Thanks for the feedback all! I opened a discussion about the optional cavalry T3, so feel free to leave your opinions there and I'll see what I can do based on the results after more people have had a chance to say something. I appreciate your perspectives!

Maybe wiewiorka can create a threat and ask for a vote or poll us for the cavalry thing

I like the cavalry since the other oathsworn cultures have land units in the same role. But that's just me, just wanted to give my opinion just so you know.

Absolutely agree, the theming is better without the cavalry

I'd drop the cavalry, every culture having A high tier unit that is optional cavalry is really boring. Embrace the fantasy of North-Eastern snowy mountain Chinese sitting on a wall and looking down at Huns!

Thanks! In principle yes, but I got stuck on some modularity issues (the T3 unit animations when mounted and on the frontend scene, and the helmet/staff subculture symbol) and haven't had a chance to get back to it. I might just remove the optional cavalry property as a not-so-satisfying fix for the T3. I was also going to add the little obsidian disk to the city sprawl visuals (which will in turn add city sprawl for secrecy cities), so hopefully that won't annoy anyone since I know a lot of people aren't that into the city sprawl, but I'd rather be consistent with the base game. Oh and the battlemage will inflict disrupted on its champion seal once I finally get back to updating the mod.

Hey are you still working on this mod? VFX isn't a big issue but it would be awesome to see you finish this vision of yours

Thanks Vizka!

@Spear Deer Yeah go for it, as long as credit is given where needed, of course. Have fun!

No worries, also I assume you took a passive ability that activates when using defense stance as baseline, so using the "skip turn" on some units is probably just recognized as a "take defense stance".
Anyway it's working fine, I'll let you know if anything glaring comes up.

Would you be okay at me trying my hand at writing a compat mod to apply the faction's secrecy passive to the additional units added in the Culture Units Reborn mod?

Thanks! I won't be able to get in the game to check this for a while (crash issue from Griffon 1.1), but you can try to reproduce the same thing with units enchanted with prescient circlets from the tome of prophecies to see if it behaves the same way as my shrouded effect. If skipped units do get precognition, then it seems my effect is consistent with theirs and I would say it's probably not a bug. If not, well then I can take a look but it might be a long while before I can get it updated. I haven't actually checked yet to see if prescient circlets is set up the same way as shrouded in terms of adding an effect on entering defense mode, but that's something I can look into.

This culture is fantastic, great implementation and a fun playstyle.
I noticed one potential bug while playing, when I used the "skip turn" on units, they would activate shrouded as if they went into defensive stance, might be a bug or maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

Hi wiewiorka,
thanks for the heads up! So all revived oathsworn units get the culture devotion effect... interesting. Well, in my opinion that's a bug. Let's see wheather this is adressed in the upcoming update.

Thanks RogerMurdock! I just tried recreating what you described but without any mods active. Looks like if you are a non-oathsworn culture and you revive an enemy oathsworn unit as a zombie (or probably anything), they keep their culture devotion effect but it only activates at the neutral level (I tried it against strife and the revived zombies got +2 fire damage on attacks when I was outnumbered, while the actual enemy strife units were getting the adherent level when they were outnumbered). So it seems that's just how the game is set up and secrecy is consistent with the others. Thanks for bringing it up!

Love this mod! It's so much fun to play as a more illusive culture.
But I noticed one thing during my gamplay as a dark necromancer. I resurrected an oathsworn secrecy unit as a skeleton and during battle while switching to defense mode the unit triggered 'shrouded'. I thought that the devotion level abilities only work for oathsworn cultures. Or am I wrong?

@Stepover34 Maybe, but I've got some other things on my mind for now. Thanks for the thought!

Would you be interested in making a tier 4 unit for https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3023411279&searchtext=late?

This mod is amazing!
Please, if you havr time and energy, could you add some more dedicated content for Secrecy and for Oathsworn in general ?
There are very few quality mods for this culture and almost none add new stuff as organically as you did with this one.

Here I was trying to make ninjas out of the pre-existing Way of War content with vanilla traits and you've gone and made it it's own thing, thank you very much!

Wow thanks! I'm glad you enjoy it and I really appreciate the feedback! Hopefully the tome mods I'm planning will also be similarly well received :)

Played a few games with this! This is one of the few subculture mod I have found that just... works very well now in 2025. It's so seamless that I had actually forgotten it was a mod. You're one of the best out there.

Thanks! Yeah, whispering stones are definitely thematically appropriate, but I didn't want to overlap too much with Harmony and their vassal focus. I am thinking about adding something with whispering stones to the culture bonuses, instead of the discount to all pronouncements, like maybe fortification or some other bonus for assigning a stone to your own city, but I haven't looked into it yet. And I think I'll wait until Giant Kings + Ogre Update come out to see if Triumph added anything I can use.

I love it. I do wish it had more interactions with vassals, since shadow-order both unlock whispering stones. But I feel like you nailed it perfectly.

@wiewiorka Happy to be of service, brother. There is some 3D asset modders out there if you ever want to tackle the various Oath icon assets (Vowkeeper staff, city ornaments etc)

@Estoc Bestoc Thanks for catching that, I appreciate it! It'll be fixed with my next update.

@wiewiorka You made a small typo in the Description of "Secrecy": Mainpulation instead of Manipulation :^) Just wanted to let you know. Keep up the great work!

For the most part I like it but a shield unit doesn't seem to fit the theme at all.

How do you see the culture as a whole fitting with sneaking/secrecy/roguish tomes in general? Both vanilla and modded?

Really nice, great update.

First major update out now! My main focus was on adding visual elements like the city modularity and 2D icons. Hope you like it, and I will keep updating!

@Vizka Sorry for taking long to get back to you, but feedback from your playthrough would be great, thanks!

@wiewiorka Ah alright my bad, I thought they were exactly the same and thus not stacking at all. I will do a playthrough soon and I'll share feedback with you if you'd like. Happy new year and keep on gaming.

Thanks all! I will keep updating it :)
@Vizka Thanks for the feedback! The pronouncement bonus already includes fabricating grievances along with the two declarations, and should stack with silver tongued making fabricating very cheap if you pick that trait. I was initially thinking about only discounting fabrication, without the declarations, but that seemed like not enough so I settled on the generic all pronouncement discount like silver tongued for now. I will also keep an eye out if the devs introduce any other diplomacy options that would fit well with Secrecy.

Yeees ninja factions!

I have yet to try this out, but I think this would work perfectly with silver tongued if not for the clashing of bonuses. Maybe swapping out the pronouncement bonus for a 25% cost reduction on fabricating grievances would be cool? Just an idea, but it would synergies well with their devotion objective.

Anyway great job, this fits so well it should have been official, can't wait to do a Preserver/Shade army playthrough with this.

plz keep updating this its amazing

One more detail for those who might care - structures like stone walls and catapult towers replace the previous version (palisade and ballista) so you don't get an additional +1 imperium from them, it just doesn't drop from "losing" the other structures. This is how it works for the other sources of extra income for defenses too.

Thanks everyone for the comments!
@StopSolo&HelpTeam Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! You've probably noticed, but I just want to point out in case you haven't, that other defensive structures (towers, support..., not just walls) also give the +1 imperium. And this works for structures from tomes like artisan fortification and temple of the pyre too. So you can get quite a lot of imperium per city beyond the wizard tower and annexed wonders if you try. But yeah, for the amount of production and other resources you need to put in before you build it up, maybe the current +1 is too low. What would you think of discounted production cost for all defensive structures in addition to either +1 or +2 imperium?

This is such a cool idea, excited to try it out!

wow this seems like a great idea i hope they make it official its nice to see a none industrious defensive culture.

+1 to imperium for walls is rather weak. Even for a palisade.
I would say that a +2 is reasonable.
+3 would seem more balanced but also an abuse lategame when cities have nothing else useful to build
Understand me: I never build walls. Outside of an occasional palisade on the frontline, they're useless. If your city needs defenses you're too far behind imho.

So either that or you could switch to a generic bonus to normal resources. Like +5 each.
Or drop the production cost of the walls by 90%


Source: There isn't a modest way to say this but I play on brutal only if that helps.

This mod is cool! I am making a Chinese translation mod right now. Just mention it here to avoid duplication work. 在这里提一下避免其他人的重复制作。

@Universal Overlord I have just updated the mod with a fix that should remove any English text from places it shouldn't be when playing in another language. The new text that is added in my mod, however, will still have English in the tooltips that have to do with Secrecy because as far as I can tell poedit doesn't automatically translate text for you, and I did not add localization for other languages. If anyone else wants to add translations, please go ahead.

@Universal Overlord Thanks for letting me know there's a problem. I'll look into some localization stuff, but I'm not totally sure what you mean yet.
@WarrGrinn That would be pretty cool! Triumph has said that they want to deal with your allies being at war with each other, so maybe they'll add some more covert diplomacy too at some point.

I'd just love to be able to pay off the ai to make peace with other ai or free cities (gold,mana,or reaver/eldritchh ability). Bribes would be wonderful to get stuff done.

This mod disables whole blocks of the game's localisation.

Thanks! Yeah, Planetfall had some fun stuff. Originally I wanted to do things like one-sided treaties (keep your borders closed but have others open theirs) but if it's even possible in aow4 it would be more of an overhaul than a subculture mod so I decided to stick to what's already in the game.

ok. thhis looks amazing. looking forward to the finished project. I just wish the diplomacy for aow4 had more options like Planetfall did for dip actions and spying.