Elephants & Wolves

am I the only one who's sad cause he can't build war elephants with ivory?

I really really miss that ability from vanilla civ, elephants are simply awesome.

don't get me wrong, I LOVE the mechanic of animal-capturing in FFH, it's just that my hunger for the tusked fellas can't be satisfied by getting just one of them every now and then sure, it makes you really happy when you can get one, but still, it leaves the ivory resource dull

so I've thought of a couple nice things that I think would be fun to play in the game without unbalancing anything ( methinks ) . we all know that the team is going to introduce marnok's lair mechanics in 0.34, which is great! these suggestions would go really well with that:

1) quite obvious: war elephants are buildable with ivory resource ( of course you would then have to come up with a way to make the ivory from the dragonbones not count for elephant-building, but I'm sure someone can come up with a way to do that. btw, it would be really nice to get rid of that little elephant below the dragonbones )

2) not only war elephants: elephants are buildable too. but not those you see running around in the wildlands. these are used as builders with a high workrate that can defend themselves well ( this idea is actually from the Rise of Mankind mod ) . if you happen to capture a wild elephant you can unite it with a normal worker to create one of these too. of course this should be unable to attack and have UNITAI_WORKER as far as the AI go, to avoid problems with combat units being AI_WORKER causing WoC errors ( although I think Sto is fixing that for 0.34, that would be awesome )

3) ivory resources around the world count as "elephant lairs" , spawning wild elephants around. that is, until a camp is built on the tile of course.

4) same goes for wolves: wolf dens provide wolf/dog ( domesticated wolves basically ) resource that lets you build wardogs ( these are also from RoM ) : an early unit with weak collateral damage, a bonus against animal units and a penalty for city-attack. would be especially useful to repel early rushes for example, and they might even upgrade into something better with a later tech to avoid them becoming obsolete very early. captured wolves can be upgraded to wardogs, and wardogs might even replace wolf-pack if that sounds good.

5) on a side note: it would be nice to let sea turtles captured by the lanun upgrade into war tortoises, I see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to do so

6) Whales have always been the dullest resource in civ4. nobody wants to work them ( i.e. have them in the BFC ) cuz the meager bonus they give is offset by the additional useless ocean tiles you'd get for that.

so, what about having whales allow a unit like a "whale-rider" that terrorizes the oceans with collateral damage or some other cool unique feature ?
and then of course have whale resource act as a "lair" for whales that wonder around the seas. it would be nice to have some of them peaceful, like elephants (i.e. cannot attack, can be captured and turned into "whale-rider" like elephants ---> war elephants . but it should also spawn an angry whale every now and then that is basically a weaker version of the super-cool Leviathan, making the seas more lively and interesting.
of course, it should no longer spawn creatures once whaling boats are built on it, just provide the resource. maybe the "whale-rider" could be a UU for the Lanun if that sounds better, but honestly I'd rather have it be a nice added perk for the lucky fellas to have some whales beside their coasts

looking forward to reading your replies to this

A defensive value + a better worker rate (ezspecially vs forests and jungles) could be very handy. the ivory resource comes to mind of course and combined with elephant lairs it would make for a more lively world.

Hrmm I like the animals + workers to get a super worker idea... that would be pretty sweet... it would also make the capture of combined workers or the loss of a super worker extra painful.

It could also be cool to do this with hunters... if your hunter captures a wolf, he gets a wolf pet and increased attack etc like goblin wolf riders. Of course, this could mean that the hunter starts at 2 str instead of 4... or alternately if your animal capturing scout captures a wolf, he automatically promotes to a hunter. When I first played this mod, thats actually how I thought hunters were made since the animation includes a dog/wolf attacking.

I'm not sure if an elephant lair is really all that realistic though... I always pictured the harvesting of ivory from the elephant resource is actually the harvesting of an elephant graveyard. I don't think elephants actually "lair" in specific locations but rather are nomadic and follow food.

The flip side of this though, I think animals should stick around for a LOT longer than they currently do. I don't think i'd mind if animals kept spawning within borders even through the whole game. Granted, it would make unescorted workers a little wary...

Ideally, each time a worker upgrades a new (unworked) tile there should be a chance for a related animal to spawn in that tile... IE the workers flushed the animal out of hiding. Assuming you're near a city, it wouldn't be unreasonable for a horseman or hunter in the city to be able to rush out to capture it.

Alternately, unworked tiles can have hidden lairs where animals can continue to spawn but they don't venture out of the tile (like when your borders encompass a bear lair, they keep loading but don't leave the tile).

I think hunters are good as it is actually, let them get the capture animal promotion and get you some free HN units

elephant lair is actually not less realistic than any other lair I guess. all animals are pretty much nomadic in nature. and even if the ivory resource is an elephant graveyard, it still makes sense imho cuz it would mean that a lot of elephants are usually to be seen there marnok's mod feature of carnivores creating dens on livestock resources is awesome. maybe elephants could do the same with grains in addition to the above suggested ideas, that would be kewl

if you want animals to stick around longer, you should try FF: animals spawn for the whole duration of the game, although of course cultural expansion by civilizations still tends to make them fade away with time.

the worker-destroying-habitat feature sounds nice, but that would lead to a need to guard them all the time that is kinda annoying imho. yes, it would give fast units another use, but I think the bad would overwhelm the good here, it doesn't sound a lot of fun tbh it could work with chopping forests and jungles though

[to_xp]Gekko;7254595 said:

if you want animals to stick around longer, you should try FF: animals spawn for the whole duration of the game, although of course cultural expansion by civilizations still tends to make them fade away with time.

Click to expand...

Gekko, I agree the animals stay around in FF longer, but...

I tried that modmod yesterday and here are the results of the four very quick games I played (all on a Huge Fantasy Realm map with 13 civs at Epic Monarch):

1. Hannah the Irin. A Conquest victory at turn 176. All other AI civs were wiped out by the raging barbs and all I had to do was turtle up in my one city with 7-8 defenders. The barbs came much earlier in the game (turn 50) and that surprised the hell out of me. It really was not possible with all those barbs to go out and capture animals with a Scout.

2. Perpentach. Around turn 45 I kept getting CTDs. This happened to me before in FF and really put me off leading to skipping the modmod for some time before trying .42g. I gave up after 5-6 random CTDs.

3. Started another game with Perpentach and won a Conquest victory on turn 145. See #1 above same-same. The AI cannot cope with raging barbs that come quickly in FF based on the two games.

4. Decius/Calabim. More CTDs sadly.

I'm back to 'vanilla' FFH2 where, following the fire on ice bug being fixed, I have zero CTDs and am able to play my specs including raging barbs without a quick, uninteresting Conquest Victory due to poor AI.

One thing that was interesting for awhile is the explorable lairs. However, I explored maybe 10 and got hammered 9 of the times. The only good result I got was a Traveling Cloak. The rest I was damaged or killed.

I know many love that modmod and it does have a lot of great features due to the hard work of Vehem, xienwolf and others, but for some reason it just doesn't work for me.

Back on topic, though, I love your ideas for the Elephants and Wolves, but frankly I always seem to have plenty of Elephants (and Bears) available for capture throughout most of my game. They are not as much a problem as the elusive Lions, Wolves, Tigers (although Priest of Leaves help there) and Gorillas.

My favorite is still the Griffon, but we need to figure out what to do with him after he has become obsolete - other than perching him on a mountain peak as a Scout!

sorry to hear that FF gives you CTDs, I've never really had a problem with it, guess I am lucky or something yes, raging barbs are somewhat overwhelming in FF especially for the AI, but you can bet that's gonna get a fix sometime soon. and although playing epic speed is by no means forbidden, it IS less balanced than normal, so the AI may be slightly worse with that speed selected.

does anyone know what should I edit in the xml to make war elephants buildable with ivory and horseback riding/stirrups ? I'd love to try that out, thanks in advance for the help

*bump*

just had another nice idea related to this

first of all let me say that the changes I've heard are gonna be in 0.34 are all great, and I'm especially excited about the marnok-style changes to lairs. I'm not sure if water lairs to make the sea more exciting are gonna be in as well, but I really really hope so

so, basically this idea goes like: Whales have always been the dullest resource in civ4. nobody wants to work them ( i.e. have them in the BFC ) cuz the meager bonus they give is offset by the additional useless ocean tiles you'd get for that.

so, what about having whales allow a unit like a "whale-rider" that terrorizes the oceans with collateral damage or some other cool unique feature ?
and then of course have whale resource act as a "lair" for whales that wonder around the seas. it would be nice to have some of them peaceful, like elephants (i.e. cannot attack, can be captured and turned into "whale-rider" like elephants ---> war elephants . but it should also spawn an angry whale every now and then that is basically a weaker version of the super-cool Leviathan, making the seas more lively and interesting.
of course, it should no longer spawn creatures once whaling boats are built on it, just provide the resource. maybe the "whale-rider" could be a UU for the Lanun if that sounds better, but honestly I'd rather have it be a nice added perk for the lucky fellas to have some whales beside their coasts