New Map: Faerun - The Forgotten Realms

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
As to what that will do to spying and scouting, I think thats livable. If the indies are set to 9 then they are supposed to represent more of a game problem. Especially if its obviously a large and wealthy province. I should probably wait for hard numbers though before judging that one. At what Indie setting do enough indies show up to make scouts worthless?

Oh, I agree! If some indies are manually set
on patrol, all is good... Scouts do have it
too easy in indie provinces. I was just afraid
that if all indies were patrolling, scouting
for some nations would be impossible.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:
I am not saying it is a bad idea, but have you
considered all the implications? Scouting would
become much harder. Eighty units on patrol, even
groundpounders, will have a pretty good chance of
revealing and killing scouts. This will
effectively kill scouting for many nations.

Not all provinces have to have patrolling units... only the provinces which have been specified by whoever developed the map.

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Hmmm I dont know about random. If anyone has played some of my random maps you will quickly see the problem. I think my maps suffer most from this. Scattered castles owned by independents are way too nice for the player. I can take the province with a scout. Get instant view and watch of all the provinces around it. And I can safely tax it to death if its somewhere that the AI is likely to reach before me. And if I do get near one I can move troops thru that province without taking the castle. If I get pushed back I just retreat and leave the AI trying to seige.

I was reffering to random as randomly assigned to either patrol or defense. Not randomly placing castles or anything else. That way some provinces will be pattroled by independents and some wont, it will be on player to find out which.

Edit: stupid typo.

[ May 27, 2004, 21:20: Message edited by: Daynarr ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
I was reffering to random as randomly assigned to either patrol or defense. Not randomly placing castles or anything else. That way some provinces will be pattroled by independents and some wont, it will be on player to find out which.

I knew that. But I dont think the chance of castles without patrol is worth having in a game. Oh well it will be up to the map maker I guess if it shows up.

It may be troublesome to do also. Actually if it was only defend and patrol there would still be an option for random as an external program the way I do it now.

[Edi]

What I'd really like is a feature that would have the commands #provgar and #casgar (or similar) for province and castle garrisons separately, so that if there is a known castle in the province (as opposed to e.g. an undiscovered Firbolg Fortress), ýou're going to have to fight the province garrison in any case and survivors from that will retreat to the castle (or just die, whichever is easier to do for the programmers), and then you will have to separately siege the castle and take care of its garrison before you get full control.

That would solve the problem quite easily, and I suppose it would be possible to program the #provgar command to react to attacking enemies like patrol without having the actual effect of actively patrolling, while the #casgar command would be handled like things are done now.

Obviously, this approach is perhaps more of an idea for a sequel game than something to be put in a patch, unless the IW people think they can do it and deem it worth doing. I wouldn't actually mind having this kind of commands for my own troops as well, having both of the options "Defend Castle" and "Defend Province" in castle provinces would be nice enough so that you wouldn't have to patrol just to be able to stay outside the walls.

Edi

[Crandaeolon]

Of course more options, such as map commands, are always better than less, but major changes are also less likely to happen in a relatively minor update like a patch.

I suggested the simplest solution I could think of in the hopes that it might actually have a chance to be implemented.

I'm all for the additional map commands suggested, though. Very nice scenarios could be created with more control over indie behavior.