Corrupt Soul and Banshee Complaint

[vapid oxide]

Just a quick rant about the Corrupt Soul and Banshee swap.

I don't get it. Why?! To make one of the tomes better? Which one? When I bother with either unit, it's in some undead mystic summoner build where I take both tomes anyway. So I don't even see any real impact on gameplay.

But in terms of flavor, it's a disaster. The Banshee always belonged in the tome of the Doomherald because it is, well, a spirit that... HERALDS DOOM. And taking the Corrupt Soul from the tome of... SOULS likewise goes against the theme of the tome.

Hell, even the icons of both spells don't match the color scheme of their new tomes, further showing how hamfisted that swap was.

[untold ingot]

Corrupt Soul + Cruel Weaponry and it has joy siphons basically built-in. Also has Armor of Despair and an instakill vs low morale.

Banshee gets the soulbound enchantment which is an overall buff for them.

[weary wren]

I support this complaint. I understand that it's mechanically better but flavorwise it blends the two tomes, eroding their flavor and making them less distinct in identity. This is bad, because the blurring of tome identities means the nuance in combination of specific tomes from one affinity with tomes of another affinity for multi-affinity characters is lost.

In #1102677036679565383 I proposed keeping the statblocks in their new homes to preserve the gameplay improvement but swapping the flavor of the statblocks (the models, unit names and attack names) so the units in the two tomes remain distinct and not blurred in this way. This is the best possible solution I can think of, because changing the swap back alone would dissatisfy the gameplay-focused people, but keeping it dissatisfies me and some ofthers on tome identity.

Before the blurring I had character ideas that one use one tome, and character ideas that would use the other. After this switch I do not want to use either tome because they are even more full of spells that do not fit the characters than they were before, that I cannot avoid them with one or two reshuffles.

Sometimes changing the flavor to suit gameplay is a bad thing.

[weary wren]

Hell, in retrospect you don't even need to trade the whole statblock to solve this.
This whole swap is based on the signature attack and ability of each, so just change the names of those and swap those alone.
For real though, it would probably be fine if corrupt soul moved around, that one has a generic enough identity that it could probably fit in many different shadow tomes, but the idea of banshee as the iconic mythological example of a doom herald being moved out of the doomherald tome to somewhere else is, well, poor in reasoning, let alone it imposing its flavor onto the souls tome, and I just can't support it.

This game found its success because it carved out a niche in the 4x community through focusing on flavor and roleplay elements. Without those it probably would have not been nearly as distinct or well supported among its peers in the genre (especially with the competition it has had in this the early 2020s), and I feel making changes that detriment flavor are ones that work against what makes this game more significant than others like it.

@trim sorrel Hi, sorry for the ping, but I noticed you voice some similar concerns in general, would you be able to expand on them here? This appears to be a minority concern so making clear reasoning for communicating it as a concern among the people who share it would be appreciated.

[trim sorrel]

oh you are summoning me to read a wall of text

its never troll fan art

yes i understand you ,the banshee is direct related to the idea of doomherald, and which i guess its the reason why it was original there. they move it cause of a gameplay elements cause its probably a lot easier to move the units than rework them. and the corrupt soul has a generic theme which allow it to not look out of place but yes agree that the banshee from a roleplaying point of view should be in doom herald tome

[weary wren]

sorry for the wall of text, but yeah

Souls the tome has always felt like the "dark healer" tome, something that could easily slot into "good shadow" characters, tapping into the dark elements of life magic for the purposes of doing good. Corrupt soul wasn't the best sell for this angle, but banshee just outright does not fit with that vibe.
Meanwhile, doomherald just outright loses flavor and gains nothing but a small combat edge with the swap.

I get the gameplay reasoning, but surely there's gotta have been a better solution than making tomes less distinct

[pale apex]

I kind of feel both fit into doomherald and neither fit tome of souls as well oddly.

(Banshee = Doomherald, both can drain morale & Corrupt soul kind of has Joy siphoners build in)

If a new unit isn't out of possibility, like how Tome of Faith got Light spirits, I'd propose AOW3 Deathbringers end up in tome of souls and either tie both summons to the same research or make one recruitable from doomdepth trench. (I absolutely can't see them doing a racial unit for free though)

[weary wren]

this is a fair stance. I can see corrupt soul being there by logic of it being a soul corrupted by magic which can influence souls, or a prviously corrupted soul which could be beckoned by machic that could beckon souls, both of which you could expect to learn from a tome all about souls, but as tome of souls does feel like a positive support tome corrupt soul does feel a little too negative being there, but banshee I feel is even more out of place

[weary wren]

personally I'd like a ethereal undead racial unit, a ghost of your people, rather than corrupted soul, but Warding kinda beat it to half of that punch

[untold ingot]

ethereal undead racial sounds like a nightmare with element resistance/weaknesses when it comes to Major transformations.

[pure edge]

Banshee in Doomherald was going to be so nice when I got around to doing my "evil fey" build.

On the whole I wish Souls was the undead tome to focus more on non-skellies though, it's actually a pretty cool tome to splash into non-necromancer builds aside from the Bone Horror stuff

[weary wren]

this is true, not the ideal solution, jus one

[stiff steppe]

ethereal undead umbral demon who gets killed in 1 hit from a base bannerman.

[untold ingot]

For me, personally, i dont put much stock in "the flavor of the tome" as I make my factions focused around the mechanics and headcanon the rest

[weary wren]

this is also my stance, I do prefer Souls not focusing on the physical, that's covered by other things a bit better

[untold ingot]

Like, if doomherald simply had a different name and lore text, ppl wouldnt complain and its not like the flavor has any meaningful weight in anything

[pale apex]

if they ever add the spooky planetfall exploding psynumbra ghosts, maybe it could become "summon dark spirit" and you get to pick which of the 3 you want lol. I can dream 😄

[weary wren]

I can understand this perspective, but to me flavor is everything unique about this game. Without the flavor, and the focus on flavor it's just another 4x game with region-based territory expansion

and I especially prefer how the tomes have all very specific flavors, so that characters being built can easily be understood simply by looking at their tome lists rather than by knowing how the content of those tomes work

[pure edge]

has a pretty meaningful weight in the current contest going on for one thing. And in general, 50% of what makes games interesting ((to me)) is representing 'flavour' with 'mechanics' in a satisfying way.

[pale apex]

I will say flavourwise, I didn't see souls as "positive" - bone horror, both corrupt soul/banshee & soul binders kind of has an evil vibe to me.

(though one less evil than doomherald)

[weary wren]

this as well, I actually only found out about the swap by starting to design a faction for the contest only to find out one of the key elements to that faction was no longer a part of its tome loadout

[pure edge]

One of the things for me, is the swap would make a lot more sense if the Tome of Souls was shifting to be about "softer" undead and less of the Bones & Evil undead. Honestly, I don't mind the Corrupt Soul in Doomherald, I just don't see it as accomplishing much without taking out both it AND the Bone Horrors from souls.

[weary wren]

yeah, I suppose that's fair. I can mental gymnastics bone horror into being neutral, but yeah that's a fair point with soulbinders. Still, I dunno if it's enough of a tonal bridge to justify banshee.

[warm quiver]

It feels to me, for what it's worth, that soulbinding in and of itself is evil, but just being a ghost isn't. And you can reflavor necromancy in quite a lot of situations, such as warriors being so devoted to their people and their cause that they are willing to take up arms as long as they must in order to protect and serve them, even beyond death. But this might be better as another tome suggestion instead...

[robust flower]

I love the swap, as it now feels like i can take doomherald in my non undead factions and not be forced to have an obviously undead unit in my roster.

[weary wren]

the undead unit was replaced with a different undead unit fam, check the stats

you are no better off avoiding undeath than you were before

[untold ingot]

i think hes saying its easier to ignore corrupt soul being undead

[weary wren]

I guess? they're both pretty definitely undead though?
I can understand the mental gymnastics that might make them seem like less of an active act of undeath (maybe summoning already existing lost souls to reform them?), but in my own framework those lines of thought also still fit better with the souls tome, at least over the doomherald tome specifically :/

[untold ingot]

If corrupt soul was only ethereal, I wouldnt think "this needs to be undead." Cant say the same for Banshee.

[solid cove]

Speaking of flavor, personally, I think Corrupt Soul is more suited to Doomherald.

[weary wren]

I'm technically in agreement there, but that's because I just don't think ghosts, even those of dead people, really count as undead in the same way vampires and liches do

[weary wren]

you think the generic corrupt soul is more suited to Doomherald than the spirit defined by its ability to herald doom?

please elaborate

[solid cove]

Corrupt Soul sounds more frightening and looks like a Dementor or other similar scary spirit. It is more visually suited to the Doomherald theme.

[untold ingot]

But u can flavor it however u like. If we look at Subjugation, many would say the flavor is evil or evil-leaning, but that doesn't matter bc u can play it as good. Like, if Tome of Doomherald was called Tome of Anti-Joy, you'd argue that'd fit, right?

But, at the end, does it really change anything? The flavor you had before, you can dictate thats the flavor then. Its a modular system meant to allow you to flavor/reflavor whatever u wan anyways

[stiff steppe]

Me when I subjugate free cities (getting them to like me and absorbing them into my empire as equals)

[untold ingot]

and actually, to my other point, flavor is also subjective. Ppl view order as the good-boi tomes, but you can clearly play them evil. Rewriting all tome names and tome descriptions to do that is just wasted effort.

[solid cove]

If we were talking about the folkloric banshee, I would agree with you. But the banshee in the game does not fit the description from folklore at all. Therefore, no, I do not consider that banshee to be suitable in anything except its name. It does not even have the appropriate abilities. That is, it is not suitable for the Doomherald theme, either visually or technically.

[weary wren]

this is a non-response, I'm sorry.
yes you can flavor anything however you like, you can flavor the vigor tome as evil cancer and you can flavor the chaos channeler tome as the fires of divine liberation, but it doesn't change the fact that banshees as a concept are doom heralds, and were probably the central unit concept for the doomherald tome, and it doesn't change the fact that the barely more than nondescript corrupt soul has by diegetic flavor only two defining elements: that it is corrupt and that it is a soul, of which only one tome can really align with by shared conception.

[untold ingot]

I mean, I definitely responded to ur concerns. U said flavor is everything and without flavor, its just another 4X. My response is u can reflavor things regardless as thats how the game was built so to say its a non-response is disingenuous.

But ig we'll agree to disagree then

[weary wren]

Banshee

'Only the most sensitive can hear it without help from the Banshee: That sweet sickly cry of life leaving the body, surrendering to despair. I raise them, the Banshees, to proselytize the eventuality of their futile flailing life - A premonition of that moment when they embrace my obsession. Despair is inevitable. Mortal life is an illusion. Death is certainty. Fly my howling messengers. Herald my revelation. Abandon all hope. Only fools deny the embrace of frigid fetid death at the hand of my Banshee children.'

        --Shadow Puppets, by Ambule Grimber, Necromancer

from age of wonders 3

[pale apex]

Corrupt soul is also all about doing damage to enemies surrendered to despair, taking less dmg and dealing more to low morale, while draining it, which is full Doomherald. Banshee is literally a "Doomherald" though yea & also does reduce morale.

I still think both strongly fit

[untold ingot]

If u really want, we can ask the devs to rename it to Anti-Joy

[weary wren]

this is true from a mechanical perspective, and I don't disagree that the statblock of the corrupt soul works better in the new home.

[pale apex]

you can consider the corrupt soul as a "doomherald" in the sense that it is an example of what happens to those that fall to despair, like the corrupted soul in a sense too

[weary wren]

see, the point here is that the concepts of the tomes are being muddled by the swap. Saying the tome's identity has been sufficiently altered by the swap to warrant a new identity all together is not actually an improvement for the problem here, but a pointing out of the problem, if you can see where I'm coming from here?
If names should be changed, it should be the units, so that whatever mechanical benefit doomherald is getting out of corrupt soul's abilities/attacks doesn't come at the cost of its identity-representative unit.

[solid cove]

If the Doomherald tome had a different name, would the banshee be suitable for it?

I like the name Tome of Despair.

"The darkness that creeps from shadow to shadow not only brings disquiet, but also carries the promise of your arrival. Dim the light of your enemies' spirits. Shroud them in despair, so that their weapons clatter onto the ground and spells do not issue from their lips."
-Arachna Aranea, Spider Queen

[weary wren]

that entertains a framework that it could have a different name. Given what I posted above from age of wonders 3, specifically with the mentioning of inevitable death and despair and heralding these fates, I find it hard to believe the tome was not erected around the banshee as a centerpiece.

Like, I get where you're coming from, and if the identity is eroded continually a new identity may emerge, like despair as you suggest, but I suppose this feedback thread is taking a conservationist stance and saying it's probably not a good thing where changes over time erode the identity of a tome to the point that it actually works better if it has a whole new identity.

HOWEVER, if you are to suggest a progressive stance and post in the suggestions channel a change to become the tome of despair, I don't think I'll stop you

[solid cove]

eh, I'm fine with it. I don't have as strong an association between Doomherald and Banshee as you do. So personally, I don't mind the name Doomherald. And it doesn't tie Banshee to this theme in any way.

[weary wren]

I'd reason it does, especially by the "Death is certainty. Fly my howling messengers. Herald my revelation." quote above, but ig we'll agree to disagree then

[solid cove]

Everyone has their own vision and associations. That's why it's great to have a modular system where everyone can build their own fantasy from separate blocks. It's important to accept this and not limit yourself and others to just one vision. What you personally consider to be the only right path may not be so for someone else.

[weary wren]

if two blocks, one black and one white, are slowly melted together into grey blocks, everyone must build the same. Distinct indentities are important to maintain, and the consequences on the roleplay of the swap impact things outside of doom herald.

To better elucidate my investment here, I care slightly less that banshee is out of doomherald, and more that banshee is in souls. I do not touch the doomherald tome for my characters, and its distinct and obvious identity-aligned unit being forced upon souls makes souls significantly more problematic to work with. A corrupt soul is generic, malleable. A banshee is literally a doom herald by lore, it imposes flavor. You can't avoid it in the same way.
You argue this is all fine because modularity and personal assigning of flavor over what is in the game, but this is anti-modularity by blurring of identity, and I am less inclined to make chracters if tome identities do 180s every major update because of arbitrary gameplay reasons.

we got another season of content coming, which means probably around three more major updates, and this swap sets the precedent that core concepts to each tome can swap during any of those, so I'm currently more incentivized to just wait until the game stops receiving updates to make characters, lest the characters I make have new flavors forced upon them, or key concepts removed from them, by changes as meaningless as "it seems a little redundant to have this unit here", you know?

doomherald by lore belongs in doomherald by tome is my argumentive stance for the most rational way to oppose this swap, but the swap impacted me personally by forcing my souls characters to have friggin' banshees, something I wouldn't have touched before

and I'm not keen to find out what else will be imposed on my characters if this is going to be normal

[pure edge]

As much as I like the swapping of the Chaplain from the Tome of Faith to the Tome of the Beacon, that's another example of "oops your unit is gone", but the light spirit is a better replacement, and the Chaplain fits just as well into Beacon as it did Faith.

(also tangentially, I wish so much for the ability to ban techs for my factions, allowing me to more easily pick up multiple major transformations and better tuning what units to skip)

[weary wren]

(I'd also like that, but checking my old suggestion on that apparently you already knew lol)

I also did not know about the chaplain swap
while that one hasn't hit my characters yet I do agree that is another example worth noting

[pure edge]

The light spirit being a same-unit-class replacement, plus the ability to take the unit with a tome of the same thematic path but a different tier, makes it feel a lot better. Especially since it improves that thematic path overall.

[trim sorrel]

From a roleplaying point of view i like the chaplain where it was cause it was a tome that although religious it didnt have celestial/holy stuff and i could go religious low fantasy, but now instead of chaplain it has the light spirit which ruin that

but to be fair most order tomes have too much religion, i wish if we get new ones that have no relation with religion at all

[weary wren]

wouldn't mind that myself, something more practice-agnostic, but with the examples above I would also feel inclined to wait on actually using it, since I guess early order units are being shuffled around too.

[deep grove]

While I agree with the claim in general, I have to echo @trim sorrel in the opinion that it's hard when speaking of Order specifically. It has too many shiny celestial stuff now to roleplay it as bad.

Previously I had a line Zeal/Faith - Inquisition - Subjugation if I wanted to play a religious society of any kind be it low fantasy, demonologists or, say, cult of the machine. Now 2 of those have shiny celestial stuff forced in which breaks immersion if taken, which is especially severe when played by AI. You can't feel bad when you have light elementals and celestials supporting you. Or it's at least harder to head-canon.

This doesn't affect the fact that I'm OK with what OP deems an issue, but Order became worse thematically after the swap, IMO, even if better mechanically.

[untold ingot]

evil celestials is def a possible fantasy but what we consider harder to head-canon are different. It takes a lot for my immersion to be broken, personally.

If your AI didnt take the celestials, would it be fine then?

[deep grove]

for me, yes. That is, if there was a functionality to set certain spells (transformations, especially) to be banned from AI research it would greatly increase my possibilities for world building given the existing tomes.

but, I mean, I agree with you as well and I am totally aware of the fact that my own (lacking) level of skill at head canoning doesn't mean it's the same for everyone 🙂

[nimble rain]

To add my thoughts as I was advocate for corrupt souls to swap with Banshee since game launch, and this was when tome of Souls was a t1 and corrupt souls was in necromancy, as fitting as the name is it's not why it was in there

Imo when I go a shadowy build and don't want undead, Banshee felt like a sore thumb while corrupt souls fit that aesthetic perfectly, I also feel it as a better finishing combo to racial with anti morale build than Banshee, then there's also that Tome of Souls had 2 melee and putting Banshee in there offers more diversity

But foremost I just felt that corrupt souls fit better the "No undead" theme better than Banshee, which feels very much like an undead unit.

Oh and to top it, undead builds generally lacked something like a BM but had enough melee and bone horror was generally enough than you every have you need to use corrupt soul

[untold ingot]

What? You dont want ur frogs to have wings, goat legs, blue veins, rock skin, and a burning aura?

[deep grove]

Sometimes I do

[weary wren]

Hey, first of all, wanted to apologize for how I spoke to you the other day. While I stand by my point I could have been a lot less rude about it, you didn't need that tone and I'm sorry for that.

Second, while what you suggest here isn't ideal, and not solve the underlying issue, it would be a compromise that solves how that issue impacts me personally. If I had a means to just veto any "surprise spells" forced onto my characters that would ruin their theming I would be more tolerant of arbitrary changes like this, I was just under the assumption that this wasn't something nearly as doable for triumph.

[weary wren]

the loss of the corrupt soul to my rebellious ghost robots faction and my ancestor worship (evil) faction would still be strongly felt, but at least with the spell denial feature you propose here I'd be able to prevent both from having doom, gloom and fate ideas forced on them.

That said, introducing a spell denial feature for AI might open the door for advocacy for spell denial in player controlled factions, and in turn removal of randomization in researchable spells, which would be an even more controversial change. Then again, we did remove randomization for hero progression level milestones, and that's been a boon rather than a bane for the roleplay I feel, so maybe not as controversial?

[pure edge]

Even just denial for the AI to use specific spells would be huge, some times you're ok researching a spell you do not care about at all because you don't have the mana to reroll or it's in a low-tier tome and therefore cheap or whatnot.