Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Eater of the dead is growing. Then yuo get a message that he can become out of control. Then you loose control. Is there any system in it? From what factor it depands when he will go out of control?
What it he is GoR-ed? Will it still go out of control as well?

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

he grows faster if there are more corpses in the province, and the faster he grows, the faster you lose control

and GoRing him doesn't help afaik

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Does it grows from corpses in a province only, or from killing in fights as well? Is he consumes certain amount of corpses (if they are available) in a province? Is there any system in it? FOr example - how many corpses are consumed per month, how many should be consumed to leave the owner? And what happens if he left.. can you summon it again? And what size it will be then? and how far from leaving again?

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

He's one of the most interesting creatures in the game because he's the ONLY indepedent which will travel, but unfortunately he's probably the worst gem investment in the game.
The first problem is the high magic paths to cast. Second you have to spend much effort so he grows and survives then when he's finally strong he turns independent and can easily turn on you. Finally its achilles heal how another player can banish him by casting the same spell also hurts its value.

I wish we had a map editor command of #travel which would allow independents we place in a map to move.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I wonder if we can replace his final form with another unit to get a traveling independent. It would be especially cool if we can replace him with a commander that will tote troops around.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Actually, he is one of the few vanilla independent that travels. (that summons that creates "the Hunt"? that Captain that hits random coastlines? isnt there also a summoned demon group that moves on its own?)

But, if you turn on Special Monsters 23 and 24 as computer players
chaos_unites.map: #computerplayer 24 4
chaos_unites.map: #computerplayer 23 4
you get a very interesting effect of more active independents. I use it in my Chaos games.
http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/Chaos_chk.cgi

Those two commands added to a map on a game server creates a castle, god, scales, etc for "nations" 23 and 24. Its not any smarter than the usual AI (unless you take further steps to boost it) but its fun because both nations have a slightly different AI and they both use the white banner of independents. WARNING: now its not just the other nations. The Independents are also trying to unite against you!

All of a sudden, the indept province next to you has a drastic army change and is now made up of a variety of indept poptypes (one of the SpecMon AIs has captured the province). And the indepts next door suddenly attack your province. Trying to track them back to their castle is not as simple as just following the flags. You dont know which of the indept provinces around you are the old stand-alone or the new mobile version. They buy mercs also.

As an added thing I like to ally them. So in the Chaos games you can have 1-4 human players (allied or not), 3 AI nations (allied to each other), and 3 versions of Independents (with the two Indept AIs allied to each other).

Of course since these are CHAOS games, there is the added fun that every province, including the indepts, get random units. So these surprise Indept armies can include pretender forms, angels, demons, horrors. etc. But some might just want the indept AIs for fun.

NOTE: its about time for another re-work of the games on the server so the Chaos games may see changes in size, maps, and surprises.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I don't think the Hunt and the Captain work the same way. Those are globals that make an attack on a (random?) province (or priest, IIRC) every turn. They don't actually come onto the map and move around.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I tried what Gandalf suggests and it blew my game up. I may give it another go to see if I can get it to work.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

For some reason its one of those things that works one way as a server action, and a different way as a solo action :(
I would bug report it but I dont think the devs ever meant for it to be used this way (I have a bad habit of doing that)

Run dom3 in local host mode, with another dom3 open for playing, and it might work.
Otherwise you might just be stuck playing it on my server for as long as the devs allow it to work.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

As mentioned by thejeff the Captain and the Hunt are globals without any real location on the map. The eater of the dead has an actual location on the map and moves on its own without any dependency to a global spell.
I've tried modding new independents which can travel using #copystats, but no luck thus it must be tied directly to the unit number within the game code. It would be great to create multiple farsummon spells which drop different independents who travel.

Interesting stuff!

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I think, as is often the case, you're misrepresenting there Gandalf. All you're talking about is AI players with the same flag as the indy provinces. This is easy to do, but how is it interesting? You can still easily tell the difference between those guys and indies if you want to. If you don't want to, I guess it's a good idea, but it would be easier to just use a mod.

Foodstamp - if you want what he's talking about just knock up a mod to do it. Would only take 5 mins.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I may be misunderstanding. I tried setting the special monster slots to be enemies of the player using map commands before but the game threw an error. Using modding, any time I have tried using the special slots, it has resulted in an error as well.

Is that not what we are talking about doing? Making the Special Slot monsters (indies) act as enemies or at least be mobile? If that is what we are talking about, how did you guys get it to work? I just need a general overview, not the actual code.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Gandalf is talking about setting the indies to act as enemies by using a combination of map commands and a server hosted game.

Sombre is talking about creating new mod nation with the independent (white) flag. See Pyg's "Indypundits" effort here for an example:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=678506

I think that Gandalf's method would potentially provide *slightly* more "indy-like" results, since the "white flag" nations would presumably not show up in the score graphs, would show up as independents in scouting reports, etc. (though I haven't tried his method to be sure.)

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Bah ok ;). Thanks for the clarification!

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

@Stavis_L:
Actually they do show up in the scoregraphs.
Im not a good tester for such things but my "glass is half full" outlook makes me like to think they act abit differently. This is the AI that handles summoned attacks on provinces when its not under your control. When the messages say the event is an attack be "Special Monsters". I like to think that they feel abit more aggressive.

@Sombre:
A Mod?
That would be way beneath your usual Sombre. More on my level. Im gueesing just a few lines to open up some of the empty nation slots and give them the white banner. Then dupe it a bunch of times. Alot like my other mods. That might be interesting as far as having more than two. Maybe a dozen different "independent gods trying to be as good as you are". A bit of different play but I didnt really expect you to get excited about it. After all, its a lesser AI. But Im not sure that would be better. With 2 map commands I can include them in a game on my server without the players having to have the mod. With more map commands I can give it a special god, useable scales, decent magic, dominion, and allies. But a mod version would probably be easier for solo play off of a server. I will add it to be (extensive) list.

@Foodstamp:
The #computerplayer is pretty messed up in general between server and solo play.
--------
open aran.map
change title to SpecMon test
add
#computerplayer 23 4
#computerplayer 24 4
save as SpecMon.map

create game using SpecMon test map
RATS! they arent there

----------------------------
open Dom3
go to Network
setup Dominions server
1234
early age

load another Dom3
Network
connect to server
127.0.0.1
1234
join twice
start game
back to host
select SpecMon test map
BINGO there they are along with anyone else you put in the game

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

That's pretty cool. I will give it a try.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

I like it.
At best it keeps me from getting cocky and thinking too far ahead. Here I am thinking Ive got awhile before Ulm attacks me. But having a white banner suddenly decide to attack you and you see it has more armies moving toward you can catch you off guard forcing a complete change of plans you had carefully laid out for the next 5 or 6 turns. Its like the Eater of the Dead. Kindof a large extended event thrown into the game.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

A white banner doesn't suddenly decide to attack you. It declares war on you then attacks you just like every other AI nation. It's also pretty obviously distinct from indies and goes around conquering indy provinces just like every other AI nation. It just happens to have the same flag as the indies, that's it. The rest is your imagination.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Oh now I understand. So the special AI slots do not get ownership of ALL the independent provinces, just their capital location. I was hoping it allowed them to control ALL the independent provinces.

So do they cast from the independent spell list, or have to research like other nations?

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Same as others I think.
You dont want to play games with all the indepts on full AI. Ive playd those and they are impossible.

I suppose you could duplicate it. But then we are back to the mod idea. Id definetly recommend breaking the map up into many different groups of indepts. Otherwise it marches across the map bringing along everything in every province it passes thru. Not good.

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Actually that is exactly what I wanted :).

Re: Eater of the dead..when out of control?
 

Well you could get a quick taste of it by map-commanding ownership of every province to a nation. Give them all to Ulm, then add Ulm as an AI. But its awful rough.