Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[Turin]

Is it possible to disable the randomly spawning indies nowadays? If it is, you could double the number of the units listed, I figured they would be there in addition to the normal indies.
Anyway modify the number or types of units as you see fit, I spent like 5 minutes thinking about the proper power levels.

[ryo_akashi]

Is there any way to regenerate the units back to full strength after each encounter?

The problem I have with independents is that the indie troops diminish after each encounter. Sending in many armies over the course of several turns makes it easier for the players to take the hard provinces. I think having the units regenerate will make it a more worthwhile challenge/fun for the players.

[Gandalf Parker]

Disable Indies: Yes. If I understand what you are asking. There is a map command for setting the province and giving it things, and another command for sweeping it clean and then giving it things. But as far as I know it sweeps everything so its only reasonable if the province design puts back a poptype, magic sites, AND guards.

Regerate after each encounter: no. But there are some ways to make sure that a province continually expands its numbers such as with devils or vampires.

[alexti]

Here's my half-baked idea:
The Citadel of High Metals:
magic sites:
- The tower of Golden Order
- The tower of Silver Order
- The tower of Iron Order
buildings:
- mountain citadel,
- lab,
Outside:
- 3 adepts of each of orders (9 total)
- 4 human commanders (like regular heavy infantry)
- 12 watchers
- 40 heavy infantry
- 40 crossbowmen
Equipment:
mages - amulet of missile protecton, weightless scale mail, pendant of luck.
infantry and crossbowmen - high quality armor and weapons of regular kind (nothing magical or extreme).

Inside:
- 20 adepts of each of orders (60 total)
- 16 Telestic animates
- 4 human commanders (like regular heavy infantry)
- 32 gargoyles
- 16 iron dragons
- 240 mechanical milita,
- 180 clockwork horrors
- 200 crossbowmen

Equipment:
Mages - lucky coin, robe of invulnerability, brimstone boots, starshne skullcap, ring of tamed lightning, amulet of antimagic
Human commanders - brimstone boots, cauldron of broth, lucky pendant

The problem is obvious - mages are vulnerable to murdering winter (and to poison too) and I don't see how to solve it thematically. It doesn't seem right for the adepts of metal orders to have (or use) water magic - same for nature magic.

It is also tempting to give mages rune smasher - it certainly sounds like the item they would use, but how can they forge it? Lucky coin seems to be the only shield item self-respecting mage may carry into the combat, other than rune smasher, no other single-handed weapon seems appropriate (and/or useful).

Concerning the troops, I think that adepts of metal orders would be inclined to build their army primarily from the engineered constructs. Did I miss some suitable summons?

I would also expect them to cast Dome (or 5) of Arcane Warding, but are there commands to do that?

[Gandalf Parker]

You can provide a small list of randoms for the equipment. Maybe the Ring of Tamed Lightening could be random with the other rings which offer various protections.

As for items they cant make.. well, holding so closely to the logic of their limits is cool. But then again, they can always trade with other mage towers.

[Endoperez]

Alexti - very nice! Also, following Gandalf's suggestion would work very well. Each mage would have one ring that provides a resistance, chosen from (Ring of Tamed Lightning, Ring of Fire Resistance, Ring of Cold Resistance, Snake Ring). That way, you can't eliminate ALL the mages with any one spell, but the spells will still be useful. Perhaps alternating between Amulets of Antimagic, Amulets of Missile Protection and Girdles of Might (for reinvigoration).

They could be given Drakes. Also, Living Statues.

[alexti]

With such a nice province I was concerned that if there is an obvious way to conquer it (storm the citadel) before the late game it may be very unbalancing (access to 4 magic paths, astral magic boosters, nice mages to cover the weaknesses in conquering nation). It's relatively easy (and important) to protect mages against Fires from Afar and Seeking Arrows, but my most concern is about murdering winter. I wonder if it is possible to set the scale to Heat+3 (and how efficient it would be against MW). There are obviously some other ways to kill off the mages, but they are either late game or rather slow and by the time significant amount of mages is killed it will be late game as well.

I didn't want to open that "trading" can of worms. It may be plausible, but from this perspective you can put pretty much anything you want on mages which would make all those "uber-mage" sites alike (and I was planning to come up with other ones - hopefully distinctly different). So I was trying to build the scenario viewing adepts of iron orders as rather smart and proficient in their areas, but not having competence outside of those. So I expected them to be pretty good at crafting items and building mechanical armies, but not at summonning or healing, for example.

Some of the units (like clockwork horrors and mechanical men) fit perfectly. I'm not entirely sure about Gargoyles, Watchers and Telestic Animates. Same for Living Statues. Maybe they could make few Crushers.

Of course, they could get Golems which is fitting, but should they go SC route? Well-equipped Golems could be an option. Can it be made random? Like if they would discover SC route in one game, but not in another. If it can be set so that there're 8 nicely equipped Golems (50% - 8 Golems, 50% - no Golems at all), that will be a nice idea

Btw, there's one remaining slot for magic sites - I couldn't think of anything suitable though - one of those gold or silver mine would fit thematically, but would make virtually no effect on gameplay.

[Ballbarian]

First off let me say that I really like your thoughtful approach to province design!

I wonder if it is possible to set the scale to Heat+3

For gods yes, for independent provinces no. I really, really, really wish we could use something like #scale_cold -3 to influence a province. The only alternative right now is by using a magic site that influences scales:

562 Desert
frq 5, lvl 0, type Fire, Heat, Death

162 Desert of Bones
frq 1, lvl 1, type Fire, F1, D1, Heat

172 Fountain of Fire
frq 2, lvl 1, type Fire, F3, Heat

154 Plain of Perpetual Drought
frq 0, lvl 0, type Fire, F1, Heat

180 Prison of the Desert Sun
frq 1, lvl 4, type Fire, F5, Heat, Heat

165 Volcano
frq 1, lvl 0, type Fire, F3, Heat

(Pardon the crazy format, but I am having fun with my GAN editor. Just got the feature filters working! )

Of course, they could get Golems which is fitting, but should they go SC route? Well-equipped Golems could be an option. Can it be made random? Like if they would discover SC route in one game, but not in another. If it can be set so that there're 8 nicely equipped Golems (50% - 8 Golems, 50% - no Golems at all), that will be a nice idea

Sort of possible. You can set it so that there are 50% - 8 Golems with each having some/lots/no equipment. But if you chance any equipment, there has to be a commander set to assign it to. There are tricks that you can use like setting a placeholder commander before a golem that will catch any equipment that the golem would have gotten. In this way you can leave each golem at 50%, but any equipment that comes into play would show up on the alternate commander as long as he had the slots. Not a great solution.

Does anyone know what happens if you assign equipment in a map file for a commander that does not have a slot for it? If it doesn't generate an error, I would guess that the command to equip the item would just be ignored.

[jutetrea]

Just a small comment,

I like the thoughtful approach as well - although while potentially vulnerable to MW - many sites are. Mwinter is a later game spell anyway. If someone wants to try to take down 100+ troops with Fires from afar - I say let them.

The limited list of resistence items is a nice idea though. In my experience (abeit limited) its usually either an SC or an overwhelming army that would take out an a difficult special... and in reality its just a matter of how big the army has to be.

[MaxWilson]

Besides, even if you block MW you don't block assassins with skelly spam/Drain Life banners/seduce/whatever. There's always a way to clear out a tough province if you're patient enough.

BTW, when an indy battlemage is in a province, what determines what schools and levels within those schools he can cast?

-Max