Terrain Warz: Scenario Design Contest Entry

[Zechnophobe]

Figured that while this is a competition, that I'd open source my entry as much as possible. I'm not going to do major work on it yet, just start doing the basic design and gaming concepts.


Description: This scenario is designed to be played in 4 person multiplayer, but is also a fun single player experience. Our scenario starts in the middle of a lush river valley, full of green meadows. The 4 playable Civs will be:


Sheaim: Who think that this valley would be a great place to begin heralding armageddon. To do so, they aim to spread Hell Terrain to as much of the territory as possible.

Malakim: The high mountain walls of the valley have not let in enough sunlight. To claim this place for truth and justice, the Malakim desire to spread Deserts and Flood plains to all possible locations.

Illians: This valley is a mere stepping stone for Auric, and must ave the touch of mulcarn brought to it. Spread Ice and Tundra as far as possible!

Ljosalfar: A beautiful natural grove this is... but it needs more trees. Many more trees. Spread them to achieve victory!


Each faction will have additional benefits in their 'native' terrain types, including some commercial and some military. Each will also have a variety of new and interesting ways to spread their chosen terrain. For instance, all civs may build Mana nodes (Nature, Ice, Entropy, Sun) and those nodes will slowly spread the terrain type. Whenever a frostling dies it will turn other terrains to tundra, and tundra to ice.

The exact ways that these changes will come about are what I'm considering first, with an attempt to make each civ play a bit different than others. Some will need only minor tweaks (The good elves are pretty capable at spreading trees as it is) while others more major ones (If the malakim lands are filled with deserts, they need to still function).

I will likely also have a custom, immortal, hero for each faction with their own special and unique abilities.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Reserved For the future.

Spreading Forests:
Existing: Priests of the Leaves
Ljosalfar world spell (Treants).
Summon Treant spell.
Normal spread.

Bloom doesn't spread outside borders.

New:
Nature Node.
Hero with Treant Leadership skill. After he kills a unit in combat he has a chance to summon a Strength 4 Treant. (Which when it dies creates a forest as normal). At level 5, treant starts with Strength 5. At level 10, two treants are summoned.


Spreading Desert
Existing:
Scorch spell. Only works on Plains

New:
Sun Node.
Hero with Shining Blades, when he attacks a unit square, 50% chance the square becomes desert. At level 5 increases to 100%. Level 10 has 50% chance to chance adjacent tiles.
World Spell causes all grassland in borders to turn to plains?

Spreading Hell
Existing: Armageddon (Likely will remove this).

New:
Entropy Nodes.
Hero with Corrupt skill. When he pillages an improvement there is a 10% chance to deal damage to nearby non demon units, and turn nearby tiles to Hell terrain. Increases to 20% at level 5, and 40% at level 10.
Cities with Planar gates summon Demons based on number of total hell terrains on map.

Spreading Ice
Existing:
Snowfall
Deepening Ritual
Temple of the Hand

New:
Water Nodes: If a water node is on an 'ice' square, it freezes and becomes an Ice node. (Build a city nearby, build a temple of the hand).
Ice Nodes: Spreads Ice.
Samhain will be repeatable, and when frostlings die, they 'cool' the tile they were on.
Hero with Freeze ability: When he attacks, all units in defending stack with movement '0' take a flat 10% damage. Any killed this way turn into Illian Ice Elementals. That cause 'cooling'.

 

[Blakmane]

are you going to be able to do all of that with only python changes?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Pretty sure, yup. Even without cheating! (Changing the Event to import something else as cf would let me overwrite the custom functions, technically, without going outside the rules... but that wouldn't be the intent of things, so I won't do it).

We are allowed to modify the python for events, as in, when a unit dies, or pillages something. You can also use the normal python calls to check things like what a units name is. There are a few things that I might not be able to do, but I'll find out after .4 comes out, and rehash things then.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Map is a Tiny map with the 4 player civs starting in the four corners with a small troupe of units.

Troupe: 2 Scouts, 1 worker, 1 settler, 1 adept, 1 Disciple of pertinent religion.

The Illians don't get a disciple, but instead have a Warrior with the medic promotion and Enchanted Blade.

Malakim get 1 Scout and 1 Lightbringer instead of 2 scouts.

Each civ starts with 3 techs: Exploration, Ancient Chants and then one magic type tech as follows
Malakim: Divination (So they can build Sun Nodes)
Illian: Elementalism (So they can build Water Nodes)
Ljosalfar: Alteration (So they can build Nature Nodes)
Sheaim: Necromancy (So they can build Entropy Nodes).

Each start location has a relevent mana node nearby (Not raw) all other mana nodes in the map will be raw to start with.

There are three minor civ's that also exist on the map, two that are always at war: A Clan of Embers and a Doviello, and one Hippus who you can have normal peaceful relations with, but all are set to be aggressive. (For multiplayer this gives people something other than the other players to worry about, but should only be minor hurdles).

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Sounds like alot for a tiny map?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Keep in mind this map has little to know water, as it represents a river valley of sorts. So while it is a 'tiny' map, it has a fairly significant land area. I poked about on a small map before deciding it was just... too big. As it is now there is enough room to grow and explore, without there being a stagnation point where both growth and militaristic expansion are undoable.

 

[Kael]

Keep in mind this map has little to know water, as it represents a river valley of sorts. So while it is a 'tiny' map, it has a fairly significant land area. I poked about on a small map before deciding it was just... too big. As it is now there is enough room to grow and explore, without there being a stagnation point where both growth and militaristic expansion are undoable.

Thats the lesson I learned form the Momus. For some reason maps seem 10x as large when you have specific scenario objectives.

As to the quesiton abotu as to if you will be able to do this with python changes only, I dont its going to be hard at all. The doTurn function alone can handle it (the current hell terrain function is a python routine in do turn).

 

[cIV_khanh93]

This sounds like it will be fun! except, the Sheaim and the Malakim will have difficulty with their terrain not being usable, wont they?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Hell terrain isn't that bad, really, just health poor.

 

[Zechnophobe]

This sounds like it will be fun! except, the Sheaim and the Malakim will have difficulty with their terrain not being usable, wont they?

Yes, that is definitely the biggest trick here. Malakim getting flood plains next to river will help a bit, and I'm thinking of a few other things as well for them. Sheiam will likely be better off (Though tree-less).

Lastly, I may make the Ljosalfar require Ancient Forest spread, and not normal forests, will make things a bit more even for them.

 

[Grey Fox]

Hell terrain isn't that bad, really, just health poor.

Especially not together with sacrifice the weak.

 

[Jabie]

Love the sound of the scenario, but I'd change the name from Terrain Warz to Terra Firma or even Erebus Firma.

 

[Zechnophobe]

When I produce it, it won't have the name Terrain Warz, for sure. That just a quick working title meant to be descriptive more than anything.

 

[xienwolf]

I saw a new post in this thread and actually paid attention to the title, was about to (but decided it wasn't constructive) post saying "For the love of god, have a good reason for using the stupid Z on the end of Wars if you stick with this title!"

 

[Zechnophobe]

One small hurdle I'm up against: I wanted to slightly customize the traits of the playable leaders. Now you can do this with add/remove trait, but as far as I can tell when you chose your leader at the beginning of the game, they will be shown as having their normal traits, and only after the game starts will the changes take effect. This isn't show stopping, a little turn 1 popup warning the player they don't have the traits they thought they had isn't that bad.

 

[xienwolf]

You are allowed to modify the GameText xml files, so you should be able to find somewhere on the startup screen to add some text indicating your changes.

 

[Switchblock]

Aw, so you have the Doviello finally renouncing their Illian masters, very good

I really wish I knew all the cool Python stuff to figure out how to make stuff like this.