Skaven Design and Ideas.

[Arexack_heretic]

In the case of skaven more likely one well-fed rat.

Skaven also sacrifice slaves to the Hornedrat. (humans/goblins,dwarves and elves are not the only slaves, the majority of skaven are slave too.)
skaven are opportunistic, they perform raids onto the surfaceworld for free food, slave and luxury gods. (but only if they expect little resistance)

skaven HWF-RPG sourcebook contains much info!
just found a nice idea dark-lores of Plague, Stealth and Warp with corresponding spells.

 

[kairob]

Real male rats eat their own babies too you know, anyways I your right they are opertunists...

It would be so easy to represent in civ2 with the multiple maps that linked, I remember fondly goblin raids that I couldnt fight against. I had to fortify soldiers on the tunnel entrence, oh those were the days...

Here is a bit of a farfetched idea;
How about the capital for each skaven clan it blocked in by mountains sea and swamp (is swamp impassable to most units?) But have most skaven units much weaker than normal units, but can use tunnels like has been discribed to teleport so they can leave or can move over mountains allowing them to attack and be oppertunistic but it would be vurtually impossible to wipe them out, although you could kick them out of all but their starting city they would always have ways of comming back or picking on unsuspecting workers, weakly defended towns etcentra...

So their units are weak but they attack your weakest points, evening you out really.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

How would you conquer the world? there would be no way to 'win' the game.

 

[kairob]

I was only brainstorming, I dont mind if ya don't like it but if you do like the idea other than that flaw then I am sure we can find a way around it, it just takes some creative thinking:

• Sending troops in boats
• A spell to allow troops over one mountain square
• Late game Assassin units being allowed to use skaven tunnels
• Dwarven mercenaries
• Allowing the skaven to build roads over mountains after a certain tech, once they get the tech they will cause their own downfall and so on and so forth)

I just thought it would reflect the fact that they are bloody hard to get rid of.

EDIT; How about instead of giving them lots of extra food you could just have it so that each citizen only eats one food (at they are half starved little buggers), again just brainstorming

 

[Arexack_heretic]

sure, sure.
I'm not convinced total isolation is a great idea, it tends to isolate.
Brainstorming is good.
We need some good ideas to prevent skaven from being attacked by blatant force (without carefull planning).
to reflect their secretive (and unknown) nature.
isolation and thus less expansion may force skaven to invest into infiltration more.

edit: one food per population...we'd have to test if it is playable and balanced. I've proposed it before, but can't remember the discussion anymore.

---
non-overt warfare is skavenlike.
(Always have a fall-guy, never get caught. Lie!)
invisible units that have hidden nationality would allow this.

Skaven Raiders.
invisible spell: ('hide' unit is invisible for one turn.?)
can capture workers to make slaves, pillaging improvements can yield slaves,food/gold-loot.

(maybe make slaves/loot a carryable unit to make them invisible too)

If city has skavenlair in sewers or other skaven outpost:
-all skaven units in city are hidden.
-allows 'skaventunnel' airlift
(untill tunnels are implemented, this is reversed, I'd like to have a
tunnel connection as prereq for skaven infiltration)
-enables some abilities of special units.
-skavenraiders can make 'raid' on city
if succesful: one of 1)all food is stolen,
2)one population is lost (! citylevels are not linear) + slaves
3)steal localcorruption*civ.gold/civ.#cities

have seprerate units for these actions and ratsewer etc req.?
i.e.
-have ratsewers+pilferers + any infiltrationunit: can perform steal treasury
-have ratsewer + skavenslaversgang: can perform slave-raid
-have eshin-gutterrunners: can perform spread-terror etc
-eshin guildmaster: establish local contacts (intrigue with locals) : allows interesting things, such as revolts etc.

I have lots of other ideas for skaven infiltration stuff.
I need to write them all down and make them logical and not overpowered.

 

[kairob]

How about using the Apostolic palace effects as the 'council of thirteen' to try to unite our 3 skaven clans?

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Interesting...tell me more.
how does that work?

 

[kairob]

I dunno I just thought of it then.

I guess it would work the same as the apostolic palace, but only skaven teams would be involved. You know how the council is trying and failing to unite the backstabbing little sods, anyways once we have time to work on nicities we could even try to write some of our own resolutions for it;

but it would be asking them to stop fighting each other, to team up on other factions, open borders that sort of thing...

 

[Arexack_heretic]

United Rodents then.

-Clan Skryre has devised a new infernal device: build something to trigger it.
or build buildingX to protect cities vs lichtmagic earthquake.

that sort a thing?

 

[kairob]

Nice button and yeah, that sorta thing.


If we could get unique event triggers for each civ too that would help, in my last game one of my Dwarven brides married an Orc!!!

 

[Arexack_heretic]

One of my hobgoblin maidens maried an ogre, it lead to an international incident.

 

[Deon]

Real male rats eat their own babies too you know, anyways I your right they are opertunists...

It would be so easy to represent in civ2 with the multiple maps that linked, I remember fondly goblin raids that I couldnt fight against. I had to fortify soldiers on the tunnel entrence, oh those were the days...

Here is a bit of a farfetched idea;
How about the capital for each skaven clan it blocked in by mountains sea and swamp (is swamp impassable to most units?) But have most skaven units much weaker than normal units, but can use tunnels like has been discribed to teleport so they can leave or can move over mountains allowing them to attack and be oppertunistic but it would be vurtually impossible to wipe them out, although you could kick them out of all but their starting city they would always have ways of comming back or picking on unsuspecting workers, weakly defended towns etcentra...

So their units are weak but they attack your weakest points, evening you out really.

Hmm it's nice if you play on pre-defined map, but if all the skaven units would be too weak, they would be unplayable on custom maps I like (I like the randomization factor).

There's no point to make them weaker in common, they should be balanced (i.e. a giant rat swarm can overhelm a horde of swordsmen easily if they'll be too many ^^). Also ratmen are not worse than men in the art of combat, and in the art of sneaky combat are much better.
So the idea of mountains+swamps+weak units comes to scenario ideas, where you shield them with mountains and restrict them from using strong units.



By the way, the icon of rat swarm and the rat model "Arexack_heretic" is working on can be used for many purposes.
For example, a giant rat as it is can be used for "Giant rat pack" weak unit, but fast to build.
At the same time the same model tinted in green color and with more rat models per unit can be used to represent the rat swarm, which builds Vermin Sewers we were talking about in rivals' cities.

The idea about "tech" and their special units - there can be a Skaven nation wonder linked to their pre-tech (so not avaliable to others) which represents the dark gloomy tunnels under the world and allows the units to move from city to city, similar to teleportation gates for mages.
Well, there's another idea about it - if you don't want to make "a teleportation gate tunnels" for all, you can make a high-tech unit like shadow molerat expedition, which acts like aircraft, in fact that it can rebase on long distances (only in cities) and acts like a transport, so it looks like this special expedition transports your troops using dark tunnels under world and shadow magic, but actually you can always limit the range they can reach.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

good ideas, keep ém coming!

I was thinking of having the giant rat as an animal in wastes and forests swamps.
packmasters being able to capture them + have breedingpit required to build them.
maybe have packmaster 'carry' it's charges.

ratswarms: ? why make them green? just make them small and more.
(we need to create a 'swarm'formation?)
swarms can do quite some damage, 'they are many' thus tough to kill. they have free movement.
maybe code something that allows to combine swarms together into more powerfull swarms.

 

[Deon]

good ideas, keep ém coming!
ratswarms: ? why make them green? just make them small and more.

Well the RAT SWARMS able to build VERMIN SEWERS must look different from usual, I wrote this. Usual swarms shouldn't be green.
And about vermin swarms - they should not be totally green of course, but a bit tinted I mean to represent their nature and so player could distinguish them among other rat swarms.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

we could use the city sickness effect over the vermin sewer rats to distinguish them rather than colouring them green...

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Does no-one find it strange we are discussing using normal rats to found a skaven presence in a city?

What is wrong with a gutter-runner establishing a presence?

--
cosmetic idea: change termites in "have devoured agriculture" event with "swarms of rats"
the log already states "pestillence has struck X agricultural lands"

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

What is wrong with a gutter-runner establishing a presence?

theres nothing wrong with it i actually like it better than normal rats.

cosmetic idea: change termites in "have devoured agriculture" event with "swarms of rats"
the log already states "pestillence has struck X agricultural lands"

good idea

 

[Deon]

What is wrong with a gutter-runner establishing a presence?

Nothing wrong. Just as I offered to use skaven guildmaster to find a pilfirers' guild, and rat swarm to infect their clean sewers if they're built .

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Better to call it by o more accurate name than rat-sewers

use infiltrator misions to increase influence or skaven religion is city ->
sacrifice infiltrator to build
skaven-warren (req.skaven influence+sewers)->stronghold (req warren)->undercity (reqstronghold)

to represent the large effort needed to build a district secretly in a foreign city, require sacrifice of a skaven great-general or expensive guildmaster unit.

maybe not require sewers in later stages of game by sacrificing a 'molerat-steamer'.

 

[Deon]

great-general

-.-
Don't think so. GG means you should make a lot of wars to get them, and if you want a "sneaky" presence and diplomatic victory within small territory, it'll be almost impossible to complete. Also it may require to sacrifice a great spy/engineer, but not GG I guess... Generals are good on the battlefield, not under city =).
The unit idea is better.