Archos: Spiders seem weak

[Divvu]

Hi there, I'm a long time lurker here on the forums, I followed Ffh (and FF) for many years now, but I rarely post...

However, reading this discussion about Archos I had an idea, I don't know how doable is that but I suspect it would be fairly easy...
Basically, since as Vehem said:

Buildings to empower the units are interesting, but buildings aren't really what the Archos do.

How about an unit "wane" ability, like the one of the sidar?

That's how I see it... Mother sends her brood in the world to make her race STRONGER, so, create a bunch of special spider promotion, like it has already been suggested, but allow each spider to learn only one of them when they reach combat 5 (or lower if you think...), then as soon as you take that "special spider promotion" you can wane the unit in the capital, the spider has grown strong enough for mother to use it as a partner...
From now on each spider has a chance to be born with the parent "special promotion" and, upon reaching combat 5 he can chose another special one... and so on!

This way you would be encouraged to grow your spiders in order to strenghten up the race as a whole. Mind you, each spider could only learn a single special promo (well not counting the ones he starts with...) so you would need to grow more than one to do that...

What do you think? This is my first contribution to FF and Ffh in general, so feel free to bash me, but be kind

 

[xienwolf]

Actually that would be pretty cool. Then you get a mini-quest to "build the perfect mate" for Mother Send out a spider swarm, get one of them to pop a "bonus level" and bring him home. Then after time passes and you have built a new swarm, send out a swarm who started with "Bonus Level X" and get one of them to pop "Bonus Level Y." Bring the new boy home to replace his father as Mother's Mate, and now you have 2 potential free promotions for your spiders. Build another swarm of spideys with 1 or 2 special promotions each and go swarm striking again, this time hoping to get one of the "Double Special" spiders to gain his third bonus and become the new father....

Each time your chances of a child with all of the special promotions that his father had are lower than the previous time, so it is fairly naturally self-limiting. Can make it so that some of the promotions don't do anything for the unit itself, but instead just make it a better "BroodFather" and results in stronger offspring in general too.


Something like:

5 Basic Enhancements: promotions which enhance the spider itself at some decent extra fluff (ie - Combat 6, small bonuses in general)

8 Advanced Enhancements: promotions which require one or another of the 5 basic enhancements and grant a much nicer bonus for the individual unit

3 Supreme Enhancements: promotions which require one of the advanced enhancements, or multiple basic enhancements and provide a unique power to the individual unit (ie - Summoning, Teleportation...)

6 Basic BroodFathers: promotions which cause your broodlings to gain a small bonus upon birth (not subject to random, all spiders get it. Things like Empower 1, or 2 XP to start)

4 Advanced Broodfathers: promotions which change the type of broodlings you gain (like Swordspiders/Phase Spiders) Probably this would be a random chance kind of deal, but along the lines of 50% of all spawns are the new type. Requires one or another of the Basic Broodfathers AND a Basic Enhancement, or just an Advanced Enhancement

2 Supreme Broodfathers: promotions which affect not just what you spawn, but also how you spawn it. ie - Spiders can now spawn in any mine in your territory (trapdoor spiders), spiders spawn in large groups instead of individually, or something else like that. And also makes all new spiders be unique types from the base Advanced Broodfather type. Requires at least 1 Advanced Broodfather.




Then you tweak the rate of gaining new broodlings (or building them yourself) and play with precisely when/how you can gain an enhancement or Broodfather capability. Enters the Archos into a need for near perpetual "spider feeding" wars so that they can slowly evolve the brood.

 

[notque]

That's a great idea.

 

[Divvu]

glad to hear you liked it Xienwolf!

Also I was thinking about a more generic "prolific" promotion to simply increase spawn rate, but your idea about a quest is simply wonderful!
It would be terrific to have such quest again and again each time mother "depletes" her partner...!

The funny thing is, I've never actually played as the archos, but if something like this get implemented they will become one of my favourites...

I remember, back in the days when in Ffh a single giant spider could mass-produce baby spiders, one from every combat if I'm not mistaken, I was fond of playing Calabim just for the sake of the enormous vampire-spiders population I had! They have never been too useful, but the coolnes factor was irresistable!

 

[HadesScorn]

Xienwolf's idea would actually make me play as the Archos for more than a hundred turns. Full vote in favor of it being implemented.

On the subject of strengths:

I think a lot of the utility of the spiders is based on gamespeed. In general, I play on marathon, and it is *very* rare to have many units stronger than base warrior in the first few hundred turns. In the one gmae i played past 100 turns on for the Archos, my initial spider waves had allowed me to position my troops outside an enemy's border and quickly seize his defenseless outer ring, while giving some excellent promos.

That being said, I do agree that their spiders need a general buff to compete as time goes on. Xienwolf's idea strikes me as the best so far- it provides emergent gameplanning and encourages early combat.

 

[Valkrionn]

I love the idea. It would flesh out the Archos' unique mechanic quite nicely... Would have to increase the spawn rate in order to achieve the kind of numbers you'd likely need, but with a mechanic like this, you could even remove the nest size mechanic for all but Mother herself, and increase the size of the spiders spawned based on Mother's Mate. Would allow you to ramp up spawn rate quite nicely, as in the beginning of the game, when it would be most exploitable, you'd be limited to baby spiders.

 

[25Hour]

Ideas

EXCELLENT. I definitely think that one of the spider promos(possibly only available through an Evil tech) should be very large bonuses on hell terrain-- it'd be a very situational bonus, but if you planned to go the route of the Sheiam and try to bring hell to the world, you'd really be getting something out of it. Plus, at AC 75 and above you could take down all those waffling Neutrals with your devastating Hell-Spiders after their lands get corrupted. NYAHAHAHA. At very least they'd be a fine defensive force if you turned AV.

 

[Arctic Circle]

Some of these ideas are excellent and I very strongly agree with finding some way to make the Spiders more useful. I also have the experience that they are only in the best of games moderatly useful.

How about adding new abilities based on (1) Age and (2) researched Techs.

I like the idea of them gaining with time, like my Jotnar does, and perhaps gain some extra horrible poison when you research 'Poison' tech.

Perhaps gets an increased spawning rate with some technology and gains increased movement with warfare.

Perhaps give them some magic ability with Sorcery? Or that the Haruplex can bless Spiders temporarily with some nasty bonus.

 

[WarKirby]

While I do like the idea of these special promotions, it has to be kept in mind that the spiders are quite weak at a base, and they have trouble gaining xp to level up because many things are too powerful for them to kill.

Some sort of unique building that gives them xp over time, similar to a training yard, would go some way towards alleviating this issue.

I imagine some people might have an easier time of it. I'm playing on emperor difficulty, and the majority of my enemies have two free promotions, which leaves the spiders a little in the dust.

 

[WarKirby]

Then you tweak the rate of gaining new broodlings (or building them yourself) and play with precisely when/how you can gain an enhancement or Broodfather capability. Enters the Archos into a need for near perpetual "spider feeding" wars so that they can slowly evolve the brood.

This gives me a thought too.

Maybe the Archos should be able to feed units to Mother. I have a lot of spare high level brutes I could put to that kind of use. It could effects on new spiders, dependant on the level of the unit you feed to them.

 

[Brokenbone]

Maybe a negative health/happiness building that adds passive XP to spiders stationed in the relevant city, representing something like a pit that useless citizens get chucked into. A twist on the Calabim breeding pit, except the point isn't to get more citizens, it's to give the spiders something tasty. Anyhow, lots of good exciting ideas for the thread, give that civ a new lease on life.

 

[WarKirby]

It should definitely be a health penalty then, not happiness. In fact, something like that should probably GIVE happiness. The people get to watch criminals being fed to spiders. The romans managed to entertain the people with similar things.

maybe it could be a carnival UB ?

Feeding Pit
Unique Building for Archos (replaces carnival)

• Requires at least one spider stationed the city to have any effect
• +2
• +2
• Grants free xp up to 20 for Spiders stationed in the city
• Allows feeding units to spiders

The happiness bonus represents entertainment the common people derive from the spectacle. The Health penalty represents a slowing of population growth caused by sacrificing Archos society's undesireables. Dead people don't reproduce, you know.

Maybe up to 20 free xp would be too much. just a ballpark figure.

Sacrificing a unit, would divide their experience among all the spiders in the city, and would also give some temporary happiness, similar to Balseraphs Arena.

Of course, the sacrificed unit would be lost.


Something like this would allow spiders to grow in relative safety, and be able to compete with trained professional soldiers of other civs.

 

[Breez]

While I do like the idea of these special promotions, it has to be kept in mind that the spiders are quite weak at a base, and they have trouble gaining xp to level up because many things are too powerful for them to kill.

Exactly. Basically once I had brutes spiders became obsolete and Baby spiders almost never make it to adult out in the wild. If there were a passive EXP would a baby be able to use that passive exp to get to adult stage?

If New Promos are introduced would baby spiders born in the wild have the possibility of gaining those new promotions?

maybe it could be a carnival UB ?

Feeding Pit
Unique Building for Archos (replaces carnival)

• Requires at least one spider stationed the city to have any effect
• +2
• +2
• Grants free xp up to 20 for Spiders stationed in the city
• Allows feeding units to spiders

The happiness bonus represents entertainment the common people derive from the spectacle. The Health penalty represents a slowing of population growth caused by sacrificing Archos society's undesireables. Dead people don't reproduce, you know.

Maybe up to 20 free xp would be too much. just a ballpark figure.

Sacrificing a unit, would divide their experience among all the spiders in the city, and would also give some temporary happiness, similar to Balseraphs Arena.

Of course, the sacrificed unit would be lost.


Something like this would allow spiders to grow in relative safety, and be able to compete with trained professional soldiers of other civs.

My suggested tweak would be to remove the happiness bonus and use the temp bonus like the Balseraphs do. +3 turns of temp happiness when used or something. Doing both may be over kill.

 

[Tarquelne]

That's a great idea.

Yup.

Especially if it doesn't end up increasing the # of D&D references.

What's the basic mechanic? Spells for spiders with various promos as prereqs? The spells create buildings, and the buildings affect spawning - influencing rate, initial promos, spider type, etc?

Or something more sophisticated?

Could a unit ("The Brood"?) be used instead of buildings? It'd pick up promos that influence spawning, and the Brood (a move 0 unit) could also defend the capital. Or I suppose do something scary like move elsewhere...

 

[xienwolf]

Spells/Buildings would be a work-around. With my nose firmly entrenched in the DLL I always think more complicated It would certainly be a more complicated setup, most likely attached to the player or team data directly, but controlled via python. You'd sacrifice the unit, Python would switch a flag on the player/team, and on each turn the DLL would notice the flag, so consult python about what to do with the data. About the best way I can picture right now to generalize this, and would allow for semi-speedy control of numerous VERY different mechanics for lots of other Civilizations (basically it would be a ScenarioCounter type of variable which links into a doTurn call).

Overall though, if such a thing were to become reality it'd depend on soem discussion in the team forums to narrow down precisely how we want the mechanic to work and then writing what is needed. Decisions like keeping the Broodfather alive for your opponents to try and kill and you to need to protect are less "how it works" and more "How it balances" and thus quickly enter into the territory of "You really don't wnat the sadistic bastard Xienwolf deciding how it works..."

 

[Iceciro]

Hey, trusting the Fall Further team has worked out pretty well for my enjoyment so far.

And if you break it, that's what my own modding is for ;-)

 

[Vehem]

Overall though, if such a thing were to become reality it'd depend on soem discussion in the team forums to narrow down precisely how we want the mechanic to work and then writing what is needed. Decisions like keeping the Broodfather alive for your opponents to try and kill and you to need to protect are less "how it works" and more "How it balances" and thus quickly enter into the territory of "You really don't wnat the sadistic bastard Xienwolf deciding how it works..."

To be honest, keeping a Broodfather alive and focusing on generating them seems to detract from the fact that the Archos are *all about* Mother. They are directed by her attendants (Haruspex) and everything they do should be to please her as a result. There shouldn't be any other focal point (the broodfather), otherwise she loses importance.

That being said - combining two of the ideas already posted - it would make thematic sense if she were to eat the broodfathers after she has finished with them, further ensuring that their influence is passed on to the next of the brood. In that way, it could be a relatively straightforward mechanic (4 eligible mates eaten = 4 free promotions for all new spiders, combined with some unique promotions to specialize the spiders).

I am always a fan of "keep it simple" - you can create a decent mechanic without a lot of extra work in almost all cases, and there's far less chance of breaking something...

 

[scaramouche]

That being said - combining two of the ideas already posted - it would make thematic sense if she were to eat the broodfathers after she has finished with them, further ensuring that their influence is passed on to the next of the brood. In that way, it could be a relatively straightforward mechanic (4 eligible mates eaten = 4 free promotions for all new spiders, combined with some unique promotions to specialize the spiders).

I am always a fan of "keep it simple" - you can create a decent mechanic without a lot of extra work in almost all cases, and there's far less chance of breaking something...

That sounds like a great idea! I love the idea that devoured broodfathers would generate promotions for future spiders - especially if higher level devoured daddies provided better promos or something. That'd be a neat distributed/remote xp mechanic for spiders all around.

 

[Vehem]

Just completed the specialization section of the spider-upgrade project, 5 different types of spider can now be selected. Specialization can be taken at level 3, the first specialized promotion blocks access to the other 4. Each specialized promotion has one further level to it that can be taken on the next level up (no requirement other than already having the specialist promotion).

Rhagodessa
Rhagodessa are bold and aggressive, they have little fear of anything unless it is larger than them. They generally ambush their prey, charging forward and grasping a target. If hard pressed they will retreat as quickly as possible, attempting to devour their victim on the run.
Basic: Blitz
Greater: +1 Move, Cannibalize

Mucro
Mucro (or more commonly "Sword spiders") with their chitinous shell, are hard to kill. More dangerous, however, are the sharpened, blade-like appendages that give them their name.
Basic: +20% Strength, +30% vs Recon
Greater: +1 Attack Strength

Argyroneta
Argyroneta have a number of adaptations for an aquatic life-style. Their abdomen and legs are densely covered in short hairs that trap air when the spider is submerged. Many coastal villages have been razed as these beasts emerge from the water to feed.
Basic: Amphibious, Double Move Marsh/Wetland.
Greater: Water Walking, +50% Vs Naval Units

Venenum
Although these spiders are not especially large, their venom is extremely potent and can cause a lingering and painful death to any susceptible to it. Some variations have also shown the ability to spit corrisive venom over a short distance..
Basic: +1 Poison Strength.
Greater: +3 Ranged Attack Strength, 15% limit

Textus
Commonly known as Weaver spiders, these giant beasts spin massive webs with which to snare their prey.
Basic: Can cast Web (same effect as "Slow")
Greater: Can cast Venomous Web (same spell as the Haruspex have)

=============

Work on the Mother/Devouring mechanic is still in progress.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

this sounds great. the Archos might become my favourite civ