Eater of the dead..when out of control?

[militarist]

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?

[Frozen Lama]

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

[NTJedi]

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.

[militarist]

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?

[Foodstamp]

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.

[Gandalf Parker]

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.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

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?)

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.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

But, if you turn on Special Monsters 23 and 24 as computer players

Interesting stuff!

[thejeff]

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.

[Foodstamp]

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.

[Gandalf Parker]

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.