Mod: UnitGen - Random nations with procedural sprites!

[elmokki]

I doubt I can be arsed to update SpriteGen. I know it's shortcomings but since it's the UnitGen part I'm primarily developing I don't really mind them.

Also having different colors for two items isn't even technically possible right now. It wouldn't be hard to implement really, but in terms of UnitGen I haven't really figured out why I should bother.

I would also like to point out that with the sprite parts UnitGen contains it's fairly easy to construct sprites with GIMP or Photoshop or whatever graphics editing program. More work than just choosing from dropdown menus, but allows more customization too.

[Ragnarok-X]

Okay, i understand.
How is balancing ? When using the hoburg nation, i would that the 3 mages were really, really imbalanced to each other (gold cost for too low for the tier 3 one).
In addition, i dont think milita was balanced either (too many small pro 17 guys) per gold.

Try it, it was names "Ragnarok".

[elmokki]

It doesn't generate the same mod based on names, but doesn't matter, I know how pricing and militia etc work in principle.

In terms of mage prices MA Abysian warlock has 3 blood, 2 astral and one random pick, costing 270g. In UnitGen the exact same would be 300g, 290g if it's a human. Sure, MA Warlock is cap only, but I found no correlation between being cap only and price so it isn't affected. If you think some mage is too cheap or too expensive do list race, exact magic picks and price and I'll take a look. Also remember that mage prices can ramp up due to special abilities like forge bonus, shape changes etc, though for mages rather few abilities affect price.

How militia amounts (and start army amounts, except they get a bonus multiplier) work is that base amount is 10 units per 10 pd. To this resource modifier and gold modifier are added. They are like this:

resource modifier = 22.5 - 1.25 * rescost - 10
gold modifier = 26.666 - 1.666 * goldcost - 10

Resource costs are calculated with size 2 resources (ie those listed in databases etc), so hoburgs should cost extra resources compared to actual cost.

Basically hoburgs being 8g by default they get 3 extra units from being so cheap, but they need to cost only 13 resources to be brought back to 10 per 10 pd. Of course there might be something wrong in the calculations, but I doubt they swarm that much compared to general levels of PD in UnitGen.

Sure, they have prot 17 and can swarm like no tomorrow, but 6 hp is a very serious weakness too.

[curtadams]

Is there a way to run this on a Mac?

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by curtadams

Is there a way to run this on a Mac?

Yes. There may well be a better way but this is what kianduatha figured out:

You'll need to open terminal, ie actual text based thing where you can type stuff in (since I believe there's some console thing on mac that doesn't allow you to type into) and navigate to the folder you have UnitGen in. Then you'll write java -jar unitgen.jar and press enter and it'll launch if you have Java JRE installed.

I'll ask kianduatha to check if I wrote this correctly once he pops in IRC.

[curtadams]

I get "Bad version number in .class file". What version of java are you using?

[elmokki]

Newest possible. Though I believe 6 should be new enough for UnitGen.

[Ragnarok-X]

I tried this some more and came up with the following suggestions. I hope you can include them.

Most nations made are too generic. I think 6 or 7 times (out of 8) i got a nation with 4 normal infantry w/ mace, spear, axe, falchion, then heavy variants of these 4 guys, sometime 1 rider, always 1 (interesting!) sacred.
Commanders were mostly 1 spy, 2 commanders w/ different weapons, 1 priest and 3 mages + 1 high priest.
I think you need to add more diversity.
For example, i believe most nations should NOT get a melee variant for *each* weapon chassis.
Maybe give it a 100 % chance for a combination of 2/2 infantry/heavy infantry variants, i.e. spear/axe or spear/mace or mace/ace with a 100 % offchance for the same heavy variant.
Then, a 35 % chance to add in a third melee guy with new weapon (i.e. 35 % a nation with spear/axe gets mace) and then anohter 35 % to get the fourth melee variant. Maybe a 20 % base-chance for a dualwielder of a random weapon.
In addition, a %-based chance to get 2 sacreds and/or light/heavy variant of a sacred.

Regarding commanders, they need better naming. The nations i made all had 2 commanders, which unfortunally were named "Commander" too.
I wish you had randomness to the naming, i.e. even chance for name "Commander", "Lord", "General", "Warchief".
Then, instead of giving 2 alternate commanders w/ different weapon, make the nation have 2 REALLY different commanders (i.e. 40 leader vs 80 leader /w standard). For Example, Commander and High Commander, Lord and Great Lord, Warchief and Seasoned Warchief.

In addition, give the nation a small chance to get the commander-class a magic pick (i.e. the tool creates a high commander that has 1 magic pick with a 10 % chance -> NOT 10 % per recruit, but a 10 % chance to get a 100 % m1 commander in nation creation).

Same goes for holy mages, i.e. some nations get H1 on their lesser/higher commander).

Lastly, maybe you could introduce a .ini file for this. The value aboves (%-chances) are defined using a .ini file, and everyone could alter their .ini file to get the programm to create nations like they want.

I applaude your work and hope you consider my suggestions.
The coolest race i got had serpent cataphracts and the sacred was a spider rider + h3 high priest. And i got hoburgs that got a sacred poison spearman.

[elmokki]

Well, normal troops are right now generated so that nation gets 3 or 4 different weapons and 2 or 3 different armors and every single combination is generated for infantry. For archers 1-2 weapons are generated and two armor variants for each weapon are generated. Cavalry is a bit different, nations get 1-3 mounts and then they get: lance cavalry or onehanded cavalry depending on a dice roll, two handed cavalry if possible (basically only if there's a great axe available actually), and a light lance cavalry. The program tries to generate cav versions for each armor, but it also depends on the available mounts. If there isn't a heavy mount then there just simply isn't a full plate cavalry unit. Obviously when a race just doesn't get some role, it won't be generated. Abysians don't get ranged, chariots or cavalry, lizards don't get cavalry and flying races don't get cavalry or chariots.

So basically you're looking at potentially like 20-24 units we're thinning the herd down from. The thinning algorithm first decides the roster size in all different areas (cav/chariot/ranged/infantry) and then starts thinning the units. Generally it always tries removing a whole tier of armor from that role first, if that is too much it tries removing one weapon type and if everything else fails it removes a random single unit. I do agree that I should probably make it chance based so that it at least sometimes - actually might be a good idea to have it do it pretty often - prioritizes removing a random unit.

I would, however, like to note that troop rosters in the game are relatively monotonous already. Many nations get very similiar units with minor changes, and it's okay. It's obvious people won't in general recruit more than 3 or 4 different unit types at most. Even then in some cases it allows a tactical choice (naginata vs katana vs no-dashi is at the very least tougher than mace vs spear vs broad sword), even though that choice is an once per choice and varies between players, not between turns in a single game (or well, naginata is 4 more damage than katana, but the pricinple stays).

The commander generation in all it's simplicity right now is picking existing troops so that all the special tags (like flying, stealthy, amphibious, 50% chance of sacred to be guaranteed to be a com) are filled if possible. I agree it could use some 80 leadership commanders, more diverse naming - especially the sacred commander version of let's say Death Templar should probably be something like Death Lord - and both commanders and priests should have magic occasionally. It isn't exactly a high priority though since unless a commander (I'm mostly looking at sacred commanders) is thugworthy or has an useful special trait (flying for that hoburg hawk cavalry or stealthy for stealthy troops) it just won't be recruited almost at all.

You can already change many of the probabilities for the program. You can't influence mage setups (1, 2 or 3 primary mages) or the path patterns they get (one path at 3, one path at 2 and one random is more common than let's say two paths at 2 and 2 linked randoms). You also can't influence the cav-chariot-archer-infantry ratio. What you can, however, influence is the probability of appearance for different sorts of magic weapons for sacreds, different sorts of special features for mages, sacreds and priests, and different sorts of gear for every single unit generated. Oh yeah, also general nation traits (both stuff shared by all units of primary race and stuff like blood sacrifice) and the probability of different pretender chassises appearing are modifiable.

[Ragnarok-X]

I understand your reasoning, and obviously its your tool. I just posted what i would be looking for in a programm should i use it. Of course i already do use it for SP, but i think the suggestions i made would make it even better. I think most dom 3 players love flavour, variance and decision-making, as such, adding more unique/diversity would add a lot.
Im looking forward to newer revisions, especially if you enable (...) even more user-customization.
thank you.

I forgot to mention, the spider-mount sacred i got, they even had enchanted maces. Good times.