Maybe letting the cultist set up cult hamlets on savanna coast tiles?
but I understand that may let them set up too many

Yes, the thought occurs that -71 should have been used due to the relatively small area cultist has to work with.

It would be cool to see an expansion to the starspawns unique ritual list, prehaps things like building void structures? Or summoning more horrors/controllable horrors. I always thought it'd be interesting if high cult got more unique interaction with the void as a plane, some way to take more distinct advantage of it with its unique themeing.

Will look into it when I revisit content.

Hey. I've enjoyed most of the changes you've made to the other factions I've played, but these guys seem out of control. To the point where I'm not even sure it's working as intended. Specifically the coastal hamlet ritual seems to have way, way too much leeway in its use and range. They can be adjacent to each other and it works on deserts, forests, plains, savanas, jungles. This combine with the ability to make new citadels more or less at will with port and pirate ports for recruitment points means I just pull ahead of the AI very early, and never look back. Playing on count vs 5 AI I was able to fight 4 of them on different fronts simultaneously, and completely outclassed their armies with just archers and freespawns. No raiding, no nonsense, I was more powerful when I made contact, and never stopped moving forward. I barely even summoned troops. Most of my sacrifices went unused since cultist time was better spent making more money and citadels. Though I did eventually devote one cultist to spawning more commanders so I could move those extra troops around.
The map ended up looking like this: https://imgur.com/a/ZnGpK46

It's pretty silly seeing fishermen spawning from former forests in the middle of the continent. I can only imagine it'd be even more silly on a smaller map.

Assuming this isn't some bug, I'd suggest limiting coastal hamlets to plains and savanna, limiting them to within 2 tiles of water. Considering not allowing adjacency. Regardless, the end result should be less hamlets, closer to actual water.
While that's the biggest issue, I have a few more oddities.
Compared to other faction troops, Cultists just seem to be way more cost effective for snowballing.
Their archers are pretty average, but they get 10 for 50. I'd rather 10 average archers for 50 than 6 slightly above average archers for 60 like the Baron gets, and archers are his early game thing. That's on top of free front line chaff from Hamlets to screen for them, and as I mentioned, with that ritual being so cheap and so versatile you end up with huge quantities of the free troops. Maybe make them get 6 or something? Or 10, but they're weaker, since Cutlists are all about magic artillery for damage anyways.

The ritual to make a village, while not worthless, is pretty questionable. It turns off the troop generation of coastal hamlets, costs a bit more than making a new hamlet, and doesn't even double your income. I found I was better off just making new hamlets. You might want to do it in a tighter game to add density to your sacrifices per tile, but I found I was just never lacking for sacrifices, OR space since you could put them just about anywhere. I made a couple villages to experiment, and was never put into a position to consider making another again. At the very least you may want villages to not turn off the freespawning if there's a way to add a coastal village or something unique to Cultist.

Regarding trade and pirate port, they just seem redundant. It was annoying to space the both of them, and they were more or less indistinguishable. There's little strategic reason I could find to consider one over the other, beyond just cost. They also seem a bit odd thematically. I'd consider tossing one of them, but allowing them to be a tile closer together. Say just pirate ports, with at least 4 tiles distance instead of 5. Also just a nitpick, but that ritual should state its limitation like similar rituals do. I had to futz about a bit to figure out how to space them.

The gnome thing is cute, but they seemed completely worthless. I can't think of any reason I'd spend money, and more importantly, time on my cultists since cultist actions was nearly the only bottleneck I had, on spawning something which was going to take 50 turns to pay for itself and would die if it got raided. Spending the gold on more archers in virtually any situation is going to be a better investment. It just takes up space on the ritual screen which feels a bit sloppy. I'd say make gnomes worth making, or have the easter egg be a bit more subtle? Have your freespawns occasionally show up as a gnome which doesn't produce gold or something? I don't know. This is an artistic choice, but it rubbed me wrong.


Thanks for reading my feedback. I understand you've been really busy slamming these mods out, and things are a bit unpolished, so I'm not being judgemental. I think your work overall adds a lot, and I've really enjoyed Bakemono, Voice of El, and Pale Ones. Cultist have been my go-to faction since like CoE3 though, and as they stand it feels like playing with cheats on. It sucks the fun out, and I don't think I'd want to play them again in their current (heh.. water pun) state.

could you please add the flying polyps and maybe the black goat and her young.