Recruitment-call for besiegers.

[Takhisis]

I was thinking of putting a barbican on it, making walls impassable for wheeled units and changing the moat for a river which eventually leads onto the sea. So you have to control the entrance bridges.

 

[Bowsling]

No trolls or mammoths, please!
I know, Plot's marvelous new mammoths make it tempting, but please, keep it real for now.

 

[Takhisis]

I'll use the Mammoth as placeholder until a suitable Elephant can be put in its place.

 

[Takhisis]

Hi there! Exams -and term- finished last week, so now I'm taking this off the shelf.
In case you want to know, I passed with about average grades, scraped it here and there but got through it in one piece.

Now, to business. I've been thinking: How would I make the AI try to make a run at the player's positions and try to recover the buildings it's lost? So, the options I've come up with (just tonight) are:

• use Gary's flags as immobile king units
• use Gary's flags as immobile capturable flags
• VP locations with a nominal value
• worthless wonders in each city? (would only work with cities and not some of the other stuff)

Which one would be best?

Also (only tangentially relevant to this, but I felt I should ask):

• what does the 'default money resource' in General Settings do?
• what does the 'increase luxury tax' option for buildings do?

 

[Takhisis]

Would something like these be good for the city gates?

Borrowed from tom's Conquests of Might and Magic III WIP thread.

 

[CiaranB123]

You could always use the walls and gates used in the Playground mod

 

[Takhisis]

Hmmm, guess I'll have to download that mod to see what's in there.

 

[nick0515]

Hi there! Exams -and term- finished last week, so now I'm taking this off the shelf.
In case you want to know, I passed with about average grades, scraped it here and there but got through it in one piece.

Now, to business. I've been thinking: How would I make the AI try to make a run at the player's positions and try to recover the buildings it's lost? So, the options I've come up with (just tonight) are:

• use Gary's flags as immobile king units
• use Gary's flags as immobile capturable flags
• VP locations with a nominal value
• worthless wonders in each city? (would only work with cities and not some of the other stuff)

Which one would be best?

Also (only tangentially relevant to this, but I felt I should ask):

• what does the 'default money resource' in General Settings do?
• what does the 'increase luxury tax' option for buildings do?

VP locations always seem to attract the AI, might be the best option.

I've never used it but I think 'default money resource' works like this. If set to a resource, say gold, there is a chance that that resource will appear from goody huts. That's what someone told me once anyway.

Re that picture, I think that the gates from AOE II would look better. It's not hard to make static graphics from AOE stuff.

I'd like to help out with this project. I'll have to read through this thread again. Is there anything specific you need help with at present, other than the above?

My time is very limited at the moment though so any help I can give will be slow in coming.

 

[Takhisis]

I was just going to bed -as soon as Mr. Robot by Styx ended anyway-, checked subscriptions and saw your reply… in short, I'll be needing city (urban) terrain mostly as well as some techs and leaderheads (I think I'll use tom's M&M advisors, I like the look of them), most units can be plucked from regular civ and/or some I've downloaded already.

 

[nick0515]

I was just going to bed -as soon as Mr. Robot by Styx ended anyway-, checked subscriptions and saw your reply… in short, I'll be needing city (urban) terrain mostly as well as some techs and leaderheads (I think I'll use tom's M&M advisors, I like the look of them), most units can be plucked from regular civ and/or some I've downloaded already.

I might have a play around tonight see what I can do with some cut 'n' past then. Which terrain do you want to look like houses. Have you thought about using the irrigation graphics for buildings terrain.

 

[Takhisis]

Rhye's Irrigated terrain improvement will be 'farmland' terrain

 

[tom2050]

Also, Google Warehouse has loads of Castle type walls and gates. You could always use those to make a quick static graphic.

 

[Takhisis]

I've already done a nice gate in the 3D thread, but I'd rather pluck a quick one first to test whether the scenario works.

 

[King Coltrane]

First of all I support this idea completely! I'm still in the process of reading through all these posts, but I have an idea that you could use and wanted to post before i forget:

Make a ladder or siege tower unit that can build airports. However, replace the airport graphics with the same ladder/siege tower graphics that the unit had. give most/all infantry units an airdrop range of 2 (or however wide the walls will be) and voila! That way you can have these units get up to the wall, set up, and allow infantry units to "scale" the wall via paradrop. these "ladder" terrain improvements could be potentially destroyed by bombardment from defensive archer towers or artillery.

Also, to differentiate ladder units from siege tower units, make the ladder unit have 1 hp and a def. of 1, so they are easily destroyed by defensive bombard/cavalry sorties and give siege towers a higher defense (like 6) and more hp (like 8 or so) to simulate their increased survivability, although both units are equally destroyable.

what do you think?

 

[Takhisis]

That's bloody brilliant!

How would the .flc for the men putting up the ladders be? It'd be feasible… I already have a copy of Kinboat's paperdoll and a stepladder would be easy… It's certainly feasible

Afterthought… men with ladders and nothing else could be escorted by shield-bearers… and towers could only move across flat terrain, not pulled onto carts and stuff. Really, I need a cart unit as well.

 

[tom2050]

That is a great idea! Now, how to trick the AI into building hordes of airports at the wall? Perhaps have airports able to only be built anywhere along the wall and no where else. You could Auto-produce special units that can only build airports? Of course, that cannot be done on the unit screen, since AI won't use workers with options unchecked, so all the other things (mining, etc) would have to made unavailable by none-era tech to hopefully force AI to build airports.

Did you plan on using workers to terraform (irrigate/mine) during a siege battle?

 

[nick0515]

That is a really great idea King Coltrane.

I think it's going to be pretty near impossible to make this mod be AI compatible, especially for the attacker, so why not give up on the AI and focus on making it for multiplayer. I mean it's going to be infanitly more fun to try and out wit a human defender than an AI one anyway.

 

[Takhisis]

That is a great idea! Now, how to trick the AI into building hordes of airports at the wall? Perhaps have airports able to only be built anywhere along the wall and no where else. You could Auto-produce special units that can only build airports? Of course, that cannot be done on the unit screen, since AI won't use workers with options unchecked, so all the other things (mining, etc) would have to made unavailable by none-era tech to hopefully force AI to build airports.

I don't think the AI would use them, it's too much of an Artificial Idiot; and I won't just disable all worker actions because I need a few of the other worker actions for other stuff.

Did you plan on using workers to terraform (irrigate/mine) during a siege battle?

Hmmm. It'll be a sort of urban siege, a bit like in EFZI, so the only worker actions would be to (re)build roads and to clear away debris. Debris could come from fires, barns starting to burn (volcanoes erupting) and -maybe- certain siege weapons' heavier ordnance…
Mines and irrigation will be pre-placed. let's face it, the siege takes place over a few days/weeks and digging a hole for a mine would take muuuuch longer than that, eh?

I think it's going to be pretty near impossible to make this mod be AI compatible, especially for the attacker, so why not give up on the AI and focus on making it for multiplayer. I mean it's going to be infanitly more fun to try and out wit a human defender than an AI one anyway.

The AI will only be the defender. If you do it as single player you're only the besieger.

And the AI can get nasty if you give it enough immobile/wheeled units to block off passages. There'll be some impassable terrain like the walls