Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[jutetrea]

If possible "kingdoms" sound cool.

I remember seeing a map on the dom2 site that reminded me of a Warcraft 2 map, 6 or so spokes to a wheel with a set of provinces at the end of each spoke. 2 nations would start on a spoke and then conquer their way towards the middle. The kingdom idea sounds cool because then you could have concentric rings of increasing strength towards the middle.. a king of the hill type thing.

Also quest type scenarios...hmm, is it possible to generate in game messages via map/script/mod? Even if pre-set i.e. on turn 20 an all message goes out - province #42 is the home to an evil black dragon, blah blah.

At its most simple level it would be cool to have something like an NPC pre-set kingdom - castle with a "boss" surrounded by provinces filled with minions.

Hmm.. guess I have to give the DB a deeper look, must have skipped some tabs. Thanks for the answers.

[lch]

This is just a silly idea...

Magic site: Xavier's School, enables recruitment of mutant with 100% AFWES random, 20-50% FWSN random

Xavier: S3, movement 1/2
Cyclops: high precision, ranged attack with the Solar rays animation or a better suited animation
Angel: Flying, high att+def, maybe some gear aswell
Beast: Bandar sprite, high Str, high MR, high movement
Iceman: Ice Elemental sprite, W2
Storm: A4, Flying
Jean: F3S2
Rogue: D2, Life Drain
Wolverine: E2, high Regen, 2x AN or AP Claw attack, maybe immortal
Nightcrawler: demon sprite, intrinsic Boots of the Crane or otherwise automatic Blink in battle

Maybe half of them in the outside, half of them in the inside. Maybe +1 Astral to Xavier and Jean, maybe -1 Air to Storm (though she should be able to cast Storm?). Prevent them from getting charmed, somehow. Make them SCs / Thugs.

[Turin]

The grey tower of nexus:
knownfeature: grey tower of nexus
3 shadow seers with a clam of pearls each (106)
2 grey lords (391)
20 grey knights (390)
poptype: standard farmlands


The factory:
knownfeature: the factory
4 mage engineers(1606) with 2 mech men as bodyguards
6 engineers (1072) with 1 mech man as bodyguard
10 mechanical men
40 clockwork horrors

[Gandalf Parker]

Some notes:

I think its best if uniques are avoided in the scripts that would add provinces randomly to the map.

We cannot BUILD completely new units. Thats a modding thing. With map commands we can build-up a specific unit that is in the game already. We can SELECT units, name them, give them experiences and equipment, bodyguards and troops.

We can also ignore the usual purpose of a unit. ALL units in the game can be assigned as pretenders, commanders, or followers. Creating a horror pretender for a nation, or a mass of horror followers for a commander, is possible.

People who are creating smarter gods and scales for the AI's might be interested to know that you can also decide what AI's tend to ally with each other. Such as, my Pangaean pretender design included a line to ally automatically with Oceania. That means they will not attack each other if they are both AI's in a game.

Please provide some info on WHERE you feel a province design should appear. Mountain? Forest? Swamp? Cave? on a river? in a lake? on an island? These are all recognizable by the program.

Certain features that we cannot give can be provided as a name OR found in the magic sites. If you want a cemetary, a town, a valley, grove, arena then use a site to give that feel to the province. And also look at the sites for things that fit the concept even if you have filled it with other things. Check for sites that have to do with temple, or dragon, or forest.

So consider: location, name, structures, magic sites (found, hidden, or filler), commanders, commander names, experience, equipment, body guards, units.

[jutetrea]

Just as an opinion I feel that all sites in a special province should be available on conquer - as part of the reward for defeating the crazy specials. Again just as an opinion, but crazy hard sites shouldn't be filled with lvl 0 and lvl 2 items but should yield potentially greater rewards. (obviously some lower level items are worth more, clams). Also obvious, rewards should be relevant to the difficulty.

Rewards aren't guarenteed anyway (routs, proximity) but getting everything and only walking away with a bracer and a luck amy is a bit annoying if you had to risk significant troops.

Another reason why I love the "kingdom" idea, thematically progressively difficult encounters.

sorry for the ramble, sick.

[Gandalf Parker]

Even with kingdoms I think we will end up with "3 neighboring mountain provinces" or "a forest next to a swamp". So progressively difficult might not work since we cant gaurantee a sequence they would be attacked in.

But, everyone should remember, these are MAP commands. All of these ideas can be built into a map. If you feel motivated to get really really specific then by all means consider doing a map and designing the entire layout and scenario and descriptions. So far we have very few scenario maps and no super-scenarios (using maps, mods, and multiple maps). Id love to see a storyline super-scenario that takes one nation thru all 3 ages.