Summoned Unit Redesign

[xienwolf]

Yeah, one of the big problems with the ideas is that most of the ones which are nice seem to always fall into the same branches. Resulting in something like 15 Mind Summons and none for Life.


Lots of great ideas so far I'm starting to think I have to dig into SDK and Python much earlier than planned because many of what I like are things I cannot do with just the XML.


Had another thought on Building Generation though. I can still limit the number of buildings by having the summon be immobile and letting the summon cast something which generates a building. Then I can use the built in Python checks to see if a viable caster (the summon) is in the town. This allows a Conjurer to provide the same kind of benefit as a sorcerer, but without having to stay in the city personally

I'll take a look at the Total Realism Mod this weekend and see if I can figure out how they implement their code and figure out a way to do it myself. Could be a very enjoyable method for doing all of the summons, but will lead to making most of them permanent, which kinda hoses the Summoner Trait people. But if they are non-combative and just there for the augmentation I think it shouldn't be too bad overall. Many possibilities though: Unit which provides bonus movement, units which provide immunity to collateral, units which provide water walking or flying.... And if it allows it for the entire stack then that makes it quite lovely. Best part is that then I can make one of the summons be an "anti-Summon" flanker/targeter so that you can specifically aim for eliminating those utility summons from the enemy army.

War Cauldron would be an awesome summon. Simulating that or the "death becomes production" wonder (each as a Rank 3 Summon of course) would be amazingly sweet, but I definitely cannot accomplish that with just the XML.

Probably a good point that insta-building improvements is too strong at rank 2, but allowing permanent summoning of Mud Golems doesn't seem too bad at all as an advantage. Already very solid workers, and the Luichirp wouldn't even mind it because at least then it is 1 less to build for themselves

The important thing about Spirit 3 is that it isn't all that strong for a Rank 3 summon. So it is mostly just for cleaning up garbage units that are easily defeated anyway. I'd think that the Griffon would give people more concern thanthe Fervid Nightmares

 

[Tarquelne]

I think Summoning vs. Sorcery makes sense - Summoning gives you more combat units, if of uneven quality. Sorcery has other effects... a few of which overlap summoning. If there's a problem with that overlap, and I think there is, I believe it to be one of balance, not concept.

I also like the "holes" in Summoning, that not every mana type gives a summoning at every level. I've even made more holes in my modmod.

That being said, I like this modmod idea. Especially if it's modular, so I can easily steal any bits I like.

And I would like to see some more variety in the Summoned units, more oddness.

I think the rampager, the paratrooper, the terrain-superspecialist and the outfitter are particularly good "wild" ideas. And should be quite do-able.

Sun3: Good place for the rampager? (Variation: Appears as a barbarian unit? So you summon it in enemy territory and hope it doesn't head for you...)

Spirit: I agree with MagisterC. about Spirit, and especially like your rank 3 idea.

Law: I like the Rank 2 idea quite a bit. I suspect the proposed Law3 would be too powerful (but only one way to find out...) I think either Guardsman OR Fear, but not both. I like the already existent Law3 summon, but the Fervid Nighmare seems like an even more interesting home for the continue-with-victory ability.

Enchantment: A good place for the outfitter idea? I'm not a fan of abstract processes/principles getting Summons, anyway.

Likewise, I don't like the idea of Dimensional having Summons. OTOH, if I _did_, I'd be a big fan of your two ideas.

Body: I think the "Restrainer" is interesting.

Earth 2: Maybe limit it to mines and forts... the "forts" thing would really work best if you could do it in enemy territory, though.

Ai: I agree about Blitz... though maybe Blitz should just be removed from rank 2. Give it first strikes instead?

Necromancy: Agree about the present summons. We play with a house-rule limiting the mana types available to human players. (Haven't tried to limit the AI - We're happy to see any AI magic use.) It's fun to see the Evil civs with their Necromantic mana pumping out Spectres and the like.

OTOH, I don't really like the Imp. The Djin is fun, though a little underpowered. I think the Imp just treads on it's toes. I'd like to see something else for Entropy 2, though I don't have a suggestion. (Err... A Hell-terrain equivalent to Guardian Vines?)

I really like the idea behind rank 2 shadow... though the HN ability seems too powerful against the AI and wasted against a human. Maybe a place for some anti-Recon (offense or defense) Summon?

 

[mtagge]

I'll take a look at the Total Realism Mod this weekend and see if I can figure out how they implement their code and figure out a way to do it myself. Could be a very enjoyable method for doing all of the summons, but will lead to making most of them permanent, which kinda hoses the Summoner Trait people. But if they are non-combative and just there for the augmentation I think it shouldn't be too bad overall. Many possibilities though: Unit which provides bonus movement, units which provide immunity to collateral, units which provide water walking or flying.... And if it allows it for the entire stack then that makes it quite lovely. Best part is that then I can make one of the summons be an "anti-Summon" flanker/targeter so that you can specifically aim for eliminating those utility summons from the enemy army.

I bet the TR guys are nice enough to help you out with the code/promotion system, they even have their own mod forum like the FFH one.

The summoner trait could be modified to allow additional summons in some way. Although that depends on how any limit is put in such as:

-If one skele per summoner then they can have two per,
-Give all of the summoners twincast for free and tone done the summons powers,
-Give the summoners the spellstaff promotion,
-If you put a total limit on the permanent summons to ten per civ give them fifteen
-Maybe give all summons by that faction additional promotions such as free moves or +1 strength and tone down the duration to two turns instead of three
-Allow additional summons that only they can get (such as requires channeling, summoning, the sphere, and a summoner trait given only to summoner arcane units)

I could probably come up with more suggestions if you don't like any of the above.

 

[xienwolf]

For now I am not worrying about the Summoner trait and balancing for them TOO much, just keeping it in mind when I do things, like realising that if many summons go permanent then either the temporary must be MUCH better, or I have to change how Summoner works.

A wild idea I had today that I am going to try out was to allow you to actually build Conjurer/Mage & Archmage/Summoner, but only if you have a building which requires the NEVER technology to build. That way it is unchanged for human players, but for the AI they are able to create Rank 2 & 3 magic users without upgrading old adepts if you turn off the AI building requirements.

 

[jenks]

I definitely like the idea of filling in the summoning gaps for Mind, Spirit, Body, Dimensional and Enchantment. Its kind of annoying if you want a summoner and you have (say) Sidar with few mana nodes and you have to give them spells they won't be using, just to get the promotions. I don't think the magic system's unwieldly, I do think the civilopedia needs a major rework so its more obvious what spells do what and lead to what.

second that. there are quite obvious gaps which need filling before any of these new branches of force/ice etc. should be explored or implemented

 

[daladinn]

typically you dont try and plan based on brokenly powerful stacked concepts....

however,

with fervid nightmares , please please please .....

play a game as sheiam and rush eaters .... plan on chaos 3. if you tech writing then bee line for eaters you can get there fast. conjurors by around 100-110 , eaters by 180 on a quick game.

then see what pit beasts can look like....

fervid dreams scare me and i like playing the sheiam ...

 

[daladinn]

ohh , heres an idea to toy with .....

1- give the acrane trait access to build 4 new buildings. 1 for each (sorcerer, conjeror , archmage, summoner).

2- each building grants those units the promotion of "rushed education". rushed eduaction gives penalty to xp gain equal to the arcane trait.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You know you can still have summons have limited duration if you create them through python, and that you can set the duration to whatever you want. You can use an if statement to still make summoner trait summons last longer (e.g., a summon usually lasts 10 turns, but 30 for those with the trait)

I'm still not really sure we need summons for every sphere, especially those of the gods that Kael has stated do not have planes of their own (I believe that he said there are no planes and no creatures of pure body, spirit, mind) Also, dimensional isn't a plane and wouldn't have summons of its own, it is the ability to connect to other planes and should thus improve other sphere's summons. (I still really like the idea of a 0 movement 0 strength airdropping summon with a large transport capacity for dimensional 3 sorcery though)

I would like more spells in general, perhaps even some that don't require sorcery, summoning, or divine. Cross-sphere spells could be interesting too, but it would be almost impossible to come up with good spells for every combination. I also don't see much of a point in filling in all the gaps before implementing Ice, dimensional, and maybe metamagic (as I'm doing in my modmod)

 

[xienwolf]

Well the ideal for Fervid Dreams is that the unit will not be strong enough to actually WIN in most combat scenarios at that tier. So I'll scale the strength to match that need if I can make them work right I think.

I am aiming for the strength of a pure Fighting Summon to be weaker than a Champion from Rank 2, and able to beat an Immortal from Rank 3 (since at Rank 2 it is a throw-away unit so shouldn't outclass something you have to actually build, but at Rank 3 it is quite the investment of time/training, so it is allowed to be strong).

And of course if there is non-fighting utility of worthwhile note then it ought to be slightly weaker still.

I kinda see what you mean with the Arcane Trait buildings, but I do not think that players have a problem with magic, just the AI, so I am aiming to get whatever I can to let them have some archmages/summoners. Unfortunately I do not know how to make them select spell spheres so that they will actually have access to spells which will be worthwhile I am hoping that just BEING an archmage gets enough free XP that the AI will eventually happen to buy rank 3 of a sphere. It is pretty likely they will have at least 2 matched mana, if not 3, by that point.

MC: I cannot do python. Not personally inability, but I am doing to design all of this as a Modular Mod. That means I am constrained to XML for everything.

 

[Tyrs]

This is a little off topic, kinda. What if you made Dimensional give a straight boost to summons, like spell extension and combat I-V, and made the rift a sorcery spell. Such as in MagisterCultuum's modmod
Level 2 dimensional sorcery-acts like a Obsidian Gate while caster is in city
Level 3-Dimensional rift 0/0/0 cargo 5, para-drop on any visible tile in the world.
Dimensional would still give some bonus, this would probably be hard to do, but if you could make summons from a caster with dimensional last a turn longer? So if a summoner invested in level 3 dimensional his summons would last for 3 turns. If it were a sheaim caster the summon would last 5 turns

 

[MagisterCultuum]

So, basically Tyrs, you are recommending that xienwolf just steal the dimensional spells straight from my modmod, right?

I already added a Dimensional 2 sorcery spell, Dimensional Gate, which creates a building of the same name that acts just like an obsidian gate but only wile the caster is in the city. This was in the first version of my modmod

I'm also planning to add a Dimensional Rift summon as the Dimensional 3 sorcery spell. I was thinking 0/0/0 with 7 cargo, and a large but still limited range; I don't think it is possible to allow unlimited range on any visible tile, at least without some SDK changes. Of course, you could set the range to be larger than the largest map size (I haven't played vanilla BtS in a long time, so I don't remember whether para-dropping requires visibility or not)

Making dimensional promotions boost duration would be awkward. It would either require changing every summon to be done though python or making SDK changes. I considered making dimensional2 either boost duration (hard) or double the number of units summoned (easy, but it doesn't stack with Twincast, so it makes a hard to get promotions almost worthless), but ended up making it instead give the starting settler bonus (+2 moves, +3 visibility) to all summons. I'm thinking that Summoning 3 will either grant a new promotion that adds 1 dimensional affinity, or (using the ptperturn python call) add 1 to the duration of all summons (well, all units with limited duration) every turn. Thus, summons that stay close to a dimensional 3 summoner can stick around forever.

 

[Tyrs]

Sorry for unintentionally stealing your idea MC, I thought the idea felt familiar, just couldn't remember what from...As for the other effects, I really like your dimensional 3 idea, not so sure about lvl 2 starting settler bonus, name aside it seems a bit powerful, and not that flavorful. What about dimensional 2 summoning ANY randomly chosen lvl 2 summon? Dimensional seems a bit close to chaos to me. Instead of calling a specific creature, the caster is just opening a door to anything. Sorry in advance to anyone whose idea I've accidentally stolen

 

[xienwolf]

Yeah, if it is already done somewhere then you can just replace what I do with what he has done pretty easily So I'll avoid that one I think

I personally LOVE passive effects, so I could probably be convinced to make a large number of the spell spheres just give a free promotion or 2 to your basic summoned units. Actually it could be kinda cool to make it so that there are only 8 Summonable units (1 each rank & Tech) and everything else just allows better and better augmentation of them....

Might be cool enough to get a module all to itself

Also, by way of progress report: I have done quite a bit, but little with the summoned units.

Law 2 & 3 are changed how I want them done. That's it on summons.

I have "fixed" Circle of Gaelan, and I made it so that the AI can build higher level magic users instead of having to upgrade to them.

 

[jimi12]

just a mine: invisible, becomes visible on attack (seems XML is not enough for it), immobile, permanent, 0 str, rank 2, destroys attacking unit on death. Good for Enchantment.
[/list]

this is a great idea. having minefields that only rangers can see or made visible with the sun spells is brilliant. id like to c this in the game or a modmod.

 

[eerr]

"Adaptability: May have a sense."
this one might be really easy, bfreepromotion will be changed to Ifreepromotion, with <5> given to the unit, it depends on how the arcane bonus works though

 

[xienwolf]

Yeah, if I could get that changed from a Boolean to an INT value that is


I've decided to go ahead and do up all the new units and ignore the rest for the moment. I'll release the entire thing just as a demonstration of Modular work on FfH, and maybe open the floor to requests for modules

It is actually pretty enjoyable to create these little XML tweaks. Except when things go wierd in a BIZARRE fashion and you are left completely boggled.

 

[xienwolf]

All done now and posted as a Mod-mod I'll continue to take feedback as people playtest them, but I am thankful for the ideas in here. I changed around a lot of things as I went through and designed the units. There are some more changes I would happily make, but I wanted to get this out before my big test next week so I left it for now.


MC: If you do actually download it so you can read the 'Pedia you'll notice that you changed my mind about having summons in the spheres without a plane (well, the ones that I knew didn't have them). There are still spells for those spheres... but they aren't summons

Just mentioning since I don't know for sure if you will download it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Where is this modmod? There isn't a link here, and there isn't a thread in the Maps & Scenarios subforum.

I probably won't have time to play for at least a week or two, but I was wanting to look over the changes you made and see if they inspired any ideas for my modmod.

You could go ahead and detail the changes you actually made in this thread while you are at it (it would also probably be good to have this thread moved to the subforum)

 

[xienwolf]

It took me a while to figure out the installer and make sure that I had done everything properly It is up now here

And I figured I would just let this thread die off and hope for future feedback all to be in the new one where I will keep the file