Thoughts from a lurker...

[Belmane]

Hello all, I've been following the development of this mod for a couple years now and figured it was about time to contribute something instead of just enjoying all of your hard work.
Now, I realize that a lot of my ideas would only really work in a scenario setting (ideally a rhye's typed one), but hopefully there will be something in my ramblings that you can use.

Dark Elves
Black Arks: The dark elves should start with these. They are floating cities that were ripped from the land of Naggarythe at the time of the Sundering.
I picture them as being a super transport of sorts, able to carry a very large invasion force. They should also be virtually unsinkable. I would propose 0 attack, 24 defense, 24 cargo capacity, and 3 movement. Would also be nice if you could dock ships on them as well. This would go a long way towards countering Nagaroth's isolated position.
Slaves: The druchii culture is almost entirely facilitated by the toil of slaves. An interesting way of representing this may be to allow them to add slaves as great people that grant +1 hammer and/or +1 food. This would help to counter the inherently poor resources of their homeland. This should only be allowed under the slavery civic, and any 'great slaves' should be removed if the civic is ever left. This could potentially be very overpowering if the dark elves have a settlement in a fertile/resoure rich area. Perhaps there could be a hefty gold cost to the slaves ability to attach to a city.
Historic Victory Goals: Possibly conquering Ulthuan, collecting 100 slaves, not sure about a third one.

Greenskins
One Civilization: I would say that Orcs and Goblins, for the purpose of civilizations, should be considered as one culture. The greenskins as a "civilization" is already a bit of a stretch. Most unified periods in greenskin history last for as long as a Waaagh!'s leader lives. Thus, greenskin city's would likely represent areas where a given goblin or orc tribe have gained a foothold.
Da Waaagh!: I'm not sure if there is a way to code it, but perhaps orcs could suffer from inverse war weariness. i.e. the longer they aren't at war, the angrier they get.
Gatherin' da boyz: I think there should be barbarian greenskins (as well as beastmen, and chaos humans). To represent a warboss 'convincing' them to join his tribe, there could be a 50% chance to capture any enemy greenskin. This may also be a good way to deal with units that rebel through animosity.
Research: Greenskins should be somewhat inhibited when it comes to traditional research. Most of their technological advancements come from aping the achievements of other cultures. To represent this, they should have a subatantial percentage-based research penalty, but be able to either get a small research bonus from defeated units, or be able to steal a tech when conquering an enemy city. They should also be very limited in their ability to build research structures, say elder council being their limit?
Command: Perhaps allow a Great General only promotion that would make all units in the same tile immune to animosity.
Black Orcs: Where are they?!?
Historic Victory Goals: Conquer and hold 3 Dwarf cities, raze 5 other cities, control all of the Badlands.

Dwarfs
The Vault: I really like this mechanic from FfH, put I don't really think it fits the dwarves of warhammer that well.
Cavalry: The dwarves shouldn't really have any.
Mountains: The dwarves are creatures of the mountains, is there any way to allow them to settle, and/or move across and work mountain tiles.
The Underway: Perhaps dwarf workers could build special roads on (more accurately, under) mountain tiles.
Historic Victory Goals: Drive the High Elves from the Old World (yeah, it's vague); found 3 cities in the World's Edge Mountains, 1 in the Black Mountains, 1 in the Vaults, and 1 in the Grey Mountains; and never lose a stronghold to greenskins, skaven, or barbarians.

Skaven
Warpstone Dependancy: Due to their strond connection to warpstone, perhaps it could be coded that they can only settle on, or maybe adjacent to, a warpstone resource. This would, of course, require them to start with the tech to see warpstone.
Masters of Stealth: Similair to my 'underway' idea above, skaven workers could be eble to build tunnles. These could function as roads that, as long as they stayed on them, could allow skaven to cross borders and make them invisible. They would aso be buildable in enemy borders.
Survivalists: The skaven seem to be able to eek out a living anywhere. Perhaps they could be able to get some food and maybe some production from tiles that would normally offer none. This would allow Skavenblight to be viable in the heart of the Blighted Marshes... but only for Skaven.

Chaos
Not too many suggestions for the civilization as a whole, but some that I think could reflect it's insidious nature.
Cult of Chaos: This could be represented as a guild like the Cult of the Dragon in FfH. It could be founded in a city by a random event and spread the same way. The effects of the cult could be a minor influence penalty and maybe an unhappy citizen, but if left unchecked for a while it could establish a secret temple that would incur a much steeper influence penalty and more unhappiness. If the city's influence ever reaches negative, it will rebel and go barbarian.
Chaos Incursions: To reflect the Warhammer World's history of sporadic, massive invasions of Chaos, how about instituting a mechanic similair to FfH's Armagedon Counter? It could be raised a point every time a unit is killed, maybe three when a city is conquered, perhaps five when a city is razed. At set points on the counter, certain events would have a percentage chance of occurring, for example, at 20 a beastman warband (5-10 units) could appear and start rampaging through your lands, at 40 an orc waagh of 15-20 units could appear somewhere, etc, up to 100 when a full blown chaos incursion would start trashing everything in it's path. At each point on these points on the counter the given event has a chance of occurring, and if it does, it resets the counter to 0. I think that this would represent pretty well the way that the forces of chaos tend to attack when there is more conflict in the world.

Tech Tree
I'm not sure exactly what to say here, a lot of it just feels kind of... clunky. For example, I don't think sailing should come after trade, and comes too late in general. I'd say Fishing and Crafting should be it's prereqs.

Well, I'm getting tired. So, I'll wrap this up for now. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Ahriman]

Some excellent ideas here.

I think in general the mod should be designed to be playable and balanced for random maps, but some of these could be incorporated for the Warhammer World.
I still prefer the Black Ark as a high-tech unit that automatically generates slaves while in hostile territory (and maybe auto-teleports them to the capital). I posted a bunch of suggestions about these in one of the threads.
Food bonus specialists or settled slaves is a bad idea in general, very hard to balance. I'd rather increase the viability of their lands in the Warhammer World map (with more bonuses like deer for eg) rather than make them unbalanced for every other map. As it stands, the Dark Elves are already the strongest civ.
If you want to represent the slave economy, you could create a cheap darkelf-specific building that adds +2 hammers and +1 food, or you could give a worldspell like the Cualli in Fall Further that adds permanent slave citizens in all your cities.

I have no problem with multiple Greenskin civs. On the Warhammer map, its good to have non-barbarian greenskin threats coming from multiple directions. And I definitely wouldn't want them all to be unified - greenskins are the opposite of unified. The engine isn't really capable of handling big ebbs and flows in faction power. Inverse war-weariness would be good, but hard to code the AI for. You could make them super-aggressive, but then they'll just end up DOWing factions too strong for them and getting wiped out, or over-expanding. I'd like to see them with a Raider trait like that from Fall Further, so that they auto-pillage with their melee units when they move into a tile.
Totally agree that there should be barbarian greenskins though.
Yeah, they're not really civilised, but I'd be pissed off it I couldn't play them, and I think it would be really hard to somehow mod a faction to not need cities.
Black Orks are in the game, as the Royal Guard replacement. You can only get 3 though.
There already IS a great-general only promotion that makes units immune to animosity - its the Discipline promotion. Great minds and all that.
Orks are significantly tech-weakened by being unable to build libraries, universities and I think Academies. Would be good to see some kind of tech-stealing though. There used to be code that gave food or gold from killing bears; would be nice to see this adapted so that orks gain research beakers from winning battles. I'd prefer this to tech-stealing from conquering cities.

Agree that dwarf cav should be weak-nonexistent, but with strong infantry. Mountain tile resources or improvements are hard to code I think.

Requiring Skaven to only settle near Warpstone is a bad idea given how rare this resource is. And making it more common will just crowd out other resources.

Agree completely that chaos cults should function like the Cult of the Dragon for non-chaos civs. I've suggested this before.
I like the chaos incursion idea. There is definitely scope here. At high levels, demons should start spawning. And maybe a national wonder for chaos civs that acts like the FFH wonder that increases the armageddon counter for units built in that city.
There should be some kind of chaos victory option here linked to the Chaos Incursion tech.

 

[Belmane]

Heya Ahriman, thanks for the response. I was skimming the forums earlier today and realised I went over some things that you had already sounded in on, often far more coherently than I had.

As I said, most of my ideas were formed with a Rhye's scenario in mind. So, as far as the Black Arks go, I fully agree that they should be a high tech unit in random map games, but they should start with a few in a Rhye's game since they were created at the inception of the Dark Elf culture. I really like your slave gathering ability idea, but still think the arks should be able to carry a LARGE invasion force. You're absolutely correct in the potential of unbalance with the food bonus specialists, improving the land of Nagaroth is probably a better way to go. Not sure if I agree with the strength of the Dark Elves, from my experience with them on the Warhammer World map, I got left behind in tech because of my isolated position. This could perhaps have been countered by sending out a fishing boat early to make contacts, but it was pretty disheartening when I found out that the tiny, backwater country of Kislev was about 8 techs ahead of the mighty and ancient Druchii Empire. ;P

I really like that auto-pillaging raider idea! I think several of my ideas were misunderstood with these guys. The main point that I was addressing was that I don't really feel that there is a need for seperate Goblin and Orc civilizations, they are essentially the same. If you want multiple threats, you could use multiple AIs. I just don't really see the point of them being represented as seperate groups. Barbarian WAAAGH!s being triggered by the chaos counter would also go a fair way towards offering more of a greenskin threat. I would never advocate a civ that had no need of cities, not really sure where you got that from. There are several well established greenskin strongholds, which I would say makes them more viable as a proper civ than chaos. As far as Black Orcs, the Discipline promo, and existing limits on their research capacity, yeah... that was just me firing off without doing enough research.

With my warpstone dependancy idea for the Skaven, this is again an idea that was focused towards scenarios. From what I saw on a map of the Underempire I was able to find online, there are only four true Skaven cities in, or near, the Old World: Skavenblight, Hell Pit, Crookback Mountain, and Cripplepeak. All of these areas have vast quantities of warpstone in common. This same map did also show the rats having numerous lairs under quite a few human cities and dwarf holds. Perhaps there would be some way to represent this? Maybe a guild that would siphon resources to the nearest skaven city? I have a feeling that would be a nightmare to code.

As another somewhat random thought, shouldn't the Empire inquisitor unit be a witch hunter? I've always been a sucker for their funky hats.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

First off, welcome to the forums at last Belmane

secondly, a huge thankyou to your input. ill go through them now:

Dark Elves
Black Arks: The dark elves should start with these. They are floating cities that were ripped from the land of Naggarythe at the time of the Sundering.
I picture them as being a super transport of sorts, able to carry a very large invasion force. They should also be virtually unsinkable. I would propose 0 attack, 24 defense, 24 cargo capacity, and 3 movement. Would also be nice if you could dock ships on them as well. This would go a long way towards countering Nagaroth's isolated position.
Slaves: The druchii culture is almost entirely facilitated by the toil of slaves. An interesting way of representing this may be to allow them to add slaves as great people that grant +1 hammer and/or +1 food. This would help to counter the inherently poor resources of their homeland. This should only be allowed under the slavery civic, and any 'great slaves' should be removed if the civic is ever left. This could potentially be very overpowering if the dark elves have a settlement in a fertile/resoure rich area. Perhaps there could be a hefty gold cost to the slaves ability to attach to a city.
Historic Victory Goals: Possibly conquering Ulthuan, collecting 100 slaves, not sure about a third one.

id actually agree that the DE should start with at least 1 black arc in the kinstrife scenario, probably not the random maps... but definately in the kinstrife scenario. ive actually been following a mod in FFH where they plan to implement 'floating raft cities' and i thought "this will be perfect for the dark elves!". i agree that a much higher defence and unit capacity, but 24 might be a LITTLE over doing it and the ability to dock ships and seamonsters would be wonderful too

on the note of slaves acting as minor great people... thats also a nice idea, but like you say could be potentially unbalancing... maybe make slave great specialists have limited duration so you have to keep replenishing them? could be interesting to code...

as for rhyes styled historic victories: destroy the Highelves, Capture at least 100 slaves, and raze x number of non barbarian cities should be my prefered goals

Greenskins
One Civilization: I would say that Orcs and Goblins, for the purpose of civilizations, should be considered as one culture. The greenskins as a "civilization" is already a bit of a stretch. Most unified periods in greenskin history last for as long as a Waaagh!'s leader lives. Thus, greenskin city's would likely represent areas where a given goblin or orc tribe have gained a foothold.
Da Waaagh!: I'm not sure if there is a way to code it, but perhaps orcs could suffer from inverse war weariness. i.e. the longer they aren't at war, the angrier they get.
Gatherin' da boyz: I think there should be barbarian greenskins (as well as beastmen, and chaos humans). To represent a warboss 'convincing' them to join his tribe, there could be a 50% chance to capture any enemy greenskin. This may also be a good way to deal with units that rebel through animosity.
Research: Greenskins should be somewhat inhibited when it comes to traditional research. Most of their technological advancements come from aping the achievements of other cultures. To represent this, they should have a subatantial percentage-based research penalty, but be able to either get a small research bonus from defeated units, or be able to steal a tech when conquering an enemy city. They should also be very limited in their ability to build research structures, say elder council being their limit?
Command: Perhaps allow a Great General only promotion that would make all units in the same tile immune to animosity.
Black Orcs: Where are they?!?
Historic Victory Goals: Conquer and hold 3 Dwarf cities, raze 5 other cities, control all of the Badlands.

i dont think there will be any civilization changes... were pretty happy with what we have at the moment . i do see your point though.

Peace wearyness is one thing i DEFINATELY want in for the greenskins... possibly even chaos.

i agree with your 'gatherin the boyz' bit

dont greenskins have the 'barbarian trait'? giving them 10% less research rate?

black orcs should be in the game, latest patch by ploep i believe. as for great generals, the greenskins get a great general UU replacement specially designed to counter animosity

Dwarfs
The Vault: I really like this mechanic from FfH, put I don't really think it fits the dwarves of warhammer that well.
Cavalry: The dwarves shouldn't really have any.
Mountains: The dwarves are creatures of the mountains, is there any way to allow them to settle, and/or move across and work mountain tiles.
The Underway: Perhaps dwarf workers could build special roads on (more accurately, under) mountain tiles.
Historic Victory Goals: Drive the High Elves from the Old World (yeah, it's vague); found 3 cities in the World's Edge Mountains, 1 in the Black Mountains, 1 in the Vaults, and 1 in the Grey Mountains; and never lose a stronghold to greenskins, skaven, or barbarians.

i think the vault is pretty suitable for WH dwarves...

i agree with no cavalry for dwarves.

id love for dwarves to be able to settle on peaks, but its currently impossible. i want to make the racial promotion 'dwarf' alow them to cross peaks though.

The Underway is a Darkelf thing not a dwarf thing i was planning on it being a unique improvement like the oak of ages.

but there was a discussion on tunneling for dwarves and skaven a while back, but im not sure how such a feature would be coded. we will definatly look back at the idea when we come to designing dwarves and skaven properly.

Skaven
Warpstone Dependancy: Due to their strond connection to warpstone, perhaps it could be coded that they can only settle on, or maybe adjacent to, a warpstone resource. This would, of course, require them to start with the tech to see warpstone.
Masters of Stealth: Similair to my 'underway' idea above, skaven workers could be eble to build tunnles. These could function as roads that, as long as they stayed on them, could allow skaven to cross borders and make them invisible. They would aso be buildable in enemy borders.
Survivalists: The skaven seem to be able to eek out a living anywhere. Perhaps they could be able to get some food and maybe some production from tiles that would normally offer none. This would allow Skavenblight to be viable in the heart of the Blighted Marshes... but only for Skaven.

besin only able to settle next to warpstone would mean they could only have like 3 or 4 cities on an entire map... pretty crippling. add in they can only settle on hills... and theyre screwed. id rather make them get +2 or 3 unhappyness if they dont havea warpstone resource.

perhaps a skaven only tile improvement 'warrens' which can be built and actls like a cottage but adds a food at level 1, commerce at level 2 and hammer at level 3?

Chaos
Not too many suggestions for the civilization as a whole, but some that I think could reflect it's insidious nature.
Cult of Chaos: This could be represented as a guild like the Cult of the Dragon in FfH. It could be founded in a city by a random event and spread the same way. The effects of the cult could be a minor influence penalty and maybe an unhappy citizen, but if left unchecked for a while it could establish a secret temple that would incur a much steeper influence penalty and more unhappiness. If the city's influence ever reaches negative, it will rebel and go barbarian.
Chaos Incursions: To reflect the Warhammer World's history of sporadic, massive invasions of Chaos, how about instituting a mechanic similair to FfH's Armagedon Counter? It could be raised a point every time a unit is killed, maybe three when a city is conquered, perhaps five when a city is razed. At set points on the counter, certain events would have a percentage chance of occurring, for example, at 20 a beastman warband (5-10 units) could appear and start rampaging through your lands, at 40 an orc waagh of 15-20 units could appear somewhere, etc, up to 100 when a full blown chaos incursion would start trashing everything in it's path. At each point on these points on the counter the given event has a chance of occurring, and if it does, it resets the counter to 0. I think that this would represent pretty well the way that the forces of chaos tend to attack when there is more conflict in the world.

a cult of chaos could be interesting. i was thinking having the individual section of chaos ie khorne, slaanesh tzeentch and nurgle being serraprate cults that require the chaos religion present in the city. any civ not with the chaos as their state religion would get horrible penalties from these cults, but if you are chaos stae religion you would be blessed by the cults.

chaos incursionas are planned for the scenarios. interesting ide ato use the armageddon counter... but then you would be able to predict when the next incusriona is...

Tech Tree
I'm not sure exactly what to say here, a lot of it just feels kind of... clunky. For example, I don't think sailing should come after trade, and comes too late in general. I'd say Fishing and Crafting should be it's prereqs.

i agree with this. at some stage i want to rework the tech tree myself. but thats a later projecti think.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

ok i should have read the whole thing before i started writing

i agree that black arcs should be late game units, but if the mobile city thing works ,then id love to play with that.

i agree with the slave UB for DE.

i agree that Greenskins are fine as 2 civs and they wont be changed im afraid

i agree barb greenskins would be cool

i agree with peace wearyness one of my favourite ideas actually.

------------------------

on the note of skaven, i just had the thought that they are kindof like the kuriotates in FfH in that they have few massive settlements and lots and lots of tiny ones. thus i think the skaven, and/or chaos dwarves for different reasons, need to thave the sprawling trait.

 

[Belmane]

Hello there, PL, and thanks for the greeting. Been following your work here for quite a while and I guess you could say I'm a fan.
A defense value of 24 was a fairly arbitrary number I threw out, and it probably is a little high, but how, may I ask , can someone sink a floating city?
I really like your idea about slave specialists expiring. It reflects the Dark Elves tendency to be none to gentle with their slaves, as well as giving them more incentive to go out and collect more... a cool mechanic that promotes playing them towards their traditional flavor. Perfect.
Yeah, I figured that most of the civs are pretty much set. The whole seperation of orcs and goblins just seems rather superfluous to me. In all honesty, I feel the same way about the chaos forces as well.
Sorry to nitpick your nitpick, but the Underway is the system of tunnels that connect the dwarven holds. It is referenced several times in the dwarven history timeline on the GW site. The caverns and underground sea that lies beneath Nagaroth is known as the Underworld. Underway, Underworld, Underempire... it's easy to get them crossed up.
I understand your and Ahriman's apprehension about the warpstone requirement for Skaven, but it's just what seems to fit them in my opinion. If you look at their background, the Skaven always seem to found their cities solely in areas of high warpstone concentration. I suppose the reason I'm stuck on it is that on any warhammer map you can't really point to anywhere and say, "that area is the Skaven kingdom." No, they have cities spread a thousand miles apart, a rare lair here and there, but a lot of their population is in secret lairs hidden beneath the cities of other races. They're everywhere.
I really like the Warren idea! Sounds pretty solid as is, but may need some playtesting.
I dunno, I think having a seperate cult for each of the chaos gods might be a bit burdensome. Although I think it would open some pretty interesting ideas. For example, a city with a lot of unhealthiness would be more likely to get a cult of nurgle to pop up. A city with unhappiness would be more likely to get a cult of rebels praying to Tzeentch for change. A city on the frontlines of a war could be a hotbed of Khorne worship. Not sure what might represent the decadence that would promote a Slaaneshi cult.
As far as being able to tell when the next incursion is coming, you could always hide the counter.
I'm not sure how exactly the barbarian coding works, but is it possible to have multiple factions of barbs? For example: Beastmen, Greenskins, Chaos Marauders, Demons, and unaligned animals? I think these would best represent the factions that would most likely have small bands making raids of their own accord, even on lands of their own race.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

A defense value of 24 was a fairly arbitrary number I threw out, and it probably is a little high, but how, may I ask , can someone sink a floating city?

hahaha too true, how would one sink a floating city? *hmm*

I really like your idea about slave specialists expiring. It reflects the Dark Elves tendency to be none to gentle with their slaves, as well as giving them more incentive to go out and collect more... a cool mechanic that promotes playing them towards their traditional flavor. Perfect.

yeh i quite like it too, but then the question is raised how would it be coded... lol ill ask vehem in the FfH forums about that he might know an easy way to do that, hes already done work on slaves for his lizardman civ...

Yeah, I figured that most of the civs are pretty much set. The whole seperation of orcs and goblins just seems rather superfluous to me. In all honesty, I feel the same way about the chaos forces as well.

heh, well you have a point, but at this stage in development its too much effort for too little gain to remove them and merge them... maybe later on down the track, when we design greenskins we can bring up the subject of merging them again... but i dont think it will happen so dont get your hopes up

Sorry to nitpick your nitpick, but the Underway is the system of tunnels that connect the dwarven holds. It is referenced several times in the dwarven history timeline on the GW site. The caverns and underground sea that lies beneath Nagaroth is known as the Underworld. Underway, Underworld, Underempire... it's easy to get them crossed up.

*checks Darkelf Rule Book* nope sorry, the passage leading to the underground caverns in naggaroth, which houses a mysterious race of trogledytes, and the DE used to get to Cathay and raid their coast is definately called "The Underway"
*checks GW website Dwarf history* hrm so it does mention it on the site as a 'dwarf underway terrain' but the link links to a skaven warren... ive never heard a reference to any 'underworld' in warhammer (which now that i think of it comes as a bit of a surprise)
oh well, whats in a name? a rose by any other name is still a rose... lol. id still prefer to keep the DE underway as The Underway... Dwarves would get something like 'Hold Entrance' or 'Tunnel'. something a little more generic than a flashy name like underway
(hehe sorry about that )

I understand your and Ahriman's apprehension about the warpstone requirement for Skaven, but it's just what seems to fit them in my opinion. If you look at their background, the Skaven always seem to found their cities solely in areas of high warpstone concentration. I suppose the reason I'm stuck on it is that on any warhammer map you can't really point to anywhere and say, "that area is the Skaven kingdom." No, they have cities spread a thousand miles apart, a rare lair here and there, but a lot of their population is in secret lairs hidden beneath the cities of other races. They're everywhere. I really like the Warren idea! Sounds pretty solid as is, but may need some playtesting.

it definately does fit them thematically, which is why i suggest the 'sprawling' trait (for those who dont know, sprawling allows you to work the third ring in a cities fat cross, but limits the number of actualy 'cities' to 3 4 or 5 depending on map size. any other cities will there-after only be settlements, unable to build buildings or troops, and purely for resource collection and culture expansion.) another thing to make the skaven dispaly their warpstone dependency is to have their palace provide a free warpstone resource (implying the capital is built on warpstone) and have a skaven only mine which has a higher chance of discovering warpstone, but less chance of other minerals... or perhaps make the new warren improvement able to discover warpstone... this way skaven units could utilise the 'affinity' mechinic, where the more of a particular resource (warpstone) they have the stronger select units (ie Grey seers or some skaven hero) could get...

I dunno, I think having a seperate cult for each of the chaos gods might be a bit burdensome. Although I think it would open some pretty interesting ideas. For example, a city with a lot of unhealthiness would be more likely to get a cult of nurgle to pop up. A city with unhappiness would be more likely to get a cult of rebels praying to Tzeentch for change. A city on the frontlines of a war could be a hotbed of Khorne worship. Not sure what might represent the decadence that would promote a Slaaneshi cult.
As far as being able to tell when the next incursion is coming, you could always hide the counter.

it might be a bit much... but so far corporations and guilds have not been implemented, and sub religious sects would be perfect replacements for corporations, as well as guilds...

I'm not sure how exactly the barbarian coding works, but is it possible to have multiple factions of barbs? For example: Beastmen, Greenskins, Chaos Marauders, Demons, and unaligned animals? I think these would best represent the factions that would most likely have small bands making raids of their own accord, even on lands of their own race.

im fairly sure thats possible.

 

[Ahriman]

how would one sink a floating city?

I think a better question would be, how on earth do you make a city float at all? Given how hard it would be to make a city float, you wouldn't have to weaken this very much to make it not float anymore.
I don't think that 18-24 is necessarily unreasonable though.
I'd definitely just make it a unit though, its really not worth somehow literally trying to make it a city that moves.
What *would* be cool is if you could make land units on board defend it, rather than just being passive cargo that die if the city is defeated.
It should probably also start with the medic promotion (do ships heal faster with the medic promotion? Not sure. If not, create a promotion or ability that heals ships faster).

Not sure what the point of giving free palace warpstone would be in-game. Are there any skaven units that will require it to be built? If so, then giving this from the palace defeats the point of having a requirement. If not, then giving free warpstone is literally just a health penalty.
Sprawling might work ok for Skaven, but.....
It really *doesn't* work in FFH; Kuriotates are one of the weakest factions by far because the limit on cities is just too nasty.
I'd really want to make sure that Skaven weren't weakened too much.
Skaven Warrens (a la Clan Warrens in FFH) might help this; part of the problem of Kuriotates is that they don't have enough military production. Warrens would help with this. And create a few bonus happy/health buildings for the Skaven.
Maybe some kind of "Sacrifice the weak" type civic for Skaven only, so that Skaven cities only get 0.5 unhealthiness and 0.5 unhappiness per population point (to encourage seething huge cities of rats).

I do like the idea of Warpstone affinity, and of somehow having good chances of it spawning.

It would be easy to get multiple types of units as barbarians. I think what the question was is can they be separate "teams", so that ork barbarians and demon barbarians attack each other.
Even if this is possible, I don't think its a good idea. I think its safer to stick with barbs vs civilised factions. The demon barbs will still attack the ork factions.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

we could simply increase the minimal distance between skaven cities if we give them sprawling, add in additional UBs such as "Warp Mine" +x happyness from warpstone, +5% chance of mutations to units built in the city. 'Warpstone refinary' +2 health from warpstone, +10% unit production speed. 'Warpstone Reactor' possibly reintroduce the idea of 'power' to warhammer, and use warpstone to do it. warpstone Reactors could act as a nuclear powerplant in vanilla civ. 'Warrens' as per FfH as you say would be perfect.

then remove the build requirement of warpstone, and change those units to having warpstone affinity, thus they get the +1 from the palace, and additional strength from any other warpstone sources they acquired.

skaven only improvements: 'Warrens' replacements of cottages 1 food at level 1, anothe commerce at level 2, another hammer at level 3. at level three has a chance of discovering warpstone.

a sacrifice the weak civic for skaven would be perfect as well.

 

[Ahriman]

skaven only improvements: 'Warrens' replacements of cottages 1 food at level 1, anothe commerce at level 2, another hammer at level 3. at level three has a chance of discovering warpstone.

Are these bonuses in addition to the regular commerce bonus at each level? If so, they're good, maybe too strong, but probably not with all the civics/techs that boost mines/farms. Maybe still give these a bonus from some of the techs (advanced engineering, etc). If not, they might be too weak; with only ~3 cities, you'll definitely need a ton of commerce.

I like this idea though. Make them a sprawling civ, but do it *right*, rather than weak-ass Kuriotates. Make their megacities true powerhouses.
Having an improvement like this that gives food, hammers and commerce will also help out the AI; it normally does a bad job of improvement construction, but it can't do too wrong if it just builds these everywhere, so it helps insulate them from bad terrain.
I like the idea of a Warpstone reactor a lot.

 

[Belmane]

I think a better question would be, how on earth do you make a city float at all? Given how hard it would be to make a city float, you wouldn't have to weaken this very much to make it not float anymore.

Seeing as how the Arks were ripped from the firmament of Naggarythe by dark sorcery at the time of the Sundering and have been terrorizing the oceans for more than five millenia, I would assume they'd be fairly resilient.

I likewise think that the Arks should just be a unit as well, and not an actual floating city with buildings and troop production capabilities. I like the idea of it having healing abilities.

I think what the question was is can they be separate "teams", so that ork barbarians and demon barbarians attack each other.
Even if this is possible, I don't think its a good idea. I think its safer to stick with barbs vs civilised factions. The demon barbs will still attack the ork factions.

Nope, I just thought it would be a nice touch if different types of barbs spawned in different areas. Getting barbs that attack each other is an interesting idea; somewhat realistic, but ultimately pointless. I fully endorse all types of barbs attacking the orcs... they probably picked the fight anyways.

The sprawling trait sounds like it might work quite nicely. I was all set to naysay it because I didn't like the thought of the rats claiming vast tracts of land, but then I remembered the cap on cities. Combined with the CoE Warrens and Sac the Weak, the limited city count should be balanced out very well. I also think it would play well in a rhye's scenario too... they would be a late spawning race and most of the good lands would have been taken, forcing them to spread out and likely get stuck in the dumps they usually inhabit.

I think starting them off with free warpstone would probably be necessary on random maps, but probably not on a scenario where they will likely start by it anyways.

Warpstone affinity does sound interesting, but it could get really nasty mid-late game if you have a bunch of improvements popping warpstone. Being on the business end of an army with a bunch of units at +8 strength would suck.
The warren improvements (Ahriman's take on it) sound pretty solid without needing to increase the spawn chance of 'stone.

Here's an idea to represent the rats tendencies to live beneath other civs cities and leech off of them: How about something like the Balseraph Gypsy Wagon? Instead of reducing a towns culture it could go after their food, hammers, and/or gold. It'd be neat if this could get funneled back to a skaven city somehow, but I'm guessing that would be difficult to code, if not impossible.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

ooo i like the idea of skaven food theif units instead of gypsy wagons thats a very cool idea. 'Rat Plague' units, make them ignore borders, have 0 strength add 1 unhealth and -2 food to any rival city they occupy (non cumulative), and maybe if a sewer is present in the city an additional -1 health and/or -2 food.

haha i think perhaps it would be a good idea to move this discussion on skaven to the civ development thread or a new thread on its own

 

[Ahriman]

It'd be neat if this could get funneled back to a skaven city somehow, but I'm guessing that would be difficult to code, if not impossible.

You could just channel it to the Skaven capital. So, write a script that gives +1 hammer, +1 gold in the Skaven capital for each such unit present in an enemy city.

I would limit the Warpstone affinity to heroes or national units with low max limits, but see no balance problem with the idea in principle. Its pretty rare to get more than a couple of Warpstone.

I'd like to see both an improved cottage building (gives a total of +1 commerce, +2 commerce +1hammer, +3 commerce+1 hammer, and +4 commerce +1hammer +1food, at levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively) AND a unit cloning building that gives a free Clanrat-type unit every time you build a unit in that city.
Also give the improved cottage building +1 hammer with advanced engineering, a small chance to spawn warpstone, and let it count as a mine for the purposes of harvesting the warpstone resource.
Auto-converts to cottages if it leaves Skaven territory.