Lophag

*Lophag'e don't merely sail, they live at sea.*

*Carefree, they float on outsized lilyphars, sharing their bliss-inducing flowers with tame liskus, befriended whales, and rare castaways alike.*

*Or at least they used to. Now that the other tribes are preying upon them, they must fight back !*

## Description

**Lophag'e** use **lilyphars** to reclaim the space they need onto the sea, but also to travel or fight. Those can grow so thick and strong that they are indistinguishable from a regular piece of land. They also produce delicious **rhizomes and seeds**, as well as magnificent **blue flowers** that Lophag'e wear in their **long blond hair**, and dye their clothes with.

Lophag starts with the **gardening** tech, which allows them to lay lilyphars along their "shores".

They move from one leaf to the next riding the nimble **liskus**, who can run so fast that even the sea is solid ground to them, and ask their **whale** friends when they need to move the lilyphars.

Grown-up liskus are not so affectionate as their offspring, and indeed are rather fearsome creatures. Their "poison" (actually a concentrated form of the bliss-inducing substance that lilyphar flowers contain) turns their foes into helpless preys.

## Special Rules

### Lilyphars

* They are terrain tiles, but can move on water (1 tile). This requires a sail (*forest*), and a unit to man it. Whales can also shove them some more (*1 move per whale*).

* Lilyphars must be **laid** on a shallow water tile, at the cost of *5 stars*. *Fores*t can be *grown* on them, but it is impossible to *burn forest*, or build anything on them except roads. They can however be **implanted** on a shallow water tile (in your territory), at the cost of *5 stars*. This creates a *field* (or forest) tile, that is in fact a fully mature lilyphar. This in turn changes surrounding ocean tiles to shallow water. They can also be **inflated**, at the cost of *5 stars*, which makes them *mountains* of sorts, that can also be implanted, of course.

* Units can move on lilyphars as usual, and standing on one that is shoved doesnt count as moving.

* Customs houses count lilyphars with roads as ports, and those can connect like ports, but at a maximum distance of 2 tiles.

*Your top-notch Lophag "fleet" is a bunch of moving mountains with roads, and forests on top of them acting like sails, showed by whales, and with liskus riders running on water from one to next. . .*

### Whales

Whales can be tamed for 5 stars, or trained for 8 stars.

**Navigate** : On top of moving in all water tiles without *seafaring* or *navigation*, it would allow whales, *navalons* and *raychis* to move under a Lilyphar (and possibly ice). They cannot end their turn under one.

**Shove :** A whale can shove a unit (on a sea tile) or lilyphar 1 tile away, taking its place. To do this to enemy units (or lilyphars with enemy units on them), they must attack them. Otherwise, a green dot displays what lilyphars or units can be shoved.

A unit can be moved on a land tile, it then retaliates with according defense bonus. If said unit is seaborne, it can move back into the sea on its next turn (for its full movement allowance), or move on another land tile as if it was landing (unless navalon or whale, of course) : **but it cannot attack** ! Swimming and flying units are not affected by this.

### Liskus

Liskus **riders** and **knights** get the **sprint** skill. I'm not sure if they should cost more, as they are partially there to compensate the clumsy "navy".

The grown-up, less friendly, giant-replacement :

**Sprint** : This unit can move on water tiles but cannot end its turn on it. It costs 1.5 moves, meaning even knights can only cross one, and riders and liskus can only cross water when they have not moved at all before.

**Numb** : Any unit that is touched in combat by this one is *numbed*. It cannot attack or deal any damage, and its movement allowance is halved. This effect can be removed if the unit is *healed* by a *mind bender*.

## Technology tree

**Gardening** (Seafaring) : The starting technology, allows movement over water and **Lay.**

**Settlement** (Navigation) : Allows movement over ocean, the Explorer task, **Inflate** and **Implant**.

**Whaling** : Allows taming and training **Whales**.

## Resources

Lophag territory is 40% water, like Kickoo's, except some shallow water tiles have a Lilyphar on them.

No other changes.

## Appearance

Lilyphars look like insanely big victoria amazonica leaves, that grow insanely big sacred lotus fruits/rhizomes, and blue lotus flowers (the really blue ones). Forests, display neatly arranged, smaller leavess growing vertically on thin stalks and resembling round sails. The ribbed underside of the leaves is visible. As for "mountains", they are just regular lilyphars with a bulging shape.

Lilyphars are just a thin layer floating on whatever they are, but Lophag actual terrain show a thicker leaf with some roots underneath, and the shallow water sandy bottom under that.

Liskus are based on plumed basilisks, but with really round crests like some of their basilisk cousins. They also have the exact same color as fresh basil. The adult ones look mean, and they are.

Whales on the other hand are clearly good fellows. Only evil Elyrian magic is responsible for the looks of navalons.

Lophag cities bear some resemblence to the Royal Palace of Cambodia, but with more different colors, and a lot of vegetal elements.

## Other tribes

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