this might have been asked before and i'm sorry for the hassle if it was but, how modable will the game be? in terms of map making and unit customization
100% moddable - everything you see the scenarios presented were build with the in-game editor. We're releasing a video showing off some of the mod capabilities in the next couple of days.
That event with the herun demon shows that ancient power can be transferred between old ones. Does this mean that I can send an agent to camp out on the seal of a rival old one and use a ritual to siphon away their power and augment my own? Could you even use this as a legitimate path to victory, a sort of dark mirror to the ascension path where you spend most of your time researching and hunting down rivals?
Can rival old ones recruit agents too?
This is a planned addition with the Rival Old Ones - just like Religions added in the element of doing battle for divine aspects we wanted the Old Ones to have a contest of their own. However, while draining the heavens invokes the wraths of the gods, battling with Old Ones will likely alert the world to your presence. It is more a case of brinkmanship with the AI - how far can you push them (or they you) before the war becomes overt.
There is no plan for it to be a victory condition, but a successful covert assimilation of a rival peer will make defeating the Chosen One significantly easier. On the other hand, if the Chosen One and his cohorts manage to defeat one of you rivals - surely this will benefit them somehow....
So, is the contest thing over? What won?
Event Chain: Second Chances was the winner - an absolutely solid entry and one I'm happy to see created because it rolls into Rival Old Ones. Most of the entries were very well thought out, and I'm hoping that those people pledged to create their own event because some of them would be fun to create unique effects for.
Working on the video when I'm done with the dev work I'm doing, ETA 1-2 days on the Video.