The Undead

[DutchJunkie]

I love the whole concept of the corpse resource.

Me too .. only the 5 or 10% is too much .. or you should give the player a chance to bury them first. In toher words: 5% chance the corpses come to live by itself after 5 turns. This way the player has a chance to clean and if he doesn't .. well then he has a chance to be hunted by the undead ..

 

[seZereth]

Me too .. only the 5 or 10% is too much .. or you should give the player a chance to bury them first. In toher words: 5% chance the corpses come to live by itself after 5 turns. This way the player has a chance to clean and if he doesn't .. well then he has a chance to be hunted by the undead ..

sounds very nice! and if not too complicated, perhaps if you raise them in 10 turns you get zombies and after that you get skeltons... (i think someone already suggested that)

 

[DutchJunkie]

sounds very nice! and if not too complicated, perhaps if you raise them in 10 turns you get zombies and after that you get skeltons... (i think someone already suggested that)

It get's even better and better ..
And what about dead dragons and giants? a little more work for the necromancer, but they could become a Zobie Dragon and Bone Giant!

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Me too .. only the 5 or 10% is too much .. or you should give the player a chance to bury them first. In toher words: 5% chance the corpses come to live by itself after 5 turns. This way the player has a chance to clean and if he doesn't .. well then he has a chance to be hunted by the undead ..

5 % means round about every 20 turns DJ. And if you can bury them safely what for youneed a priest? Workers could mass together to bury them faster also.

Dragons and BoneGiants are powerful individuals. They shouldn't be spawned randomly everywhere on the map.

 

[Civmansam]

To summarize the Corpse resource idea:

Everytime a unit gets killed there should be a chance corpses appear on the tile(imo about 50%)

Corpses could have similar effects like waste(pollution) on the tile, leaving it without production.

Corpses could be removed in three ways:
1: a necromancer raises them
2: A priest sets them to rest(via prayer/spell)
3: Workers bury them

Ifs possible I'd like to have a small chance like 5% every turn the undead rise by themselves(undead barbs) also removing the corpses. This chance could rise to 10% if workers are burying them(disturbing the dead)
After a long period the corpeses also coud simply get consumed(something like 50 or more turns)

@Civmansam
Think you can write that code?

I'll see what I can do, but I'm an amatuer pythonist so I don't know. Especially the last part

 

[Ploeperpengel]

That's ok. If you can get the first part done that would already be good to post. We can allways add the more tricky stuff later- but you allways grow with the challenge

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Love it all! this would be awsome.

 

[Civmansam]

Finally started on this, just wanted to ask something, if I could make bones a feature, because it would be a ton easier to code that way

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I don't mind if we get the same effects.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

corpses = pollution is a bit much IMO.

so is 50 turns for them to decompose, a year or five and only scraps should
remain!
hmm. 10 turns, then 5% every turn of rising up...no chance they are gonna take decomp lying down. They will rise eventually.

I also like to see a wonder (black piramid?) that does what Nagash did: kill all humans in his kingdom and raise them as undead.

It should be a fairly difficult thing to build, but the rewards would be high:
-no more food needed.
-Plus free raise dead spell/turn or -free 5 free lichlord units (for raising dead).

Hmm population growth could come from 'harvesting' those corpse fields.
(All undead units can disband in necropolis to add 1 pop)

or from 'mining' graveyard enhanced squares, bones/skulls would replace shoves of grain.
Could a wonder replace all irrigation/hamlet with graveyard enhancements?

edit:
Maybe if chance of a corpsepile can be kept relatively low, you can cleanup a tile by burrying them, creating a graveyard. (no chance of undead rising spontaneously, unless by winds-of-magic.)
This has no value for most civs appart from + maybe or - .... But for undead civs these would be great attractors.
Graveyards can be cleared by workers at the same rate as clearing a forest. But with a chance of 10% of barbarian undead rising.

If dead rising spontaneously % could be tied in with warpstone or other souces of magic being nearby, that would be realistic. but much trouble for something that could be a rare occurence. Unless people start fichting for a chunk of green glowy stuff.



-technical question: can terrain appearance be changed according to culture? (Undead fields / chaos plains / bleak forrests etc)

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

those are some damn ambitious ideas, I love em! especially the wonder killing all your people and then raising them as undead, that would be cool, one for the Khemri (Black Pyramid and Black Tower of Arkhan but can only build one of them not both), one for vampires (Nagashizzar?) and one for Lhamia(also Black Pyramid or Black Tower of Arkhan but can only build one of them not both) .

 

[Chamaedrys]

cool ideas, I like it.

 

[neener]

I think someone floated this idea in another thread, but I'd definitely get a kick out of being able to send Necromancers into other people's civilisations. I used to play Undead back when they were still one army and there was tons of fluff text about Necromancers living undetected in Empire towns, employing graverobbers and slowly building a cadre of Undead. Eventually they'd be discovered and make some dramatic escape, cursing the town forever and such. I'd love to have Necromancers be able to act as 'spies' of sorts, being sent into enemy territory and being able to set up a cult much in the same way you set up an Embassy in Civ. The longer you have the Necromancer in the enemy town, the stronger he gets, with a % chance of being discovered, until eventually when you don't want to push your luck anymore you either bring him back or he 'erupts' as a slew of Undead units around the town, kind of like Partisan uprisings in Civ 3.

I don't know if it'd be worth all the trouble, but it would give a unique flavour to playing the Undead.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

I like it.

Ghouls, warped by chaos winds while still in the womb, IIRC also lived at the fringes of human civilisation, robbing graves and eating drunks too dazed to fight back.

Same goes for vampires. They could 'live' undetected in a town and decrease it's population growth or health. Only a witch hunter or other higher servant of Sigmar would be able to track him/her down and expose him/her.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

nice idea neener! that would certainly be an awsome addition for the vamps! i hope it wont be too hard to implement...

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Necromancers in disguise:
The invisibility wouldn't be a problem. The rest we need a programmer for. I support that idea. For Necromancers as well as Vampires. But they should need a special promotion "disguise" i.e. for it. Not Every Necromancer or vampire should be able to act that way.

I also agree the undead spawn chance should be reduced but I council against changing the basic concept to much else it would get to complicated. Ghouls could simply be another unittype able to spawn from battlefields besides skeletons and Zombies.

About the wonders I'm not so sure. Undeadtype units already don't need military support mostly I changed that already on my homeedition but we should search for an easier way to balance that. My solution now is simply low morale(later additional damage if they break) and slightly weaker units.
I don't think the AI could easily understand it need to sacriface units in order to have cities grow. We maybe could use these wonders simply to give undead civs the necromancy tech. Also needs coding but much less complicated since there's already a modcomp "secret tech" we could use for that.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

thats a point about the wonders, damn Artificial-Dumbness

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Compensating rules for undead:

1) Undead have a drawback called 'instability' reflecting the tenuous magicall and inherently unnatural state of being undead.
(have that -undead units suffer additional damage when pushed back.

2) Most undead units need a powerfull hero to lead them or they suffer from stupdity.
-Undead-civ-rule: undead units need a 'leader/necromancer' units within, say, 1 tile or suffer collateral damage and stupidity.

3) No natural population growth. Could be a problem for AI...true