Idea Dump

[xienwolf]

I've been working on quite a few projects without releasing the precise ideas behind them all, but it is seeming that my upcoming year will be INCREDIBLY busy, and I am not certain that I will have time to bring any of them to full implementation, so I have decided to share my ideas and hope that other people who can mod (or decide to learn how... really it is quite simple) can pick up the ideas and work with them.

Spoiler Equipment Mod :

This was my most ambitious project, and I have made a lot of headway, but as with many things I do, about 70% of the way into the project I decide on a better approach and start from scratch. I am on revision 23 next time I start it up, but it should be pretty solidly refined by now.


Most important portion of this project was to assign an Equipment Category to each Promotion. This required creating a new file in the XML to define the Equipment Categories. Since I am also aiming to define a specific size (how many of that type) to each category, this cannot just be done in the BasicInfo area, but must have a fully fleshed out XML, which is ideal anyway IMO. Took quite a while figuring out precisely how to add a new XML file, but I think I have it down now.

Once the File is defined, you set up some equipment categories. In my case I did Head, Torso, Main Hand, Off Hand, Legs, Pack, and Overflow. You are allowed 1 of each, but the setup is done so that you could easily add other items, like Rings (and allow 10 if you so desired), or Gloves, Shoes, Cloak... whatever you really wanted to.

Each promotion can be assigned a size (how many slots) and a destination (which slots) for as many pieces as you desired. So you could have "Full Plate" take up Head, Torse, and Legs, while "Helm of Justice" only takes up Head. If you added Rings, you could have a nifty glove that takes up 5 Ring slots to reflect that your hand is now covered.

The tricky bit was to set it up so that if you gain a promotion which fills a slot you already had filled, it drops the old promotion for that slot to your Overflow Category. Anything in Overflow your unit is just carrying around, it doesn't actually have any effect, except allowing you to re-equip the promotion (thus removing the other one).

After that, things were mostly cosmetic.

Since I added the potential for more equipment, I wanted to remove the silly "Equipment Units" setup. I instead allowed Tiles to have Promotions, and if a Tile DID have any Promotions, it would show a tiny Treasure Chest in the lower Right Hand Corner of the tile (done in the SDK so that it isn't an Improvement, Feature, or Terrain type, which require me to bloat the system with duplicate Terrains, or re-write it to allow multiple Features/Improvements per tile). I began toying with using Marnok's Explorable Lairs Mod to allow you to "lock" or "Trap" equipment which is on the ground in your own territory.

I also made it so that equipment promotions will not show up in the normal areas where you list a Promotion, instead they are displayed in the unit Mouse-over information box above the name, along with an Icon to indicate what slot they are filling. This just helped to see what slots you had filled, and keep from cluttering the already NUMEROUS promotions on all of the units anyway.

I began toying with adding a new mechanic for generating Equipment, but wasn't willing to figure out how to train the AI at this stage. I had it set up so that each Metal Resource in a city would provide some "Equipment Points," as well as a few Buildings, and that you would have a second production line for each city, one for equipment only. That way, while you are building units or buildings or whatever, you are also slowly churning out equipment for your units and stockpiling it on your City Tile (since Tiles can hold Promotions now).


Once I finally settled on having all of that done, I was going to redo the Promotions system completely. It is the only thing in the game I fell that FfH has slacked off on doing. I think it NEEDS a re-write. Each UnitCombat should have 5 or 6 promotions available to them, but after that it should all be based on having the right equipment as a pre-req. Thus a Warrior whom you equipped with a Shield and Sword will learn completely different promotions than a Warrior you equipped with a Spear. Assassins would need special Cloaks and Daggers to perfect their trade, workers would be able to improve themselves by carrying Plows or Axes..... It is quite the interesting departure from the standard mechanic IMO.

Also, I intended to make "Hero Equipment" for each category. Mostly it would be the items which Hero Units currently have, but I would add a few more (or modify existing ones, like the fact there are 2 "Hero" staves, Staff of Souls and Scorched Staff). These would be gained through World Units who start with them, World Spells, Events... whatever

Spoiler Various Promotion Junk :

While I was working on adding fields to PromotionInfos from UnitInfos to get practice with C++, I was mostly learning how to do the work I would need to add the fields which I wanted. Those fields are as follows:

Vieled Nationality: This is more of a spell than a field, but requires a new field added to the unit. It allows you to appear to belong to any other Nationality, including Barbarian. Much better than the current Hidden Nationality, as you are only made Hostile to the same units as your target Civ is Hostile with (and the Target Civ themselves, as they would be able to discover the treachery quite quickly)

Age Requirements: The game already tracks when a Unit was created, and what turn you are on now. So it is really quite simple to make a Prereq for some promotions which is based on how many turns the unit has been alive for. The main catch is to remember to base it off gamespeed, and possibly map size and difficulty settings.

Spoiler New Civilizations :

Two Ideas I had for New Civilizations:

First, barbarians.

People had asked a while ago about being able to play as the Barbarians, and since then people have requested a lot of the same type of things for the Doviello. My intention was to set it up so that you gain by defeating other units and razing cities. You would be incapable of keeping or settling cities (which automatically keeps you locked in a "Require Complete Kills" setup, and blocks research, religion and many other things). I was going to either add in a spell which all your units can cast that is basically like Hire Mercenary, but can be cast anywhere and produces a unit based on your current Techs, or that produced a lot of units, but scattered around the world, OR I was going to set it up so that units spawned for the normal Barbarians were placed under your control at the start of your turn.

Plan was to just ignore the other Barbians in the game. They exist and you exist. No reason to expect that all the Barbarians get along is there?

Second: The Peacekeepers.

This Civ would have played quite differently IMO, but Balance would have been a bit tricky. All the units would be about 2 points stronger on the defense than other units, but would only have 1 or 2 offensive strength, if any. They would also have a damage limit of 90%. With the sole exception of the "Executioner," a weak who would be spawned during combat with a "Judge" unit (the only strong attacker the Civ has, but a VERY strong one, still with a 90% limit though. Thus if you haven't "Judged" a unit, you cannot Execute them). The Executioners would be set as Kamikaze, so you can only kill 1 unit with each of them, then you have to hope to spawn another if you really must kill anything else. (Alternate Unit Names were Arbiter and Enforcer)

An Alternative idea I had was to create a new "Never Hostile" tag, which would prevent any other units from EVER attacking the units which belong to this Civ, and always allow them access to other player's Territory. They would have access to numerous abilities which place buildings in other people's cities to give an advantage to each player while the building is maintained. I couldn't go for that though until I figured out how to also make it affect your diplomatic relations with the other Civ so that everyone winds up liking them a lot. They would also be able to perform Great People type missions with the majority of their units, either for themselves or others (so they could "Culture Bomb" your city to give YOU more culture, and some random benefit to themselves, possibly just improved relations with you). Also wondered about allowing them to build improvements in other people's territory which are better than normal improvements, but again, have some benefit for each Civ.

The main goal was to create a Diplomatic/Builder type of Race that was enjoyable to play still. Once a race fits that category I am hoping more modders improve that side of the game instead of always enhancing the combat related aspects and forgetting about the Builders and Diplomacy.

Spoiler Housecleaning :

I doubt anyone will care to take this on, but I also had a LOT of plans involving "housecleaning" the game.

I already did a lot of work on cleaning up the XML (Making non-used fields optional and removing them, as well as sorting the XML files in a better manner for how they will appear in WorldBuilder). This was of GREAT benefit, but made merging new versions of FfH a PITA. So I decided to wait on that till Kael "finishes" FfH at the end of the year.

The other aspect to clean up CAN be done now though. People have already noticed that there is WAY too much information being displayed on units since they can wind up with a LOT of promotions. Worst thing is that some of it is completely useless anyway. So I was hoping to change the order that items are displayed, combine a few things here and there, and in general ensure that if anything is displayed on the Mouseover screen, it is USEFUL, and CONCISE. This is possible, and in my opinion, desperately needed (even if the promotions are re-written as I would like them to be)

Another change I wanted to make and just never got around to is making it so that the Buildings Pedia Entries would list ALL the units which the Building Enables, instead of just the Default Units. There are many Unique Units in FfH which do not require the same Buildings as the base Unit does (Ogres are the best example) and are thus not referenced in the Pedia at all.

Spoiler Spells :

Main plan with spells was to move things which are done frequently in Python (in more than 1 spell, or potentially useful for mod-modders) into the DLL, and teach the AI a little bit about using them. I pray Kael already planned to do that however.

New things I wanted to add were fairly minor.

I wanted to place a Timer on Buildings, so that you could have them last for a few turns AFTER the mage created them, or have Rituals or other things which create temporary buildings. A lot can be done with buildings which would be nice to have temporary. Ideally the timer won't count down while a potential caster of the building is in the city, so all CURRENT spell buildings could be unchanged by having a timer value of 0.

Spoiler Various :

Some other things which don't quite deserve their own categories:

I wanted to create a new Route Type for the Water which is created at map generation and in no other way (except maybe a few events). This would allow enhanced Ship movement and help ensure that ships actually meet up in the High Seas for some battle on occasion.

I wanted to enable Resources to be connected by just being in your Territory. This was mainly so that you could display the number of Raw Mana Nodes a player controls and have easy references for when your mana reverts or your territory expands, or someone Casts Oghma.

I had also been working on making the AI a bit smarter with how it selects which unit to attack with from a stack, but I assume Kael and the team will get to that themselves before this December, so I don't need to entice others to do it too


Anyway, I will continue to work on these ideas, and possibly come up with others, from time to time. But if anyone likes an idea and wants to work on it, please feel free (and change it all you want). I just don't see myself as having much time to work on these projects, and would love to see them out in the community for people to develop further if they would like to.

 

[DuckAndCower]

The equipment idea is amazing and should be useful (especially for that Dungeon Adventure mod). Veiled Nationality is a great idea and is probably something the Council of Esus should have had when it was introduced.

Not sure about the civs... barbarians seem like they might be a tad boring to play as, but I guess I'm biased, as I much prefer the builder playstyle. Peacekeepers seems like they would be pillage bait with their low offensive strength, or if "Never Hostile" was implemented, wouldn't they basically be invincible?

Cleanup would be really nice, especially the buildings' 'pedia entries. It can be very confusing for a new player. Also, it's horribly annoying when a stack's info pushes off the top of the screen, so you can't see what you'll be fighting next.

Seems like a lot for one person to do, but good luck getting it all done with those mysterious new demands on your time!

 

[rocklikeafool]

I like the equipment idea. It sounds really cool. The veiled nationality, to echo DuckAndCower, should've been included in Esus in the first place. It's nice someone thought to put it in somewhere. Course I unnerstand it's not implemented yet and you may never get round to it.

 

[Mailbox]

I wanted to create a new Route Type for the Water which is created at map generation and in no other way (except maybe a few events). This would allow enhanced Ship movement and help ensure that ships actually meet up in the High Seas for some battle on occasion.

I really like this idea, and agree with yout assesment on a builder playstyle. I've been trying to head that way with MIMM because it's nice to have a option to not go to war.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Ya know, the Peacekeepers civ kinda sounds a builders dream. Myself, I'm a warmonger. But the builders would prolly love it, cuz all you do is sit there.

 

[Sureshot]

for the water route idea, might be interesting just to make Ocean tiles require 2 movement points, and Coast only 1 movement, then putting long "Coast" tile chains through the ocean. Coastal tiles already have +10% defense and +1 commerce over Ocean tiles, adding the extra movement cost to Ocean tiles and making paths through the ocean made of Coast tiles would make them ideal routes.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Huh? Why? Explain.

 

[Sureshot]

you'll have to be more specific as to what you want explained, it all seems self-explanatory to me heh

 

[rocklikeafool]

I wanna know why exactly we'd attach 2 to ocean tiles and 1 to coast, 10% defence bonus, etc. It's water; it doesn't make sense to try to attach such values imho. It should jus work the way it already does. After all, the water on the game is tryin to mirror the action of real life water as much as is possible for an animation of that size and quality.

 

[Sureshot]

the 10% defensive bonus and +1 commerce for coast tiles is how it is currently. i was just saying that rather than create a new feature to make water routes that it could be done simply and elegantly by making ocean tiles 2 move cost, and then just creating coastal tile chains through the ocean.

 

[rocklikeafool]

I know wat the tile currently is. I thought you meant to have it change by addin +10% def bonus and +1 commerce; guess not.
So, you sayin make the 'sea lanes' coastal tiles and encourage people to use em by makin the ocean tiles cost 2 movement. Ok, I get it. That might work, provided the AI decides usin the 'sea lanes' is a good idea. Huh, ya know, this whole thing would represent global currents very well.

 

[hbar]

I wanna know why exactly we'd attach 2 to ocean tiles and 1 to coast, 10% defence bonus, etc. It's water; it doesn't make sense to try to attach such values imho. It should jus work the way it already does. After all, the water on the game is tryin to mirror the action of real life water as much as is possible for an animation of that size and quality.

One explanation could be that shallow water has shoals and corals that can play a large role as "terrain" in a naval battle. After all, even the mightiest frigate can have it's hull torn asunder by an unexpected reef. As far as the commerce goes, there is more to harvest in the coastal regions then in deep ocean (mmm, shrimp)

 

[rocklikeafool]

You have a point there.

 

[Sureshot]

the AI would definitely use the sea lanes whenever they could this way, since they prefer routes that have higher defense generally, but also because with oceans have 2 movement cost the sea lanes would be the faster way

 

[rocklikeafool]

Hmm...ok. Yeah, you can tell I don't pay attention to wat the AI prefers much, btw. But, yeah, that makes sense.

Now, the key would be to make the sea lanes generate on random maps.

 

[Aeon221]

for the water route idea, might be interesting just to make Ocean tiles require 2 movement points, and Coast only 1 movement, then putting long "Coast" tile chains through the ocean. Coastal tiles already have +10% defense and +1 commerce over Ocean tiles, adding the extra movement cost to Ocean tiles and making paths through the ocean made of Coast tiles would make them ideal routes.

We tried something like that in Rhye's mod for Civ3 (I redrew the world map using sea tiles as essentially railroads aligned along traditional sea routes) but it made everything look like ass balls. Rhye ended up just buffing ship move rates because it was the only non-ugly option. So I'd really recommend against it, having tried it.

Now, if you wanted to add cloud sort of things that could move around on the seas and replenish move points if you entered one, I think that'd be pretty cool.

 

[DuckAndCower]

I think the idea, though, is to encourage encounters out in the ocean, where normally your ships can sail without running into any enemies.

It seems to me like it would be emulating currents like shipping lanes use. Maybe have an animation of water flowing instead of the coastal graphic?

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_current#Significance_to_people_and_sea_life

 

[CypherKnight]

I like your idea (among others just that this one caught me) for making something like 'water roads' faster currents that the ships would use therefore making ferrying troops back and fro from the motherland less of a hassle and also grouping up ships along these lanes and it would give the Lanun and would-be pirateers an actual hunting ground.

My only concerns is that the AI given time makes a buttload of ships. Seeing ten or twelve ships travelling along the equivalent of the Gulfstream might make this more of a curse then a blessing for Falamar's Ilk.

You might want to make any ship in the current unable to attack or even unable to move while it is engaged in the current. This would allow for a ship attacking it's prey in the current without it being overwhelmed by an armada (of several different nations potentially) floating in it. Disengaging and engaging into the current might need to be looked into as well.

Also it might give a new mechanic for water mana. Creating currents, reversing the flow, stopping them, creating shipwrecking... maybe even a UU... Water witches...

A lot of potential.

 

[rocklikeafool]

How exactly, tho, would we be able to get it to generate on random maps?

 

[eerr]

i finally hit upon a reasonable bonus of dwarven tunnels(in mountains):
mountains passable (1 mp)
dwarves are invisible while inside
dwarves get a bonus in mountains, similar to the woodland promotion.
(it applies on attack)

also
blitz should require drill 4 or (drill 2 and a certain tech)