More Lairs!

[reverend oats]

I love the new lair feature in .34, but they are not enough of them. In my most recent .34 game as the Illians on a large pangea, I only came across 3 ruins, a goblin fort and Bradeline's Well. If too many barbs would be a problem with more lairs, the spawning rate for lizzies and skelies could be decreased or a new type of benign dungeons created, which would be identical to the ones we have now but wouldn't spawn units. Thanks!

 

[Azure-Dreamer]

Fall Further has had the explorable lairs for some time now, the also have implemented the very thing you suggested. i think its called a "Great Steading" or something like that.

 

[Marnok]

Wait for next MarnokMod (unless someone beats me to it). I'll be putting in a settings file to spawn more lairs if you like them.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

new type of benign dungeons created

You mean like... dungeons? OR ones that don't spawn units even when exploring?

 

[retro V]

Perhaps it's because I play small maps, or because of my rotten luck, but I don't feel more lairs will be a good thing; the AI are the only ones who will benefit/suffer from them anyway (there's no such thing as fog where the AI is concerned).

From what I can tell so far, there's probably too many lairs. My games feel like 'raging barbs' has been turned on, even though it hasn't. On anything below emporer settings AIs are falling left right and center within the first 100 turns normal speed.

 

[Marnok]

I think there need to be some balance/tweaks in the main mod for explorable lairs. I think the spawn of "boss" bigbads might be delayed for a grace period at the start of the game.

 

[Fafnir13]

I'm a little worried that this might make a scaling issue where people try to explore them ASAP before the power of the things that get unleashed can grow. In tandem, the good things that can spawn should also be reduced until the scary guys can also spawn.
In my game, I over saturated the world with AI's just for a change of pace. I only got to explore one lair (withered my unit) and a shipwreck (spawned a drown that ate my worker boat). The Pire is still around, although I'm having to rebuild my expeditionary force. 8 str gargoyle plus a retinue of Azir (I think that's what they were called) made for quite some trouble.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Kael said he can put a limit so that rare good and rare bad don't spawn before a given turn. (I think either str or xp of unit exploring would also be good scaling factors.) Ideally all of thise would factor in.

 

[Frozen-Vomit]

I would like to have ancient towers as explorable lairs. Kind of fitting from flavour perspective. After exploring you could just have a message the tower is empty instead of razing it.

 

[Marnok]

I would like to have ancient towers as explorable lairs. Kind of fitting from flavour perspective. After exploring you could just have a message the tower is empty instead of razing it.

Best way to do that would be to copy the tower improvement, make the copy explorable, and when it is cleared out replace it with the generic tower.

 

[reverend oats]

Quote:
new type of benign dungeons created
You mean like... dungeons? OR ones that don't spawn units even when exploring?

I meant lairs that didn't spawn units passively, but there would still be the same exploration results.

 

[rusty217]

I meant lairs that didn't spawn units passively, but there would still be the same exploration results.

Which is exactly what the dungeons do...

 

[BugReportage]

Awesome... But can't you use lairs to spawn big baddies that will go to your neighbour's cities and wipe them out? What if I go explore a lair right beside YOUR border in an online game and a big fat ogre that's level 15 comes out and just bashes your capital? You wouldn't be too pleased right? I've not tested what the AI targets when they spawn but I ASSUME they target the nearest city and run at it like a pack of lemmings at a cliff. -Shrug-

I really have mixed opinions on lairs but I do like them alot. Just not sure what exactly would need to be done about situations that don't make them very fun. (Especially middle game when sending in two stacks of 10 warriors to check out (together) EVERY unchecked dungeon in the game to get all the benefits and not caring what losses I receive)

Oh and I should add that I do think level of the exploring unit should be a HUGE factor as to what you receive. Someone who is more experienced should have the courage to go deeper than others and get better rewards. When I enter a dungeon I want to feel like I'm risking something to get something. I normally just pick one of the weaker units in my stack to do the dirty work and give the reward to the stronger dudes in the stack (unless it's experience and whatnot). So if you want the ARTIFACT OF <insert imposing name here> you need to send in someone who's got the guts to go down into the depths of hell and who's got the strength to come back out alive with that artifact. (Basically More Better Experience=More Better ARTIFACT OF <insert mean name here>) I'd risk a Level 12 champion in hopes if getting a leveled artifact that gives +3 atkstr or something.

 

[Blackmantle]

BugReportage: FFH2 is mainly designed for singleplayer, and there is an option do disable lairs. So just use this if you want balanced multiplayer. Not all that hard really (some players also seem to disable huts, events and barbs or features for that.) + in coop it should be more fun with harder lairs and coop is viable multiplayer as well. Isn't it?

Agreed on the experience and certain promotions (like hero) should give better results. But i belive that is allready in. AT least it was in the modmod.

But if you can, give Marnoks new Modmod a try. You'll find some mechanics there to handle the midgame-issues you did describe...

@ Marnok:
I really hope your modmod will feature at least some kind if the old big badass power again and the possibility of monsters to build lairs again so more get placed over time and they are much harder to clear completely (still missing deap-sea and peak-lairs At least monster-spawning ocean ones should make their way into the main-mod imo. To make the seas a bit more interesting finally. Not just the coasts...).
I definately miss those City-Raider 1+2+3 Water Elementals ~ Turn 90. Makes you watch out and really struggle for survival.
Those normal pesky Ogres are rather meh... just needs 2 or 3 experienced warriors and some strategy to handle (Still by far better than before naturally. Don't get me wrong. Im really really glad that the explorable lairs have found their way into FFH2 main game. And i understand that some kind of balance was needed...)
Oh and i miss those rare flying privateers / ships as well. Some real incentive for boarding parties to go for a little bit of swashbuckling.

But overall i agree that lairs should be a tad bit more common even in the core game (if lairbuilding by barbs won't find its way into the mod that is...).

 

[retro V]

Whilst I understand the reasoning behind experienced units yielding better results, unfortunately it leads to another human advantage over the AI since humans always take better care of more mature units.

Maybe cost of units could be a factor instead. So as a game progresses and all sides are using higher tier units, better results are possible.

 

[Marnok]

Maybe the armageddon counter would be a good measure.

 

[TheGreatSteve]

It'd be nice if the Adventurer promo that you could get in FF's lairs was purchasable in FFH. Or at the very least give it's effects to Hero.

<-Still annoyed at a level 15 Brigit being "never heard from again"

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

agreed about the fact that better ( more powerful/more experienced units ) should be able to get better results from lairs, and that there should be more lairs around.

I really like the idea of being able to explore the ancient towers btw! this would make them feel truly ancient

and monster-spawning ocean lairs would be totally awesome indeed

edit: oh yeah. the "outright killed" result of lairs should not be possible for high level units. cuz it's way too frustrating to handle

 

[Jenaelha]

I'm ok with relative rewards, but I would rather they be allowed to respawn, instead of automatically destroyed, like barbarians from the fog of war regions do. You'd have to give the option to destroy them though.
I would like to see treasures like +1 type magic items, or items bestowing random promotions combined with gold/gems/jewelry too.
I had one that tunneled to a far away unexplored area where there were more lairs to find!

 

[xienwolf]

It would be really nice to see Barbarian Cities removed from the mod completely, and instead have them spawn dungeons and other lairs. Add a weighting factor to the units which spawn from them to account for game progression in some manner (unit cost, experience, gameturn, whatever) and it would make things all a lot more exciting. Also keeps the Barbarians from setting up camp anywhere rather effectively, but it would change how some features work (Acheron & Tumtum currently need to be built, but you could easily have one possible "bigbad" result be clearing the lair, spawning a Barbarian City, and placing one of those 2 in it with a small army to back them up)