What is a golem?

[rylen]

I'm experimenting with the Golem Cult. Machaka, with easy access to earth and nature seems a natural for it. But, I'm not always sure what is a golem. Here is what I've found so far:

Claymen
Enlivened Statues
Lumber Constructs
... are

These should be but I haven't checked:
Golems
Seige Golems
Iron Dragon
Mechanical Men
Clockwork horros
Crusher

These sound like they should be but arent:
Manikin
Mandragora

These might be:
Corpse Constructs

So, what do I need to add? And what can move from one list to another? And do any get special bonuses? I think I get a larger boost for Lumber Const then I do in Enliven Statues in the same domain. I'm checking that now.

Rylen

[Nagot Gick Fel]

rylen said:
I'm experimenting with the Golem Cult. Machaka, with easy access to earth and nature seems a natural for it. But, I'm not always sure what is a golem.

It's much easier to check this with a dedicated mapfile. Eg, make a copy of eye.map to golemcult.map, edit golemcult.map, change the title (#dom2title) to "Golem Cult", and add these lines:

#specstart 0 1
#setland 1
#commander "Golem"
#commander "Siege Golem"
#commander "Mechanical Man"
#commander "Corpse Construct"
.
.
.
etc. (add all the unit types you want to check as commanders)

Now design a new pretender for Abysia with the Golem Cult theme and a high dominion, start a new game on the "Golem Cult" map, be sure to leave the "Special start locations" enabled (it should be by default).

Generate a few turns, and look at your commanders. If their hit points have increased, then their unit type is affected by the Golem Cult theme.


[Edit: for this test, it'd be better to choose a high-number province as your starting province. Starting in 1 will give some of your commanders an heroic ability in turn 2, which might turn out to be 'heroic toughness']

[Cainehill]

If that works, the description of Golem Cult when creating a pretender is incorrect, as it says "All golems and other mindless constructs will receive an increased number of hit points when created inside a friendly dominion."

"When created" implies that the extra HPs come from the dominion strength at creation time, and commanders already on the map won't be considered to be "created", I don't think.

It also means that once created in a high dominion area, you can freely move them to hostile dominion without losing the extra HPs.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Cainehill said:
If that works, the description of Golem Cult when creating a pretender is incorrect

Never believe the blurb texts . Golem Cul's unique effect is to give your constructs extra HPs, depending on your dominion strength in the province they're in. They aren't affected by adverse dominion (their HPs will only go down to normal here, and will raise again when you bring them back home).

[Wauthan]

I wonder if Golem Cult works in conjunction with the global spell "Mechanical Militia"? Both of them give you a solid defence (which is the best kind of offence) so if they work together your opponent would pay dearly for every province he invades inside your dominion. I can see Iron Faith Ulm being particularly strong in this strategy since their priests get the inquisition bonus.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Wauthan said:
I wonder if Golem Cult works in conjunction with the global spell "Mechanical Militia"? Both of them give you a solid defence (which is the best kind of offence) so if they work together your opponent would pay dearly for every province he invades inside your dominion. I can see Iron Faith Ulm being particularly strong in this strategy since their priests get the inquisition bonus.

Golem Cult requires a magic scale, Iron Faith requires drain. You can't pick more than one theme anyway.

[Wauthan]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Golem Cult requires a magic scale, Iron Faith requires drain. You can't pick more than one theme anyway.

Doh! Never post until you checked the facts first. I'm writing this at work so my mind was a bit distracted.

Then what faction would make best use of Golem Cult? Vanheim perhaps? Marignon are the best Dominion pushers but they don't get good access to the magic needed. Vanheim got fairly durable priests and the dwarves can pump out even the higher tier golems. I know I've used Claymen en masse as Atlantis but Lumber Constructs are not interesting enough to sacrifice nature gems for.

More research into the nature of what is a "golem" seems to be needed. Seems Rylen hit a nugget.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Wauthan said:
Then what faction would make best use of Golem Cult? Vanheim perhaps?

Vanheim, Arco, Machaka. These are my Favorites Golem Cult candidates. I also got surprisingly good results with R'lyeh the one time I picked Golem Cult, based on the premise that many constructs can go wet, and often are either mindless or magic or both (all of these being good things for the squids).

[Endoperez]

Interesting thread. I'll be trying W9E4 Cyclops with Vanheim Golem Cult when I have time!

[Cainehill]

Wauthan said:
Then what faction would make best use of Golem Cult? Vanheim perhaps? Marignon are the best Dominion pushers but they don't get good access to the magic needed. Vanheim got fairly durable priests and the dwarves can pump out even the higher tier golems. I know I've used Claymen en masse as Atlantis but Lumber Constructs are not interesting enough to sacrifice nature gems for.

Pangaea and Man might also, given cheap temples that allow them to build their dominion quite well. A bit harder to mass the mages required to do the castings though, I think.