MarnokMod .34

[Marnok]

When the mod is ready, I'll post in this thread. Delayed by sister giving birth this morning, and electricians working in house.

Now that the mechanics of Explorable Lairs are in the main mod, it gives me a nice clean slate to start again with my modmod. It also means, I suspect, other people could be making seperate modmods which feature explorable lairs. Therefore I don't want to do anything to change how the basic system works in my modmods or it will cause all kinds of confusion.

First version will be a test version for the brave! There will have to be a fair bit of tweaking and testing.

The plan:

1. New lair spawning system.
I have toned it down a bit from the mad million-monster events of the previous version, but a lot will still be in the settings.py to allow wilder spawns if you prefer.
I am thinking that lairs, when not being explored, will spawn normal creatures, and only pop a supervillain as the result of a random event.

2. Take control of lair placement
Using settings.py so you can create your own playstyle experience; lots of lairs, or just a few...

3. Simpler "area-control" thing
I am doing a much simpler version of the area control by villages etc. Improvements can be added to a list which lets them be controlled. This means if you don't like the system, the list of improvements can just be emptied and the system won't do anything. I will start with villages/forts controllable and putting control on surrounding tiles. I might add in barbarian allies being able to control dungeon-lairs. When buccaneer's dens go back in, Lanun would be able to control them, and so on.

4. More lair exploration events
I have a few ideas of my own, plus I am stealing other peoples ideas to add even more diversity to exploration results.
Also I'll be looking at regular events which happen to target lairs. The spawn of a raiding party, placement of a magic item on the lair (I am changing the script so items can't be picked up while the lair still exists, unless you control the lair! so if you lose Orthus' Axe in a dungeon, you have to clear the dungeon to get it back...!), creation of a big bad villain, upgrading the type of monster produced at the lair... all of that kind of thing.


As always I'll be looking for feedback

CURRENT VERSION:
http://www.marnok.com/Civ4/MarnokMod.rar

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

awesome, looking forward to the new version

 

[Kael]

Very cool. Talk your sister into using the name generator on her new baby!

 

[Marnok]

Very cool. Talk your sister into using the name generator on her new baby!

lol - I'll try!

 

[Caradoc]

Some random thoughts on lair outcomes:

- Spawn an illusionary version of yourself (a la Black Mirror) but hostile
- Spawn a mad Puppeteer and his gang of Puppets
- Spawn a group of Wolves, Lions, etc.
- Spawn a tame Griffin
- Trigger event that warns of Dragon ahead. If player proceeds, encounter weaker version of Acheron (with Dragon Treasure)
- Trigger event that warns of Lich ahead. If player proceeds, encounter weaker version of Barbatos (with Staff)
- Trigger event that warns of Giants ahead. If play proceeds, encounter group of Giants (with Gold)
- Hold unit captive until rescued (don't know how this might work)
- Free some Slaves
- Rescue a Damsel in Distress (Courtesan?)
- Teleport unit to Capital
- Promote unit to Hero
- Promote unit to Hidden Nationality
- Promote unit to Subdue Beast
- Cast "Wonder" on unit

(And I'll have to look out for the those electricians. We don't need another kid around here.)

 

[Wauthan]

A few ideas for events:

- Vengeful witch curses unit into random animal.
- Healing spring cures all ailments, including insanity. (Frequent dungeon explorers suffer a lot of disabilities).
- Unit teleported to random tile (or dungeon or landmark).
- Kill evil cult leader and saved child of influential noble from being sacrificed. +1 relations to random civ.
- Kill evil cult leader. Turns out he was the child of influential noble. -1 relations to random civ.
- Find mysterious old master that trains you in advanced combat. (Unit upgraded to next tier unit).
- Rescue magnificent mount from evil druid. (Unit becomes basic cavalry, or +10 xp for unit that's already cavalry).
- Find withered old sage that trains you in the art of magic. (Unit becomes Adept, or +10 xp for magic users.)
- Kill a monster only to find out that it was a unbelievably talented artist. Collection of unique art boosts nearest town with +100 culture.
- Epic battle saves the life of village worth of kidnapped peasants. Unit severely damaged but spawns settler.
- Eruption of lifemagic turns this and surrounding tiles into jungle.
- Eruption of deathmagic withers this and surrounding tiles into desert.

 

[Marnok]

- Spawn an illusionary version of yourself (a la Black Mirror) but hostile

This would be cool, maybe doppelgangers or a "mirror of opposition"

- Hold unit captive until rescued (don't know how this might work)

Already in thanks to Kael and the gang

- Free some Slaves

I have one like this in testing. Of course if you have slavery or are evil, you can take them as your own.

- Promote unit to Hero

I am putting "adventurer" promo back in with a couple of changes.

(And I'll have to look out for the those electricians. We don't need another kid around here.)

heh, usually takes 9 months after a power cut...

 

[Marnok]

- Vengeful witch curses unit into random animal.

This could be interesting. Especially if you get an animal which retains its previous skills.

- Unit teleported to random tile (or dungeon or landmark).

There is one like this in .34!

- Kill evil cult leader and saved child of influential noble from being sacrificed. +1 relations to random civ.
- Kill evil cult leader. Turns out he was the child of influential noble. -1 relations to random civ.

This made me think, what if the evil cult leader escapes... you create a named adventurer under control of a rival player. Might be interesting to have a dungeon result which directly affects a neighbour instead of just yourself!

- Find mysterious old master that trains you in advanced combat. (Unit upgraded to next tier unit).

I'm testing one like this already!

 

[Gelvan]

When the mod is ready, I'll post in this thread. Delayed by sister giving birth this morning, and electricians working in house.

I love it how you guys on this forum talk about real life, as if this "real life thing" is only some kind of dream ...somewhere beyond the horizon of being fallen from heaven...
sorry for OT
and all the best for your sis and your nephew

 

[giddion]

Just wondering how this awesome mod is progressing?

 

[Marnok]

Thanks for asking!

I'm having one of those times when I seem to be constantly busy, but never actually achieving anything! So I have a lot of half-finished bits here. Also I've been playing the base 0.34 in my spare time (ha!) to get a feel for how things are running now. Can't mod something I don't understand well.

I am thinking of a release schedule, perhaps:

MarnokMod 2.1 : Reborn
simple stuff like putting a settings.py file in to allow intensity of lairs to be optional; also a few events to allow non-exploration related spawning of bigbads and other results.

MarnokMod 2.2 : Villager
add in village related stuff, plus some other area-control (simplified and clearer than previous versions) and perhaps a few playstyle related things; like fishing villages which can upgrade to coastal towns, where you can "buy" ships (send a worker, spends time and gold making ship). For those games where you are playing with no settlers or single-city, or just can't build a city on the coast for some reason but need to get out to sea!

MarnokMod 3.3 : Adventurer
Add in Adventurers... where I have lots of ideas which seem cool and fun, but might turn out to be a nightmare to implement! Also bundle up dozens more lair-events.

I am almost hesitant to discuss the Adventurer ideas, for these reasons:

1. Someone will steal the idea and release their own Adventurer mod, scooping me.
   (I realise this is total wishful thinking. Ages ago I posted my ideas for "explorable lairs" hoping somone would implement it for me, and look where that got me.)
2. People will like the ideas and nag me for them constantly.
3. People won't like the ideas and will fireball me for even opening my mouth.
4. I won't get it to work and I'll ruin my modmod reputation. "Hey didn't you used to be Marnok?"

So anyway, here's the basic though process behind adventurers:
I thought it would be good if adventurer types could sometimes cross neutral land without open borders, so I thought, give them an ability like Loki so they can just wander about as private individuals. A bit like "HN++". It may even be that they won't attack / be attacked by enemies while "cloaked" so they can actually adventure in enemy cities. Of course they run the risk of discovery.
The reasons; I wanted to include more mini-quests, like the treasure chests, where a player may be encouraged to explore the world in a different way. It might be a good way to help bring a sense of the world and the diverse cultures in your particular game... well, my RP side thought so anyway.
This ability could "wear off" and turn to HN at random times - adventurers have a nack for getting into trouble. Also a player could hunt down and "outlaw" adventurers in their own land with similar effect. Various actions could also cause the status to switch.

OK, now I had an idea that adventurers could journey and quest and stuff - but I decided to expand it and hit on some interesting ideas.

Like, what if adventurers could take actions in cities, even cities you don't own... so if my Archer hero travels to a rival city where they have Bowyers, he could upgrade himself to a Longbowman This could be peaceful trade (costs money, some money goes to city's controller) Or it could be theft or underhanded in some way. If he enters a Balseraph city with an arena, he could fight in it. (Maybe he would find himself fighting involuntarily as an event.) Stable? Buy/Steal a horse and sidegrade to a mounted unit type. That sort of thing...

Also, there might be special promotions like Ratcatcher (needs to be in a city with the Ratcatcher guild, gains ability to commit Theft in cities to steal gold at some personal risk), that kind of thing... so if you want a true Rogue adventurer and the Ratcatcher guild is in a rival city, there's a mini-quest for you right there!

I realise there would need to be limits, checks and balances in here. So I thought, why not adapt the Espionage point system to suit the purpose? Adventure Points or something. Just an abstract way to limit the effect.
Any Crime type event would of course have a high risk of turning the character Outlaw, even have diplomatic effects. But, the Adventure Point cost would be reduced based on the city's Crime level. High crime city = more chance foreign adventurers will get up to no good! But also more random events which target adventurers (adventurers are always getting into trouble).

I started expanding the idea - and this is where there is a danger of getting Silly of course... Bounty Hunter promotion lets you capture adventurers... captured adventurers can be executed, turned into special Slaves, forced to fight in Arenas... basically they come under the control of their captor but remember which is their homeland and might escape (or of course be rescued, making an on-the-fly mini-quest!)
Adventurers could have Gender and possible romantic involvement with other adventurers - already in a romance reduces the chances of straying, but if they have romance with a foriegn adventurer one or the other may switch civs to be with their love...
Players can Guard lairs to prevent other civs/explorers from entering.

Some of the additional quests I had in mind where things like a magic item/scroll/macguffin which allows a certain spell to be cast once, at a certain place, for some big effect. Read this scroll atop the Pyre of the Seraphic to (get your world spell back, cast a unique worldspell level magic, gain a magic item, gain a special promotion, unleash a monster, find a secret hidden cache of gems, replace this quest-item with a different quest-item for multi-stage adventures, reveal a new dungeon somewhere in the world, etc...) There would be a set of magic items which allow the spell, and also allow themselves to be examined to determine their effect (which would be randomly allocated at the start of the game). Options for items might be - one to use in each religions Holy City, at a specific unique feature, maybe others. Would probably have a list of Good Effects For Caster, Good Effects for Area, and Bad Effects. AI can then use Good For Caster types when they want, Good For Area only if it is their own or an ally's area, Bad Effects only in enemy or neutral territory.

Well, I've rambled on a bit, but you see what I'm thinking.

 

[Skitters]

dropped jaw at the ambition smiley

I'll try not to pester you every day until 3.3 Adventurer + Platinum edition is released. Fabulous ideas here! Love the way that it'd effectively bring (some of) the non-conquest focus back from the wildlands to the cities.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

wow! you truly have a ton of awesome ideas there Marnok. take your time and I'm sure you'll gift the community with a jewel

 

[Marnok]

couple of typos in my long post there, of course I meant 2.3 Adventurers.

Thanks for the positive replies, I'll give this a go then. I'll do my best to put together a 2.1 at the weekend, I'll start a fresh mod folder and keep it simple so at least I am started.

 

[Verdian]

That... that sounds just beautiful.

I wish you luck.

 

[Marnok]

NEWS:

my excuse for not uploading this weekend is that my phone line has been killed by lightning! BT are sending an engineer on Monday. I had hoped that more lines would be hit in the street so they would prioritise it but it seems mine is the only one hit. (my line touches a tall tree at the end of the street, which might be something to do with it).

Anyway, sorry again guys!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

no worries man, stuff just happens

 

[Hanny]

Marnok, i have anumber of models you are welcome to use for your Adventurer class, ill upload to file front on monday for you to take a look at them and see if you like.

 

[Kjara]

Random idea inspired by the adventurers bit.
What about the idea that if your adventurers work together with other adventures from around the world(or possibly just other adventurers from your own land) to conquer harder dungeons? We already could have the metal line as warriors, the adept line as mages, the priest line as clerics, the recon line as thieves. You form a group, and then (eg.) check a) if theres a "warrior" in the group, and b) if the warrior is high enough level(or some random check where its more likely to pass at a higher level) to avoid certain bad situations in various lair events?

Example: Your axeman and ranger are a group(perhaps they both have to be sitting on the dungeon tile when either of the two explores), you hit a event where you run into a group of enemies guarding a group of prisoners. If your ranger is much higher level than your axeman, you might want to let him try to sneak in and free the prisoners(with his level/tech level affecting not only his chance of success, but how likely kinda bad(discovered and flees) vs very bad outcomes(discovered and wounded/killed) happen if he fails), if the axeman is much higher level, you might want to try to let him just run in screaming and attacking the enemy(with his level again effecting his chance of winning). If you don't have either a "warrior type" or a "rogue type" you have to just pass on, or perhaps just have to take some other default action.

Heck, checks for specific promotions would be cool too. Lets say you run into a wolf inside the lair, if you have subdue animal you can subdue it and gain the wolf as a unit. Aka more reason to explore with decent units, rather than junk units, so you can throw them away if they become withered/diseased, etc.

 

[Marnok]

no worries man, stuff just happens

It's still bleeping happening. Bleeping BT didn't fix the fault today and after about an hour on hold and waiting for replies I got a robot voice telling me "we have not fixed your fault today. Sorry" which then hung up on me! I know we all suffer from information overload and want to cut it down a bit but cmon some kind of bleeping clue please!