So yesterday we looked at Commander Bertelli, an airship captain. Today it's the turn of Viviane Garcia, a city governor and ardent socialite.
When assigned to a city, she reduces the local level of unrest, makes it significantly cheaper to build upgrades such as universities and shipyards, but also makes the city much more vulnerable to enemy spies. She can also be called upon to organise a fabulous masked ball, raising the spirits of the citizens and granting you a bit of reputation. Of course, while everyone is wearing masks, spies have an even easier time.
The masked ball is a city edict, a temporary event that governors can invoke. Other governors have edicts such as declaring martial law, organising a scientific symposium, or using the population for unethical experiments.
(Note to self: commission a version of her portrait where she's wearing a mask.) She has two stats, loyalty and experience. Her loyalty is direly tested whenever you perform a spy action, but the very worst thing you can do is hire a man called Pyle McMorley. Who?
This is McMorley:
As you can see, the antipathy is mutual. The other stat is experience, which she gains through diplomacy, signing non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts, and alliances. Once she reaches 100 experience, she transforms into Dame Viviane.
Now she's less interested in masked balls, and she's learned to find out and stifle enemy spies in her city - though she still despises McMorley. And now she has a fame stat, which rises slowly over time, delivering victory after about seven years - if someone doesn't get there first, or sabotages her rise to fame... So several readers have understandably expressed concern that winning the game through fame will be overpowered. A quick victory that bypasses much of the actual gameplay. That's not the intent here - fame victory should take time and effort, and other players should have the chance to resist it, much like with coronation and worm age victories. With a DLC like this, I think it's important that the power level of the new features is carefully adjusted. If they're underpowered, the DLC ends up not mattering, and if they're overpowered, the DLC obsoletes the gameplay of the base game. If the power level is right, though, the DLC makes the game more complex and interesting. So that's what I'm aiming for. The heroes you see in these posts will go through plenty of testing and balancing before the release. Tomorrow: Vex! Combat Magic! Gargoyles!