Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[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!)

[HoneyBadger]

I think a good selection of equipment for a golem would be:

Horror Helmet
Black Steel Plate
Stinger
Ring of the Warrior
Ring of Tamed Lightning
Shield of Valor
Boots of Long Strides

That way, you've got a very nice selection of reasonably thematic equipment, and nothing *too* powerful, since there's going to be 8 of them.

[Ballbarian]

The point of my reply was to demonstrate the technique I was talking about, not to suggest equipment for a golem. I just copy/pasted some lines from a random file.

Edit- removed the rolly eyeballs. Was having a bad week. (sorry HB...)

[Gandalf Parker]

I just tested your concept and confirm it. If the selected commander doesnt have the slots then the game simply ignores the item assignment and moves on. They dont fall to the ground, go in armory, and do not go to the next commander selected.
Oh yeah, and the game doesnt crash.

[Endoperez]

I only have about three hours until I have to get back to the army. Thanks to a combination of a batch of new books (mainly Pratchett) and a friend's graduation party, I haven't even started this project. I'll do my best to write down the ones posted here next week.

[Ballbarian]

Hopefully by the time you get back I will have the province editor complete. I think (if you can run windows programs) that you will find it helpful. Right now it is roughly 75%-85% complete.

-Edit-
Make that 95% complete.

Here is a sample from the first trial run using very basic stuff:

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
SAMPLE999_CLD_IS_U_R_S_SWP_FST_

@1 landname
"Forgotten Isle"
#temple
#lab
#fort 26 --Dead City
#population 0
#poptype 88 --NO RECRUITABLES
#killfeatures
#feature "Chillsick Swamp"
#knownfeature "Haunted Village"

#commander 777 --Tartarian Monstra
#comname "Ess of the Lost"
#additem "Flesh Eater"
#additem "Totem Shield"
#additem "Robe of Shadows"
#additem "Amulet of Antimagic"
#clearmagic
#mag_death 9
#mag_astral 9
#xp 300
#bodyguards 15 526 --Serpent Fiend
#units 20 526 --Serpent Fiend
#units 20 533 --Wight
#units 20 533 --Wight
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I still need to add support for Endo's castle defenders to the editor, but it should be a piece of cake. Which reminds me... I can't believe that I didn't get your "Realm of the Ape King" added to the new release of RanDom. I just checked and it is not even on the site. *slaps forehead*

[Ballbarian]

Thanks for testing that G!

[Endoperez]

Magic Site: Doom Cloud.

Commander: Queen of Clouds, equipped with Doom Glaive, Chain Mail of Displacement, Spirit Helm, Amulet of Anti-Magic, Dancing Trident.

Troops: 20 slyphs.

--------------------------------------------

Magic Site: The Endless Field of Cubes.

Commander: Vistor, equipped with spell focus and eye of the void.

Troops: 30 things of many eyes.

----------------------------------------------

Magic Sites: Horses Vale, Totem Collection.

Commanders: Horse brother with bow of war, horn of valour; horse brother with black bow of botulf, champions skull.

Troops: 50 horse brothers.

------------------------------------------------
*Innsmouth with cultists and fishmen. (R'lyeh, imprint minds)
*Sunken city - mechanical men, golems and other animates. (the animated things are called inanimates in Dominions )

These have been done. I'll release them later today with whatever else I manage to do.

The Camelot is pretty good, but still lacking the castle. Unless something goes wrong, I should have it done today.

These three I will do. They'll all add a little something into an existing province.
* site:Forest of Truffles, (1) Great Boar of Carnutes, (15) Great Boars/ (15)Iron Boars (sacred versions), (1) Fay Boar, 3 Druids, 1 Druid with N2, H3, Moonvine Bracelet, Treelord's Staff
* site:Mammoth Forest, and a Mammoth commander with a Horn of Valor leading 4 Mammoths set as bodyguards.
* site:Forest of Delights, a Pan with a pair of Endless Bags of Wine leading a group of 40 Maenads.

These three I'd like to do, but where I'd like to get a bit of help:

*Lair of the kraken - pretender-sized octopus with items (there is an octopus pretender)
*Transylvania with a vampire count leading an army of infartry, peasants, villans and wolves.(LA Ulm)
* Village defended by seven samurai. (MA Bakemono)

For the Kraken - what items?
For vampires - how many commanders, how many items, how tough? also, site suggestions are velcome
For the seven samurai, their names and what weapon they should have. I'm going to add them as unique additions to any one province's defenders.