Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[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

[lch]

Doesn't turning up the heat to protect against Murdering Winter make you vulnerable to Flames from the Sky? And other magic paths have remote spells like that, too (Beckoning etc.).

[alexti]

lch said:
Doesn't turning up the heat to protect against Murdering Winter make you vulnerable to Flames from the Sky? And other magic paths have remote spells like that, too (Beckoning etc.).

It's easy for adepts to have 100% fire resistance and most of their troops is also fire resistant, so FftS is not a big danger. From my (admittedly mostly Dom2) experiences other spells are much less efficient - for example beckoning allows MR and morale check, so it's useless against all those inanimates, and mages have a good chance to pass the checks too.

More dangerous is Leprosy, I think.

But anyway, creating unassailable province was not my goal (if it was I would just put few thousand tartarian commanders there :>), I'm just trying to think how adepts of metal orders could defend themselves best (but within their limitation)

[Ballbarian]

I am not sure I completely understand your idea. Maybe it can done differently: create two such provinces: one with Golems, another - without and then set it so that only one of the provinces is selected for the generated map. Then Golems could have had semi-random equipment. Would it work?

You have discovered one of the limitations of the current design. If you create two unique provinces there is a chance that both could be placed on the same map.

Ideally, I should have treated commanders as objects with their attributes attached directly to their selection instead of treating each line separately. Maybe in future versions I can add support for random sections. This would allow multiple internal province versions... Will have to think on that some more when I am awake.

What I was describing before was that if you had a commander of some sort with no or limited slots (I'll call him "catcher") and a chance for a single golem that might make an appearance as a well armed thug, the placement in the file would be something like this:
#commander 101 -- catcher
@2 commander
471 --Golem
--no Golem
#additem "Horned Helmet"
#additem "Fire Plate"
#additem "Fire Brand"
#additem "Charcoal Shield"
#additem "Boots of Long Strides"

In this example, their is a 50% chance for the golem to make an appearance. If he does, then he will be equipped with the listed items. If he does not then the items would be applied to "catcher". My thought is that if catcher has no slots for these items that they simply go *poof*. This depends on exactly how dom3 handles such a situation and is just theory on my part. If the catcher does have slots, but they already have items, I strongly suspect that the existing items will be replaced by subsequent #additems.

Anyone who has had experience with anything like this, please feel free to correct or confirm.

P.S. Thanks for the program!

Your welcome! (and thanks for the thanks!)

[alexti]

jutetrea said:
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.

This would be pretty tough for solo-ing SC - a lot of unroutable with a lot of resistances, plus horde of mages firing all kind of spells (assuming AI will be casting something sensible).

Increases in army size stop being efficient at some point, there're only so many that can fight in the gates and number of turns in the battle is limited. In this case it's more of a question of having the right army rather than a large army.

[alexti]

Ballbarian said:

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.

I am not sure I completely understand your idea. Maybe it can done differently: create two such provinces: one with Golems, another - without and then set it so that only one of the provinces is selected for the generated map. Then Golems could have had semi-random equipment. Would it work?

P.S. Thanks for the program!