Some ideas to developers

[betresen]

1. Barbarians & Animals

1.1 Ridiculously to see a bear protecting a city of barbarians, as well as the skeleton protecting bear's den. I suggest to enter 3 separate fractions Animals, Barbarians and the Harbingers of the Apocalypse which are with each other in the world, but carrying out separate functions.
1.2 Army of spiders in early or middle game is dangerous weapon of cold war with your opponents. And all animals are useful, but in late game spiders less powerful than most of modern units (even warrior upgrades into powerful champ with 10 str, or longbowman). I propose some features to balance power of animals in early and later games.
a) Giant Spiders lvl 12 or higher may be upgraded into Dread Spider (Evil civs) or Greater Spider (Neutral & Good civs) in cities with Mage Guild, after researching Strength of Will.
Dread Spider (2 str (+2 poison), 2m) - spider lose 1 str, gaining 1 movement point and 2 abilities: Web (creates web on tile of forest or jungle, ANY unit entering tile destroying it and loses 2 movement points, except units with Spider* promotion, spiders using webs as roads and not destroying it) and Poison Spell (all enemy units in 1 tile gain +1 Poisoned promotion*). Supporting unit for other spiders, debuffing enemy without battle and building webs).
*Spider promotion - unit have +25% vulnerable to fire, can use webbed plots as roads, cannot carry an artifacts or great commander.
Great Spider (4str(+2 poison), 1m) - spider gains 1 str and Web ability, and additionally may create Baby Spiders with 10% chance. More dangerous than Giant Spider, Great Spider can build webs as well as Dread.
*Poisoned promotion - gives -10% str and decreases healing rate. I think that it must be stackable up to 3 times (Poisoned I, II and III), giving a stackable effects from different doses of poison.
b) Doviello may create Wolf Den in city from captured wolves. Wolf Den allows to build Hunting Wolf (4/2 str, 3 m, no terrain penalty, doesn't receive defense bonuses, using cargo slot instead of hawk, at at EoT returns to master's plot). These animals are good scouts and attackers, it will be good early bonus to weak Doviello.
c) Recently tamed animals are dangerous and may be agressive. What if all tamed units will be granted with Tamed (+5% chance to become barbarian, +12% chance to wear off per turn) promotion?
1.3 Scout's detecting may be more impotant with new barbarian units - Gremlins (0/1str, 1m, invisible to most units, 35% withdrawal chance). Their function - to destroy enemy improvements. You'll receive many problems with these guys!

For today, it's all. Tomorrow i'll add new proposes about magic balance and some event ideas to this post.

P.S. Sorry for my english, i'm from Ukraine... You know ukrainian language not better than i know english

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a couple good ideas here. I agree that it's sad to have your experienced, hard-to-get animals becoming obsolete, and would love an upgrade for the spider ( griffon should get something similar too IMHO, and it needs it even more actually cuz you can't turn it into a building ) . dividing barbarians in 3 different factions is an idea magister had too and is in his modmod as it is in snarko's option mod IIRC, and it IS a great idea indeed.

 

[westamastaflash]

griffon should get something similar too IMHO, and it needs it even more actually cuz you can't turn it into a building

Griffon Riders with Animal Handling! Do it like the War Elephant Upgrade!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

awesome idea

 

[Algeroth]

1.1 Ridiculously to see a bear protecting a city of barbarians, as well as the skeleton protecting bear's den. I suggest to enter 3 separate fractions Animals, Barbarians and the Harbingers of the Apocalypse which are with each other in the world, but carrying out separate functions.

Veiled Esus, your humble servant begs you. Please hide this thread from the sight of MagisterCultuum. I don't want to hear about His Modmod, althrough this was one of his best ideas.

b) Doviello may create Wolf Den in city from captured wolves. Wolf Den allows to build Hunting Wolf (4/2 str, 3 m, no terrain penalty, doesn't receive defense bonuses, using cargo slot instead of hawk, at at EoT returns to master's plot). These animals are good scouts and attackers, it will be good early bonus to weak Doviello.

And this is good idea too.

 

[Fafnir13]

I came to these threads to post some animal ideas I'd been getting during today's games. Your's are better.

I do have a few ideas which might expound on the webs in beneficial fashion.
To create a web takes the spider three turns or so. This would keep it line with other terraforming spells and is in keeping with the time it takes a spider to set up its lair. Also in keeping with spider webs, it should last forever. I don't know if it is even possible for improvements to have expiration times attached to them. I know fire can go away in a few turns...
Anyways, the timer would reset every time a unit with the spider promotion entered it. Given an expiration timer of, say, 10 turns or so; a spider could create a web, go to another tile to make another web, wander back on through, then head out for more web building. This rather nicely depicts a spider tending to its web, creating an ever growing lair.

That takes care of creating the web. To destroy them (again, no idea how coding would work), mark down the expiration timer by the amount of move the unit entering had. Webs left untended would break easily, but fresh, strong webs would hold. Every turn, remove as much move as the unit has from the timer until it reaches 0, only then destroying the web. Anything with + from fire would destroy the web automatically, given the weakness to fire.

That's web creation and destruction, but what could they do? Units with spider promotion gain (let's just go crazy here) +100% str when defending in a web and when attacking units caught in a web. Allowing webs to act as roads for spiders is also a great idea and would help the spider keep them tended (resetting the expiration timer).
For further fun and giggles, and to allows spiders a greater presence in the world, webbed terrain could also have a small chance to spawn baby spiders.

I know, very unlikely anything like this will get implemented. Lot's of code, lots of unique stuff, and all for one little unit type. If nothing else, could we at least get some more promotions for all of our animal friends? The undead certainly get a slew of unique ones.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm thinking spider webs could be pretty cool. I'd recommend implementing them a little differently though.

Currently, features can randomly expire but improvements cannot. That is, unless you consider being destroyed when it randomly creates a feature to be expiring.



The first thing you'd have to do is create a new TempImprovement python function, similar to the TempTerrain one. I was actually planning to add this (and a TempFeature tag) anyway. Actually, I already did add in one non-released FfH 0.30 version of my modmod. I got the DLL to compile correctly, but there were some (most likely unrelated) problems with that version. I was focused on fixing the problems my other changes made (which seemed to only make them worse instead of better; eventually it would crash upon loading), and forgot to actually test to see if these new functions would work. I think I could probably get these functions to work though in my next version, but I don't really have time to work on it because of school work.

(I'm also hoping to change it so that improvements do not get destroyed when they create a new feature. I'd use the TempImprovement function for Blaze, so smoke could randomly create flames or expire. The expiration wouldn't be random each turn, but rather the duration of the smoke would be an unrevealed random number set when the improvement is created. Then, I'd add a Forest preserve improvement that has a chance of turning a forests to an ancient forest, and probably get rid of their automatic spread.)



I'm thinking you overlooked the most obvious thing that Spider Webs should do: immobilize units that enter the tile. This would be quite simple to do with a <PythonOnMove> function. I'm thinking that when a unit (with some exceptions, like flying units, maybe angels and demons, Archos units if this is in FF) move into the tile it should reduce the Web's duration by a random amount, and then itself be immobilized for the length of time the web would then last. If there are already units there it might reduce their turns immobile to the same amount.

I think I'd rather keep webs tied to a unit rather than a new promotion. I was actually thinking it might be good to make webs spawn Baby Spiders instead of having them be created in combat. I don't want to have any per turn effects here because of performance issues. It would probably be better just to have the build web spell work where web already exist, increasing their duration.

Letting spiders get a free promotion while on a web tile would be very easy if you use Xienwolf modcomp/FF's new tags. Letting spiders use webs as roads would be much more difficult.


I just got to thinking, if Xienwolf and Vehem make it so that a nit could never have negative movement (which causes all sorts of problems) like they recently made it so that they could never have less than less than 0 strength, then you could pretty much ignore all the python stuff. You could simply add an AutoAcquire/MustMaintain promotion that would be given for free to non-spider units (spiders would get a different promotion) which would decrease the units strength and movement. If you wanted, you could ignore all the duration stuff and just make it so that these could be pillaged, but most units wouldn't have enough movement to pillage them and would be stuck indefinitely. Come to think of it, that is a bad idea for two reasons. The first is that improvements that spawn units are automatically destroyed when entered (which I really think should be changed), and the second is that units with the Raider promotion (which FF has the raider trait give out) would automatically pillage the webs too, giving them an unfair and rather illogical advantage.

 

[deadliver]

Algeroth,

Esus has failed you yet again.

 

[Fafnir13]

I find it rather funny that what I thought was the simplest item on the list (using webs as roads) turned out to be one of the more difficult ones. Could it be made to work like elves with forests?

 

[Skitters]

When a unit gains XP but has no more promotions it can take, could there be a recurring 'Heal' promotion that would have no benefit other than to give the HP a boost in the same way it would be with any other promotion?

Actually it possibly would have another benefit, in that it would presumably increase the level fo the unit.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I find it rather funny that what I thought was the simplest item on the list (using webs as roads) turned out to be one of the more difficult ones. Could it be made to work like elves with forests?

Not if Webs are improvements. If you made them features then they could, but it would be kinds weird to have to get rid of forests to build webs. It seems like that would be the most logical place for them.

 

[Fafnir13]

Perhaps features called "web forest" could be created. Of course, that would require unique graphics for forests, ancient forests, jungles, and the more snowy trees found near the poles. Worth it? Mebbe...
Would seem a tad extreme to create new features for one unit in the game, especially one that's rarely caught. Hmmm....

 

[Sarisin]

1. Barbarians & Animals

1.1 Ridiculously to see a bear protecting a city of barbarians, as well as the skeleton protecting bear's den. I suggest to enter 3 separate fractions Animals, Barbarians and the Harbingers of the Apocalypse which are with each other in the world, but carrying out separate functions.
1.2 Army of spiders in early or middle game is dangerous weapon of cold war with your opponents. And all animals are useful, but in late game spiders less powerful than most of modern units (even warrior upgrades into powerful champ with 10 str, or longbowman). I propose some features to balance power of animals in early and later games.
a) Giant Spiders lvl 12 or higher may be upgraded into Dread Spider (Evil civs) or Greater Spider (Neutral & Good civs) in cities with Mage Guild, after researching Strength of Will.
Dread Spider (2 str (+2 poison), 2m) - spider lose 1 str, gaining 1 movement point and 2 abilities: Web (creates web on tile of forest or jungle, ANY unit entering tile destroying it and loses 2 movement points, except units with Spider* promotion, spiders using webs as roads and not destroying it) and Poison Spell (all enemy units in 1 tile gain +1 Poisoned promotion*). Supporting unit for other spiders, debuffing enemy without battle and building webs).
*Spider promotion - unit have +25% vulnerable to fire, can use webbed plots as roads, cannot carry an artifacts or great commander.
Great Spider (4str(+2 poison), 1m) - spider gains 1 str and Web ability, and additionally may create Baby Spiders with 10% chance. More dangerous than Giant Spider, Great Spider can build webs as well as Dread.
*Poisoned promotion - gives -10% str and decreases healing rate. I think that it must be stackable up to 3 times (Poisoned I, II and III), giving a stackable effects from different doses of poison.
b) Doviello may create Wolf Den in city from captured wolves. Wolf Den allows to build Hunting Wolf (4/2 str, 3 m, no terrain penalty, doesn't receive defense bonuses, using cargo slot instead of hawk, at at EoT returns to master's plot). These animals are good scouts and attackers, it will be good early bonus to weak Doviello.
c) Recently tamed animals are dangerous and may be agressive. What if all tamed units will be granted with Tamed (+5% chance to become barbarian, +12% chance to wear off per turn) promotion?
1.3 Scout's detecting may be more impotant with new barbarian units - Gremlins (0/1str, 1m, invisible to most units, 35% withdrawal chance). Their function - to destroy enemy improvements. You'll receive many problems with these guys!

For today, it's all. Tomorrow i'll add new proposes about magic balance and some event ideas to this post.

P.S. Sorry for my english, i'm from Ukraine... You know ukrainian language not better than i know english

Your English is fine and IMO you have some great ideas to offer for the animals.

I have mentioned before that it is just wrong to have barbs guarding dens and goodie huts. The most extreme example of this is when you find Orthus himself pulling guard duty.

As someone who love the early game of capturing animals and using them to harass the AI, I strongly support any ideas to improve their lot. I recently have discovered how much fun you can have in the early game with Griffons. But, as Gekko mentions, by mid-game they cannot kill any units, and they cannot be upgraded or used in Carnivals/Spider Pens. One good use I have found for them is to perch them on mountain peaks where they are great scouts for incoming trouble. Not too many units can go up and get them there.

I really enjoy capturing a Giant Spider or two in the early game. Again, you have a lot of fun moving them into the territory of the civs that are hellbent on expansion and disrupting their plans as you pick off their exiting Settlers. In almost all my games the Giant Spiders top out on promotions, so it would be nice if they could get a heal promotion (Damaged HN spiders can take a long time to heal) as mentioned by Skitters.

Some good ideas there, betresen. I look forward to your next post.