Queens — Mothers of Abundance, Serpents of Wrath

"From the roots of the earth they rise, crowned in blossoms and scales, their six arms weaving blessings and curses alike. The Gorgon Queens walk the line between beauty and terror, between life’s boundless gifts and nature’s cold retribution. Under their rule, harvests swell, cities bloom, and soldiers fight with a vigor unknown—yet all know the price of their favor. Where their gaze falls, stone cracks, hearts falter, and foes turn to statues of regret. In their realm, the land thrives—but beware: abundance is never without its thorns."

this ruler dlc would include elephantkins
and a new mount: giant sloth

Gorgon queens would be a ruler in the vein of wizard kings or champions, open to be made with all race forma availables, their class and skill options would be altered to cater her nature of Mother Druid Goddess of the Jungle.

the main inspiration are myths under influence of Alexander the Great in India for a new versatile ruler type

I have seen it also works for a Carthage-Hannibal with an indian touch

[tribal whale]

The orginal post feels like its written by AI which doesn't inspire any confidence that you have a lot concrete ideas for them. Its also would be a bit weird to have gorgons to be definitively nature based give that their most iconic ability is very much Materium.

[grand heath]

its written by AI with detailed instructions to showcase all my sources of inspiration in detail. My first concept was more plain, a dryad-naga like a myth of alexander the great in India, with six arms and recover nagas as a ruler without need of a transformation, more like this, but then I worked further to make dryad queens more versatile like wizard kings useable on race forms we have, and name to sound more impactful and universal

my concept is to make a ruler very friendly to roman-greek-indian-fey centered in nature in the sense of abundance, druidic of green, after all is naga dryad. Why? could be the ruler to bloom city expansion for beginner players

I have been also thinking in jungle summons, be more jungle gaia

[tribal whale]

I think it does run into the issue of they are a bit too specific and there is already a ruler type to help beginners to get a big city in champion with their governer bonuses.

[grand heath]

gorgon queens could have new green monsters options to summon, from cobras to fly traps

dragon's breath are specific

gorgons queens should be specific

just like dragons or giant kings

stone giants are very specific

[tribal whale]

I mean that should probably just be a new tome because I don't really associate jungle with dryads.

[grand heath]

they are not dryads, dryads are units

[tribal whale]

I feel like you didn't really understand what I meant by specific, Nature mother Gorgon naga are a very focused concept compared to dragon, eldritch monster and giant.

[grand heath]

they are gorgon queens (naga-dryada, specific to alexander the great in india or carthage hannibal in late roman to india)

Nagas are already used as transformation, giant trasformation also existed before giant kings, its similar

some people wanted six armed rulers, this is the solution

alexander the great in India blend

Echidna Naga-Dryad

Echidna was mother of monsters

jungle regions is something not exploited yet well, is the background of great alexander in India

gorgon queens brings the possibility to start with simian, human, elf, bird, feline and voila, is gorgonized, its a fresh proposal to cater for a sooner faster green city expansion.

[tribal whale]

I also feel like it would probably be the focus of the leader type instead of being attached to a ritualist that can't really use it.

[grand heath]

you can still learn any tome you want

maybe could have a dancer ritualist assasin tree of skills, because is six armed

I was thinking on this but didnt explain

I was not thinking on the ritualist we have

my fault not explaining it well

[tribal whale]

The living city thing is also a thing that is kind of very specific and would be hard to actually differentiate from how champions do stuff if the entire thing is just food.

[grand heath]

I was still planning more deep to food use for summons instead of the mana based

something like lost food to awaken food as summons of walking fly traps

keep the greek and indian influences as possible, also cobra snake like summons

[grand heath]

mechanics of living city would be more focused in Wrath of Gaia thing, including penalizations to the use of mounts not suitable for thick jungle, or dense foliage

summoning with food but having harder time forging weapons and armor, making civs under gorgon queen more savage

this would reflect faith in nature for a price

more ideas for food summons from Gorgon Queens

recasting an example of gorgon queen with simian race form as base

[formal hull]

Please stop spamming the discord with plagiarized slop.

[grand heath]

plagiarized? spamming? slop what?

[grand heath]

hey? maybe you could express your own ideas or your opinion without acting like a nasty bully?

[low slate]

They're referring to the AI images and posts.

[grand heath]

if this is the case he is being VERY hypcrite, he can read this footnote in the Steam shop page for Stellaris:
"We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor."

[formal hull]

AI image and text generation tools work by amalgamating the work of people who weren't paid or credited and who didn't give consent for their work to be used in this way. It's automated plagiarism.

And even if you don't agree with me on that, which is fair enough, if the AoW4 devs wanted to use AI tools for inspiration, they're more than capable of doing so themselves, without your help.

Posting AI generated content to the suggestions forum is disrespectful to other users who are putting actual, original creative effort into their posts. It's disrespectful to the devs. And frankly it shows very little respect for yourself. Do you really need a machine to do your thinking for you?

I'd love to hear your ideas for Gorgon rulers, Kitsune rulers, or whatever, but that's not what any of this is. This is ideas from hundreds or thousands of other people, mixed up into a sort of bland soup.

[formal hull]

And I fail to see what Stellaris has to do with any of this. I don't agree with what they're doing either.

[grand heath]

sounds like EXTREME hipocresy to me you criticizing this use in suggestion thread in forums but you keep playing a game made with AI assets and AI inspiration for prototyping, stop, or you just a nasty bully encouraged because I am not paid

[tribal whale]

Not really, stellaris has been criticized quite a bit due to using AI generated content for newer DLC.

[grand heath]

AI doesn't rip off copyright, it's called generative because from the amalgam imitating the human brain structure develops new ideas and concepts from what did learnt. I agree is unfair machines can learn that much efficiently but this doesn't work how most people imagine, AIs have their own way of changing its own memory evolution, at first they just copy like humans do to learn, but on bigger training it learns from itself, derivating from their own repetead service to humans.

[tribal whale]

No, that isn't what current AI models do, quite famously current AI models don't preform well when having a lot of AI generated images in their dataset because it reinforces common mistakes they make.

[grand heath]

Is when people ask for something recognizable copyrighted when the AI will keep doing it, doing similar things to copyrighted, but it doesn't mean is copy pasting from resources, it may be in the less trained AIs but is not how it works. AI makes self depurations and old copyright material goes away over time. As more peple uses the AI to change with things more specific ideas and details written with more creative and specific prompts, thats what makes AI step away from what we did learn years ago, and reaches the point everything is derivated from experience, just like humans.

AI makes a lot of errors because works as human brains, hallucinates often to get ahead of prediction of the best suitable actions each time.

[tribal whale]

I think you are thinking that AI content generators are far more advanced than they are.

[grand heath]

Most people criticizing AIs doesn't know how to use them, and doesn't know how LM works.

[formal hull]

What are you talking about? I don't play stellaris.

[tribal whale]

They have a large data set they pull from, and do their best to guess what you want using things like keywords. So if an AI for example makes odd smudges on an images it and you add it to the data set it don't actually know that the smudge is a mistake which can cause more smudges because it doesn't actually have a proper way to tell what is correct or incorrect beyond assuming that stuff that is common is correct.

[grand heath]

They are trained to much larger data and with much powerful processors that they don't keep or use later. It synthetizes what learns and from its experience their data is refined while "lives". I agree if you use a fresh pretrained AI is very naive and not evolved from its own generative content, but is not the case of the modern AIs.

Could you draw pixel art in the first nokia phones? is exactly the same

AI is a tool, nothing else, when its primitive its noted is not enough generative yet.

On the other side you can criticize the taste of the prompter, or its expertise at being patient to generate better with a good mature AI.

"I like the style of my drawings, not that hindu cards style for prototyping". Ok, that's a different matter.

[tribal whale]

I mean people mostly criticize that they don't tend to get permission to use the art in their data set or do it in a kind of scummy way, like just turning it on by default in an update.

[grand heath]

they should leave behind the nokia primitive phone phobia but for AIs. Is just a tool, and human art should always be appreciated in a different superior category, because is made slowly by human time, this doesn't mean that is acceptable launching inquisition against someone enjoying AI things.

[tribal whale]

That comment is literally just about the ethics of AI art and how it doesn't tend to source its data set in a way that respects the people whose art is in it.

[formal hull]

Again, what the hell are you on about?

Do you have me mixed up with someone else?

[grand heath]

I was playing Stellaris in one of my screens, yes, but anyways the use of AI is not forbidden and is not plagiarized slop, this way of expressing things is bully and unreasoneable.

If you want to draw you are free to draw to make suggestions, make your threads of suggestions as you want.

[formal hull]

So you called me a hypocrite, realised you were totally wrong about me playing stellaris, and now you aren't even going to apologize?

[grand heath]

You still hypocrite, all computer uses copyrighted intellectual works of code that you abuse thinking you smarter without paying for lots of human time coding, wich is not all open source at all, and you continue to use each minute without coding everything yourself. Code needs a lot of creative thinking that only humans can do well, and you never considered it when you put on start all time your phone or your computer. When you buy a phone you are paying people that did steal code, etc... is much more deep than you think.

[formal hull]

You have no idea how copyright law or software development works.

Jesus wept.

Look, I don't feel like arguing ethics with you. There's no point, we're never going to agree on anything.

[grand heath]

you are just being selective and naive, software has intellectual works you can't trace well all time and is everywhere plenty of stolen code.

[formal hull]

There's a difference between software that occasionally, accidently contains poorly-sourced, improperly leased, or plagiarized code but mostly tries to be above board, and an AI industry that only works because of a ruthless commitment to stealing everything they can get away with and a bunch of things they probably can't.

[grand heath]

you never had a doubt on paying for hardware that uses stolen code (software), did you get angry for something like that in the past?

[formal hull]

I'm typing this on a phone that I paid extra for because it's about as ethical as you can get while still owning a smartphone, so yes.

And even then, there's a difference between that and industrial-scale automatic plagiarism.

And even if the AI tools were completely ethical, they would still be producing mostly unoriginal crap.

[grand heath]

I don't believe you, no one cares on this kind of things, and technologies can just go forward when previous human knowledge is recycled, it happens since the invention of the wheel, latin language, etc...

[tribal whale]

Yeah if AI image generators were a lot more honest there would be a lot less criticism of them ,like how stuff like synthv has started to include AI in it products but because unlike most AI voice things they got actual permission from their voice actors so there isn't really anything ethical wrong with it.

[formal hull]

This is a giant waste of time.

[grand heath]

NOTHING is completely ethical, nothing

[formal hull]

Ah, yes, the Orphan Stew argument.

Because nothing is completely ethical - even digging up a potato might squash a worm! - it's fine for me to enjoy this delicious bowl of Orphan Stew

[tribal whale]

I'm going to be honest I tried being polite as possible but if you feel like something shouldn't even try to be ethical it probably shouldn't exist.

[grand heath]

is probably when you pay extra for something ethical, you are just promotoing to launch the trend of hidding the way they did things to sell it for extra, having different unethical problems. Not minor: unknown different ethical problems.

[formal hull]

For the third time, there's a difference of scale and intent between things that accidentally use ill-sourced content and the deliberate, calculated, billion-dollar-scale theft industry that is generative AI.

[formal hull]

If you are that cynical then nothing anyone says will ever get through to you. You'll justify anything with "oh, but it's all unethical anyway!"

Your argument is basically "it's impossible to be perfect so we shouldn't ever try to be good"

[grand heath]

we have laws, if you want change the world be politician to create new laws. Laws define objective ethical boundaries. What you do is wanting to go inquisition mode and make the world like you think should be without being voted or a politician.

[formal hull]

I mostly just want you to stop posting really dull ai generated slop art on a discord forum that I normally enjoy reading.

[grand heath]

Do you want to be activist? is ok, but your rights end where the rights from someone else begins, and under the law.

Shaming people like you tried by calling spamming plagiarized slop is bully under the law, and I am not taking any economic profit or breaking any law, you have even less right to do this.

[formal hull]

There's no need for me to involve the law or politics in any of this. I'm not trying to restrict what you're legally allowed to do, or even what you're allowed to do under the rules of the server. I'm just telling you that what you're doing kind of sucks.

[grand heath]

This means you are very UNETHICAL becaue you don't care to break law to shape the world and others as you envisioned, even crossing law boundaries.

[formal hull]

What the hell are you smoking

[grand heath]

all this conversation is because you tried ashaming me, that's very unethical and is not respecting discord or forum rules.

[formal hull]

And you've repeatedly called me a hypocrite and a liar, so we're sort of in the same boat here, aren't we?

[grand heath]

you are too used to troll on things you don't agree with, that you forgot your behavior breaks law

I accepted to debate but still being an agression from your side

[formal hull]

Calling your AI art "slop" is against the law? Where?

Look, I'm going to end up actually insulting you if this continues, and I'd rather not do that.

[grand heath]

that's not what you said, you commanded to stop spamming with plagiarized slop. Every word is a bullying and ashaming.

[formal hull]

I don't have the power to command you to do a damn thing.

[tribal whale]

"Please stop" also isn't a particually powerful command.

[grand heath]

I was not spamming, thats the first thing, and is not plagiarized slop, in fact was a rain of ideas I worked previously for some time alone with the AI before making this thread. You are destructively bullying and breaking discord rules.

My time is still precious even if warmed ideas with an AI before posting in a place that is not illegal to post that.

[formal hull]

Ok, you know what? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I was so harsh with you, and I'm sorry I was so overbearing.

[grand heath]

Okay, thank you very much.

[formal hull]

I still don't like the AI art at all, and I still don't think you should post it here. If you have ideas, and you definitely do, they are better expressed in your own words.

The devs are much more likely to pay attention to something written with care by a human.

When I see AI art on a post, particularly when it's a lot of very similar images, I assume there's no real creativity there. Essentially, the AI art makes me write off the entire rest of the post.

I can't stop you from posting it. I'm not even going to ask the moderators to have a rule about AI content, unless it starts to become really disruptive.

But what I will say is that I am really bored of seeing it.

[grand heath]

Ok, dont worry, everything is said.

I felt very bored when I knew vampires are going to be in season 3, it feels too generic. And I wanted to bring more intrincated ideas.

[formal hull]

I think the philosophy of AoW4 is to have some generic "bases" and let players combine them in interesting ways.

All of the base cultures are pretty generic, except Reaver, but the combinations are interesting

[grand heath]

Of course but vampire is too generic to combine anything in my opinion.

[tribal whale]

The primary thing you have to remember when making leaders for AoW4 is that it has to be a bit generic so they can fit better into more people stuff. Like as I mentioned, dyrad jungle naga gorgon doesn't really feel like something you can expand from.

[grand heath]

don't get me wrong I love undead in most games, like vampire counts in total war warhammer

but here, transivanian vampire seems more a culture or a tome

very little diversity to combine

[formal hull]

We don't know if they're stereotypical Transylvanian vampires yet

I don't think we even know if they're going to be a culture, a ruler type, a form, a tome, or even just one transformation spell

They could be anything from classic Dracula to a completely original and monstrous take on vampires

[grand heath]

the opposite, they can rule all types of civs and forms without looking bad: the images were to show they could be like champions or wizard kings but relying on massive food to manipulate defenses and summons.

reavers with gorgon queen monkeys seem very different than high culture with gorgon queen elves

reavers may have reaver units and reaver mechanics on top of gorgon queen mechanics

[tribal whale]

That is how every leader would work.

[grand heath]

maybe be like El Dorado, conquistador robinsons hidding in the jungle

the idea is that this living food abundance is not on any ruler yet

and using it as mana

we already have eldritches leeching from population

vampires would be similar

[tribal whale]

I don't know how you read my words. Every leader could have any culture, that is how they work. The issue is that the leaders don't really have anyway to expand themselves into something different because of how set in stone they are while also being pretty specific.

[grand heath]

but we still not have a mother gaia that stimulates faster city expansion and mechanics about food abundance but using food for almost everything

[grand heath]

dragons will not use swords or shields, some rulers should have limitations that make them unique

gorgon queens can't develop as champions or wizard kings because they already exist., dragons can't support their population with their skills like champions do, gorgon queens are more similar to champions but using less civilized way, not just nature, is also a little more barbarian wild, you could still have it with high or reavers, but probably will have more power with primal or barbarian cultures, some combinations are stronger for certain type of rulers

[tribal whale]

My main point is that what you made feels like it should be 1 option for a ruler type, like its something you build into rather than being what you get out of the box. Multi armed snake woman isn't something that has a lot of wriggle room but it works fine as something that you get to.

Reavers are one of the hardest factions to build roleplay factions for because they have a lot of stuff set in stone that doesn't give them a lot of wiggle room and ideally you want to avoid that.

[grand heath]

Multi armed means unique way of fighting about speed, Echidna and Gorgon are very linked to wild untamed biomes. It could have lots of stuff: unique skill tree, most ruler types don't use normal classes or not entirely.

Eldritches already leech from population, bleeding them, sacrificing them, and vampires are not enoughy mechanically distant from that trend.

Gorgon Queens do the opposite, generates wild to feed the population, overgrowths and blooms first and faster at the price of refining or civilizing harder (harder to forge weapons, limiting certain mounts, harder to generate mana maybe, because generating all that food uses it, but food could be used for many things because under gorgon queens is magical..

[grand heath]

Reavers are still in need of a rework.

I would like Kitsune rulers to be the optimal choice for reavers. If kitsunes are added... Kitsunes are well known for smoke illusions and fits with the smoke magic technologies of reavers very well. Also reavers could have Venice like subculture with more aesthetics about masks and espionage that also fits Kitsunes. But could also work with agile and fragile flamboyant vampires. But I don't think most fans want this kind of vampires, they want Alucard superhero vampires that kill dragons or giants hand to hand.

[static ember]

This sums it up really well. The whole concept of "half-snake deity" could work fine in the same way that giant kings work, where you could align them with specific elements or affinities (though there would be a notable overlap in the "rock" department), but as per usual, this is just.

Way too specific. A ruler type that hard-locks the player into the Nature-route would just not find a lot of appeal. Rulers need to have some general appeal with actual options. If it was just base snake-humanoids that can spec into dryad archetypes for Nature affinity, multi-armed Shiva-esque for Chaos, classic gorgons for Materium etc. we might have something here, but this is just once again the kitchen sink approach of "Everything I want thrown into one big pot".

The more you hone something into a specific niche, the less customisable it is, and if you can't customise your ruler in a meaningful way beyond "What race does your forest snake-creature have", there's no point in it because race in this game is a very superficial choice. And also, the whole "living city" aspect dips into the territory of a culture rather than what a ruler does, the game hasn't ever done "Here's a DLC that comes with both a ruler and a matching culture". Giants didn't get Mountain Cities that shook up the gameplay, they got a lil thing they plonk on the map to change the terrain to what the chosen type of giant likes.

[static ember]

And as for that random dig against vampires; yes. As a baseline, "vampire" may sound boring. Much like the concept of other rulers or cultures sounds boring. The ruler concepts whittled down amount to "You are a champion who can fight good", "You are a wizard who can cast good", "big lizard", "big wizard", "big dude".
The cultures are similarly lame-sounding if you just present them that boiled down. "The medievals", "the goods", "the evils", "the builders", "the brutes". It's all - at the base concept - pretty generic stuff, and intentionally so, because they're not the end point, they're the building blocks.

You combine things to make something unique, they don't start that way. That's why you transform and adjust your race as you play. To customize and make things unique. Vampires as a culture would be fun because it would be interesting to see the classical transylvanian vibes interact with all the races, transformations, spells, enchantments. Why NOT make a giant evil dragon that rules over his flock, you could have a literal dragon Dracula.
And if they end up a ruler type:

Yes, I want them to be able to kill dragons or giants hand to hand, because Champions and Wizard Kings can also kill giants or dragons hand to hand. That's just what the game is about and I don't get why this needs to be a random dig against people for what they want. Like what, do you want a vampire ruler with 40 HP that explodes when a Wizard King casts Rock Blast on them twice?

[grand heath]

I reckon this could be full reworked to, at least, have non nature gaia subtypes and feel it way more versatile

[grand heath]

Very good points, we'll see