Rise of the Machines suggestion

[PvK]

Originally posted by Zen:
Couldn't you just mod the ship so that it is like the Pocket Ship Item?

Make it a Commander and it's effect is to carry 1 Commander and 50 Troops (25 Mounted) in a 1 Movement Ocean type of scenario? Kind of like how CotS and Vanheim are right now.

I was thinking about this yesterday. It's almost possible to mod something interesting, but the problem is that there is no way to restrict the movement of such ships to the water - it would always be possible to drag them across land provinces, which is silly. So unless and until IW decide to implement something to help with that quibble, they have to be rationalized/imagined as at least partly magical, like the pocket ship or Vanheim leaders.

The added problem with items like Pocket Ship is you can teleport them for free using magic labs, or give them to a flying unit or undead cavalry or other fast leader type, and move them very fast across land.

The added problem with "leader" ships is that there is no way to use them to transport other leaders.

Still, adding magic ships to more races could be interesting. Some maps (such as some of Gandalf's random maps, and the England map) bring up some interesting maps for coast-to-coast ship movement, such as when there are many land provinces all adjoining one sea province, so sea movement can not only bridge obstacles, but also can allow much faster coastal movement.

Siege engines could be fun, but I would wait for the weapon mod and then make them not very efficient, so even if people Gift of Nature them and add silly powers to them, they won't be too powerful. That is, a missile-thrower would be innaccurate and have an extremely low rate of fire (should be quite worse than an Ulmish arbalest, or even simply ammo = 1) - the advantage is if it does hit something, that thing is almost surely kaput. I would give practically all siege engines a strategic move of zero, as well (not one).

PvK