Request: Animals and Beasts

[Solanus]

First off: big fan of FfH2 and FF! Easily better than many fantasy strategy games.

On to my request:

One of my favorite things to do when playing FF is to send out my recon units to capture the available fauna. Between gaining low-level skirmishers and scouts, and dropping in happiness buildings, these units are an awful lot of fun, especially griffons and spiders. However, I would love to see some of the following things added to the mix:

1) More types of animals, including giant versions, starting with bats, boars (wild), eagles, insects, octopi, owls, rhinoceroses (sp?), sharks, snakes, toads.

2) More types of beasts, starting with basilisks, beholders, chimeras, hags, hydrae, manticores, nagas, oozes, pegasi (wild), sphinxes, unicorns, wyverns.

3) Do more with what you get: allow animals/beasts to be trained and equipped to become regular units (like War Elephants), become mounts (like Austrin pegasus riders), become buildings (e.g., allow new units of the same type to be produced), or be altered (e.g., through magic, make a Wolf into an Ice Wolf with extra Cold damage).

4) Have some animals/beasts be tied to their lairs, from which they could only periodically bombard, or be locked into a territory (3x3) that they can move around in but not stray from. This could open up other types of creatures that are more limited in mobility (e.g., crocodiles) that you could ensure that their lairs are in a preferred environment. Maybe have events that drop in a lair in the middle of a civilization's borders to stir up a response.

Now, if there are more animals and beasts out there, that would shift the balance towards those civilizations that start at peace with them, or those that have strong recon groups that would take greater advantage of them. I'm not sure how to balance that, but I'd be willing to discuss it with anyone who cares to.

 

[cypher132]

That's a lot to ask for, but I like some of the ideas. I'd like to have more animals to choose from. I'm not a modder, though. Just a writer.

 

[Andvare]

The biggest problem, I'd wager, is the art, not the code.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, the art would be by far the hardest part.


Adding Panthers would of course be very easy, as their art exists in vanilla civ.


One type of animal that could be interesting would be Giant Beetles, like the ones found in Ashes of Br--oh, wait, I'm not supposed to share the story Kael PMed me last night. I probably haven't given away too much yet though, as these are mentioned in the Bestiary of Erebus too. There are a lot of creatures found there you could try to implement.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

well, Warkirby seems to be good with art and these idea are definitely sound.

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, Art is the main limitation. Actually the idea of leashing a unit to the improvement/lair which spawned them is already 50% implemented. I could finish it up in a matter of minutes if we just had something worthwhile to make use of it (I would at the same time allow improvements to set their own spawn frequency so that you could do things like make the Broken Sepulcher spawn 2 skeletons a turn up to a limit of 20 and they cannot move more than 2 tiles away. Thus it would be a swarming mass of skeletons you have to wade through to take down the tomb)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Bestiary makes it sound like Beasts of Agares may actually start out as more mundane animals or beasts that are subjected to extremely dark rituals to turn them into the abominations. I've been thinking it could be interesting to make it so that they aren't built, but created though a spell that can be cast in cities with Demons Altars. There could be several different types of Beasts of Agares, with different strengths and weaknesses based on what type of creature it was before the rituals. Of course, it might create too much synergy between AV, nature, and the recon line, which should probably be left to FoL. Also, Warkirby is already working on new Beast of Agares art and would probably not want to start over to create Beast of Agares versions of every animal and beast in the game.

 

[Valkrionn]

Aye, Art is the main limitation. Actually the idea of leashing a unit to the improvement/lair which spawned them is already 50% implemented. I could finish it up in a matter of minutes if we just had something worthwhile to make use of it (I would at the same time allow improvements to set their own spawn frequency so that you could do things like make the Broken Sepulcher spawn 2 skeletons a turn up to a limit of 20 and they cannot move more than 2 tiles away. Thus it would be a swarming mass of skeletons you have to wade through to take down the tomb)

A leash system would be a nice way to bring back Barbatos... Or to improve my WildMana.

As for animal units, art already exists for Stags, Mammoths, Sabretooths, and Hippogriffs, the last two thanks to Warkirby. All of which are in FFPlus.

 

[WarKirby]

wiith many of these things, the problem is not just art, but new animations would be required too, something I can't yet do

 

[cypher132]

A leash system would be a nice way to bring back Barbatos... Or to improve my WildMana.

As for animal units, art already exists for Stags, Mammoths, Sabretooths, and Hippogriffs, the last two thanks to Warkirby. All of which are in FFPlus.

Speaking of which, when will it be compatible with FF .51?

 

[Valkrionn]

Soon as I get some art issues worked out... Can't play it myself atm, so there's a bit of a lag between me packaging it and people testing it, which has to be done before I can release it.

 

[Iskar Jarak]

how would more animals affect the Grand Menagerie? it's nearly impossible to get now.

Possible solution:you could have it only require some of them, as in any 5.

 

[readercolin]

Would be nice if it was just any 5 for the Grand Menagerie right now. I would love to be able to substitute that damn gorilla that I can't find (or that damn wolf - where the heck are they hiding anyways? puny buggers) with that griffon or elephant that I captured.

On the other hand... that would be one hell of a nested ifstatement to get it to work... I doubt you could pull it off with a switch.

-Colin

 

[Solanus]

Thanks for all of the great responses to my requests, which are really more in line with suggestions. I'm especially glad to hear about the very potential ability to have units leashed to terrain improvements. That may be a way to change the mechanic for destroying lairs, to make them more of a destroy improvement or explore lair action, rather than an auto destroy after the guardian's defeat.

As an example, a Griffon's Nest (Aerie?) could spawn on a hill with a 2-4 square leash for its griffon guardian. Units could be sent to the area to deal with the threat, either to kill or capture (by recon units). The unit could then enter the nest (lair) and explore it, potentially finding a Griffon Egg object/promotion, which can then be activated in an owned city to build a Griffon Hatchery, allowing that city to produce new griffons through hammer production and/or allow for a Griffon Rider promotion (like the Austrin Pegasus Rider) to be purchased.

This might allow for actions where a unit sneaks into a lair while its guardian is away; after the lair is explored/destroyed, the guardian would either aggro on the unit or just lose its leash. Again, these are just ideas, so take what you will from them.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

On the other hand... that would be one hell of a nested ifstatement to get it to work... I doubt you could pull it off with a switch.

-Colin

I don't see why you would need nested if statements. Why not write it like this:

In CvGameUtils.py, under def cannotConstruct(self,argsList):

		if eBuilding == gc.getInfoTypeForString('BUILDING_GRAND_MENAGERIE'):
			lList = ['BUILDINGCLASS_DANCING_BEAR','BUILDINGCLASS_SPIDER_PEN','BUILDING_GORILLA_CAGE', 'BUILDING_LION_CAGE', 'BUILDINGCLASS_TIGER_CAGE','BUILDINGCLASS_PANTHER_CAGE','BUILDINGCLASS_ELEPHANT_CAGE']
			numBuild = 0
			for iBuild in range(len(lList)):
				if pCity.getNumBuilding(gc.getInfoTypeForString(iBuild)) > 0:
					numBuild = numBuild +1
			if numBuild < 6:
				return True

Thinking back, I think Kael actually used to have the DLL working so that if you had more than NUM_BUILDING_PREREQ_OR_BONUSES (which is set in GLobalDefinesAlt.xml to 5) number of building or bonus prereqs that it would let you build it with any NUM_BUILDING_PREREQ_OR_BONUSES of them. I'm thinking that code wasn't carried over with the BtS conversion though. IN my version I changed it from 5 to 21 so I could make the Tower of Mastery require you have all mana types when you build it, and when I added those prereqs without changing that global define I got a CtD on loading.

 

[Valkrionn]

Why this?

if numBuild < 6:
	return True

The code you posted increases numBuild for each building you have in the list, correct? To me, that means it should be :

if numBuild >= 5:
	return True

 

[MagisterCultuum]

That is under def cannotConstruct(self,argsList), so returning true means that the building cannot be built. If I did it your way, you wouldn't need any cages to build the Menagerie, but having too many would block it.

I guess we were wanting to be able to build it with any 5 rather than any 6 though, so if numBuild < 5: is probably what you'd want.

 

[odalrick]

Why this?

if numBuild < 6:
	return True

The code you posted increases numBuild for each building you have in the list, correct? To me, that means it should be :

if numBuild >= 5:
	return True

Notice that the function is called cannotConstruct .

 

[Valkrionn]

Woops, missed that. I've always used CANconstruct.