Leader Traits Replaced with CivBonuses

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 9, 2007

ok, so Solwen came up with a great idea that, instead of having leader traits to distinguish civs we repalce it with civilization bonuses, ie benefits and maluses unique to that civ only.

in addition to this we can distinguis leaders by getting different leaders to spawn a unique world unit that is the 'king unit' for that leader. (ie for woodelvesAriel spawns an Ariel unit, Orion spawns an orion unit)

so thought i would make a thread specially for the development of this idea. i will post the finalized ideas in this and the next few posts

Empire: (by Solwen)

Spoiler :

Lizardmen: (bySolwen)

Spoiler :

Woodelves:

Spoiler :

Khemri: (By Solwen)

Spoiler :

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 9, 2007

GNERIC CULTURAL TRAITS:

Spoiler :

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 9, 2007

*Only skinks unit can be produced (and terradons riders/salamanders)
+No unit upkeep at all
+ units can "create" slaves to be sacrified when defeating another unit.
-Other units (including chameleon skinks) spawn each x turn when their according building is created.

what about sauruses? they are an important part of lizardman society no?

not sure about the no unhappyness though, that could be a bit too powerful.

how would the first 4 cities be ensured to start next to a gold resource? (it would be better with first 3 cities, or only the capital, otherwise 4 is too powerful) perhaps they could actually start with a building that provides 1 gold, like a 'Gold Vault' or something

-LM can only build improvment to exploit ressources (and road of course) and lore temples

i thought this was the case for all civs?

everything else looks cool, except that the number of slann should be limited (world unit? limited to first 6 cities?)
i especially like the lore temples

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 9, 2007

Woodelves:

Spoiler :

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

yes 4 golds was an example , it may be 3 ,2 or 1. I'm not a programmer so i don't know how to make a specific ressource spawn near a city but the main concern of making the ressource spawning near the city and not a building giving the ressource is to make the lizardmen rich by exploiting the ressource. They can not trade ressources and don't have trades route ... and on the other hand they are very wealthy so i thought it was a good idea.

About the land improvment, they can not build cottages, mines, windmill etc... They can only build improvment who give access to ressources on this ressource (ex: mine on a gold or iron source, plantation on spice etc...). For the farms i don't know. On a second thought it seems logical that they are able to make some farms.

They got several major drawbacks so i thought giving them no unhappyness would balance this (but i'm not a master balancer ). Moreover, LM nver complain, they just follow the orders of their gods, incarnated by slaans.

For the units:
"Spawning pool": Can train skinks warriors, terradons riders and salamandaers (if a swamp is in borders) and skinks chameleons spawn at irregular rate.
"Underground spawning pool": automatically spawn a "saurus" unit each 10 turns and a "kroxigor"s unit each 40 turns and a "temple guards" unit one time per Slaan
"Temple-pyramid of Itzl": automatically spawn a "saurus cold one riders" unit each 20 turns
"Holy pens of Quetzl": automatically spawn a stegadons unit each 40 turns

The turns number are just example but it represent well the way lizardmen army are built. If they loose a lot of saurus they will be in danger for a time. (as it was the case when the skavens decimated them with plague)Moreover, this way we will not see stegadons, krox and cold ones as rank and files. Moreover, the units spawning could be limitted by a max number (for each units). Something like 10 saurus, 2 krox, 1 steg for a 10 pop cities.

All the number are just examples to be balanced.

Other ideas that may be cool:
_Environment near a Lm city slowly change to jungle and swamps (building or spell ?) as they did on Albion.
_a small % that spawn appear with a random promotions (to represent the saurus blessed at their birth by some Old ones)

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

About the wood elves here are my suggestions

*Elves (standard template for elves)
+Bonus research in the first 2 ages.
+Bonus +3 to health
+Mobility free promotions for all units
+overall stronger units
-malus 25% to unit production
-High upkeep for units
-Units heal at a slower rate
-Cities grow slower (+100% time... their major drawback and weakness...population)
-can't change some of their civics (i don't know)

*the Oak of ages: Make orion and ariel not available during winter (can only "idle" during winter)

*Progress of the Seasons: Instead of making 4 turns=1 year (will be too long for the time scale i think) why don't we just say that turn 1 is the spring of year 1000, turn 2 is the summer of year 1001, turn 3 is the autumn of year 1002 and so on ?

*Archery
Archer get the drill II promotion at creation + city garrison

*Friends of the Forest
all wood elves units get the woodsman II and flanking I free promotions
"wood spirit" (dryads etc...) units spawn randomly on forest inside the wood elves borders (and can do nothing in winter)
Why the wood elves have problems with mountains ? the falcon riders live there

*Spite
I don't think there is a need to be malus for that as they have already some strong drawbacks as elves.

Good job, we are getting some very interresting civs who will be truely uniques (not only their units). This is very good for the warhammer atmosphere and last not least, greatly raise the replayability (and the attractivness of the "minor races" like ind, nippon etc...)

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

small change to the lizardmen:

they get woodsman II in jungle instead of woodsman III ( wich is reserved to chameleon skinks)
They have only interrior trades routes instead of no trade routes (as with "mercantilism")

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

Khemri: The power of the Afterworld

*Faith in after death ascension
+ A "Priest-king" unit spawn each x turn (act as a gg but gives less xp) and automatically dies x turn later (of old age).
+ Workers can build "Necropolis" land improvment (give bonus happyness). A Necropolis being pillaged gives a LOT of $ but is not destroyed
+ When an unit with 5xp or more dies, she has a 50% chance of being "teleported" back to a "Necropolis" land improvment. When a priest-king dies, he is teleported back into a Necropolis.
+ Khemri can "sacrifice" any of her unit on a necropolis.This unit is added to the necropolis "dead". A necropolis can hold 10 units max + 1 priest king. Dead units inside a necropolis can't be moved, used etc...they are dead and should not even be shown on the map (maybe remplaced by "sarcophago" units whose sole purpose is knowing how much dead you have in your necropolis).
+Khemri cities can build a "Pyramids" building that acts as a small necropolis (5 dead units + 1 dead priest king max).
+ When khemri is blasted by the great Nagash spell, all the "necropilized" dead units come back to life in their undead form. (catapult become skull catapult, dead wizards become tomb scorpions etc...). All these units are "immortal"
+ Dead priest-king become tomb-kings and are immortal too.
+ 50% of the not necropolized units dying by nagash spell transform into lowly skelleton warriors.
+ 3 lowly skeletton warriors are created for each pop point killed by nagash spell
- When Khemri is blasted by the great nagash spell all his cities are reduced to 1/3 of their original population, his lands become nefarious, all his land improvments (exept roads and necropolis) are destroyed, all his units dies and he lost all his diplomatic contacts.

*The nehekhara kingdom (before Nagash spell)
+ +25% units production
+ bonus research
+ Can levy troops at the begining
+ Land improvment are built 25% faster
+ Can enslave units
+ "desert warrior" free promotion
- High upkeep for cities
- +2 unhappyness (petty quarreling against priests kings city states)
-If a necropolis is pillaged, the nearest city riots.

*The khemri kindom (After Nagash spell)
+ Can enslave unit
+ Can recruit mercenaries (+50% cost)
+ can sacrifice slaves to create new units( according to the type of units sacrified)
+ Khemri troops don't crumble is they are not with a necromancer
+ liche priests and tomb kings never suffer drawback from failed spells.
+ desert warrior free promotion
+ 0 upkeep for units.
+ Immune to corporations and other religions spreading.
+ No health, no unhappyness and no starvation for cities.
- City don't grow exept if a slave is sacrified into it or if an ennemy unit is killed inside the khemri borders (nearest city take "food" from this)
- can not produce units exept liche priest
- undead khemri troops can do nothing (can only fight back) if a liche priests or tomb king unit is not on their stack.
- If a necropolis is pillaged, the nearest city riots.
-if a tomb king is killed, 1/2 of the army in a 10 square radius is killed (brought back to the necropolis as they are immortal)
- can not build land improvment (exept mines on iron, gold etc...)
- No trades route at all
- No trade agreement
- No "free passage" (don't know the english term srry) exept with alliances.
- No map trading

There it is, complicated again but khemri is really complicated as there are 2 civs in 1 (before and after)

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 10, 2007

here are a couple of the things that masada posted in the brainstorming thread:

Bretonnia: Something involving crusades.. actually just a call to arms for the Bretonnian armies normally there is only a small standing army defending Bretonnia the rest of the army is dotted around the country in small groups split between various lords and dukes... calling something like that together would take ages, in reality it used to take ages to call together a medieval army anyway... so something to allow a Bretonnia player to call together a large army or at least assemble one over time... so either a power to draft Knights every X turns from cities or a wonder that constructs new knights every X turns (with no upkeep?) and perhaps a castle type tile improvement cuts the amount of food available.. castles take up a fair amount of room increases shield production and increases defense.. just an improved version of the current fort in vannila civ which is next to useless... (there is a alot of commerce and industry generated by building a military base..)

Cathay: Well Cathay has a massive army simple, they need one Cathay is the size of the Old World and constantly fights with the various goblinoid empires and other darker things combine that with a massive population of rural peasants and that allows a massive army to be drawn together in times of need (they treat it like a type of defered tax) draft effect X3 along with a high upkeep (it costs alot to equip and feed such a large host even if you dont pay them...

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 10, 2007

Khemri could be extremely fun to develop

heres what i think:

Spoiler :

overall very good ideas solwen, the conversion from living to dead i think will be the trickies part of the whole thing. perhaps a leader change is in order after the spell, (as in the hyborium swapping in FfH)

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 10, 2007

High Elves:

Spoiler :

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

For the Khemri change you made all seems good to me.

Tomb kings do pay mercenaries some times where they are in dire need. Especially Tutankhanut. These mercenaries are almost always arabyan as these 2 people have a somewhat understanding of each other

I'v got a national project that would be cool for Khemri:

Make it only buildable in Numas (or maybe not). "Bonds of the past" that gives:
_the city grows with living peoples
Desert gives +1 food.
Can build: Numas milicia (cheap low archers and spearmens)
undead production: -25%
2 Farms are built near the city

The city of Numas lead by Tuthankhanut has a LIVING human population that live with the undead in symbiosis. They are not slaves and they consider their tomb king to be a god reincarnate. When Numas goes to war, the undead legions are accompagnied by the humans of the city
This is real fluf from last tomb king army book and it shows ,accuratly, that Khemri and the tomb kings are not evil, as the vampires are. Khemri is bellicist but not evil...The tomb kings continue to abide as they did in their "living lives". The undeath is also considered to be a great curse for them, not a gift

The tomb kings are very isolationists (even more after the differents waves of tomb plunderers on their land) so: No map trading ^^.

And give tomb king +50% damage from fire.

solwen · Oct 10, 2007

The Power Of Order and Dicipline or the power of Sarathai (the world-dragon aka Ulthuan)

*Elves (standard template for elves)
+Bonus research in the first 2 ages.
+Bonus +2 to health for every city
+all elves move a base 2 squares
+overall stronger units
-malus 25% to unit production
-High upkeep for units
-Units heal at a slower rate
-Cities grow slower (+100% time... their major drawback and weakness...population)

*militia
+Cottage and village improvements have a chance of spawning a highelf militia unit (random melee, spear or archer) the same as how treemen are spawned in ancient forests in FfH good idea but wouldn't it be cooler for brettonians ?
+ Can levy troops at the begining and dosnt cause unhappyness
+ spawned militia units start with 'homeland' promotion as per FfH and combat I ?
-high upkeep of levied troops
-levying reduces population
- levying troops are always bowmen and x turn or X xp later they become spearmen.

*diciplined
+all Highelf units built normally (ie not levied) start with a 'Diciplined' Promotion giving them Commando, and drill one benefits, as well as making them loyal to their homeland (loyalty benefits as per FfH)
+ highels cities can build Training yards which can get 2 units stationed in a city to 'fight' each other, (like the belseraph arena in FfH) where they both have a chance of dying (50%?) and both get EXP.
I don't think high elves who are short on population would fight to death. But this idea is uber for orcs and ogres !
-Highelf units are very expensive to produce (unless they are levied)
-More war waryness exept when fighting Druchii (war is bad for HE as it moves them closer to instinction)
-If the HE loose the "Altar of Khaine" landmark :+1 unhappyness in all cities and +2 if it is the druuchi player who gots it"
-x3 revolutions time when changing civic

*Early culture / magic
+highelf cities shoul be able to build a few extra cultural buildings early on which become obsolete later on. or have unique variants of old buildings like theatres and obliscs which provide more culture.
+Highelf libraries should provide extra culture and/or magical bonus to units, ie +2 EXP to magical units built in the city
+magical units gain EXP faster than normal
-cultural buildings require more hammers
-mages have less strength due to more studying of magic I think mages strenght doesn't represent their combat skill but the magical destruction they inflict. Moreover, on the tabletop game, HE mage have fairly decent stats (better than humans wiz for ex) +Mages are powerful and do not suffer from failing a spell.
-If the "Isle of the dead" landmark is destructed, demons hordes are unleashed in the Ulthuan borders and all the HE mages die.

*seafaring
+all Ships get +1 movement, retreat chance, bonus to strength and +1 cargo space.
+the capital is always built next to coastal square
+Coastal cities get +1 food for each square already with 1 food
+Can use the pearls resource from FfH (highelf Only resource)
+ HE "Corsairs" have double range of blockade
+fishing boats can build coastal cottages like the lanun in FfH
+ Can give independance to 3 colonies and still control them
-inland cities get unhappiness hmm why ?
-If the He player don't have a city on each continent + 2 unhappyness

there needs to be more maluses, not only extra cost. i dontwant them to be unplayable becauseyou go bankrupt in the first 10 turns

Nice idea, we are productive that's nice and don't forget to put "Druchii hatred" to the HE promotion

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 10, 2007

Ok, on the khemri,

i read up about tutankahnut, and your idea of the "bonds of the past" national wonder is great. maybe make it buildable in any city not in the capital?

The tomb kings actually want to try regain their former glory and are very expansionist arnt they?, i suppose map trading dosnt really help with that though...

Tomb kings nad liche priests have the 'Embalmed' promotion giving them regenreration (minor), but +50% damage from fire attacks)

On Highelves, your changes are good

The cottages spawning militia: in the old highelf army book there is a section called "call to arms" which says "All elvels able to bear arms are honour bound to spend time serving as warriors in the levies of thir cities, towns and villages.... in times of great danger, a general raising of the citizen levy will swell the forces of each relm many times over." so i figured, "how best can we show this willing levieing of troops without overpowering HE?" and that was my conclusion

Also make the randomly appeared militia dissapear after x turns (going home)

maybe combat 1 could be too much, we would need to play test.

why always bowmen> wodelves are the archers here, HE are good all rounders.

Trainig: the short populations are dissinsentives to train, but the EXp is an insentive, so players need to decide what more important.

id rather make the alter of khain a wonder that can be raced for between DE and HE, and whoever gets it is hated extra fiercly by the losing team.

more later, Uni calls

EDIT: thats true about mages but i couldnt think of any maluses, the isle of dead thing is a bit over the top too. i wasthinking something a little less devasting

i was running out of ideas with the inland cities are unhappy thing. the theory was that HE like water, and if theres no ocean they get sad

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 10, 2007

OK solwen, i think this is enough to keep us going for a bit. now that these rough sketches are done for each civ can we start thinking about how each idea could be implemented? (im no programmer, but it shouldnt be too hard, that way Leffer and SidArthur have a better idea of what we want)

also can we start talking about the king units individual benefits? we can move completed designs to the digestion thread for Ploe to look over and any one else to balance and look over.

shall we start with Empire (ive don a bit of thought on how king units could work, ill post them later today after Uni)

Masada · Oct 11, 2007

hmmm been doing some thinking, and i have come to the conclusion that Warhammer armies are problematic to represent in a real sense, this ties into whole national power idea

There are very few armies in warhammer that are solely profesional soldiers...

High Elves: Spearmen and Archers are levied during wartime
Dark Elves: Warriors are levied during wartime
The Empire: freecompany, archers and realitstically the Electors own militaries are levied in the service of the Empire
Ogre Kingdoms: no real soldiers
Tilea: militia and mercenaries
Brettionia: the kings personal forces then his dukes forces (same position as the electors)
Chaos: most of the horde would be volunteer warriors

So that brings an interesting question to light... we cant hope to represent all the complexities of warhammer... and from memory Rhye's reason for his powers was rather simple...

Germany has Blitzkrieg not because that is representitive of Germanys history as a whole but because it suited his unique victory conditions

most of the nations have that same filter applied to them

For example i would choose these qualities for the High Elves:

-Cities grow slower (+100% time... their major drawback and weakness...population)
+starts game with more techs (i.e another age ahead or so)
-units cost more (50% more would be acceptable and a population point?)
+High Elven units are quite a bit better... (lets say +3 strength on average and a faster stronger navy (by faster im talking about Galleons speed or destroyer speed)
+can levy militia with a cost of only one population (could be like a worker in the sense it can remerge with the city)

So what does this mean for the High Elf player? in a warhammer map they would not be stuck on Ulthuan at the start (Civ3 mod i remember that...) with a small population and a small strong military so what does a nation with a small strong military and a small population do? expand to places where they cannot be attacked easily Islands would be the natrual places (Rhye hardcoded a preference for civilizations to settle in places)

Dark Elves
-Cities grow slower (+100% time... their major drawback and weakness...population)
+starts game with more techs (i.e another age ahead or so)
-units cost more (50% more would be acceptable and a population point?)
+Dark Elven units are good but lets give them only +2 strength on average and a stronger navy but not faster
+all Dark Elven units have a chance to enslave, enslaved units can produce a large shield bonus and pillage more (this would offset the weakness of Dark Elven units compared to high elven units, better represents the Dark Elves willingness to throw away lives, human wave tactics anyone?)

So what does this mean for a Dark Elf player? that the only real target for a Dark elf player apart from raiding would be the high elves... similar low build rates similar weaknesses...and not with the large amount of troops needing to be cleared from the Old World cities or the Lizardmen in thier jungles

The Empire:The Power of the Electors: States Rights
+Reduced corruption (the Electors rule themselves most of the time, the office of Emperor exists only from convention rather than any devotion to the throne, i get the feeling that the capitol tends to be only where the Electors decide to meet) this would represent the regional nature of the Empire corruption and inefficency tends to be easy to stamp out in smaller regional divisions
-normal imperial armies (since the player assumes the role of the holder of the title of Emperor) are ruinously expensive (the Emperor normally only has access to his state army and the Reiksguard Knights and only as much money to run "the imperial army" as the Electors decide to give them) these would represent the armies of the Emperor himself
+the Empire can levy a mass of troops for a limited time or for their upkeep they could be even more expensive and cost absolutely massive amounts a turn to leave the borders of the Empire
-cities other than the capital get large -happiness modifiers for each unit garrisoning it
+cities can automatically spawn troops in advent of attack... based on the size? or amount of shields?

So what does this mean for a Empire player? That like the empire you would be crippled with a small army under your direct control and a bunch of fractious feuding cities that have no interest in helping you and only bother to answer you call to arms on the condition that they remain in your borders... probably severely limiting the size of the Empire to its natrual borders (in a civ version of Warhammer, the Empire would steamroll everything in the Old World fairly quickly you just need to look at the map, its twice as large as Bretonnia and and three times as large as Estalia, Kilsev and Tilea with more cities than all of them combined almost... so it needs some fairly strict limits placed on it.

Pretty much every nation in this mod should have difficulty fighting for long periods in grand wars of conquest most of the wars should be small and with limited gains... ie trading a city back and forth between you and your enenmy for quite a long time... (or find out how Rhye uses terrain to restrict nations, which tends to be rather unwarhammerly)

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 11, 2007

im tending to agree with you masada, we wont be able to represent EVERY side of EVERY race with unique bonuses and penalties. what we should do is set a limited number of bonuses that we can allot to each civ, and an equal, balancing ammount of penalties. (about those civs that like levying, it wound be too hard to diversify the method of levying)
for example let each civ have 4 bonuses, and thus 4 penalties, or 1 major bonus, and 3 minor bonuses, along with a magor penalty and 3 minor penalties.
eg: woodelves

Spoiler :

For the woodelves this means that they have quite a restricted home range, as the Oak of ages effectively limits the range of militray control (poor moral = poor fighters) but later in the game they can expand this by building the OoA sapling wonder. it also means they have small populations, and small armies, (due to pop penalty and unit prices), however they are very speciallised armies that stick to forested areas and fight from the shadows and defend more than attack (less strength, better archers) it also means that Woodelves stick to the kind of terrain that they love, lush forested regions, they stear away from ice and desert, and tailor their territory with enchanted forests ,tree villages and orchards.
all this pretty much suits the WE character. any less and i would feel done out of a cool feature (but if not all of these are implementable i will understand

, (im not too sure about moral unless Leffer or SidArthur can work on a merge of lord Olleus' moral mechanics)) any more and it would be complicating things a tad.

everything bar the moral is doable with promotions, buildings, unit alterations, and already implemented mechanics like Unique features, nothing new, so it should all work reasonably smoothly.

Masada · Oct 12, 2007

Wood Elves
+Woodland Defender (we shall see what it actually entails when we have the map and can balance it but probably extra movement in forests and i would prefer +50% str when attacking or defending into or out of forest but costs population?)
+Oak of ages always spawns in the capital city etc
+gets better forest stuff
-no mines no clearing etc
-population grows 100% slower

Actually lets for ease have a look at Elves in general:
The 100% slower population growth should be standard to all elves
Elven units should all be more expensive but better and cost population
And they should all start with a tech advantage

Then we tweak the rest to suit the various elven teams

Humans: Would work like normal civ teams with only team negatives and bonuses.... (ie growth etc would remain the same)

Undead: Would have similar limitations... ie Khermi and Von Carstiens are fairly similar with regards to being undead (controlling units, citiy growth shouldnt matter and units should be created in another way...)

Chaos: Would be completely different from normal humans... ie Chaos should be able to levy massive hordes with no upkeep but have limited siege weapons and extra pillaging bonuses and slaving

That would save us a huge amount of time and make the coding for the individual teams much simplier... only having a few changes from the core "racial" identifier

Psychic_Llamas · Oct 12, 2007

remember we discussed racial bonuses before? didnt we decide that that was just to limited? i cant remember.
anyway what i really want is to wait for the bts beta, see whats what and then design ONE CIV AT A TIME. finisgh one civ completely and then move to the next, and then the next

Masada · Oct 12, 2007

what im trying to say is... every elven civ we have decided on so far (well drafted) has features in common these three features

The three traits that Elves would hold in common are:

The 100% slower population growth should be standard to all elves
Elven units should all be more expensive but better and cost population
And they should all start with a tech advantage

If we standardize a portion of the Elven traits (ie High, Wood and Dark Elves have a 100% slower population growth instead of 120-130 and 140 respectively) all we need to do is impliment it into one civ... then copy and paste the code into the others...

making eleven units more expensive and costing population wouldnt be all that hard to do (High Elves and Dark Elves are light and dark opposites... realistically there are few differences between the armies, dragons vs dark dragons, mages vs sorceresses, archers vs repeating crossbowmen etc... the notable differences ie Witch Elves etc can be done indipendatly...) but the basic shield changes, population cost and strength costs can be copied pasted the little differences then only need to be balanced...

the tech advantage would be a simple cut paste once you code it in once...

but simply speaking they are not racial traits... they are traits in common... the raiding bonus and slaving bonus of Dark Elves can be cannabalized for Chaos...

Standardization would reduce the work load... leaving probably only one or two completely indipendant traits per civilization leaving every civ a new experience to play but still holding similar traits for ease of programming and implimentation and for the sake of the players sanity (nothing like being forced into a massive learning curve)

Then once we have each civilzation sorted out we can then go as wild as we want with little fixes and whatnot (but think about it this way Rhye the genuis that he is... is still balancing things after how long?, and with a similar shaped world and similar civilizations... so what can we learn from his great mod... an absolute ton... but look at what he has done and its perfect because it perfect.. simple easy and just so well polished)

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