Make the Dakhma lord capable of upgrading generic undead with low efficiency (but not horrible). The Raksharaja already get a very awkward undead summon and more or less depend on spamming Summon Dead to get a ghoul to be able to feel dead. I don't think it is very synergetic.

Edit: I actually don't have many ideas otherwise. Perhaps mercenary recruitment out of Atavi villages? Some extra monkey's at a discount of course. Otherwise they don't provide that many benefits.

Edit 2: Possession ritual to include animal corpses. A good trick for the Markgraf is to get hordes of their quick recruiting Hoburgs (if possible the slingers as a ranged throng even with pathetic attack can do some serious damage) so when they die, they can be brought back and upgraded to front line troops. Can't quite do that here. The Marakatas Archers are a fantastic force (can even accept them being Stupid like in some mods), but have no value after death. Being able to return them as animal carcasses would be pretty cool.

Nice! I agree the Raksharaja raise dead/bhuta possession is a bit of a weird one. It uses commands modders can't access, and there's no info on how it really functions. Dakhma Lord was added to keep the undead unit upgrades somewhat usable since it was pretty painful to cart soulless back to bases and "recruit" only 1 set per turn.

I will add sense dead to the Dakhma Lord to help further alleviate the need to spam summon dead.

Atavi villages I'll just reduce the cost to create them, but keep them as-is with occasionally providing free units. The current cost of 25 is probably a bit too expensive.

A raise animals ritual seems like a solid addition. Especially with the synergy with Markatas mentioned.

The villages are in an awkward spot. They only differ from regular jungle tribes by having free spawning troops (at what I feel is a very slow rate) and a hedge mage recruitment (which is a very solid addition and I hope the Maharaja also get them, very important for archer centric strategies, be punny Markatas machine gunning your enemies or Bandar nailing them to the ground).

That's fine, and you can scrounge a decent recruitment of 1-2 Atavi a turn out of a cluster of 4-5 (very common in jungles).

But why veil them? 25 sacrifices for this ritual. It will take the village 25 turns to pay back, 13 if you have the trade to buy sacrifices. I get that 25 is about the cheapest sacrifice ritual in the game, but not only the villages are low value, they are in jungles. Enemies to take, or your commanders to grab the free spawns, it will be a whole turn to get in and possibly much more if it's deep in jungle as it often is.

All of that for the enemy to not see the village? Guess if can use it as a hideout for an army it's a bigger deal, but from a strictly defensive approach, woefully overpriced in my opinion.

Now, if they offered a(nother) benefit that doesn't demand you to trek trough jungle to enjoy, like mercenary recruitment of Atavi, I would see more of a point to veiling and holding them.

So I had a note for "veil village" to either reduce in cost or make it learned for free. After a bit of testing, I'm finding all the "cloak area" rituals across the board to be a bit janky. They are cool in concept but very situational and seem to have a few bugs/quirks that make them easy to get around. Location names are not cleared/hidden, and it appears that while the tile on the map appears as blank, right clicking to inspect the tile all units/terrain is visible, unlike when trying to view a tile with stealth/invisible units.

I may look into replacing with entirely new rituals as these currently seem broken in a way modding can't fix.

Originally posted by Alex the Beetrayer:

So I had a note for "veil village" to either reduce in cost or make it learned for free. After a bit of testing, I'm finding all the "cloak area" rituals across the board to be a bit janky. They are cool in concept but very situational and seem to have a few bugs/quirks that make them easy to get around. Location names are not cleared/hidden, and it appears that while the tile on the map appears as blank, right clicking to inspect the tile all units/terrain is visible, unlike when trying to view a tile with stealth/invisible units.

I may look into replacing with entirely new rituals as these currently seem broken in a way modding can't fix.

The name issues will be alleviated on locations that are not towns and whatnot, but yeah, quite frankly, that will only fool the AI and a non-observant player that failed scouting, assuming it is working as intended besides the quirks.

Regardless the rituals are very inconsequential. They bloat a bit ritual lists, but I don't think it is necessary to replace them, perhaps to just remove them.

If you insist on them conceptually but on a more reliable form, how about a phantasmal garrison that will be instantly defeated if an enemy wander there?

Got a few games under the belt, I think I can think of a few things.

As with the Bandaraja/Monkey Maharaja, you are a hybrid class, leaning less to warlord, as you don't have the Maharaja uniques and elephants. Arguably though, what's important, you do have.

As you don't have magic archers and diced casters like the Maharaja, you will have to rely on the Bandar archers heavily. However, unlike him, your magic is arguably stronger and undeniably have offensive potential, and you get dependable access to Blood 1/2, and Storm 2, and for my surprise, Forest 1.. Your frontline is also easy to replenish, either with undead, or ogre-tier summonables. My ideal army is a Kala-Mukha (if possible, otherwise Raktapata works) and Yogini leading 18 bandar archers. If you got time, spam some armored monkey warriors to have a frontline, or if your blood economy is decent, spam Naraka Summoning on the move until you have a full frontline. This will be your general purpose army, it can take about anything that's independent, and you can converge multiple to take on a large player threat.

Yogini is very useful here, Heal is a weak spell but you got a tough frontline so it is not wasted, but more importantly in battle, wolves. Fuel your frontline, can distract and perhaps even assassinate the enemy backline. And knowing a heal for the passive health recovery is useful.

Blood, despite (arguably) not being your main spell, can be crazy good if you get a lot of Strength spells. Sure, you can drop on your Marakata archers to have a crazy number of now actually human damage archers, but I prefer the durability and second frontline potential of the bandars, that also benefit of the extra damage.

Lanka Summoning, low tier is not worth it. Yes it is cheaper at 20, but Naraka have diced rolls, you often get 2 and even 3 unarmored rakshasa, that are slightly stronger than the best of the Lanka, always one figure. Past that, Greater Summonings are up to your discretion. Lanka got larger dices, and the summon is cheaper, so it is a worthwhile bet. Regarding the commanders, Rakshasi are your only reliable shot at Maya Manipulation other than the Rakshasa (got 1 General after upgrading the main guy in an entire game) and can Seduce at tier 3, while Dakni can fly (for all it is worth), can do tier 2 rituals, and Storm Magic, which combos nicely with your vital bandar archers.

Bhuta Possession. Can be a game changer... when it works. You can keep a commander busy for muiltiple turns to get 4 skulls down to 2. The Dakhma Lord can upgrade your own monkeys quicker, but I often find myself just using him as a scout or bait. Lugging around a horde of zombies is not bad, they are durable and will keep your archers firing for longer. Consider the lowered movement a "ritual tax", get these illusory armies going to confuse the enemy. But overall, unless absolutely desperate, I prefer to raise undead just when I'm about to assault a tough fortification.

On this topic, Summon the Dead. Yout ghosts do magical damage, will be VITAL to take Creeping Dooms. Frankly, probably your most cost effective ritual overall. Your ghosts are tough, the 1 figures have their uses (finding corpses if you decide to raise them, nearly ogre-like stats, one can turn others into ghouls and the other have a ethereal second form), and lots of dice rolls.

Rasatala, I am not sure it is worthwhile. Mandeha Dreadful Eclipse can be wortwhile, they're all combat casters and the others have multiple weapons, with the Asura also having Blood 1 and Storm 1. 500 blood is a lot though, and having just 2 accessories and a weapon means will be tough to turn them into stack killers. I prefer to spam Greater Naraka, the odd Rakshini can be upgraded to get me Maya 3, the troops will be nice, and the assassin is probably the best in the game.

Excellent! Thank you a very detailed write up. I definitely think you are on to something with the quality disparity between the tier 1 Lanka and Naraka rituals. I also think the Dakhma Lord has room for a little more utility to be added. Bhuta possession is unfortunately "is what it is" since what can be changed further is limited without throwing out its unique mechanics, and might be best left a little unreliable so this class does not encroach too much on Necromancer/Markgraf's niche.

Regarding possession my suggestion is to make it an 1AP ritual. The sacrifice cost is fine and touching that can really derail things, but if it's an unreliable Raise Dead at least it should be done faster (no insanity cost, sure, but 25 blood is not trivial either for something that can net you 4 zombies in a cast).

Seems like a reasonable suggestion/adjustment.

I noticed Daitya and Asura have this golden bow, but never use it because casting takes priority? I don't think they'd underpriced if that bow got the "can use while casting" trait, even though that would also make it usable in melee?

Good catch, I am definitely too busy watching the level 3 spells to have ever caught that. Yeah seems more like a bug fix.

I had another chance to test this and it seems i was mistaken. Must have just been out of range when I looked last time.

Trying out the Glycon, I do find it a nice change of pace from the rest of the spellbook. The sprite looks so dandy in his little crown! But the use-cases for it seem deceptively narrow.

As an economy option, it turns sacrifices into gold. That is almost always going to be the opposite of what you want as Raksharajah. By the exchange rate, it pays for itself if you keep it alive for 50 turns. That's plenty of time to trade that gold back into sacrifices--except I could already do that. Unless I didn't have the gold to afford trading for sacrifices. But if I'm short on gold, I'm going to be shorter on Sacrifices, since almost everything that yields S yields more G. So I won't have the S to burn on a Glycon!

I presume that the Lar was the starting point these numbers came from? But there are 2 key differences that make the Lar better as an economy option. The first is that as Senator, gold is all you need, no issues with having gold instead of what you really want. The second difference is that the Senator has a gold multiplier, meaning the Lar actually pays for itself MUCH faster than the Glycon.

Meanwhile, the Glycon a fairly capable guard dog. Better than the Lar, perhaps because you already considered the above? With a little help, it can keep Indies out well. So it certainly has value placed in a remote hamlet--one that is safe from invasion but not from indies. But it is a big expense to pay for that service! To the point where actually coming out ahead from such a move seems iffy.

There are a few different ways I could see addressing this.

Switching the cost to gold, and/or lowering the cost pushes both use-cases towards viability. Too far and you make spamming it mandatory.

You could make it an even better guard--perhaps by making it birth minions to protect it. If it did that, you could safely fire and forget in a remote hamlet, knowing that it would not be whittled down over time. If the minions weren't themselves stationary, that would give it utility in riskier locations on your frontier. going this route you might even remove gold bonus entirely

Yeah that's a pretty good point. In a recent Raksharaja game I did roll the Glycon ritual early on and plopped 2 down to make an investment into a stronger gold economy which worked fine, but then I never touched it again. I was leaning towards making the sacrifice cost cheaper, but I think I like the idea of it being swapped to a gold cost ritual better.

Here's some more spaghetti for the wall:
Noticed Dakini (lanka stormcaster) have a unique synergy with Summon The Dead. It's the class's only commander-unit combo that produces a useful flying/floating army (drawbacks of both, but still useful)

I don't know what thematic connection you could draw between the two, but the mechanical connection is there. Dakini would be more attractive if they always got Summon the Dead... Potentially they could have a unique level 2 ritual with stronger dice? I could also see them getting a unique variant of the ritual that only summoned floaters, either at the first or second level.
Kind of a weird tech tree to opt into a fast ghost army by casting Summon Lanka 2...
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New ritual for the monkey skeleton king! The fact that he's unique to this faction opens up possibilities! A ritual that converts a MonkeyGhoul into an armored variant, with a sword and shield. Loses the special effect of the claws, but becomes sturdier and killier.
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Thoughts on Glycon: Since it is getting less "costy" (even if you decide to keep it at 50 Gold), maybe it ought to go down to a tier 1 ritual? This opens up a the possibility for a tier 2 upgrade.
I was thinking limit it to Atavi tribe villages--the best place for a glycon anyway. It would give the Glycon Serpent Magic 2, and Gold Bonus 2.... If you gave it a breeder ability that spawned atavi and markata, it could effectively "boost" the atavi tribe's unit output!
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This is maybe more of a base-game bug (actually real this time!) but the Asara (javelin Lanka) lack the hidden trait that other cyclopses have that cause them to gain "Lost his only eye" instead of "lost an eye". Foamed at the mouth when I saw it. Literally unplayable!

I'm a little neutral on specializing the Dakini towards summon the dead, but I'll give it thought. The Dakhma lord is going to be gaining the "Bhuta Possession" ritual in the upcoming update, but there could be room for a few more interesting unit promotions to those monkey specific undead. The Glycon is currently a level 1 ritual so we should be all good there. I don't think I'll want to make it Atavi Tribe specific as it might get a bit too niche to use in games where tribal villages are not plentiful. If it seems like it could use expanding I could see it "growing" into a larger unit after X amount of turns. Truly game-breaking bug! The Asara will be correctly made a cyclops lol