CherryMod Thread

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
New unit for my Japanese theme: Sumo Wrestlers! Capitol only.

Weapons:
Belly - Damage 0, Attack 5 (how do you miss with a belly?), Defense -4

Assuming this is a no-hands weapon, shouldn't they also have two fists?

Also, if you are doing a Japanese theme, I hope it will include ninjas. There should be at least three types: ninja warriors (a normal stealthy troop, maybe capitol only), ninja agents (spy and assassin in one unit), and ninja masters (with one random elemental magic; ninjas were believed to employ a variety of mystical techniques. These should be capitol only). One of the capitol sites could be a ninja fortress.

I'm assuming a basically Shinto priesthood (at least for the default theme; if we're creating a new nation, we could create special themes too.)

They could even get some national summons (kitsune would be cool)

Armor:
Belly - Prot 5, Defense -4 (cumulative with the the belly weapon defense), Encumbrance 8
Sumo Gi - Prot 2, Defense 0, Encumbrance 0

Base Stats:

Cost: 25

Size 3 (needs 3 supply)
HP 15
STR 14
ATT 10
DEF 10
PRT 0
PRE 8
ENC 3
MRL 14

Trample, Berserk +1

25 gold for a size 3 berserking trampler? Compare the minotaur at 50...

They should have more strength, though. Sumo wrestlers can pick up and throw other sumo wrestlers. That takes a lot of strength.


Of course, I'm assuming the sumo wrestler isn't just a joke. A Japanese theme would be cool, but I don't know of sumo wrestlers ever having been used on the battlefield.

It'd be awesome to have Miyamoto Musashi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, or other historical/legendary figures as national heroes, though. (Or you could go for more fictionalized, fantastic accounts and have Hitokiri Battousai...)

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Also, if you are doing a Japanese theme, I hope it will include ninjas. There should be at least three types: ninja warriors (a normal stealthy troop, maybe capitol only), ninja agents (spy and assassin in one unit), and ninja masters (with one random elemental magic; ninjas were believed to employ a variety of mystical techniques.

Oh, don't worry! I will most certainly have ninjas! Several types=)

I'm assuming a basically Shinto priesthood (at least for the default theme; if we're creating a new nation, we could create special themes too.)

That's my biggest problem - I'm not all that creative in the magician area. Other than ninja with level-1 fire or level-1 death, and maybe ninja masters with 2?, I'm not sure what sort of mages to give them.

They could even get some national summons (kitsune would be cool)

Of course=) I'm not sure if national summons will be moddable (at least at first), but there are numerous possiblities, especially multi-headed dragons. Maybe Tanuki (cheap, stealthy, glamour) as well.

25 gold for a size 3 berserking trampler? Compare the minotaur at 50...

Well, yeah, but with only 5 protection, no defense, and 15 HP they won't Last long=) Compare to Arco Chariot instead.

But, yeah, the sumo wrestler was kind of a joke=) It would be fun to see them in the Arena, though, maybe up against an Earth Mother=)

It'd be awesome to have Miyamoto Musashi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, or other historical/legendary figures as national heroes, though. (Or you could go for more fictionalized, fantastic accounts and have Hitokiri Battousai...)

Heh, heh, heh... young Battousai, of course. A dual-class samurai-assassin with Quickness +300% (Godlike Speed) AFAIK, there are no national hero assassins yet...

Oh, he'd get an x50 patrolling effect, too, though that would be a waste, unless you were a crzy pacifist=) Patrolling without killing populace might be a nice hero ability.

Any help or suggestions would certainly be welcome! I plan to add several themes - for example:

Man "Peasant Revolution", with no national units but most normal indy units at castles, cheaper than normal indies, and only new custom human pretenders (no god-like pretenders). Basically, the world's inhabitants grow tired of gods running roughshod all over.

Mictlan "Rise of the Amazons" featuring no Mictlan units, but all the Amazons.

Atlantis "Aqua Regia", where most national units are merfolk, most aquatic-only units are sacred, and the amhpibious Atlantians are no longer holy, sacred, or dominant.

A new Ermor all-undead theme, "Vengeful Dead" (isn't that also a spell?) in which the low-level undead lose their mindless status, and destroy their controlling necromancers / undead priests.

Abysia: "Gates of Hell" - the Abysian blood economy gets a little too aggressive, too many summoned demonic commanders are empowered in Blood, and the demons take over - consuming their masters (Warlocks and Demonbreds), as well as all the humanbreds! Warlocks and Demonbreds are replaced by buildable demon magii, all the humanbreds are gone, some lesser demons are buildable as units, and a new "Demon Gate" site is added. All mortal Abysinian commanders get weak horror-marks.

However, all of these will feature only existing units, with altered stats (including the new pretenders). With the Japanese theme (probably "Rising Sun", unless someone can think of a clever name) I'll need a lot of new sprites, unless I can steal them from Shogun

-Cherry

P.S. Just because I'm using this thread to collect ideas, I think I'll add this, from another thread.

***

There are a few units that I think would be extremely useful... if only! Those are Villians, Woodsmen, Hoburg Militia, Burgmeister Guards, and land-based Shamblers. I never build any of them, except the Woodsmen (because of their 11 precision). What would make them useful:

Villians, Hoburg Militia, and Woodsmen: These are stealth units with no stealth commanders! I would love these things if the provinces included stealth commanders, costing less than ~3gp per unit (as opposed to the Druid, which costs 90 and leads 10, for 9gp per unit... and requires a temple and lab... crazy!). What's wrong with a 30 gold, 10 leadership (or 40 gold, 25 leadership) Chief Villian, Hoburg Militia Captain, or Woodsman Huntmaster?

Shamblers: The ones on land are amphibious, with no amphibious commanders! That makes NO sense. Sure, you might be able to find a water mage, but where there are Shamblers, there should be shambler commanders.

Burgmeister Guards: These are like heavy infantry, just not as good. Now if their resource cost scaled down a bit, and they consumed less supply than humans, I'd build them. If I could ever find them in a resource-rich province...

***

So, I'll probably make the above changes (except the supply scaling) unless they are made to the base game.

[ November 23, 2003, 23:09: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Lazy, lazy... Wow, that would have saved you so much time if you had associated resources with armors and weapons, and let the game auto-calculate unit resource costs!

When we associated encumbrance and defence with armors instead of units we had already made some hundred units (that was early in Dom I). It was a chore to go through them all. Resources was not remade at the same time and now it feels kind of owerwhelming to think about.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
When we associated encumbrance and defence with armors instead of units we had already made some hundred units (that was early in Dom I). It was a chore to go through them all. Resources was not remade at the same time and now it feels kind of owerwhelming to think about.

From a programming perspective it should be simple... Add a resources field to all equipment, add a method to units to to calculate resource cost based on carried equipment. Compare the computed values with the current resource cost for all units. If you like what you see, refactor to call the resource method rather than the hard coded resource variable, and then remove remove all the now extraneous unit resources. Perhaps keep resources around as a variable on units, so you can it to the resource sum if you want to varry resource cost aside from equipment.

[Saber Cherry]

I know doubt the tools for modding scales will allow even 10% of what I mention here, but unless you speak up, you never know=)

Things I would like to add:

Rebalance scale design point costs, if possible, like this:
+45,+40,+35,0,+35,+40,+45 for Heat/Cold
-35,-40,-45,0,+45,+50,+55 for Magic/Drain
-45,-40,-35,0,+35,+30,+25 for Luck/Unluck

This rebalance would make the currently attractive endpoints of luck/unluck less attractive, and the unattractive magic/drain and heat/cold endpoints more attractive. Note, these are the INCREMENTAL costs, not cumulative. Currently all the scales cost 40,40,40,0,40,40,40 (with the 40's positive or negative, depending on the scale).

Luck scale affecting afflictions using this algorithm: (Damage*(10-Luck)/(10*HP))=chance of affliction. That's a 10% difference per scale. For example, a 25 HP unit taking 5 damage in a +3 luck scale province would have a (5*(10-3)/(10*25))=14% rather than default 20% chance of gaining an affliction.

Magic scale affecting gem production, with randomized gem output, with sites getting +-10% average output per magic/drain scale. Production would be like this: Every gem would change to 2 coin flips. So, a 1-gem site would have a 25% chance of making no gems, 50% of 1 gems, and 25% chance of 2 gems, each turn. Magic/drain would unbalance the coins, so that a neutral scale coin would have a 50%-50% head-tail chance, and a +1 magic would have 55%-45% head-tail distributions.

Example: A site makes 2 Earth gems, 1 water gem, and is in Drain-2. Coins are thus 40% heads, and 60% tails. This generates 4 Earth coins, and 2 Water coins.

Using these unbalanced coins...

4 Earth coins flip for:

13% 0 Earth Gems
35% 1 Earth Gems
35% 2 Earth Gems
15% 3 Earth Gems
2.5% 4 Earth Gems

2 Water coins flip for:

36% 0 Water Gems
48% 1 Water Gems
16% 2 Water Gems

This generates an average of 1.6 Earth, and .8 Water gems, max of 4 and 2 and min of 0 and 0. Note the average 20% reduction from the original 2 Earth, 1 Water due to the drain scale unbalancing the coins.

This coin-gem system would also be great for use with a potential map gem-richness setting... Note that the player never sees coins, or knows about coins, they are all behind the scenes.

Also note that if +-10% seems too drastic, +-5% could be used instead... or the scale could simply be made more costly.

-Cherry

[ November 23, 2003, 07:59: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Jasper:
From a programming perspective it should be simple... Add a resources field to all equipment, add a method to units to to calculate resource cost based on carried equipment. Compare the computed values with the current resource cost for all units. If you like what you see, refactor to call the resource method rather than the hard coded resource variable, and then remove remove all the now extraneous unit resources. Perhaps keep resources around as a variable on units, so you can it to the resource sum if you want to varry resource cost aside from equipment.

Many units have resource costs not only dependent on the equipment. The resources of Jotund and other non human beings are arbitrarily altered to compensate for size and other materials. We would have to go through all units. Not difficult but very boring and some bugs would not discovered. On the other hand we have a merry group of people here that wouldn't mind pointing out misses.

The Minotaur Lord was one of the units that were missed in the previous encumbrance change. I believe you remember him.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Many units have resource costs not only dependent on the equipment. The resources of Jotund and other non human beings are arbitrarily altered to compensate for size and other materials. We would have to go through all units. Not difficult but very boring and some bugs would not discovered. On the other hand we have a merry group of people here that wouldn't mind pointing out misses.

The Minotaur Lord was one of the units that were missed in the previous encumbrance change. I believe you remember him.

If setup algorithmically all the individualized unit resource differences would be calculated, and you'd only need to review the shorter list of those actually differing. This would be much simpler to maintain/extend, and much easier to catch simple mistakes.

It'd be tedious, but get JK to do it! Tedium is what programmers are for. ;-)

[LordArioch]

I thought of some interesting themes to suggest...but I think you already have them.
Pangea: All animal units, maybe werewolf mages...DRAGONFLY SCOUTS!!!
and an undead theme where you pay gold and resources to build the undead?

Also, perhaps an all etheral theme...it might be hard to do though since most etheral units are undead or very powerful.
A theme involving the aesir somehow perhaps...vanheim with giants.
And a nation where every unit has a bow and good precision...."Reign of Arrows" Maybe for caelum.

Oh..and I want the Black Coven too...I'm thinking Ulm with death/earth mages and unholy priests maybe. Now that would be a cool Ulm theme. Just imagine if they could get wights with black steel plate on. Be really cool if they reanimated undead with black steel plate.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
and an undead theme where you pay gold and resources to build the undead?

Base Ermor is fairly similar to this, as you pay for the priests that do the reanimation. It would be interesting to have a "Kingdom of the dead" though, where they go about living their lives like normal people and are every bit as reluctant to go into battle.

Also, perhaps an all etheral theme...it might be hard to do though since most etheral units are undead or very powerful.

Well, Soul Gate is pretty much this. It has the disadvantage of requiring MR checks for many of the weapons to hit.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
I thought of some interesting themes to suggest...but I think you already have them.
Pangea: All animal units, maybe werewolf mages...DRAGONFLY SCOUTS!!!

Yeah I've been thinking along those lines as well. Some sort of "Gaia", "Devolution", or "Return to Nature" theme, with no human units except druids. And inverted cavalry, where miniature ponies charge into battle riding specially-bred human linebackers. Centaurs and Satyrs might still be tolerated, but there would be mostly "Battle Bunnies", "Squirrel Soldiers", and "Mousie Militia". National heroes would include the Vorpal Bunny of Death from Monty Python's Holy Grail, and of course the immortal Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons. He'd start out feebleminded, though.

Ok, seriously - I've been giving a theme like this some thought, and it's hard for me to figure out how the economics would work out. Why would animals want gold, and with no tools, what would resources do? I want it to be nature versus humanity, so it would include vine ogres and vinemen in addition to animals, but they don't care about that stuff either. I like the dragonfly scouts=)

Hmm... the best way for it to work would be to make animals and vine-creatures spontaneously arise in provinces with high dominion and high magic, and allow the Pangea "Nature" theme to take turmoil, sloth, and unluck (require +3 magic and at least +2 turmoil). But, alternately, it could have intelligent talking animals that want to be paid for their services and wear armor (just not leather armor).

Anyway, non-humanoid themes require a bit more work and thought than more standard themes.

P.S.

By Graeme
It would be interesting to have a "Kingdom of the dead" though, where they go about living their lives like normal people

Perhaps you mean "undying their undeaths"?

Yes, I'm going to put in a theme like that. Zombies have figured out how to make baby zombies, and etc. This theme would be best if province population could go negative, to represent a bustling undead population.

[ November 24, 2003, 19:32: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]