Ytnic

Ytnic head

*"Insane, death-worshipping, bodyparts-collecting cannibals."*

## Description

They may not be what one envisions when one thinks "spriritual tribe" but actually, **Ytnic** are probably the most pious of the whole Square.

Their land is so barren and poor, that they have to rely on faith and bipede-hunting to survive.

Their cheap temples serve both as butcher shops and fashionable relic markets, on top of religious service.

Ytnic starts with a technology called **Cannibalism** (free spirit) that allows temples and a special **Collect** ability.

They harvest **wartoes** (jerusalem artichoke), and hunt **landbats**.

**Blood** is the purest thing to them : They cleanse theirselves and wash their clothes in it.

They also wear a bone necklace.

## Resources

Ytnic live in a complete wasteland

* - crops
* - forest (regular amount of game inside those)
* - fruit
* (- water, but the game currently doesn't allow it)

## Special rules

### Technologies

* *Free Spirit* is replaced with **Cannibalism**. It unlocks temples and **Collect**, a unique Ytnic ability that replaces *disband* :

"When a Ytnic unit is killed in melee combat, 1 **meat** is collected. When a Ytnic unit kills a foe in melee combat, 2 meat are collected. Each collected meat is worth 5 points. Collected meat go to the smallest temple of the city the unit is from. If there are none in that city, only the points are earned."

* Shields is replaced with **Slaughter**. It unlocks the **Slaugtherer** unit, and the **Carnage** unique task : "Build a level 5 temple".

* Spirituality, Climbing and Aquatism are called **Forest, Mountain and Sea Chase**. Instead of defense bonuses to Ytnic units, they lower their enemies'.

* Meditation does not unlock the *Pacifist* task (replaced with Carnage).

* Philosophy unlocks the **Warpriest** instead of the *mind bender*, and the **Devout** task instead of *Genius* : "Build 4 different temples in a city".

### Temples

* Ytnic temples only cost 10 stars.

* Each new level adds 1 population to the city.

* They grow with collected meat, and the amount of meat needed to upgrade increases for each level  :

1 meat to grow to level 2 ; 2 meat for level 3 ; etc

* Ytnic temples count as ports when using customs houses.

* There can only be one of each temple per city.

* To other tribes, Ytnic temples are just normal temples that don't grow over time.

More on Ytnic temples below.

### Units & Skills

 Warpriest

I**nspire** : When it attacks, adjacent melee units are granted an *additional attack*.

## Appearance

Their mountains are your typical heavily eroded badlands ; mostly grey with some horizontal streaks of more colorful material. Fields are just grey, and forests are a bunch of thin black dead trees huddled together in small patches. The landbats are dark grey, but the scattered nature of the forest makes them visible enough.

Their temples are entirely made of skulls and bones, with blood dripping to indicate a near upgrade. Otherwise they have the same global aesthetics as their normal counterparts. Monuments are all special temples of sort, with more pools of blood, bodyparts, and other marks of massive slaughter.

Their housings are made of the longuest bones one can find on a human or landbat, some landbat leather, sometimes "painted" with dirt, and sometimes with blood  ; thatch roofs made of those miserable trees, and likely the occasional body part ornament, or hanging carcass.

## Notes

### General note

I've tried my best to do many things at once : Get the Ytnic to build temples in every city, and search for new ones ; favour melee units and make them slightly suicidal as well as hungry for others' blood ; and at the same time refrain from mass spawning knights too soon ; reach the same kind of scores than the other tribes while having fewer, bigger temples (maybe the score part of Collect is unnecessary, by the way) ; and all of this while being balanced and interesting to play. I wonder how that would play out...

### Giants

In their current form, Ytnic have normal giants. Those can kill a lot of units, especially with inspiring warpriests to spur them and even better offense on special terrain. They would also be most useful to defend (as Ytnic have no defenders).

### Warpriests

They are reckless fanatical warriors that have been willfuly maimed, and fight a bit like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They would be hillarious if they didn't embolden so much their more dangerous Ytnic brothers. It's worth mentionning that a fresh one can actually withstand a knight attack (with 1 remaining hp).

### Temples

Ytnic temples are easily better than any other building in the game : They can yield up to 20 population and 8 stars of revenue per city, plus 1600 victory points, for a total of just 40 stars. 4 ports would cost the same, add the same revenue, 8 population and no victory points at all.

But on top of those 40 stars, you will need 40 kills, 3 different technologies including 2 tier-3 and a tier-2, and at least an empty mountain, water, forest, and field tile. A mere 12 kills would yield 12 population, which is great, but even that would take some time, and require the same techs and terrains.

So clearly, Ytnic temples are great, and you're likely to build as much as you can, and try to get the chasing techs as soon as possible ; and not just in Ytnic wasteland, but about everywhere you can ; yet they are not exactly OP 10-stars game-killers. At least that's the idea...

If they are too strong, the first thing to try would be to highten the amount of meat needed for upgrades  : 2 meat for level 2, meaning 4 more per temple at level 5.

### Holy farm

Wether you're playing for highscore or to crush your enemies(' bones between your teeth), you could be tempted to keep weaker ones as holy fodder providers, so you can easily harvest meat to grow your temples faster.

In some way that would be similar to the Aztecs "flower wars" against smaller, beseiged enemy state of Tlaxcala, useful to train warriors and get captives to sacrifice. Only you would sacrifice them right on the spot.

### Random facts

Not only are landbats all but plentiful, they also taste awful. All the more reason to eat human flesh instead.

Wartoes on the other hand (or on the other foot), are quite delicious... but if one was to spend some time alive in Ytnic territory, he should beware of not mistaking them with actual warty toes, because the Ytnic eat those too.

### Etymology

Yet To Be Named Insane Cannibals tiredly shortenned YTNIC ended up sounding cool.

## Other Tribes

If you liked this one, go take a look at the others here : Gradokko