Idea: Adventuring Party

[Zechnophobe]

Take one non hero unit of each type:

Archer
Melee
Recon
Arcane
Disciple

Where each is level 6 or greater.

Have them all on a single tile? Great, give them the ability 'form Adventuring party' which sacks them all to create a National Hero unit with....


And that's as far as I am in the thought process.

Maybe move 3 with blitz, since they can all attack? Has all promotions of the party (Including existent spells) but then starts over at level 1, and gains hero like a, well, hero.

Special abilities of the Adventuring party might be special things in graveyards, additional effects from sacking a lair... I'm not sure yet exactly.

 

[Ekolite]

You would have to not let Archmages, druids or High priests join to avoid gving the player unlimited tier 3 casters, apart from that it sounds like a pretty cool idea.

 

[Zechnophobe]

It's a National Unit itself, so it isn't 'unlimited' by any stretch of the imagination .

 

[micmc]

actually..if you could figure out how to do it, tie "mini maps" into the main map via gateways, and take your adventuring party onto real dungeon crawls like the tacictal scifi mod from bts (which I can't think of it's name just now) and by having "mini maps" you could help people with low end machines since each time you switched the maps would just reload..and have the dungeon crawl all take place on 1 turn of the main game map..so no switching back and forth (cuz if you were on a 6 month dungeon crawl..that would just suck..though anybody who's played enough WoW some raid groups can be like that..and D&D's underdark was very much like that)

and have the rewards be, hero items, otherwise unattainable tech, gold,

It could be a great mini mod-mod industry of people making dungeons once the engine was set up.

 

[JDexter]

@micmc:
If you take a look in the modmod forum you will find a "Dungeon Adventure" modmod that is doing exactly this.

 

[xienwolf]

No, Dungeon Adventure is just small dungeons to crawl through.

Micmc is talking about having you playing normal FfH, then finding a Lair, casting a spell and suddently playing Dungeon Adventure instead. Then when you finish it, returning to exactly where you were in normal FfH, but now with whatever you gained/lost in the Dungeon.

It is thus far only a pipe dream sadly Nobody has proclaimed a method to achieve it yet.

 

[micmc]

yeah, that's what I was saying

um, do you want to get hired as my my interupter...cuz I talk stupid too often to be easily understood sometimes.

the other thing I was looking at is for a long loved idea of mine, which is demension mudding (now called MMO's) but it could be applied to Civ just as nice, where within the mini-realms (demensions) you could do something compltely different than main game, but bring back the rewards....

sooo..you could end up whacking the crap out of the eygpitans to find out how the UFO's built the pyramids within a demension, then go kick the nuts out of Sauron just for laughs in another and return to Erebrus with your rewards...and I'm assuming if the basic idea could be made to work you could juice it up and have multi-layered maps where you need to kill everybody...just get a good divorce lawyer before you start playing cuz if you were killing 300 civ's..it might be awhile.


We still love ya Mr. Aspirin...we want more Skeeve.

 

[Mewtarthio]

No, Dungeon Adventure is just small dungeons to crawl through.

Micmc is talking about having you playing normal FfH, then finding a Lair, casting a spell and suddently playing Dungeon Adventure instead. Then when you finish it, returning to exactly where you were in normal FfH, but now with whatever you gained/lost in the Dungeon.

It is thus far only a pipe dream sadly Nobody has proclaimed a method to achieve it yet.

Weren't they working to figure this out back before "Fire" (for the Hell mechanics)? I doubt it's even possible.

 

[Tarquelne]

create a National Hero unit with....


And that's as far as I am in the thought process.

Maybe the new unit gets the spell "quest." "Cast" quest and the unit disappears. It may show up again and it may not. The quest may result in you getting a treasure of some sort, or a bonus to your civ or a city.

Or:

Give the unit the ability to move in rival territory, a not-completely-reliable "stealth" ability, Marskman, Kidnap, and Steal?

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

We have been having a similar discussion in the Dungeon Adventure mod mod thread -- trying to figure out how to implement separate maps the get loaded in-game.

I have a suspicion that editable arrays like what is used for starbases in the Final Frontier mod could accomplish this. I don't know much about handling arrays within Python unfortunately. But the basic idea is that you define a mini database, with each entry being all of the information from a single tile. These entries are updated whenever the current map needs to be "stored," and an alternative array can be called up when moving to a new map.

The main limitation to this approach is that all of your maps would need to have the same size. I suppose smaller maps could be nestled in a frame of impassible terrain, however, to simulate a smaller map.

Just my 2 cents -- I love to get this idea working!

 

[Mewtarthio]

I have a suspicion that editable arrays like what is used for starbases in the Final Frontier mod could accomplish this. I don't know much about handling arrays within Python unfortunately. But the basic idea is that you define a mini database, with each entry being all of the information from a single tile. These entries are updated whenever the current map needs to be "stored," and an alternative array can be called up when moving to a new map.

So, in essence, you want to store the data of an entirely separate map, save every tile in the current map, and then, tile by tile, replace everything on the current map with something on the new map?

...Seems a bit labor-intensive, but it may well be the only option. Oh, and make sure that it's single-player only, and that you don't do it for AIs.

 

[Caradoc]

As I see it, the Archer unit is not a single archer but a squad or some other fighting unit. Same for Warriors and Horsemen. The Adept may be one spell caster, but she is accompanied by guards, servants, scribes, and so on.

I could be wrong, but it seem to me that a City would have more than a dozen or two residents. And that it would take more than one workman to dig a Mine.

 

[micmc]

this coming from complete ignorance so, if that is all it is, then forgive me and move along

but it seems like the various maps could be tied together as various save-games, so when you create the orginal game you have the option of the dungeon adventures...if so it triggers a thingie (techincal term) for the gateway to be created (however you want to handle it for the game, random spawn, spell etc) when the gateway is used, the main game saves, closes down, and creates the new mini-game as a funcitoning new-save game, (independant of the first) and when you move back through the gateway, only key information is sent to the original save game...items, or exp. or loot. or whatever is decided upon..even if that would mean at the end of the mini-game, both mini- and main- are resaved with the new data (which would clearly not be in a place to overwrite the old either way)

which would mean you could fight a series of scenario's within the mini-maps, have the scores from those be transfered to the main game (along with any titles etc. being the King of Narnia, Duke of the Underdark, First Premio-head-knocker of hell...at the end of the main game would be kinda cool)

looking at this from an amatures standpoint, I'm not sure there is a wya to make the maps dynaimic turn to turn...unless you created special buildings within the main map to represent the "win items" from the conquored mini maps...meaning if you beat the "dwarves under the mountain" a building would be created within the captal of the main game that would give XX amount of gold as tribute from the dwaves each turn...the same thing could be done with troops.

to make it dynamic and AI friendly, simply put it a point system (the mini maps) when the AI, reached benchmarks in it's scores, a percent of its army/etc would be spent on the mini map, and within the same turn get the rewards (maybe based upon a dice roll for success). that might be the easiest way to make the main map fair for the AI

 

[Zechnophobe]

Warcraft 3 Used an interesting work around for their 'persistent' multi map campaign (*Orc Missions in Frozen Throne*)

They'd simply save the game, save some other information to disk (Basic stuff like inventory, level, and a bunch of flags) and then load a new map, but skip the normal 'start map' screens.

Might be able to do something similar?

I'd REALLY like something similar to the Test of Time multi-map thing. That was so freaking badass...

 

[micmc]

yeah..give me workers and settlers who add back to population..a muti tiered map and a map where Shaka, napeleon and ghandi were all in terrible start locations and I was happy. Now I just pray I'm close enough to get to the Caladim(sp?) to get to them before they whip out their bloodsuckers.

 

[xienwolf]

That is the best running theory that people have thus far proposed for doing it. But the trick is making the CIV engine manipulate the savefiles. Something which it is NOT built to do. Because what you are proposing requires reading selective bits of a savefile (mildly possible with the Engine), and the altering another Savefile in selected areas (almost definitely impossible).

With a third-party program it MIGHT be possible to pull it off though. Create a WorldBuilder Save, read off key elements of it, generate a new Map (dungeon) to play through, finish and create a new Worldbuilder Save, read off key elements, write them to the initial WBS, load it (with changes now) and continue to play.

You would need a third party program which can manipulate the WBS files, and a program framework to identify and properly place each possible element of any save to achieve your desired switch.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Hmm, maybe if we added a second 'algorithm' for generating a new map, that basically just regenerates from an old one? Hmm, perhaps not.