Animals in version 22h

[Sarisin]

A new update on the baby spider to Giant spider progression:

In my current game, I had a baby spider turn into a Giant spider THE VERY NEXT TURN! This surprised me especially because the baby spider had not yet healed.

On the other end of the spectrum, I sent a baby spider to one of my cities to heal and mature...200 turns later it was still a baby spider. I don't know what happened there, but I had completely forgotten about it until I got the tech that allowed me to build spider pens.

 

[Gabriel21]

Slow down the rate at which new barb cities are settled. Sometimes it is just ridiculous. I have taken out a barb city on my border (but just out of sight), only to have a new one appear a few turns later. Barb cities are a real nuisance and if you don't have the gold to capture them, you must raze, and there goes the counter increasing again.

In my recent game at normal speed another civ wiped out a barb city. Three turns later the same city was there with a barb in it.

You make me curious, i'll try marathon again in my next game.

 

[Sureshot]

Since animals and "barbarians" are being sepearted in function (and through a mod, barbs can actually hunt animals) it leads to some new interesting early and mid game fun.

I have some ideas on this. Specifically, I think it'd be awesome to see the "non-civ" units divided even more.

Barbarians (a rival non-controlled civ), Animals (as they are now), Beasts (animals that adhere to specific terrain/climate), and finally "Monsters" (Your garden variety "I dont know where this unit goes" unit.

Barbarians would function as they do now. Getting free units, building cities, constantly razing/capturing your cities and ravaging your country side. As per normal wonderful barbarian behaviors.

Animals would function as they do now. Spawning, harassing your explorers and expansion plans. Also capturable to fit in with the FFH world.

Beasts. These buggers you could arrange to have ONLY travel in certain areas. This could be Giant spiders among others.

The giant spider may only be allowed in Jungle, Forests, and similar features. Perhaps they'd be given the potential of getting access to new terrains by promotion. "Pit spider" evolution/promotion would allow them to travel on deserts, and plains. "Crag spider" may allow them to traverse hills and mountains (a definate advantage). Each "beast" would be limited to certain terrain - but would be very deadly in those terrains, and whatever "den" is created would be even more deadly. The "good side" is that perhaps some sort of reward is given for eliminating beasts. Perhaps "gold from hides" would be a good boon. Or den's might become very rare and very potent luxury resource tiles when destroyed. This allowes for myriad beasts of D&D lore - AND if myriad beasts were encoded into the game, it might be rare to see any one kind of them. An "Ice Wyrm" found only in glaciar spots, might never appear for 20 games, if there were other compeditors for spawning and terrain type. So seeing one, and slaying it would be all the more fun.


Finally, Monsters. I see monsters as being the "catch" all for fun, unique, and special units that the team will most likely develop into questing and other fun things for scenario's later.

Skeletons and many summons would be "monsters". Each individual monster would obey its own unique rules. Skeletons would have many animal, and potentially "bestial" and "barbarian" traits. They can spawn anywhere, they're not animals, but they can have "spawn point/dens".

Monster may also be a nice catagory for Dragons. Unless they get their own.


Just my thoughts.
-Qes

ADD: Potential Ideas for "beasts"

Spoiler :

Offspring are assumed to be "minor" or "baby" versions of each and are expected to "mature" after a given amount of time (depending on balance)

All units and dens are assumed to give "gold" as reward for their destruction (depending on balance) unless otherwise stated.


Giant Spider - Forests/Jungle
- is invisable
- can upgrade to access to desert/plains and mountain/hills and tundra/ice
- Can produce offspring (spawn)

Ice Wyrm - Ice
- can upgrade to access tundra
- gains xp slowly over time
- Den produces a luxury resource if destroyed

Crag Hag - Mountains/Hills
- can "capture" units (making your units into barbarians)
- can make "fake" dens/spawnpoints
- Actual Den has combat ability and poison damage.
- Actual Den produces a free settler or worker (freed people from the crag hag) if destroyed.

Sand Tyrant - Desert
- is invisible if fortified
- has "devour" ability (insta kill weakest unit in stack)
- Den is invisable

Gorzilla - Jungle
- Gains bonus experiance per victory
- can produce offspring
- Baby gorzilla has a movement of 0 and gives all other units in stack a movement total of 0 (family care-taking)

Man of War - Coastal/Sea
- has Poison damage
- produces offspring
- can pillage
- movement = 0 on resources tiles (fish/whale, clam)

Yeti - Tundra/Mountain
- can "mate" with Sasquatch (if in ending its turn in the same tile as a sasquatch, it will have a high chance of producing a hybrid - which would have terrain access to all 4 terrain types.)
- Produces offspring
- Can enter cultural boundries

Sasquatch - Jungle/Forest
- can "mate" with Yeti (if in ending its turn in the same tile as a Yeti, it will have a high chance of producing a hybrid - which would have terrain access to all 4 terrain types.)
- Produces offspring
- Can enter cultural boundries

Razor Back - Grasslands/Plains
- Will attack anything (barbarian/animal/beast)
- If it destroys another den - it replaces it with one of its own.
- If den is destroyed, a metal resource will appear in the tile.

Formians - Hills/Plains
- Can upgrade to access any terrain
- Den's are "Hives" and are hidden/invisable.
- Hives spawn Formians anywhere within 5 spaces of the Hive (and still in appropriate terrain)
- Hives spawn more frequently than Dens
- Hives can be captured (and produce friendly formians) by scouts with the appropriate ability.


Just some ideas.

like the idea of beasts that can only travel in one terrain, could then allow them to enter cultural borders without them becoming an all pervasive problem.

currently animals are very easily dealt with by just pushing out cultural borders and building new cities near existing borders. but if there were some beasts that make an entire track of land uninhabitable it would extend the lifespan of the wilds a bit.

like the sand animals, would make settling along certain deserts/floodplains too dangerous until its dealt with, since even if you managed to get a settler safely there, afterwards you'd have the beast killing your units and trying to destroy your city. you would then realize you must avoid that track of land until you can deal with the problem.

 

[Gabriel21]

like the idea of beasts that can only travel in one terrain, could then allow them to enter cultural borders without them becoming an all pervasive problem.

Good idea! By this way these animals can be found almost the whole game if you need any. Maybe they should be born regulary to make them available.

 

[Gabriel21]

In a Marathon game, IMO, the counter moves too quickly for this reason.

2. Slow down the rate at which new barb cities are settled. Sometimes it is just ridiculous. I have taken out a barb city on my border (but just out of sight), only to have a new one appear a few turns later. Barb cities are a real nuisance and if you don't have the gold to capture them, you must raze, and there goes the counter increasing again.

Hi Sarisin, as promised - getting strongly influenced by you - I tried marathon. My report: Wave after wave of barbs, they wiped out 2 civs rather fast. Hundreds of - seen - wolves, thousands of them.

The only battle is against the barbs, showing 3 problems:
1. The increasing AI as already mentioned by you.
2. Conquering a barb or foreigner city is problematic, at the beginning one does not have purification, so no farms etc. can be built on the old territory.
3. The limitation of XP for e.g. the fighters. When >100XP is possible?

For marathon speed the latter two are building a very serious limitation.

The whole character of the game is totally different. Pure survival, till the year 550 no direct contact (e.g. a battle) with another civ!! And how to overcome Archeron??? Impossible!
Thank you for your advice, it's nice and completely changing the view.

 

[Sarisin]

Hi Sarisin, as promised - getting strongly influenced by you - I tried marathon. My report: Wave after wave of barbs, they wiped out 2 civs rather fast. Hundreds of - seen - wolves, thousands of them.

The only battle is against the barbs, showing 3 problems:
1. The increasing AI as already mentioned by you.
2. Conquering a barb or foreigner city is problematic, at the beginning one does not have purification, so no farms etc. can be built on the old territory.
3. The limitation of XP for e.g. the fighters. When >100XP is possible?

For marathon speed the latter two are building a very serious limitation.

The whole character of the game is totally different. Pure survival, till the year 550 no direct contact (e.g. a battle) with another civ!! And how to overcome Archeron??? Impossible!
Thank you for your advice, it's nice and completely changing the view.

I just finished a Marathon game playing as Cardith Lorda. I've gone back to Epic. There really is a big difference IMO between those two speeds. Techs take forever to research in Marathon and a Worker needs 24 turns to build a simple farm. Getting that first Warrior will take 50 turns (maybe a bit less).

Still, the animals, skeletons, etc. come the same time as in other speeds. The counter moves along before you have a chance to get Courage or decent units to defend against the Four Horsemen.

Yes, Acheron is untouchable for a long time and will muck up everything when his city happens to settle close to you. Another good reason to take out barb cities near you, but the counter moves on. You can Sanctify when you get Life Mana/Adepts, but the AI never does this and razes plenty of barb cities. The counter marches on.

You get past the 100 XP threshold in 4 ways I can think of - maybe there are more:

1. Your civ has the Raider trait.
2. You defeat a non-barb unit.
3. You attach a Great Commander
4. You happen to pop a goodie hut and gain experience when you have 100.

I have seen a few units get 101 pts on their own, but not many can do this.

I'm glad you tried to play a Marathon game. I'm not complaining, but I really think the game designers had the faster games in mind when they designed this mod. The slower speeds present a real challenge. I have been able to win Epic games (still slow) up to Emperor, but Marathon games, only about 50-50 at Prince.

Still, it's fun trying the slower speeds IMO and I don't enjoy the Normal or Quick games. That's why I posted that thread on starting position being important, because I know I am in it for the long haul and want to get off to a good start.

 

[Gabriel21]

Still, it's fun trying the slower speeds IMO and I don't enjoy the Normal or Quick games. That's why I posted that thread on starting position being important, because I know I am in it for the long haul and want to get off to a good start.

You are quite right! But in the beginning one or two reptile warriors, one with some XP (for what and how?!), cannot be overcome for a long time, esp. in forests. This is not only hard to face, but annoying feeling so helpless (being forced to be passive instead of active!). They only have strenth 3! If the barb archers with 2/4 will not make mistakes by attacking (weak AI), you cannot overcome them by attacking not having developed the city conquer bonus for a very long time.

Here some adjustments would be nice, esp. when the other civs are wiped out and are therefore missing for competition in the future. One of it is having copper and jems available. But my nearest copper deposit is occupied by Archeron, the jems as well. So I have to live with strength 3 for swordsmen etc. Funny! The probability to find copper by an occasional mine will help considerably.

The only chance is e.g. to overcome Orthus the sooner, that the AI makes tactical mistakes. And this is not so funny, just being in the only position waiting for mistakes ...

I prefer to play Malakim - having fire mana early on and some good heros such as Barbur, Arthendain, Baron Halfmorn. In my way to play they are decisive.

I was totally astonished as a fighter of Kilmorph, placed in a forest, restisted against many, many wolves, he now has 100XP just "automatically" and was only one time hurt! Do not underestimate the dwarves!!

But I do not want to change the balance by myself, for where is the limit to make it too easy?

 

[Gabriel21]

You get past the 100 XP threshold in 4 ways I can think of - maybe there are more:

1. Your civ has the Raider trait.
2. You defeat a non-barb unit.
3. You attach a Great Commander
4. You happen to pop a goodie hut and gain experience when you have 100.

I have seen a few units get 101 pts on their own, but not many can do this.

Thank you very much for your advices. These conditions are not easy to fulfill.
ad 2) There are no such units to be seen!
ad 3) A Great Commander is sufficient? Just to have in a city?
ad 4) In the years > 600 there should not be too many huts in the near suroundings - any more.

Does anybody know other conditions?

 

[Sureshot]

you attach the Great Commander to a unit to get +1 strength and +1xp per fight.

the Law2 (i think) spell Valor also adds +1xp per fight.

go to war with another civilization for non-barb units to kill

 

[Gabriel21]

go to war with another civilization for non-barb units to kill

Thank you! Very clever advise!!

1. I misunderstood you completely. I meant to declare war, then kill barbs, then the XP exceeds the 100-limit.
2. There are no other civs in the vicinity, all are wiped out by the barbs.
3. So there are no other non-barb units available.

 

[Marksman77]

ad 3) A Great Commander is sufficient? Just to have in a city?

He has to be joined to the unit. And I'm not ao sure that he allows the unit to exceed 100XP limit from fighting barbs (wiki is still down, so can't check it). For sure he makes the unit gain XP faster.

 

[largedarryl]

I can see the problem that the barbs and animals can cause at the slower speeds, but as was mentioned, I think the mod was designed to play at normal speed. I have been playing at normal speeds, and it just seems like that speed plays closer to a vanilla epic game.

I think Kael needs to modify the spawning percentages for the slower games, or in a marathon game he would need to just delay the arrival of barbs an extra 20 turns. I guess then you would still need to deal with the animals while you try and settle your next city.

 

[Kael]

I can see the problem that the barbs and animals can cause at the slower speeds, but as was mentioned, I think the mod was designed to play at normal speed. I have been playing at normal speeds, and it just seems like that speed plays closer to a vanilla epic game.

I think Kael needs to modify the spawning percentages for the slower games, or in a marathon game he would need to just delay the arrival of barbs an extra 20 turns. I guess then you would still need to deal with the animals while you try and settle your next city.

They are modified by the game speed train modifier. So if it takes you twice as long to train a warrior the spawn chance is halved, etc.

 

[Gabriel21]

They are modified by the game speed train modifier. So if it takes you twice as long to train a warrior the spawn chance is halved, etc.

Do you feel this modifier fits exactely? In marathon this makes a very big difference in regard to barbs and esp. wolves. I do not see a single square being unoccupied by wolves. Sometimes there are 6 units per single square.

 

[Kael]

Do you feel this modifier fits exactely? In marathon this makes a very big difference in regard to barbs and esp. wolves. I do not see a single square being unoccupied by wolves. Sometimes there are 6 units per single square.

This isn't possible in 0.23. Wolves stop spawning entirely if there are more than 1 wolf per 10 unowned tiles of the continent they are on.

So yes, I feel like the spawn rate is appropriate, but an upper limit is also required which resolves the issue you are noting.

 

[QES]

Would this be a Sasqueti or a Yuatch?


will barbarians be hostile to beasts?


that's just mean =p

nice entries btw

Thanks. I liked "Sasqueti" for your hybrid name the best.

Also - I would think that each "type" of these untis would be hostile to others. Beasts hostile to Barbarians hostile to animals, hostile to monsters.

The one type of beast would even be hostile to other beasts maybe? Its up for grabs, I was just musing.
-Qes

 

[QES]

like the idea of beasts that can only travel in one terrain, could then allow them to enter cultural borders without them becoming an all pervasive problem.

currently animals are very easily dealt with by just pushing out cultural borders and building new cities near existing borders. but if there were some beasts that make an entire track of land uninhabitable it would extend the lifespan of the wilds a bit.

like the sand animals, would make settling along certain deserts/floodplains too dangerous until its dealt with, since even if you managed to get a settler safely there, afterwards you'd have the beast killing your units and trying to destroy your city. you would then realize you must avoid that track of land until you can deal with the problem.

Sureshot - yours are among the opinions I value most, and it pleases me greatly to see you enjoying the concepts behind my ideas.
-Qes

 

[Sarisin]

They are modified by the game speed train modifier. So if it takes you twice as long to train a warrior the spawn chance is halved, etc.

So you're saying that the Dirge, barrows, ruins, etc. would not spawn bad guys in a Marathon game as fast as in a Normal game?

I just can't understand, then, how I can move my Scout/Warrior to a barrow in a Marathon game and find a Skeleton guard there on or before turn 7.

Would it be possible for you to also use this modifier to slow down the rate at which barb cities 'spawn?' This a big problem with the counter moving too fast in Marathon games IMO as the AI razes them at will and, of course, never uses the Sanctify spell.

Thanks.

 

[Gabriel21]

This isn't possible in 0.23. Wolves stop spawning entirely if there are more than 1 wolf per 10 unowned tiles of the continent they are on.

Very fine, thank you.

 

[Kael]

So you're saying that the Dirge, barrows, ruins, etc. would not spawn bad guys in a Marathon game as fast as in a Normal game?

I just can't understand, then, how I can move my Scout/Warrior to a barrow in a Marathon game and find a Skeleton guard there on or before turn 7.

Would it be possible for you to also use this modifier to slow down the rate at which barb cities 'spawn?' This a big problem with the counter moving too fast in Marathon games IMO as the AI razes them at will and, of course, never uses the Sanctify spell.

Thanks.

Yes, it applies to all spawns. Game speed also already effects the barbarian city creation.