#Mythical Beast Ruler - with Pyramid replacement for Wizard Tower

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sullen ledge
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After the desert content we got with RfR, I was thinking desert-theme-wise from previous games, we're only missing:

  • Djinn (humanoid elementals can come with more content of what element they are and fit anywhere)
  • Rocs (Giant bird fits anywhere too)
  • Manticores (Hard to do them justice as a mount trait, given their power in AOW3 & potentially a bit plain mechanically as just a flying melee unit)
  • Sphinx (needs egypt theme)
  • Egyptian style deserty Pyramids (No room for a new egypty culture now IMO - Architects build Pyramids, chariots are mount trait, while Mystic/Nomad cover both eastern and deserty themes together.)

Therefore, what about a "Mythical Beast" leader with an Egyptian styled pyramid as a wizard's tower replacement? As a feature, this ruler type could perhaps get mini versions of itself as mounts for heroes (using the player's cosmetic choices), or perhaps as a special "Myth Beast Rider" unit. To me, this dlc would have an Astral (Mythical/mystical beast posing riddles and prophecy), Nature (Giant Beast)and Chaos feel(Mutant beast hybrid, eat your foes)

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Visual Options:

  • Quadrupedal form made up of tail, body, wings and head(s), can choose body pattern

  • Possibility to cover multiple mythological beasts:
    Chimera - Lion head, Goat Body with bonus head, Snakehead tail,
    Sphinx - Humanoid head, Lion Body, Eagle Wings
    Lamassu - Humanoid head, Lion/Bull body, Eagle Wings
    Manticore - Lion head, Lion Body, Eagle Wings, Scorpion Tail

    Therefore, only a few options cover a lot of mythological beasts:

    Head & Neck: Lion/Humanoid
    Body: Lion/Bull/Goat Body with bonus head
    Tail: None/Snakehead/Scorpion
    Wings: Eagle/Vulture/Bat (for good measure)

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Mechanics/Vibe:

  • I imagine you'd choose between lightning, fire and venom powers in hero skill tree, incorporating some prophecy/weather (precognition/storm), demonic/chaos (misfortune/consume chaos) and nature magic (venom/entangled) too.
  • I imagine this ruler could choose between claw and relic weapons, allowing for reuse of Dragon Lord & Eldritch Sovereign equipment, while granting them more content in turn.
  • Breath attacks could also reuse some visuals from dragon's breath weapons, but to keep it feeling different, i'd keep it at the size of lesser dragon breath with 3 turn cooldown, but focussed on placing terrain hazards, knockback and status.
  • I also see the ruler having a "myth spell" tree improved with various astral, nature and chaos effects in an aoe based on signature skills. Something like Sun Disc from AOW3 potentially too.
  • Through improving your pyramid, you can gain the ability to create hero mounts which are mini versions of yourself (cosmetically), whose function changes based on either the signature skills you have taken or various mutually exclusive upgrades to the pyramid, allowing manticore riders/sphinx/whatever riders to be strong and interesting.
  • Feel would be a more frail, less breath focussed dragon, mixed with some of the artillery nature of sovereign, but with melee capability. Long cooldowns for each ability, making you consider the best place to use each, like for Ironclad's ammo options - feeling like "which order am I best using my abilities in".
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Potential future tech reuse/fitting into the grand scheme of things:

  • The tech for choosing customisable visuals for a mount for a unit could be reused in future, for example a construct focussed ruler having a customisable invention you can build.
  • Dragon lords could get a "Wyvern Rider" unit and access to wyvern mounts for their dragon affinity (Though, we'd need a nature and materium wyvern I suppose)
  • Would be good content to add along side a way to create hero mounts
  • Already discussed above, but shared access to relics/claws gives more content for the new rulers while also adding to the old - more options for everyone than creating a new weapon if it comes with new relic skins & promotes people to look into other dlc without being intrusive.
  • Plenty of lore potential to visit a desert realm in future (this is basically fanfic/speculation) - Yaka origin story on another realm/investigate alternate method of prophecy and/or could neatly tie up some lore bits & have a reason to visit Athla again (For example, it could be that while yaka was gone before AOW3, the tigrans abandoned the north of the southern continent (Kesh?) to deal with some kind of rogue sphinx or manticore-become-sapient related disaster in the south, for them to return north after dealing with it. Or, could explore how the Azracs came to have the Horn of the Dead in the AOW1 plot, which itself could like back up somehow.)
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Notes:
Didn't want to include Pegasus/Hippogryph/Centaur/Winged Serpent/Hydra as to me I either couldn't quite picture them sitting on a pyramid telling riddles, deviate from being a quadruped, and/or would be best not as a ruler type IMO.

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Mythical Beast Ruler - with Pyramid replacement for Wizard Tower

ebon stump
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As commented previously, I think a ziggarut could also work and be a bit more generally applicable than specifically Egyptian-style pyramids. Heck, a ziggarut could also be ported back to be something dragon lords can use instead of a wizard tower (there's some precedent from AoW3). Would also allow some other visual options, although from a design perspective it might be easier to keep to 'winged quadruped'.

With respect to breath or breathlike attacks, one distinction with dragon lords is that the default could be a 3-hex line (and Sun Disc could well be the spirit version of this). This could then be altered, including the potential for an artillery-like mode, but probably not able to go to the maximum breath sizes that a level 12 dragon can get to.