can you give swarm lord and concubine desert move? Does ammits desolator ability give life force currency or does it just burn through terrain and cities as damage? Great mod BTW.Also swarm lords ability only works like three times and then the shadowwood turns to desert. Perhaps remove the tile requiement for shadow wood? You also have to wait for your pyramids to break down a forest. it seems rather restrictive for swarm units that cost 150 anyways.

Thank you! The desolator ability does not provide the absorbed life force as currency. Definitely you will want to march Ammit into enemy territory as not to burn through your own resources. Next update is pretty big and probably ready mid-week. Swarm Lord and Concubine are already being slightly reworked, and adding desert move is a good suggestion to add on.

Swarm Lord's ritual is being flipped a bit, now using ancient forests with a chance to reduce it to a shadow wood with each cast, and the life drain attack is swapped for summoning additional locusts in combat. Concubine is switching the seduce aura for a ranged charm attack that has a "reload" time and only affects humans.

Nice. Thanks for your responses. If I notice anything else ill let you know.

I've always found scourgelord to have a higher difficulty in the early game. I think the reason is that they have these utility rituals that do what other classes do for free by holding tiles. Make a new lv. 1 caster? Other classes just spend gold. Gather the main casting resource? Other classes just... do it.

Not only do I need to spend resources and time doing these rituals, but I also need to unlock more rituals than other classes. build obelisk is mandatory, making it guaranteed is fair enough. But now instead of having 1 free ritual I can... do what other classes do already. And at lv. 2? Same thing, with appoint herald.

You know what ISN'T guaranteed? upgrading pyramids to obelisk. It DRASTICALLY impacts your casting economy. Hard not to think of it as mandatory. But i have to roll for it on the expensive lv. 2 casting pool. VERY RNG.

IMO, making obelisk and pyramid freebies, so that a newborn scourge lord still gets another random ritual at each level, would not be OP. I think that appoint herald is fine as a non-guaranteed random rit, as all the rituals, almost all of which are necessary somehow, will be more accessible.

If you wanted, you could counterbalance this buff with an early game nerf by replacing the starting herald with a Sheik or something.

I think the amount of "learning" and investment a Scourge Lord has to do is somewhat balanced by their freedom from chance recruitment offers/having to discover sources of their special resource. However, I do think that swapping which tier 2 ritual is innate/free is not a bad suggestion.

Ok, after actually winning a map on Knight for the first time ever, I didn't have the soul crushing early game I'm used to. Swarm Lord helps a lot in that department! Here's some stuff I noticed--

-Scourge Ants seemingly can't be primal'd. Is this intentional? Is it even possible to change?

-Primal Font(1) has a tough time churning through all those swarmies! How about a new possible result of swarm summoning, producing a "Swarm Courtier," a nameless, flying, backrank support unit with Primal Font(1). That way, a Swarm Lord who has had a few chances to feed will have helpers to feed his rats.

-Giant Vulture is kind of lackluster. Not overcosted really, but I'd prefer a higher price and something that stood out from other big birds. Darkbless? Primal-ificatability? Lv 1 casting, like Unlife?

-I could see Carrion Summoning as a random table. After all, scavengers are opportunists! Candidates include:
-That big black centipede from the t3 summon table.
-3 Ant Queens with a sizable bodyguard squad.
-A new "Swarm King," 4 tiles big, but otherwise a lv.2 casting swarm lord. Perhaps he could breed beetles.

And now, non-swarmlord related commentary:

-The Construct Guardian ritual seems to have been buffed to allow 3 guards on a tile? The description has not been changed, still saying 2 is the limit.

-Call of the Pyramid is a frustrating ritual to exist in a random pool. It is tier one, but requires the use of a tier 2 ritual to function. While you fish for that tier 2 ritual, you might get "Call of the Pillar" which makes it obsolete? These two should be one ritual, or else they should both work on any place of power, and the tier 2 version should bring the army along.

-Ghouls could be given desertmove without impacting other classes that use the unit.

The "primability" of any animal unit is thankfully moddable. For scourge ants this is disabled as the base game puts them in the same tier as leogryphs or wyverns as being a magical creature that can't be further empowered. No real strong feeling one way or the other on this.

I have also been reevaluating the swarm lords role/features and a bit of this lines up with what I have planned. The giant vulture currently feels misplaced in a few ways and will likely be moved to one of the scourge lord's summoning rituals. It also feels like a vulture is a natural fit for a corpse consuming ability, so that's something I'll be testing to make this feel a bit more unique from similar "giant birds" and a more interesting unit overall.

Swarm lord I'd like to update to have a recruit rate based on temples, no ties to old battlefields, just using a combination of corpses and lifeforce for summoning.

I do like the idea of the "Swarm Courtier" so that additional summons can increase the rate that the summoned units are empowered.

I am also working with the idea that the Swarm Lord will have the capability to create ant hills as a secondary ritual to replace the old vulture summons as it's more expensive ritual.

Construct Guardian going up to 3 is unintentional and just a result of the command being a little funky and allowing 1 past the written limit. So that's a minor issue that will be adjusted to correctly limit to 2.

I never really gave the "call of" teleporting rituals much thought but that is indeed pretty wack. I'll probably cut "Call of the Pillar" entirely and move "Call of the Pyramid" to level 2 and auto-learned with the ritual to create the pyramid in the first place.

I think ghouls are a bit underpowered at the moment which is a shame given their fun gimmick. I'm already planning on buffing them with berserker, so I have no issues giving desert move to lean in to their role with the scourge lord.

"Champion's Oath"
New tier 1 ritual, can only be learnt by Heralds (this is possible, right?).

Cast on a fortified citadel, costs 10 Iron and 50 Lifeforce. Promotes self to a "Scourge Champion," gaining fast-heal, front rank, and better stats. May never become a lord.

This would allow you to keep heralds in their fighter role once a bless-heavy build transitions to using a frontline when they unlock sellsouls.

This is pretty close to an idea I have for a minor rework on Scourge Lord in relation to Heralds. I'd like to introduce a bit of diversity to the Scourge Lord's servants/lieutenants and have them serve more unique roles rather than as mini-scourge lords that are very cheap and effective to spam. Additionally I'd like the faction to feel very top-heavy with the titular Scourge Lord being uniquely required for the best summoning rituals, and having it be a more painful setback when he's killed.

ROUGH WIP concept:

Insects/animals are removed from Scourge Summons rituals and a few new units added. Scourge summons will now lean towards smaller quantities of units with stand out traits, spell casting, or dark bless. High tier Scourge Summons require proximity to pillars/pyramids/mountains of power. Mountain of Power ritual is now 1-time cast, but the mountain acts as a citadel (without standard recruitment for just the Scourge Lord) offering unique recruitments that cost lifeforce, 1 of which is a unique stationary defender for the mountain that is summoned initially but can be re-recruited if killed.

Scourge Herald summoning is removed. Instead a cheap, plentiful, non-combat commander is available for recruitment, "Scourge Sycophant". Can build Pillars, and has 2 potential promotions at Pyramids of Power (both of which claim it as their home).

Scourge Herald (updated): No longer a caster, now a melee front liner with decent stats, inherently magic sword that ghoulifies, immunity to mind effects, enables merc offers for larger batches of Sellsouls (as well as a means to recruit some prior to Scourge King)

Swarm Herald: Also a rework of the Swarm Lord. No longer a random offer, now a 2nd promotion option. Building off the existing dynamic but aiming to give the swarm units a more defined alternate summons identity. Can summon anywhere but using a mixed cost of lifeforce and carrion (humanoid/animal corpses). Goes for large batches of weaker "swarm units", some potential summons that can primify the others, ant queens, units that can consume corpses on the map to reproduce.