[TOT] EmperorIsDead

[Dadais]

, long live the ... ho damn !

Some of you may have tried my somehow childish contribution few years ago, namely Last Days Of Empire.
The idea is to propose a new version of it, taking advantage of ToTpp abilities and few learnings from its creator.

Working on it on my "working" computer rather than on my "fun" computer, this project is advanced in the mean time of the TES on.

Lore shall be slightly altered in this version, and map is gonna be changed. It is planned to give choice to player at the beginning of the game to play or hide a fantastic part of it.

Some gameplay element shall be implemented in it. Namely,
-Sixteen Nobles each choosing their side with alea at the begining of the game (Prince, Princess, none, extremely low republicans ?)
-Expeditionnay forces: launched by various barbarians depending on occasions
-Archery support (additionnal early damages in stacked fights, 1-2 priority "shots" when directly attacked depending on attacker)
-Siege simulation : Defensive structures units, buildable&upgradable by serf or in cities using citywall improvement, priority in defense yet with low Def and high Hit, allowing many support from stacked units.
-Charge : granting additionnal Att (& Fir once ?) to cavalry units in plain, making them "normal attackers" otherwise, then in high danger facing pixers.
-Meteo : In some "regions", somehow alea changing lands with months to snow some of them (plains, forests, cities, farms, mountains, forested hills ...) using lua
-fantastic : Death Tsunami with a spawn of zombies, ghouls, demons each evolving when veteran into the next one, each creating an additionnal zombie when destroying a living unit.
-fantastic : Special mount to Legion and Corporates, instead without fantastic have no own mounted units.
-fantastic : Special mount avaible with a "hide and seek" to a special knight order.

Here are some of the graphics sets already choiced thus far.
Units there,

Spoiler PrimaryUnitPreview :

and then cities,

Spoiler Cities preview :

 

[JPetroski]

It sounds interesting, especially the lua work:

Archery support (additionnal early damages in stacked fights, 1-2 priority "shots" when directly attacked depending on attacker)

Charge : granting additionnal Att (& Fir once ?) to cavalry units in plain, making them "normal attackers" otherwise, then in high danger facing pixers.

For the second one, I really like the idea (and am doing something similar in HoF with infantry at least). It also makes sense/is intuitive. I think we both have the challenge of making sure the base stats of the units will allow the AI to initiate a combat with them, but this doesn't seem insurmountable.

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Map layout is done, restricted to a Medium map for somehow less long games.
Map specifics, including mainly urbans, forests, roads, forts and abbeys are beeing placed.

Graphics are intended to portray a medieval world.

Spoiler map preview :

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Using possibilities given by ToTPP18,

-some more units shall be presents with the "fantasy" option that could be chosen at the beginning of the scenario.
-furthermore, the 16 nobles distributed shall each have their unique troop.
-Some special units are added for barbs use.
-Added 4 Siege units*

*Shall add a siege system :
Siege units may be build by field units when next to an ennemy fortification unit (like munitions), yet have no def nor movepoint.
Their only goal shall be to greatly assist the attacking unit.

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Played a little, altering the Imperial guard,
Replaced few units by Imperial Palace, Dwarf Colony and Elven Village Tree

I also gave a simple and brutal try to terrain change, as to picture Winter (and its "lack" of food)
Worked pretty well, while some graphics are still rebelling, that seems acceptable to me. The Idea in the end is to have Snow come and leave "regions" by "regions" from North to South, with months and alea.

Spoiler Big Map Pictures :

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

So, altered mountain snow graph (to be less white),
replaced "arid plains" with "snowed swamp" and added few swamp tiles across the map.
replaced "Deserts" with "Arid plains" and used its second bonus to picture the desert.

Created Lua functions to snow or green the land, + its testing key press.
Preparing to create weather regions, also altered two piece of lands on a climate basis :

"Closed" the Wild River eastern valley with hills so cold air getting up the Wild River valley get "stopped" before reaching the eastern plain
"Opened" a gap through mountains east of the southern desert leading to wild eastern plain, granting wild eastern plains hot air preventing it from getting snowed (yup, arid plains are not to be snowed ever in this scenario)

 

[JPetroski]

Can I just say that your map work in this and also TES made me look back at Germanicus and cringe? Some day, I'll get around to properly updating all my scenarios to meet the new standards... Someday

 

[Dadais]

Truth is, at least 90% of graphics merits are Catfish's and Fairline's ones*, after which I played with their wonderful contributions.
*(and on larger side, Tanelorn's, curtsibling's, and all the other I forgot)

Appart from graphics, on map disposition, I only did copy and set little adaptation for the TES map,
and hold the advantage for this map to create it from nothing but my imagination, giving freedom to own geographic considerations free of any reality matching.

Honnesty makes me add ... Germanicus scenario is already above the standards, isn't it after all ?

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Altered roads so they may blend better with settlements yet stay correct in the wild.
Altered rules.txt terrain's section so Snowing land makes it provide not only less food, but also less production and less trade, yet in the mean time have a trade bonus for food-related tile bonuses

Defined Weather regions.
Made them rather large on purpose, The idea is to grant them three avaible status (green, heights snowed, all snowed), considering months, a geographical factor (roughly dedined by the region's color on map with small disparities) and connection factors between some of them.
Next is to translate these region definition in Lua.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Next is to translate these region definition in Lua.

If you didn't know, I have a script for generating polygons. Load the script, and it will explain how to define regions, and the defining tables will be printed to the console. Save the game first, since you will be placing units to mark the corners of the polygon.

In the General Library, the command gen.inPolygon allows you to figure out if a tile is within a polygon or not. (This has been in the General Library for a long time, so probably don't need to upgrade if you already have a copy.)

--#gen.inPolygon(tile,tableOfCoordinates)-->bool
-- the table of coordinates defines the corners of the
-- polygon.  Returns true if the tile is within the
-- polygon defined by the table of coordinates, and
-- false otherwise.  Checking that the map is correct
-- must be done separately
-- the entry:
-- tableOfCoordinates.doesNotCrossThisX
-- sets an x coordinate that the polygon does not
-- cross.  If absent, 0 is used,
-- meaning the polygon shouldn't cross the date line

 

[CurtSibling]

Excellent terrain, and great work, @Dadais !

 

[Dadais]

Project became main one, having it saved on USB key and migrating on the fun machine.
Weather Region Definition is going on !

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Weather Region are defined.
As I didn't have a single thought about civs and other placement when building map, also took time to think about where would be who, giving names to the 16 lords by the way.

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Weather profiles of regions are roughly set. For each month, probabilities to be full snowed, height snowed or not snowed

 

[JPetroski]

VERY interesting

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Spent few days on irrigation and farmland for this project after having completed lua function for regionnal weather changes.

mm I guess the irrigation would win loosing its two trees.

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

I guess ... it works !!

Spoiler old graphics test :

ho ! Forgot to alter terrain2
Shall tweak terrain1 too

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Altered 15 terrain files to get this :

I think I'll go forward with it !

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Having 18 terrain files, err... why not having 50 ones to make season changes less brutal and more precise ?

Took advantage of that to depict irrigation and double irrigation evolution monthly. Shall I add recolts effects to cities with lua ? That could be done. I may reserve that for futur scenarii.

On the other side, the "farm" terrain was redoundant with the double irrigation. I then depicted it as a specialised cattle farming.
This brings a distinction between :
plains with double-irrigation with very high output when not under snow.
farms with high output be it under snow or not.

terrain disposition may be slightly altered to picture this specificity (more cattle in snowy north, more irrigated plains in the hot south)

 

[Dadais]

Spoiler creation diary :

Terrains files shall be ready now, providing monthly changes on a three year cycle.

.

Now altering tech tree, to be completly reworked from the Last Day Of Empire one.

I do plan to have eighteen* "De Jure" tech one could research if they own all cities of their fief allowing to build its unique ruler and special unit in it, and one could loose when the other imperial heir searched it.

I'd like too to have a "food" system to balance where harvests brings riches to cities owners yet low food in cities are treated either with money loss (food distribution) either by revolts (be it from a stingy policy or lack of money). These policies (share or keep food) could be set up with two tech facing one another, and may have an incidence on defenders HP in siege too ?

.

*: the sixteen allocated lords at the beginning of each game AND two "lost" dukedom (to demonists and republicans starting points)