Warhammer Heart of Chaos: Design Discussion

this thread is purely for discussing Design decisions as they appear in the DESIGN OVERVIEW thread.

 

No discussion in the thread? Won't that just lead to it getting buried?

Anyway, whatever you prefer

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Cool!

Do you also intend to add some more double-speed building aspects to traits?

Some design thoughts:

Adaptive actually only lets you change 1 trait atm, so it needs to be clear *which* trait is adaptive.

Some traits also shouldn't be chooseable with adaptive (like peace with barbarians, fallow, etc.)

This sounds good, but 16 aggressive leaders seems on the high side, maybe we can cut this back?

I'd remove Summoner. This could be hard to balance, particularly for early game summons that are only 3-4 strength, like Doom Bolts or Fireballs or undead summons.
It will be strong enough without it, with the research bonus.

Interesting! Seems potentially too strong, but worth playtest.

This is basically the renamed "Tolerant" trait, where you can still build the units of conquered cities?
I'm not sure that belongs in Warhammer; a conquering leader isn't really likely to manage to incorporate conquered troops into their army; I have weird visions of a Kurgan Crom the Conqueror being able to field Bretonnian knights and imperial steam tanks and dryads in their army. We have too many UUs for this to really be balanced.

This could also be a huge balance nightmare since it lets you get around all the UU limits.
If you can build 10 pikemen as your own civ, AND 10 wardancers from your conquered woodelf city AND 10 halbardiers from your conquered Empire city etc. etc.

I don't think these will need the research penalty.
Also I note you're assuming we can only have the 3 barbarians; if we can have the 5, then we can add the animal-peace to wood elves and beastmen, and undead-peace to some of the undead civs.

Weak. Add 50% cheaper settlers?

The unit upkeep will need some testing, but this is probably good.

This is likely to be too strong; the only good AIs in past were the industrious ones because of the bonus hammers.
How about adding +25% worker build speed, +25% wonder build speed, and +1 bonus hammer on tiles with 4 hammers.
Still might be too strong with clansmanship civic, which might need a nerf.

There is the question of whether we want this to be a leader trait, or to just put the magic resistances into the dwarven racial promotion.
Also; we aren't sure that magic resistance really protects from anything except "magic" damage. That is, it has no impact on fire, poison, death, holy, etc.

Too strong.
The City raider 1 overlaps too much with Besieger. Remove this.
+1 xp per combat is pretty good by itself, as is using enemy roads (free commando trait).
Also we'd need to make sure no-one could get both Raider AND Marauder, otherwise that could be a balance nightmare; a 3 move horseman could potentially pillage 9 tiles per turn.

Drop the +pillage gold to 50% and we are probably fine.

I think we might need to re-evaluate subterranean, and I don't think the wildborne is a good idea.
I think these are likely to be too restrictive in where you can build cities, the AI is already pretty bad at city placement.

Also; what if they get a flood plains start or something?

Potential problem; I worry that adding the "Mutated" promotion doesn't actually mutate the unit (ie adding mutation promotions), it just prevents the unit from being mutated again.
Need idea though.

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An insane hero really needs an extra bonus trait slot, otherwise they're weak. Perpentech gets 3 traits + insane relative to all the other 2-trait leaders in FFH.

Expansive is a strange and pretty useless trait on a woodelf, who already has no health issues thanks to the forests.

Marauder + raiders = too strong.

Spritual and arcane potentially a problem for goblins; their casters will either be arcane or spiritual, not both, so they aren't really going to be able to benefit from both traits.

As we discussed in the chaos dwarf thread, chaos dwarves aren't designed to be sprawling. Sprawling (with its cities) is a BIG penalty, unless the faction is specifically designed to work around it, like the Skaven are with all their extra production boosters and Warrens unit boosters.
Skaven are sprawling, lets leave chaos dwarves without it.

 

Big reply:

Spoiler :

im going to get it stickied. plus ill be updating it every time we come to a decision on something.

most definately

it really is a lot. mind you we do have 54 leaders soooo...
but feel free to discuss which leaders can have aggressive swapped for something else

this is very true. we can leave the summoner promotion for heroes then

ahhh i didnt even CONSIDER that. i like the name of a conqueror trait, so perhaps we can think of a new mechanic? perhaps cause enemy cities to suffer unrest and riot when it is surrounded by at least 50% (ie 4 units in base contact with the city) with your military units, this will remove cultural defence and be a huge fun advantage

ok. but we should definately keep it for greenskins.

yep

ah i knew there was something i had forgotten. all the trait info there is directly out of the TraitInfos.xml, and that ignores a lot of stuff like production speed boosts to buildings, and units.

all of this is copied from the last version of warhammer. so if it worked ok in that version it should be ok here

Kislev's Katarin uses this trait too, so id advise against it.

if we want to add combat type resistance to magic resistance we can easilly (if it already dosnt) plus im sure damage types work in FF.

ok done

true that... hmmm

the ai always seemed to handle subterranean fine when i played against dwarves or skaven. plus forests a lot more common than hills.

we can code it so these civs start near hilly or foresty land quite easilly.

im pretty sure this would work. if it dosnt we can think of something else. like all cities start wit ha building that mutates units built. say 'twisted presence' or something.

added ingenuity. i was going to add Imperialist but that would be OPed.

Yeh, i didnt know what other trait to give him. i really wanted a unique trait...something like Preservationist or something, but couldnt think of a decent effect.

suggest and alternative?

Ill change the one their casters are not to Organized.

oh yeh i forgot about that haha done. changed astragoth to be (Traits = Arcane, Besieger, Industrious). ingenuity is weak and raiders plus those three is too much.

 

Precisely. Or as a potential promotion that requires Channeling 3 OR the hero archmage promotions.

I agree that magic resistances work.
What we would need to do here would be to change the magic resistance promotion so that it also gives +20% death resistance, holy resistance, unholy resistance and whatever others we think are appropriate.
And then leave the trait unchanged.

It doesn't really matter what you add, since all the traits change randomly. Ingenuity gives them the starting gold bonus.

I'm happy to leave it in and playtest.
But its hard to evaluate the AI since *all* the AI's were pretty rubbish in 1.5. Partly thanks to watchtower spam.

Ok, we can code it and playtest. Its a neat idea.

It sounds from before that you wanted something that boosted beast units for this guy. So why not have beast units and recon units start with combat 1 or something?

Either remove the commando trait from marauders, so its +1 free xp from combat and some double speed of building bonuses (or +5% military production in all cities?), or replace one of the traits with something else in each case.

That sounds fine. Ingenuity is partly there for the regular dwarves to compensate for the Dwarven vault. Will chaos dwarves use the dwarven vault mechanic?

AI won't really understand that. We can brainstorm another effect.
Maybe it adds a conqueror promotion to melee units that gives a passive influence aura (ties in with the influence-driven war promotion to shift tile influence while they're standing there)?
Or reduces the influence (culture) of any city you attack with a Conqueror unit?

Maybe it gives a +15% military production bonus, -10% building construction penalty in all cities?
Maybe it could reduce city maintenance costs?
Or removes unrest from conquered cities somehow?

 

too easy

true that. if we can think of a better mechanic im willing to try that out instead. but we can still try the current one for the tiem being.

*psst, your genius is showing* (added )

nah they have more important things to worry about thans shiny stuff. namely big sharp pointy things that tend to explode and lava.

nice ideas. i like the passive culture effect one. we could make conqueror double the effect on influence driven war, coupled with a reduction in city maintenance costs, and/or a maximum of 1 turn unrest after capturing a city?

 

Oops, sorry

Then they don't need the ingenuity trait anyway.

Seems worth playtesting, though possibly annoying to code.

 

probably. ill take a propper look later on unless someone beats me to the punchline.

 

thank god you guys are willing to put together design threads man.

I got a question about Sprawling. Are there going to be outposts (non-cities) as well? How do you want to handle these? Should they get a limited build selection (i always found outposts without walls to be a little silly) Maybe we could have outposts inflict a held promotion on units built there to represent a garrison not a real army?

 

I think its wisest to represent Sprawling the same as in FFH/FF; buildable outposts with no upkeep, but no buildings no tile yields, they can only get any output through a single specialist from some civics which allow them.

The only point of outposts is for claiming some resources; they're basically just a trading post.

I wouldn't be opposed to letting them build a waystone and the weakest wall, but its probably harder to code that.

Skaven aren't known for their defenses anyway.

 

Perhaps but they are known for their tunnels, lots and lots of tunnels. Allowing the player to teleport units to outposts would be cool and allow the outposts to act as springboards into enemy territory.

 

After the research of the tech that gives you the chaos religion, we should be able to turn the land into mutation, similar to the hell terrain of fall from heaven 2. These terrains consists of mutated trees, the land are dark and purple-ish, someones you see an eye in one of those pink parts along the land and hear cursed whisperings from them. IF you played Warhammer Online at the beginning of your chaos character, you know what i'm talking about.

There should be different roads in this game, from trails, roads, to paved roads.

you should also work on the art of each city, Dark Elves cities and forts have those spiky towers and walls. High elves got tall white marble towers and buildings. the empire build houses that look similar to the Germany houses and taverns during medieval/renaissance. Orcs have huts, etc etc.

 

Already in the design; Skaven get a building that allows airlift.
So yes, for Skaven the outposts also act as landing spots for airlift.

Already in the mod.

 

Excuse me, I'll be right back......

Sweet.

 

For skaven outposts, i think a waystone, weak palisade and a Tunnel entrance (To alwo teleporting of units) are the only buildigns they should be aloud to build. and im pretty sure we can code that.

if not, then no big deal

 

How would they build them? IIRC outposts don't get any hammers and can't work any tiles.

 

very true. we could set up a series of wonders for skaven that provides Tunnel Entrances in all cities on the continent (Wonder = Underempire), perhaps one that provides a weak level palisade in all cities on the continent as well...

 

I like this. The palisade wonder could be at construction, the tunnel entrance (airport) building could be at Engineering, and then the tunnel network Wonder at Advanced Engineering.

Skaven being chock full of Wonders (with all their Clan HQs as well) will add to their playing differently as well.
More things to build so their super-cities don't run out of buildings.

 

yay

added some UBs and UWs to the skaven design.

 

Beat you to it, updated my design thread.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=290972

If you are updating *everything* into the big design thread its ok... but we need some way to coordinate. I'm often adding/editing mild tweaks to the design threads linked to by

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=313999

I've made a few today.
Maybe in future any changes I make, I should also post in your "do not post in this" design thread?

 

Yeah I like this idea of wonder driven outpost upgrades, even just a few buildings already mentioned would be a nice upgrade to have and gets around having no hammers.