Design: Heroes

[SchpailsMan]

How about allowing him to make vaudoo puppets and curse his opponents ? Or spit at ennemies ?

Make a Vaudoo Puppet : summons a "vaudoo puppet" unit which can't attack but can cast a "Vaudoo Curse" spell to an adjacent target. Vaudoo Curse gives the "Vaudoo Curse" promotion (yeah, I had to think a while to come up with that promotion name) to the targetted unit. I've little idea of what the VC promotion would do. Maybe Guybrush would have another spell called "Pin Strike", consisting of striking vaudoo puppets with a pin immediately dealing extremely small but really annoying damage to the target unit (maybe something as low as -10HP, along with a slight str penalty... the goal here to be annoying rather than deadly). Targets would have a chance to lose the Vaudoo Curse promotion each time they are pinned, or maybe only priests could remove it, your choice. The only tricky part would be to find a way to collect organic reagents for the curse, but I guess you can abstract that as being automatically done somehow when clicking the "Summon Vaudoo Puppet" button

Spitting : ranged spell, green and sticky I must admit I don't have any idea what it could actually do, but I DID spend a lot of time trying to understand how to win the spitting contest in MI2, and anyway I'd love to get a non-fireball ranged spell of some sort Suggestions I'm not really satisfied of : the victim would spend 1 or 2 movement points to clean itself after being spitted at (undeads would be unaffected I guess). Or maybe it would be visible from a greater range.


Well, unless somebody comes up with a good mechanics for spitting, you'll want to forget about that (I just had fun with the spitting contest in MI2, but I can see it doesn't fit well with the FfH background). But I do like the vaudoo thing (maybe without the useless puppet sumonning phase). I'd also consider trying to do something related to : underwater treasure searching ("I can hold my breath for 10 minutes !"), jungle exploration (explore temples ?) or monkey summonning...

 

[pa12ick]

Is Yvain supposed to start with the "Elven" promotion?

 

[Kael]

Is Yvain supposed to start with the "Elven" promotion?

Yeap. I will change that in 0.15.

 

[loki1232]

1. A new ability for loki. Create Grotesque Sculpture. Gives combat bonus in adjacent squares to balseraph unique units, and reduces combat strength of non balseraph units. (so ordinary balseraph units aren't affected). Doesn't stack and they can't be built adjacently. Can be built in rival territory, but gives a dip penalty.

You're looking for Guybrush/Dark Wind abilities, right?
1. Both of them can attack rival ships who you aren't at war with. (civ 3 hidden nationality)
2. Dark wind--Can attack rival ships that are harbored in a city. Gets triple gold from winning that battle.
3. Dark wind--carries 3 boarding parties, 50% chance of escaping when attacked (before battle, regardless of relative strengths).
4. Guybrush can "inspire" other boarding parties on his ship, meaning that they get any of the combat promotions that he has.

 

[Kael]

1. A new ability for loki. Create Grotesque Sculpture. Gives combat bonus in adjacent squares to balseraph unique units, and reduces combat strength of non balseraph units. (so ordinary balseraph units aren't affected). Doesn't stack and they can't be built adjacently. Can be built in rival territory, but gives a dip penalty.

You're looking for Guybrush/Dark Wind abilities, right?
1. Both of them can attack rival ships who you aren't at war with. (civ 3 hidden nationality)
2. Dark wind--Can attack rival ships that are harbored in a city. Gets triple gold from winning that battle.
3. Dark wind--carries 3 boarding parties, 50% chance of escaping when attacked (before battle, regardless of relative strengths).
4. Guybrush can "inspire" other boarding parties on his ship, meaning that they get any of the combat promotions that he has.

The Statue is an interesting idea but difficult to implement just because we dont have many layers to work with in terrain. The best would be to make it an improvement but then it will wipe the improvement that is already there. Meaning the player will have to decide between production or the bonus (and they will probably choose production) and it wont be possible to put in rival territories unless you are at war with them (because blocking or destroying their own improvement would be to powerful).

Maybe we just make loki into a flagbearer, so he gives bonus to all allied units around him.

And those sound great for the lanun heroes. Hopefully we can get hidden nationality worked out.

 

[loki1232]

Okay, i just thought that his art could be very inspiring, but also demoralising to normal troops.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Here's another weird idea which probably doesn't deserve to make it in but I'll throw out:
Is a summoned hero possible? Gains experience from battle and at hero rate, has wide range of promotions (like a normal melee or whatever) but will disappear like summons?
Also, since it'd be a unique (world) unit, it will disappear if summoned elsewhere. Also, it'd be able to be summoned by other players who have the appropriate spell spheres (maybe metamagic and summon and channel 3). And if it died, then no one would be able to summon him again. Or else you'd summon a new one with 0xp and have to start over.

 

[Kael]

Here's another weird idea which probably doesn't deserve to make it in but I'll throw out:
Is a summoned hero possible? Gains experience from battle and at hero rate, has wide range of promotions (like a normal melee or whatever) but will disappear like summons?
Also, since it'd be a unique (world) unit, it will disappear if summoned elsewhere. Also, it'd be able to be summoned by other players who have the appropriate spell spheres (maybe metamagic and summon and channel 3). And if it died, then no one would be able to summon him again. Or else you'd summon a new one with 0xp and have to start over.

Yeah, We have been thinking about that since someone submitted the idea back in the design a unit contest for the giant worm. I do want to eventually get a summoned unit in the game, but it will be special art and art list is full of higher priority needs right now.

 

[QES]

Hero Unit:

(unknown owner/reason for comming around - divine would be best)

The Nameless Hero

Hero would start out with 12-15 Str, be a mid game unit. Maybe he gains xp faster than normal heros? Or has a higher cap? (not high enough to get to the last promotion though, he'll have to fight to get there)


Heros promotions would be limited to the following.
-"Time on Earth 1-5"
-"Mission 1-3"
-"Sacrifice for the many"

"Time on earth" would be the opposite of "heroic strength" He'd lose strength over time, every time he was promoted. Time promotions would be necessary to get to the other promotions listed.

"Mission I" - Grant Loyalty and Valerousness to other units in stack
"Mission II" - Destroy Targeted (Summoned) Unit. - Or whatever type he'd be here to rid the world of.
"Mission III" - Build Building (without sacrificing him) in target city - again fitting with point of his being here

"Sacrifice for the Many" - Destroy All national units in the world, all civs go into anarchy, Nameless Hero is dead.

These are alterable, but i like the idea of a meloncholy and lamentatious hero who knows his time in this world is fleeting. He/she's just doin they best they can before its over.

-Qes

 

[Grillick]

I was poking around in the xml files, trying to make this work, and I failed miserably, so I thought I'd bring it to you.

In your description of the Grigori heroes, you say they 'get heroes as great people.' What if all the Grigori great people were heroes, who kept the great people abilities, but also had the hero promotion, and the ability to upgrade into a single unit class, rather than the current separate great person type who is very versatile?

For instance, Grigori Bards could upgrade into Scout-types, Grigori Engineers warrior-types, Grigori Merchants horsemen-types, Grigori Sages adept-types, and Grigori Prophets into Grigori Inquisitioners or Grigori Medics?

Great Commanders could remain the same, or perhaps get a promotion that makes them immune to Marksmen, and gives bonus xp over time to units in their stack, like an adept's xp gains?

Their lack of religion is really cool for theme and style, but I've found that it puts a serious damper on their power, and having these more versatile great people could help to assuage that a bit.

 

[Jono]

Grogori Great Commanders could later on become the Great General from Warlords...

 

[Grillick]

Grogori Great Commanders could later on become the Great General from Warlords...

I'd be surprised if all Great Commanders don't do that, once Warlords comes out, and they've had time to implement its changes.

 

[Jono]

I'd be surprised if all Great Commanders don't do that, once Warlords comes out, and they've had time to implement its changes.

I think they started making adjustments for Warlords a while ago with beta testing.

 

[Jono]

i think i made entirely too many people like corpses by arguing against them
I guess we'll have piles of bodies in .15 then

So will we have piles of bodies in .15 as predicted? I still think it's a good idea to have corpses laying around everywhere, it could inspire people to attack a certain tile only to have their fellow people burried in their homeland or something of the sort...

 

[QES]

So will we have piles of bodies in .15 as predicted? I still think it's a good idea to have corpses laying around everywhere, it could inspire people to attack a certain tile only to have their fellow people burried in their homeland or something of the sort...

There's a graphics issue. Unless you made a terrain or feature type called "battleground" or "corpses" the computer would have major lag issues as the bodies piled up. Unless, are you advocating for workers to have to "clean up" the bodies? That could be an interesting consequence......still, seems like busy work.
-Qes

 

[Jono]

No, as I said, the corpses would level up every turn and the AI will automatically go for "decompose" every level, at level 5 of decompose they would get a spell and, well, finally decompose

 

[QES]

No, as I said, the corpses would level up every turn and the AI will automatically go for "decompose" every level, at level 5 of decompose they would get a spell and, well, finally decompose

Huh, interesting idea...why would a human go for "decompose?"
Reminds me of my "nameless hero" unit earlier in the thread, gets weaker over time, but there were concrete benefits to weakening him. WHy would i want my coproi to decompose?
-Qes

 

[Jono]

Not the human, the human wouldn't. The AI as a barabrian would, when captured, the unit can no longer decompose (if this is even possible), because the AI would use it and never manage to burry or sell a corpse.

 

[H.GrenadeFrenzy]

I Haven't been to this thread in a while but I have a question about a world unit and wheter is has been or is in the works........Is their a Bard world unit with the special ablity to inspire to geatness a group and win over enemies to their cause.........one like the Scandinavian or Highlands and Irish stories have with fullblown Arch wizard ablities and knowledge(another special non-sacrificial one) or anyonw like that.......been waiting on hardware and it occurs to me.

 

[Jono]

Loki kinda reminds me of a bard hero... Of course, all of the extra militaristic crap leads ya off