AoW4 Factions, 25

AoW4 has managed the odd feat, unequaled since City of Heroes, of inspiring me to not just write up a character bio but constantly create new factions and give them all more or less whimsical flavor text. So here they are, one by one:

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For the last of my four giants' elemental alignment I thought, rock, materium, crafting, man, I haven't made enough dwarf factions yet. Grumpy-ness lends itself well to a phlegmatic sort of evil you don't really get from the usual rampaging hordes, so this vignette was fun to write. Mind you, I've always hated the portrayal of necromancy in fantasy games, so let me also clarify it's not their magic that makes these jokers evil, but their acquisition of materials. Otherwise the use of post-conscious matter is inherently harmless, no matter if it breaks the moral majority's precious taboos. In practice, they turned out less dependent on necromancy anyway, since the armor bonuses of materium combine quite well with shadow's debuffs to make for some quite invincibly terminator-ish units requiring very little replacement with boney fare in the field. The perfectionist artisan stability/economy bonus made for slow but smooth growth and one of the most cheerful shadow factions you could wish. Maxing an evil alignment is actually harder than it should be given the positive pay-off for such self-interested actions as razing monster spawners. The one truly overpowered aspect though turned out to be the Cult of Tyranny's hostage diplomacy, which basically gives you free relationship growth with as many neutral towns as you can violently vassalize. On the large maps I favor, even with sparse neutral towns, it only takes one early war for hostages to gradually build you up into an economic powerhouse via tribute.