Legendary Cruelty?
 

I just got the Legendary Cruelty heroic ability on a commander in an SP game. Is that new? I have never seen it before. Seems to give you Fear +0, and increased likelihood to give afflictions.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

No

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Not new. Have seen it several times now. Great in MP games to justify your actions.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

It's one of the rare ones like Awe, Undead General and Adept Researcher. It's an enhanced form of Battle Bellow (which gives fear), much like Heroic Agility is an enhanced form of Lightning Reflexes and Heroic Battle Prowess.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

All hail the Bloody Mummers then. (Song of Fire and Ice reference)

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Half the characters in ASoIF probably have this trait.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

And the other half are dead by now.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

George RR Martin does have a penchant to kill off main characters, indeed.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

What I'd like to know is when will we get "Unholy Cuteness"?

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Would I be correct in guessing that you recently changed the nation you are playing?

I say that because I have noticed that there is some sort of quasi-relationship between unit type and heroic abilities. When I play the same nation for an extended period I seem to get the same set of heroic abilities and when I change nations there seems to be another set. The sets are not mutually exclusive, but I have clealy noticed some sort of pattern in the distribution of the heroic abilities.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

And if you look at random newspaper clippings enough, you'll see patterns emerge there too. It's a conspiracy, man.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I think Edratman is right, there is a relationship between unit type and heoric abilities.

And Reno, yes one can see patterns in everything if you keep looking, but refusing to see any patterns ( or conspiracies) is just the flip side of the Wrong coin.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

The conspirology squared: you look for conspirologists under your bed... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I'll keep my eyes open and try to accumulate data. I have noticed that my Adonim keep getting heroic agility (ambidexterity, increased att/def) and heroic endurance (increased reinvig).

-Max

<font color="red">Edit: Heh. I guess I should say "that Adonai keep getting..."

Adonai = "my Lords", which is also the way Hebrews vocalized the name of God because they didn't want to pronounce it. Very punny in my mind and I had to share it.</font>

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I've seen thick skin once, higher protection was only on a dwarf (EA vanheim dwarfie)

I the awesome presence is indeed rare too.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

&lt;~~~~ Thou shalt know true terror.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Yes, I was playing the new nation of Hinnom when I first saw legendary cruelty.

I get the unequaled obesity one a lot, which is kind of cruel since I am a bit overweight myself.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

The truly rare abilities are

• Awesome Presence (awe + leadership)
• Legendary Cruelty (fear + greater chance to cause afflictions)
• Battle Bellow (fear)
• Adept Researcher
• Undead General

Some of the more commonly seen ones:

• Valor
• Heroic Battle Prowess (attack)
• Heroic Strength
• Lightning Reflexes (defense)
• Heroic Precision
• Tough Skin (protection)
• Unequaled Obesity (strength + hitpoints + extra encumbrance)

Uncommon

• Heroic toughness (hitpoints)
• Heroic Endurance (reinvigoration)
• Heroic Agility (battle prowess + lightning reflexes + ambidexterity)
• Heroic Quickness (action points)

These are all based on what I have seen personally. In a large SP or cooperative hotseat game I consistently see all of the common and uncommon ones, with Heroic Toughness being the rarest of that lot. I see one of the rare ones in maybe 1 game out of 5 if I'm lucky. In the current cooperative hotseat game I'm playing with Kaljamaha, I have two units with the Tough Skin perk and they both have base prot around 11 or 12 (starting from 0).

Some of the more memorable heroes I have had:

• The Abysian Newt with Adept Researcher and research around 34 points per turn. My Great Warlock pretender got thoroughly schooled in the research department, he was lagging over 10 points behind easily.
• an Ulmish wolfherd (in Dom2) who had Awe(+10) by the time that SP game was done
• A Raksharaja in one of my games got Heroic Toughness and he was absolutely ridiculous, with well past 100 hitpoints
• This one is Kaljamaha's, a Raksharaja with Heroic Quickness and action points going past 40. Once he's done buffing, his boots of quickness take him on a rampage through the battlefield, leaving corpses in his wake.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I suspect it's not tied to nation, but to unit stats instead.
My machakan sorcerers would often get heroic endurance, precision, quickness, etc. Heroic Obesity is often mentioned in context of giants (Jotuns, and now Hinnom). Warrior type commanders get strength, reflexes, obesity, toughness and other combat buffs more often.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I agree. I've seen unequaled obesity on EA Agartha fairly often compared to other nations I frequently play.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I've also seen an ability called Third Eye, which was both increased Precision and increased Magic Resistance. I was pretty pleased. I don't recall who got it, unfortunately, other than that it was a battlemage who ended up with 25 precision or so, was kinda silly.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Oh yeah, that one. It's so rare that I forgot it existed.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I am sure that you are correct in that the traits have a distribution probability factor that is related to unit stats (somehow). That is why there appears to be a change in the set when you switch nations because there is a change in the units stats.

Edi, you also forgot Heroic Stupidity. It only appears rarely in the game because about 2 dozen of my employees have the trait and the game is rebalancing the global distribution.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Last time I checked 'specialised' heroic abilities gave more bonus than ones that boost multiple skills. So Battle Prowess would give more attack bonus than Agility.


Some wild speculation:

The heroic ability a commander gets may be related to his actions in battle.
The only time (as far as I remember) I got Adept Researcher was with Black Duke of Ulm. It's a SC from 'epic heroes' mod. I don't like the mod, but that's not the point. If I remember correctly, the Duke attacked enemies in melee, which is quite unusual for a spellcaster. The Duke of Ulm has some magic skills in 3 or even more paths.

The following is completely ungrounded speculation. Heroic Stupidity may be granted to commanders who actually do something very stupid, such as accidentally killing lots of allies. If true, it should appear quite often on machakan/black sorcerers (it doesn't).

Perhaps some heroic abilities only seem less common because we don't know what triggers them ? Some ideas for tests:
- test a bunch of ordinary melee commanders (with and without leadership to see if it affects presence/awe like abilities; big and small thugs separately)
- test some evocation mages (I often see endurance, quickness, precision on machakans)
- test some commanders with ranged weapons like bows
- test smiting priests

I'm not familiar enough with map editing, so these tests would be too time-consuming for me.

About obscure heroic abilities: I believe pale ones get Second Eye :-).

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I got awesome presence two times in a game with EA Atlantis Basalt Queens thugs (may be because they have holy magic ?) one got Battle Below (because they have innate fear ?).

I got one or two adept researchers with Utgard werewolves but most get heroic endurance or strength.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Makes sense. I think awesome presence is somewhat common on prophets.

Edit:
It would be interesting if Heroic Stupidity was actually an affliction. Remember Minsc from Baldur's Gate ?

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

You're kidding! That's unspeakably awesome!

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I tend to use my original scout for my prophet in most games, and I can't count how many times those units have recieved Valor (increased leadership). Kind of useless on a unit that can't lead troops.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I have played innumerable SP starts (to turn 10 or 20ish) to test out different starting strategies with a VAST (nearly complete) range of nations and pretenders. In nearly every game, I start by prophetizing the initial commander, and setting him to Smitex5 for my initial expansion.

As far as that goes for "testing", I have noticed absolutely no correlation between being a prophet, or using smite to get mass kills, in what traits I get. Now, it is true, I am often jumping from nation to nation, to see how a certain factor affects them, but I also often play one nation 10x in a row to try to maximize the initial growth, and there is no strong correlation.

The only thing that I have noticed, is that I get the "common" traits more often, specifically the ones I see most on starting prophets are - Endurance, Battle Prowess, Strength, and Tough Skin.


A side note on that rough sketch of rarity, I personally see Toughness FAR more often than Obesity, which I barely see any more often than the really rare ones. Someone's theory above was that the combo traits give more total than the individual, so Obesity would be less common since it is Toughness + Strength, and gains maybe 60-65% as fast in both, as one would get if it were the single version.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

There's also the one that gives increased Magic Resistance, fairly common for me.

Toughness is pretty common for me. My bet is it is mainly just random, though it seems to me that when multiple units get heroic at the same time (like when you send three commanders into the same battle on turn 2), they often all get the same ability as each other.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

I'm not aware of any correlation. Abilities should be random, with a couple being rare, unless JK has changed something without my knowledge (which might happen).

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

People will always see Elvis, they don't need JK's help with that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

No tir no n'Og gets it all the time, but they are the lords of illusion

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

Is heroic bellow the same thing as battle bellow? cause i got heroic bellow.

Re: Legendary Cruelty?
 

What did it give you? Battle Bellow is the name I've always seen on that ability and it gives fear.