Skaven Design and Ideas.

[Arexack_heretic]

Edit: Sorry. I know skaven are not in the pipeline yet. However they are about the only race I ever played with.
And as nothing has been done with them, I have a level playingfield as the noob here.

Skaven:
-fleet of foot: no terrain movement modifiers.. exept roads.
-burrowing: can build cities in hills and mountains.
-cannot build cities on other terraintypes, but CAN capture them.
-hidden: skaven are naturally secretive.
-NEED warpstone: without it, they are stuck in the stoneage.
-The reasons skaven should go to war are
1-warpstone.
2-capturing human cities for food.
3-capture dwarven territory.
4-because it's evil.
-I'll copy/paste the ideas from the outside thread later...


Anybody thought about tunneling as an advance?
For groundloving civs such as Dwarves and Skaven, darkelves.

-a second roadlayer.
-can also be built in mountains...did the skavenmap say they also tunneled to Cathay?
-may be built in enemy territory by special(stealthy)workers (skavenslave-tunnelers)
-Can be used to move through enemy teritory, ignoring culture.
-goblins can use existing tunnels.
(-Other races cannot dig tunnels, but can research for special tunnelrat units?)
-Units in tunnels are considdered hidden....hmm. maybe too strong. Only from more than 1 square away?




Can civs have bonusses from specific terrain types?

If so I'd like to propose Dwarves can get more money (and food, don't forget stonebread!) out of hills.
Woodelves could get a food bonus for forest and lessfood for cleared land. They also need to be able to plant trees early on in the game. (btw: How do you do woodelven city walls? magically (illusion) or inherently defended by height?)
The point is: I'd like some civs to prefer certain terraintypes to live in.




Another offtopic thought:
Some races/civs should have early advantage.
And it's not the humans!
Elves and Dwarves should have early techs that give them special abilities/magic.
Orcs would be really strong early, so that they need never really need to leave the stoneage.
Orcs may benefit from having all units able to chop down trees too.
Humans would get even when they get their magics and get upperhand in the machine age.

It's said that humans learned magic from the elves, who learned it from the ancientOnes.
Maybe Elves should start out with raw magic and further refine it during the game. If raw magic is very expensive to research, this could function as a hurdle to seperate the magically inclined races from the barbaric/mundane ones.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i like many of those ideas there Arexach, especially the tunneling and the skaven only being able to build cities in hills and mountains. that would be very interesting to see.

About the woodelven walls, i expect its either as you said, illusion, or its a "wild Heath" such as that which surrounds Athel Loren. an expanse of poisonous, thorny and generally unpleasant plants that the enemy would have to manouver through.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I like the idea of tunneling but I'm not sure if it's realizeable however we should keep this in mind as well as founding cities on mountains. But it will be really complicated to achieve this -a city art that looks good on mountains would be a challenge on its own already not to mention the disadvantage of a civ that doesn't find any hills and mountains nearby. For the tunnels we could maybe use reskinned railroads but the coding of the other attributes of them will probably be an insane amound of work. Let's just say we'lll see

Bonuses for civs based on terrain are posssible. Woodelves already got their special cottages and woodsmanpromotion i.e. so they shouldn't get much more from that else they get overpowered but dwarves should probably get bonuses from hills and mountains and mali for grassland, plains...details we should discuss in a thread for dwarves when we get started with them.

About the techs also good idea, lets discuss that in the techthread

 

[Arexack_heretic]

<snip/paste of first posts basically random ideas>

Necromancy -> allows no zombies?,
-graveyard as improvement/resource for undead units?
-mummy units from black pyramid?

Warpstone...-Influence of warpstone based on religion? (poisonous to most races)
(eg Skaven should be rabbid for the stuff; HornedOne Worship gives +bonus also many powerfull skavenunits should be reliant on it).
-Used up rapidly as its only found small deposits.
-Magical storms could replenish it in random deposits.
-can be 'cleaned up' by alchemist/wizard units?
-Most (evil) magicians want it for it's raw power and good wizards are fascinated by it (but afraid of it's unpredictable nature).

Skaven:
- starting tech: Raw magic, slavery.
- prefered civic: tyrany
-specials: (hopefull thinking?)
-fleet of foot: no terrain movement impedement.
-rapid breeding: increased pop growth.
-hidden ? skavencities visible only from 1 square distance.
-tunnelling as skaven-slavegang (worker) improvement, 2xmovement in tunnelled squares. still needs bridgebuilding(tech) for crossing rivers.

tech tree ideas:
ClanMoulder-tech
warpstone+beast-handling (tech)-> clan moulder (tech), allows: GiantRats/swarms + Wonder:MoulderPit (allows: warpstone-mutations(tech) (allows RatOgres, Wolfrats (req:Warpstone))

ClanSkrye-tech
-warpstone flamers(siege, coll dam)
-poisonwind (FS, colldam) (unitupgrade or single unit)
-Warplock Jezzails: ? High initial impact.
-Wonder:Skrye Engineshoppe (allows: bigger engines, with appropriate secondary reqs, steam etc)

ClanPestillens:
..is it possible to script plague?

Clan-Eshin
-unit upgrade: assasin extra first strike, extra power.
-spies. unseen can infiltrate enemy territory and do stuff...steal warpstone, assasinate unitcommanders (damage50%), poison city water supply (plague?). etc. Install skavenoutpost in city sewers. (negate citydefences, information on city)

etc etc. gotta go now.

</snip>
I realised skaven, fimir, goblins, treemen, ogres etc would make good barbarians.
Skaven especially, as they are supposed to appear from nothing and field huge armies.


I'd like to continue thinking about them though.

It would be a fun civ to play, albeit tricky:
Without warpstone, skaven are stuck with their less powerfull foottroops.
No archery, no siegeweapons, no magic etc.

slaves....how to make cannonfodder usefull, without bankrupting the civ or giving away free exp?


Religions/magic schools:
-to most civs all magic schools schould be at least available for study.
-Can researchcost be variable amongst the civs?
-Effect of researching -alien- magic or their products, could have negative consequences.
(necromancy may not be inherently evil, but average humans take a dim view of king animating their dead to build his palace. Same for chaos magic, it might be powerfull, but you are a fool if you think you are its master)

-Should have a higher impact on interciv relations than is now the case.
If Bretonia adopts the Chaos Gods as religion, the Empire may not like it that much.
Then again, adopting the Chaos Gods should lead a nation to being absorbed by the Chaos civ....hmm.
Anyhow. My initial thought was that Chaos might be friendly with undead or darkelves, but never with the Empire etc.

-Chaos religion spreading could be a cool way for Chaos civ to grow by sowing civil unrest....forcing human nations to expend alot of resources on purging the heretics from their midst!
Cities with Chaos cultists may be eligable for 3rd collumnist action, helping Chaos forces when they attack.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

+Skaven plagueincence bearers. (goblin fanatics too!)

How to implement these colourfull units?
Special unit upgrade I guess, pre-combat decimating attack. double-edged 33%damage self.

But:
-can models deviating from the generic unittype be added to a unit?
-are there usefull animations to be recycled? maceman maybe?

+Giant behaviour.
the oldentimes rules had a full page of possible giant actions, which were highly comical, but overly complex.
Maybe some of these actions. (being drunk and falling over into a formation/eating a hero/plucking a tree and using it as club) could be included in some form?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

+Skaven plagueincence bearers. (goblin fanatics too!)

How to implement these colourfull units?
Special unit upgrade I guess, pre-combat decimating attack. double-edged 33%damage self.

But:
-can models deviating from the generic unittype be added to a unit?
-are there usefull animations to be recycled? maceman maybe?

+Giant behaviour.
the oldentimes rules had a full page of possible giant actions, which were highly comical, but overly complex.
Maybe some of these actions. (being drunk and falling over into a formation/eating a hero/plucking a tree and using it as club) could be included in some form?

No useful animations in game to simulate anything like that. Neener works on a fanatic already. Giants we have but I doubt we can make animations for them that will properly represent giantactions. I already thought about this yesterday though and think we can have pythonevents displaying text but don't expect much more.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Pity about the giantactions, but expected.

Did some more thinking on tunneling.
Considdered RedAlert-style tunnels (exits only)
but those enable too fast travel and need too little planning and resources to build.

I still considder a secondary road system the best.
Using railroads makes them visible to all AND messes/interfaces with the existing roadsystem. I'd like it to interface only with cities and villages.

-should be invisible to civs without tunneling ability and then only if near, FOW hides tunnels.
-visible in adjacent squares for Earth-elemental(ist)s and witchhunter types.
-allied units on tunneled square is hidden, unless attacking. attacking from tunnel un-hides entire stack.
-attacking city from tunneled square negates defensive bonusses derived from fortification or civics-buildings.


Dinner is ready. continue later.

2) Doom bell can be skaven siege engine used for bombarding.
3) Skaven can not capture cities, only pillage.
4) Skaven can found cities on ruins.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

5) Internal strife: skaven cities are more likely to rebel and turn into a barbarian-skaven city.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

alot of those other ideas are good.

about the tunnels, we could make them like improvements, but that they can only be built every 5 squares? for example.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*OOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO*OOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO*OOOOOO*
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OO*OOOOO@OOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

if O = empty square
* = tunnel entrance
@ = city

does that make sense? and then units can use tunnel entrances like ariplanes use air strips in vanilla, ie they can 'teleport' from one tunnel to the next closest.

That would require a fair bit of work, but i think it could be interesting.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

and use the 'airdrop' routine for movement between them...
It could work.

I'd rather have a secret roadsystem, but will be happy for any secretmovement.
It doesn't simulate the relentless gnawing at the roots of the world though
and prevents large concentrations of skaven mustering secretly for an assault.
Unless unit stack limit is increased for skaven....

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i always thought the unit limit was a temporary measure, but im unsure.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Untill the AI can be made to spread out it's forces and still be agressive, yeah.

addit:
I think many skaven specific units could be like the 'fighting transport'.
-beasts for packmasters
-clanskryre support teams for core regiments
-assasins for regiments
-plaguecenserbearers for plaguemonk regiments
-warpscrolls? magic items? for heros/champions

 

[Arexack_heretic]

some icons.

Morskittar (leader_creative/scientific) /plaguemonk/Ratogre/Jezzail/EshinGutterrunner w/skryre upgrades

 

[Arexack_heretic]

I have been messing with XML's for skavenciv this weekend.
Nice massive errormessages pile at startup.

(first really free weekend for months it feels like!)
(actually I should have been writing a thesis. but bleh. )

Anyhow I feel it has been a productive weekend. Did a dinner and made a batch of eggrolls too!

Some more icons:
(I'm planning to do the major clans as minor-religions.)

Eshin / Moulder / Pestilens / Skryre / SkavenMagic

 

[Arexack_heretic]

And some unit icons:

Another Gutterrunner (maybe a sewercrawler-scout) / GiantRat / Poisonwind / ratswarm /Eshin assasin or Nightrunner

 

[Arexack_heretic]

YEs I've been really productive...

Blackskaven / LordSkrolk(leader_religious) / Verminlord (deamon) / two generic skaven civ buttons

 

[Arexack_heretic]

edit: If any has acces to nice pictures of skaven slaves, I'd be partial to them.
(Otherwise I'll be reduced to putting my tin models on the scanner)


And finally the dreggs:

Darn I've saved these as BMP's.

Well the names tell all :

HornedRat / FlagDECAL (Also got a GreyCounsil one) / Tranquol (leader_magical) / alphalayer Hornedrat_icon


(edit2: it might be nice to use the alpha layer to give a bit of colour to the flag... although my civ-colour is grey right now, darkred might be nicer))

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I like the buttons so far but they would need a common background(like woodelves/highelves/Empire etc. partially already have). Also what about buttons for units already in the mod?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i absolutely Love that "skaven magic" button, very nice the rest a nice too.

 

[Chamaedrys]

Yeah, very nice buttons