Acheron more like Smaug

[Boleslav]

I like Acheron as is. It makes thematic sense to me to have him stay in place. I think if I was a dragon guarding a horde of treasure I had spent a long time collecting, I would stay to protect it and not go wandering off on hikes.

 

[Go Boks]

Yeah, that's a good point too. Maybe if he does go off on trips, it should be very rare. Like once every 100 turns or so, and for only a few turns. Maybe it is even rarer and added to the list of random events that can occur, so it might never happen in your game.

 

[renardargent]

I like Acheron as is. It makes thematic sense to me to have him stay in place. I think if I was a dragon guarding a horde of treasure I had spent a long time collecting, I would stay to protect it and not go wandering off on hikes.

I agree too, but imho, if I were Acheron, I think I would also like to improve my collection further more.



So... how about Acheron the mad collector, who would go after any unit/city with magical equipments, starting from Orthus' Axe to Crown of Akharien (not sure if I spelled them right), and would foolishly leave his treasure under a guard of a few orcs = easy target for both a player and AIs.

Of course, he would at some point come back, found his treasure stolen, and try to reclaim it in rage.



Moreover, when he founds his treasure dismissed in wilderness and his city already razed by the thief, he could also go and capture a nearby city as his new bed. (so could be abused to make him attack rival civs)



Also, maybe having all or most of the equipments droppable on a city would be nice too, so that he could add them into his glorious collections

 

[Gilg]

.... I like how the spawning of "Acheron the held" can f*ck up the expansion of any civ and torch elven forrests. I like how he draws in a lot of attention and become the backbone of the "barbarian nation" if/when they get the chance to steal a few cities.

In other words, I like how Acheron has been implemented.

However...... Since I only do singleplayer and rarely play the number of turns needed for a AI civ to finish a dragon, FFH to me is a dark fantasy game without any real fear of dragons.

The only dragons to ever exist are the ones I "build" or the friendly Archeron.
It seems natural to want a dragon version of Orthus, or better.

 

[hegemonkhan]

Realistically, real forest fires, no matter how big, eventually burn themselves out without human intervention, even if there is plenty of forest left to burn. -Go Boks

if we were to raise the oxygen percent of the atmosphere enough, the entire earth would be engulfed in a giant fireball.....from something as tiny as lighting a cigerette

oh wait....our earth was already like that...long long long long time ago
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leave acheron as is, and jsut make a "hill giant" type unit that can't enter cities but instead of being a hill giant it is a dragon (and much much stronger than a hill giant). jsut make super strong barbarian animal-beast units ("dragons") that can't attack cities and ONLY have 1 movement point.

 

[Imuratep]

I agree too, but imho, if I were Acheron, I think I would also like to improve my collection further more.



So... how about Acheron the mad collector, who would go after any unit/city with magical equipments, starting from Orthus' Axe to Crown of Akharien (not sure if I spelled them right), and would foolishly leave his treasure under a guard of a few orcs = easy target for both a player and AIs.

Of course, he would at some point come back, found his treasure stolen, and try to reclaim it in rage.



Moreover, when he founds his treasure dismissed in wilderness and his city already razed by the thief, he could also go and capture a nearby city as his new bed. (so could be abused to make him attack rival civs)



Also, maybe having all or most of the equipments droppable on a city would be nice too, so that he could add them into his glorious collections

I don't think he should leave to get the treasure. Instead he should reward those who bring him these artifact - namely the barbarian civs which are able to enter his city. For each piece of EPIC equipment (e.g. the wonder equipments, the horsemen weapons, the hero equipments) you get 1000 gold and a large amount of XP/ the hero promotion (because the superior mind of a dragon can teach any mortal a lot of things he doesn't know). Additionally if you delivered a weapon equipment one of those Orc barbarians which guards the city upgrades to the best unit type you can build, gains the weapon promotion of this equipment and the hero and the held promotion. Acheron has a new personal guard for his collection.

 

[iffi]

Or make a scerario out of it? With possibility of letting us choose all the specs (the map type, size..). So at minimum it would be just a random game with a moving dragon, but if someone wants to expand on that I doubt anyone would mind.

I sure would like to occasionally experience a Rampaging Acheron(tm).

 

[DarkxL0rd]

I think it's funny how thread starters get upset if others don't post anything constructive. Totally irrational behaviour. I mean, who expects people to actually compose a worthwhile reply. ROFLMAO!!!

But seriously, DarkxL0rd, your reading comprehension skills are phenomenal. The OP totally says Acheron should be turned into an "insta-loss" event.

you come up with an idea, and people respond on how the idea has many holes in it and the potential problems it would cause. you immediately get offended and come back with a clever retort on how they are stupid for not wanting a challenge, or to try anything different. dude...stop getting your feelings hurt. kael has mentioned before that he doesn't like to add in features that virtually ends gameplay for the current game(and your rampaging archeon does just that). after hundreds of revisions and testing, the creators have decided on the current role for archeon. there is a reason for that. it works. your idea, however, does not. don't get all defensive.

 

[Fenboy]

Last time Acheron was able to move around, he was so horribly broken it wasn't even funny. Stapling him in place was a last ditch effort short of removing him altogether. Anything else would require gargantuan amounts of coding, and I don't think anyone on the design team has the time or inclination to go back there.

 

[WarKirby]

What would be wrong with limiting him to within a 5 tile radius of his home city.

He could wander around and eat any passing travellers, but that's usually not far enough to enter anyone's empire. He would effectively become a no-man's land on the map, where few dare to tread.


Some way of paying him gold or giving him resources (like sheep) in exchange for peace, would be nice.

 

[Brokenbone]

Maybe handling it through a random event after some minimum number of turns has passed, or tech level achieved, to have Acheron rampage would be interesting. Alternately treat it like a barbarian World Spell, that is, after a certain point, it WILL happen and it will not be pretty. Maybe like other World Spells, this episode would be temporary. That is, he goes off and maybe focuses on pillaging exclusively, or if he is interested in cities at all, they get razed on capture. When the rampage is over, return to wherever his Hoard is at, and maybe the Hoard is considered upgraded in some fashion (i.e., a "Hoard v2" to recognize his successful plundering, maybe more bonus resources, more GPP, visitors to the city don't only end up with enchanted blades, they get to equip themselves from flaming arrow stockpiles in the hoard, whatever.

As it stands, Acheron's city is for me just an annoyance of barb culture generation, making certain territory unclaimable until you get up the gumption to get proactive & destructive.

 

[Zurai]

Acheron unchained can and will destroy the entire continent all by his lonesome without breaking a sweat. There was one point in FF 0.50 release where he was spawning without Held and in every single case he wiped out his entire continent within about 50 turns.

There's no point to the game at that point. It's not just an instant "you lose" random event, it's an instant "this game is unplayable on anything but archipelagos and even then you can sometimes randomly lose" event.

 

[Fenboy]

What would be wrong with limiting him to within a 5 tile radius of his home city.

He could wander around and eat any passing travellers, but that's usually not far enough to enter anyone's empire. He would effectively become a no-man's land on the map, where few dare to tread.


Some way of paying him gold or giving him resources (like sheep) in exchange for peace, would be nice.

Those are great ideas, but sadly the coding it would require make it pretty much unfeasible.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Or make a scerario out of it? With possibility of letting us choose all the specs (the map type, size..). So at minimum it would be just a random game with a moving dragon, but if someone wants to expand on that I doubt anyone would mind.

I sure would like to occasionally experience a Rampaging Acheron(tm).

A rampaging Acheron is already part of The Cult scenario.


Adding a game option that prevents Acheron from being held would be very easy. Well, actually adding options requires DLL changes (except in FF, I think), but you could easily use a dummy option for this effect. Xienwolf added several buffer options in FF that could be used, or you could use the GAMEOPTION_WB_EXTRA option until it gets replaced by a user made scenario.

It would only require changing

		if unit.getUnitType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('UNIT_ACHERON'):
			unit.setHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_HELD'), True)
			city.setNumRealBuilding(gc.getInfoTypeForString('BUILDING_THE_DRAGONS_HORDE'), 1)
			iX = city.getX()
			iY = city.getY()
			for iiX in range(iX-1, iX+2, 1):
				for iiY in range(iY-1, iY+2, 1):
					pPlot = CyMap().plot(iiX,iiY)
					if (pPlot.getFeatureType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_FOREST') or pPlot.getFeatureType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_JUNGLE')):
						pPlot.setFeatureType(gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_FLAMES'), 0)
			cf.addPopup(CyTranslator().getText("TXT_KEY_POPUP_ACHERON_CREATION",()), str(gc.getUnitInfo(unit.getUnitType()).getImage()))

to

		if unit.getUnitType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('UNIT_ACHERON'):
			if not gc.getGame().isOption(GameOptionTypes.GAMEOPTION_WB_EXTRA)
				unit.setHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_HELD'), True)
			city.setNumRealBuilding(gc.getInfoTypeForString('BUILDING_THE_DRAGONS_HORDE'), 1)
			iX = city.getX()
			iY = city.getY()
			for iiX in range(iX-1, iX+2, 1):
				for iiY in range(iY-1, iY+2, 1):
					pPlot = CyMap().plot(iiX,iiY)
					if (pPlot.getFeatureType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_FOREST') or pPlot.getFeatureType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_JUNGLE')):
						pPlot.setFeatureType(gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_FLAMES'), 0)
			cf.addPopup(CyTranslator().getText("TXT_KEY_POPUP_ACHERON_CREATION",()), str(gc.getUnitInfo(unit.getUnitType()).getImage()))

Limiting Acheron to a 5 tile radius would pretty much be impossible. You could give him a Ranged attack with a range of 5 is you like, but in order to use it he would have to loose the held promotion. Then the only way to be sure he stays in the city is to make him DOMAIN_AIR, which would make him useless at actually defending the city.

 

[smusebaer]

the reason to stop him from moving, as I remember, where a couple of axeman fortied on a hill waiting for a early dragon kill

 

[TheGreatSteve]

Acheron being allowed to run around would spoil games if it happened early, and some of the special stuff people are suggesting the AI probably wouldn't understand at all.

If you're going to improve Acheron, I'd suggest just making his presence in some way buff his city to a large degree. Right now Acheron just represents a 5x5 area I don't want to send guys. Make his city produce much more, grow faster, maybe get free orcs who are drawn to Bhall's weapon. Make it where you want to get rid of him to stop the attacks, not just for a free Hoard.


And having some sort of condition where he loses Held, something designed to occur fairly late in the game, would be good too.

"As the civilized nations of Erebus grew, so too did their cities. And more importantly, the cities' treasuries. The orcs of (dragon city)find the surrounding lands defended more strongly every day, and bring less and less booty back to enlarge the Hoard. So Acheron takes flight, to secure new treasures for his collection."

 

[Zurai]

By the way, making Acheron more like Smaug - assuming you're talking about The Hobbit Smaug and not the Silmarillion Smaug - is pretty much exactly opposite of what you're suggesting

Smaug did absolutely nothing but sit around on his hoard until Bilbo stole from him, at which point he shot fire at Lake Town, which was the Civ-equivalent of one or two tiles away. Then a hero killed him.

In other words, exactly the same thing we have now.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What if we just made the Steal spell remove Held from Acheron, so he will go on a rampage if someone takes his treasure?

 

[Imuratep]

What if we just made the Steal spell remove Held from Acheron, so he will go on a rampage if someone takes his treasure?

That would be cool. Barbarian civs with Esus would have a way to send him against their opponents with a very small chance (20%) to have any problem. So actually something that can be influenced.

 

[the_fish]

And having some sort of condition where he loses Held, something designed to occur fairly late in the game, would be good too.

Why would a dragon start to rampage? When:-

a) His hoard is stolen. (MC's suggestion)
b) He can obtain a better 'hoard' elsewhere.

Once a neighbouring civ would no longer benefit from obtaining Acheron's hoard*, he'd get jealous and flip out. If a civ can get this far without dealing with him, it'd spice up the late game, and not be an auto-lose.

Can you still steal the hoard safely if you're a Barbarian civ? This should either be blocked or cause war, IMO.

*it still provides Mithril, right? Well then, how about having "'Mithril Working', a source of Mithril, and having territory adjacent to Acheron's city" be the trigger.