Wild Animals, Pirates, Fleeing Crimals / Indentured Servants / Slaves
Idea is to bring a little more life and danger into the gameworld.
However it should not be annoying, not slow down game and not ruin AI.
So the power of these features is limited.
It is just an addition for a little more fun.
These features are not supposed to dominate gameplay.
Wild Animals
1. There are different wild animals like Polar Bear, Bear, Black Bear, Boar, Cougar, Panther, Wolf, ...
(@Robert: In my preview you can find many graphics under ...\Assets\Art\units\Animals)
2. There are 2 Types of (Re-)Spawning possible:
A) By Terrain
Thundra, Permafrost -> Polar Bear, Wolf
Marsh, Light Green Savanna -> Panther, Boar
Prairie -> Cougar, Bear
Savanna -> Black Bear, Boar, Wolf
B) By degree of latitude
Around Equator -> Panther, Boar
Close to Equator -> Cougar, Bear
Further away from Equator -> Black Bear, Boar, Wolf
Far away from Equator -> Polar Bear, Wolf
I personally prefer variant A).
(It is probably easier for me to implement.)
3. There is a maximum limit of wild animals to be (Re-)Spawned defined at the mapsizes. (XML)
4. The frequency / chances of Respawning will be set at Difficulty. (XML)
5. There will be a game option to turn this featue of.
6. Wild Animals cannot enter a field next to a city. (These are save areas)
(Of course they will also not be spawned there.)
7. Wild Animals are generally relatively week and only pose a real thread to non-military units.
8. Natives and Wild Animals will never attack each other.
9. Killing a Wild Animal will give you a little Fur. (Automatically at the next city.)
10. European AI will attack Wild Animals of course.
11. The UnitAI of Wild Animals will attack units that are weaker and run away from units that are stronger.
Pirates
1. Similar to the Wild Animals there will also be spawned Pirateships on the ocean.
- Maximum Limit of Number at Mapsize
- Frequency at Difficulty Level
- Possibility to turn of as Gameoption
2. There are 3 Types of Pirateships
Weak
Normal
Strong
Their chances of creation will be set at GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.
Also there will be settings for
minimal rounds to be played berfore spawning of "Normal Pirates" and "Strong Pirates".
(So in the beginning there will be only "Weak Pirates".)
3. Eventually we could even have some kind of diplomacy with Pirates.
For example bribing to not attack own ships for the next 20 rounds.
There could be a button to start diplomacy with pirates at Port Royal Screen.
4. European AI will attack Pirates of course.
5. Pirates will be balanced to generally be weaker than strong military ships.
"Strong Pirates" would be as strong as one of your own Privateers.
They only pose a real threat to non-military ships.
6. Killing Pirateships will gain you a little money.
7. The UnitAI of Pirates is almost the same as the existing one of Privateers.
8. Probably no need to mention: Pirates are no playable Civ.
9. Once a Pirateship destroys another ship, it will head for an "Ocean-Field to Travel to Europe" and disappear.
(They will secure their bounty. Thus also much less danger of totally ruining a player.)
10. In TAC there is a feature of capturing ships.
However it is not possible to capture pirateships.
They can only be destroyed.
11. Pirates do not have any landunits and do not have or found citites.
Fleeing Criminals / Indentured Servants / Slaves
As already mentioned, we will introduce Slaves.
Also in TAC it is possible that Criminals / Indentured Servants run away.
(Currently they will only disappear.)
1. This will change.
There will be units running away.
(New unit graphics and new UnitAI.)
2. These units do not pose a thread to anybody.
3. Natives will ignore them.
4. Wild Animals will kill them.
5. Europeans can (re-)capture them and get back unit Criminal / Indentured Servant / Slave
6. However you should be fast in capturing them.
After a few rounds (random) they will simply disappear.
7. Chances for Fleeing will pretty much be the same as currently in TAC.
8. This feature cannot be turned of in GameOptions.
(There are already possibilities to disable Fleeing in XML.)
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Implementation:
Wild Animals, Pirates and Fleeing will be implemented as own "
Barbarian Civ" each.
This has several advantages:
A) It is much easier to control the behaviour of Natives / Europeans towards each fraction.
B) It might allow us to have diplomacy with Pirates.
C) It is much easier to separately deactivate in Gameoptions for example.
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