Ruins to Lair

[Zechnophobe]

Just an interesting thought, but it would be fairly cool if city ruins would have a small chance each turn of changing into a Dungeon or Barbarian Fort. If you then make them unpillagable perhaps, you would give some added value to the sanctify spell.

 

[Ahriman]

I like it!

 

[Blackmantle]

So signed.
Even without them turning into something else. Just use them as they are. Should be possible.

It might lead to players sacrificing fresh settlers/cities just for the fun of it. But that needn't be all bad...
The only real issue whould be that it makes founding new cities in their place alot harder. But thats fine with me at least...

(low-powered Undead and some crazed units like lunatics or other simmilar things sound right. Just keep the chance to get a spawn by themselves low. And make it a rather low-danger low-reward dungeon so its not to much of a hassle / overly rewarding...)

So you either lower the counter or get the risks / rewards of exploration...

But likely AI whould have to be thought to use sanctify or explore them so it doesn't get screwed in its settlement routine...

 

[zbelg]

I had thought about this too, I really like the idea of not being able to pillage and having to rebuild over or sanctify it, it'd help make ruins more than just props. I think if there was a set time before it could "upgrade" or it'd change when a barbarian moved into it it'd work well, it'd be annoying if it randomly flipped two turns after it were razed. As long as the players knew there would be problems if they left the ruins unchecked for too long.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

there was some talk about this in the FF subforums, the idea basically being that city ruins should "upgrade" into an explorable version after some time, just like the lairs. it would definitely be lots of fun

 

[Blackmantle]

As said, i doubt that a 'change to a lair' whould be needed in the first place. Just make them unrazable and function like a lair should be doable without to much hassle (in fact i think it even might be easier to do than changing those into lairs... Also has the advantage that it can be made to work a bit different in spawn rate and exploration results in comparison to other lairs.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

problem is that making them explorable right after the city is razed leads to some potential exploits. I can't remember them right now but trust me, it does

while if they become explorable only after a while the problem is slved

 

[Blackmantle]

As i mentioned above, that can be handled by making the rewards and risks table rather low (lower than the existing goblin forts / ruins / barrows. Which is really hard to do if you use existing lairs and also makes sense imo. ).
If there is nothing but a very minor chance to get something significant (like a unit or item, let alone greath person), exploits whouldn't pay off much if i presume rightly.

Small "exploits" seem ok and could also be seen as features / strategy plain and simple. (If you see exploits only as things which create real problems for gameplay balance that is. Not anything remotely creative in using the games features.)

(most glaring one i could imagine whould be sacrificing settlers lategame to make lairs. Doesn't sound all to hefty if exploration offers not to much in possible rewards.)


Also that whould help prevent the devaluation of sanctify and make coding easier... (both of which whould be a problem of ruins changing into lairs as opposed to directly turning them into ones.)

So: Why not use the simple way (im not utterly sure of course there are no possible exploits even with less extreme results in both directions. But that is precisely what we testers are there for. Isn't it?)?
If one could point out some real problematic exploits i might understand better what problems are feared in that regard. So it whould be apreciated.

 

[Ahriman]

I would implement it so that ruins have a chance of turning into a dungeon each turn. So, you cant' instantly turn ruins into a dungeon, but you still get the mechanic where monsters can take up residence in a ruined city.