Modmod for a better hippus-merc-system requested ;)

[Sangfugol]

Hi,
first thanks for this great mod. Please excuse my bad language and other things. As stated in the title, i would like to see a better/additonal mercsystem implemented, because of the Rhoanna-entry. This isn´t meant as a request for Kael and his team, as they are busy to balance the mod and want do other even better things, but for modmoders like magistercultum , as i have no clue how to do this myself and actually also no time to change my deficit. But as i´ve seen, how you moddified the game, i think most of it will be doable.

Here is the idea:

intentions of the changes:
-the wiki of the hippus makes them to an mercenary civ, not to a mercentsfriendly civ (maybe remove some abilities of their hero), so i wanted to have some mercenarylike flavor, so i wanted to give the mercenaries something similar to hidden nationality back.

unintended, so hopefully balanced
-mercenary is in competition to coe and in some things stronger, I hoped this has been weakenend by the restrictions
-instead there is an great synergy between merc and coe-units (while it´s possible to have a lot of strong mercs, they can´t capture a city after having declared war – the coe-units can)
- to have a chance against this we need an counter – and here it´s possible to boost the empyrean (first clean your own house, before you switch to order and bring the war to the agressor) and also the defender-treat


Promotions:
Hidden nationality:
Same as the current promo

cast Hidden Nationalilty:
caster will get promo hidden nationalityIf i talk from now on about Hidden Nationality/HN, I mean this promo.

Mercenary:
Same as HN, but without the possiblity to show its nationality(so they can´t even capture a city after declaring war); -1 strength; mercenaries can get on HNships and the other way (bougth mercenaries start with promo)

(Holy) Headhunter:
“Promo for Specialzised Empyrean Units, who want to save the country from unknown troops in times of peace” +50% against units who hides their Nationality (HN, Mercenaries)

Question is, if there is a need to change the sun3 sorcspell. It should either remove all three promos or only the “cast hidden promo”, as otherwise the Units with the Headhunterpromo would lose their advantage.


Buildings:

Hippus Mercenary Headquarter (requires guild of nine in city):
Unit built in city will get the mercenarypromotion
-25% millitary production (as a mercenary unit is not a regular army unit and needs some “special training and extra experiences”)
+50% cityupkeep (due to the specialtraining and the extra experiences – I would like, if the promo would give the unit +1upkeep, which sounds hard to accomplish)

Lanun Pirate Headquarter (requires tech of the piratunit and/or guild of nine in city)
25% chance unit built in city will get the mercenary-promotion (don´t want them to become a merc-superpower like the hippus, but I want to have hn-boardingparties and also after the pirateship-era some strong HNships)
+100% upkeepcosts (pirats like to have some chaotic parties, you know?)

Both of them should be national wonders, although I doubt, you would want them in more than one city. If a %-chance isn´t possible reduce the millitary production to 50% and make it 100%)

Additions to existing Buildings:

Empyrean Temple:
5% chance unit will get the Headhunterpromo. (10% if malakim)

Esus buidling/Smuggling Ring (requirements: if Smuggling Ring, then esus and octupus only + undercouncil as civic and no resolution; I don´t see ashenveil as an real undercouncilreligion and it has other advantages).
5% (10 if svartalvar) chance unit will get the cast Hidden Nation promo (smugglars!!!, nightwatch takes to long to research)

If a %-chance isn´t possible make it as a national wonder(similar to the headquarters) or a ritual with some chances to turn every unit. Adding it to the religion-promo or the Empyrean-UUs would also be a good alternative.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Maybe a simpler way of doing things is to borrow a page out of RFC and have the option for the Hippus to, if they have a city with the Guild of the Nine, hire out their own troops as mercenaries for a set period of time, as a way of raising funds. (but you would need somethign to blaance them out, because they're already pretty strong, and giving them more bonuses/options is probably not what they need.)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I've been planning on changing mercenaries for quite some time, but haven't gotten around to figuring out how to do it yet. Honestly, I'm not a fan your proposed implementation.

I was planning on making the hire mercenary spell trigger events (I haven't figured out how to make events yet, since I've been busy lately) that allow you to negotiate with different mercenary leaders to contract out some troops. Different choices would be offered at different times and give you different units with different promotions (HN would be a common choice) at different prices. These would include units of different races and even UUs (but not heroes, unless I add a couple of costly heroes that can be gained no other way) Some times they might have limited duration, sometimes they might cost a gold each time you use them, some times they may even just take your money and run, not giving you any units. The Hippi would have better choices and chances for positive outcomes from the events, and might also have the ability to contract out their units as mercenaries in a reverse form of the event.

The mercenary unit would be removed, and the units that you could hire would perhaps be any unit buildable in any city with the Guild of the Nine present.

All mercenaries would start with the Mercenary promotion, which would be like the Aeron's chosen promotion in that it would allow spreading the guild. It would also make the unit be likely to change sides instead of dieing when defeated (unless it has the loyalty promotion), and perhaps make the unit have a very tiny chance of turning barbarian (so they would turn barbarian if you tried to disband them without paying them. I might also add a spell that disbands them without the risk, but requires you pay them extra gold to buy them out of their contract early.)


I was also thinking of adding similar events allowing you to hire pirates on Pirate Coves/Harbors/Ports. Anyone could try to hire a pirate ship or a crew of boarding parties, but the chances of them fulfilling their end of the deal would be very low unless you are Lanun (and still risky then); it would be more likely that they would take the money probably steal the ship you sent to to hire them. Ships could also be sold at pirate coves.

 

[xienwolf]

Thinking of Contract Durations, I wonder if you can borrow from the Summon Spell mechanic to give them a limited duration, then add in a spell which they can use to extend that duration a few turns. It'd be nice if you could make the cost of the spell variable per unit, but maybe it could be based on unit strength at the least to make extending the contract of a Merc-Only Hero more expensive than a Merc Scout.

 

[Deon]

Or just to make them require additional gold per turn. Because I've heard enough complains about the haste management... And you can fall in the same pit with the "extend duration" spell if you have a large merc army.
Just an idea with increased unit maintance. Because isn't it originally for the payment for a service?

 

[xienwolf]

Well, the way maintenance is run right now, either a unit has maintenance, or it does not. It is a boolean switch, so you cannot have MORE maintenance for a certain unit.


MC's earlier idea was that attacking would cost you Gold on each attack, but I think that a contract length (it wouldn't be single turns, but 10 or so) could be another interesting mechanic for them.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I was actually already thinking of contract durations (which is why I mentioned it already), which would be pretty simple to handle in python. Different units would be contracted with different durations, at different costs.

I still think that needing to give some mercenaries a bonus for when thay actually fight makes since too.


Are you sure that maintenance is just a boolean? I'm pretty sure you used to be able to give different units different maintenance costs (pre-shadow).

 

[xienwolf]

The line I saw that seemed to deal with maintenance was:

<bMilitarySupport>0</bMilitarySupport>

And the only values I found were 0 or 1.

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

Yeah I just checked the schema it's a boolean. Maybe you could make the mercenary promotion give no movement and have a spell (costs money) that allows the unit to move and has a limited duration (or chance of wearing off per turn if you can't make a promotion disappear after a specific amount of turns).

 

[kenken244]

Then you could have free city defence mercs and make taking cities nearly impossible