Chaos

[neener]

I prefer Olleus' plan, simply because it's not random. The player can plan for those deficiencies and use tactics to avoid them. There's no way you can strategise against a 5% chance your unit will explode every turn.

As for alternatives, if it was up to me I think I'd make Chaos work in a similar way to the Barbarians in the Barbarians mod in Warlords. The one where you have a mobile camp and you can purchase units with gold, and you gain gold from pillaging and razing. The mobile camp thing probably suits Chaos better than building cities, but to be honest I don't know how well it would work so I'm not too serious about that part. However, you could give Chaos the same sort of mechanics of pillaging, and give them relatively high upkeep too. That way they're forced to keep attacking and pillaging other civilizations to keep afloat. Instead of calling it gold, though, you could call it Chaotic Favour or something. The idea being that the more pillaging and destroying you do, the more Favour you get from your Chaos God, the more units you can buy, the more pillaging and destroying you can do. That presents a challenge to the player to offset the powerful nature of Chaos, and also gives Chaos its own unique flavour instead of making them Orcs with a different texture.

I don't know if it's possible in vanilla, or if we'd have to wait until we switch over to Warlords, but it's what I'd probably try and do.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

The last idea is interesting but I think would still be quite complicated to get on. But I like it sort of. However Chaos arent Mongol Hordes and I would hate playing them without Khorinaun(just got used to that city in civ3). Also I would really miss all those horrificbuildings they could have. We maybe could use Kaels code from FFH that makes the civ which name I forgot just use 3 strong cities and build small settlement everywhere to get necessary resources. Chaos could go without commercial improvements and would need to pillage in order to hold it's troops.
Settlements could produce Marauders and Beastmen only plus Herdstone(+1culture and gateways later to teleport their strong units from their capital-just like airports). Only the three core cities could build Chaosknights and Warriors. Daemons would have to be summoned by Scorcerers not produced. They stay until the Scorcerer casts another spell or gets killed or distraced otherwise. The summoning of a greater Daemon would require to sacrifice a scorcerer(highest tier). In this case the Demon stays until it's killed or banned.

And:
Daemons lose hitpoints every turn in enemy territory (2-5%), Wards could increase the damage by 5% and standing stones would give another bonus of 10%.
If Daemons of different gods encounter each other this also adds to the damge and gets a small chance they attack each other (say 8%). That's random but you could just have them stay apart from each other. Will only make it difficult to defend cities hording Daemons.

 

[neener]

Now that's more like it!

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Don't make Deamons attack each other. There could be some technical problems if you try to attack someone on your own tile, and it doesn't fit in with chaos. Chaos troops are probably the most disiplined of all the evil civs (apart from maybe darkelves) and the idea of them squabling just seems wrong.

The needed mechanic for that is already in the animosity code and seem to work ok also chaos disciplined? ok maybe the scorcers and Chaosknights but certainly not nurglings and Beastmen.
I know they got high Leadership but they also have frenzy and similar stuff. I'd say disciplined isn't just the right word, they are simply fearless and crazy for blood imo.

Hell! DJ please send me the new rulebook.pdf it's really difficult to get some agreement if two sides are relying on different sources

Edit:
Some possible Leaders PL mentioned:

Archaon, end of times.
who gets a 'United Chaos' trait or something which alows his to get some of each kind of deamon?

Haargroth the Blooded One, a mighty Champion of Khorne, began his life as a simple farmer boy and has risen to preeminence in the eyes of the Blood God.
gets a 'Chosen of Khorne' trait alowing his to create Khorne units

Feytor the Tainted, Champion of Nurgle, whose entire village was struck down with plague, alone was spared and embraced by his most pestilent savior.
gets a 'Chosen of Nurgle' trait alowing his to create Nurgle units

Styrkaar of the Sortsvinaer, blessed of the Dark Prince Slaanesh, is a Norse king whose people fall at his feet in adoration and worship.
gets a 'Chosen of Slaanesh' trait alowing his to create Slaanesh units

Melekh the Changer with his mutant-child Cyspeth, touched of great Tzeentch, cut down an Aesling shaman to lead his people alongside Archaon.
gets a 'Chosen of Tzeentch' trait alowing his to create Tzeentch units

 

[El Loco Mono]

Personally, I've always seen Chaos as the true Survival of the Fittest races, as each unit wants to achieve that small percentage chance of being blessed by the Chaos gods as a champion of some sort.

I think the idea of any animoisty (or any other negative aspect), needs to be controllable by the player. i.e. the triggers can be avoided, or as mentioned, players will get frustrated. It needs to be - It happened but I can avoid it if I am willing to play a diffent tactic. I don't like the standard % and disappear, with only triggers on the %chance. That and I think we have to give a benefit for every negative, so the civs are still attractive. This might not always tie up with the Warhammer rules, but we still want a "fun" game in the end.

As for attacking the same square. I played around with this and it's not a problem as long you make sure the unit is not busy. The fight scenes interesting as 1 unit stands just behind the other and hits them in the back of the head

I'm quite happy doing loads of different code types for different races, as I personly want a different feel and flavour for each race. So while the animosity code could be used, I imagine the ability for different effects for different civs put into the code as it progresses.

Also as a thought, instead of -% in HP's from Attrition (which could be countered with healing promotions from other medic units), you could also go for a small decrease in %str. Something that takes X number of turns in a friendly territory to reset back to normal. Sort of a Warweariness effect (since I imagine Chaos won't really have WW in the end design).

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

This is more like it i love all ideas so far.

but (there is always a 'but' ) will the incresed upkeep of units mean the armies will be smaller? because i want massive hordes of deamons! perhaps make some of the essential buildings for chaos have a negative gold modifyer?