Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[jutetrea]

No, its just harder to find them in the DB if you don't know names. I used the online tool for formatting, and had the database open - just switched back and forth. Plus it was like 3AM here.

I'm all for using uniques, plan on a

province where all the horrors hang out when not assassinating people.
Elemental Nodes - fire, air, water, earth
Sorcery Nodes - Astral, Nature, blood, death
do a little research and figure out the naming for that arabic mountain castle where all the assassin's hung - hashishen or something. Aby/machaka themed
Mayan/Aztec temple - Mictlan themed
Bottomless pit/broken seal - agartha themed
There be dragons
Olympus - home of the gods

Questions:
Is it possible to force provinces to be next to each other in a random setting? i.e. 2 related provinces right next to each other.

Is there a designation in the database for what nation a unit is generally associated with? For instance, query out anything not related to Machaka.

Using heroes as units - (not the generic hero unit) the uniques that appear per nation. How are they listed in the DB?

Neighbors to a province - automatically done during map creation?

Is it possible to script units/commanders via map file? Or even position them?

If a unit is given F6 for magic, do they have access to the while spell book or are they limited to 0 lvl spells? Seems like they have access, but are there any restrictions? Can you give a unit 15S/gems and hope he casts master enslave?

[CelestialGoblyn]

This is a *great* idea.
Now, I'd need to research for details, but just a few ideas:

Innsmouth with cultists and fishmen.
Shaolin with disciples and monks.
Village defended by seven samurai.
Cimmeria, land of barbarians, with Conan as one of them.
Kirke's island from Odyssey, sorceress and a horde of beasts and foulspawn.
Holy sanctuary with clerics, flagellants and paladins.
Transylvania with a vampire count leading an army of infartry, peasants, villans and wolves.
Highlands with banshee's and barbarian swordsmen.

For underwater:
Land of the drowned - full of undead.
Sunken city - mechanical men, golems and other animates.
Lair of the kraken - pretender-sized octopus with items

[Ballbarian]

First let me thank Endoperez for taking on what I just don't have the energy left to do. Endo, you always explain everything so much better than I can!

Definitely some great ideas in this thread.

I will try to answer a few questions:

Is it possible to force provinces to be next to each other in a random setting? i.e. 2 related provinces right next to each other.

That is something that Endo has asked for in the past and that I would like to add in the next version as "kingdoms".

Is there a designation in the database for what nation a unit is generally associated with? For instance, query out anything not related to Machaka.

There is a tab with nations & their units, but not a field in the "All Units" tab. That would be a very nice addition though. I would be afraid to incur Edi's wrath by asking for another field, safer to add it ourselves. (Just picking Edi )

Using heroes as units - (not the generic hero unit) the uniques that appear per nation. How are they listed in the DB?

If I remember correctly, there is a field at the far right on the "All Units" sheet called "special" or something like that. I remember seeing notes there designating a unit as being a particular nations hero.

Neighbors to a province - automatically done during map creation?

Neighbors should already be done by the map designer or by the games random map generator. RanDom doesn't touch them.

Is it possible to script units/commanders via map file? Or even position them?

Nope, but would be a welcome addition if a simple way were given.

If a unit is given F6 for magic, do they have access to the while spell book or are they limited to 0 lvl spells? Seems like they have access, but are there any restrictions? Can you give a unit 15S/gems and hope he casts master enslave?

I have wondered about this for some time. I wonder if since independents are considered a nation unto themselves if they don't quietly do research in the background. By late game, I usually have any Independents that I am going to attack already cleared out, so this is just speculation.

I think that the only way to give gems to an independent commander is via gem generating items and I have heard (from Gandalf?) that sometimes they will receive them when using #randomequip.

[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.

[Endoperez]

CelestialGoblyn said:
This is a *great* idea.
Now, I'd need to research for details, but just a few ideas:

Innsmouth with cultists and fishmen. (R'lyeh, imprint minds)
Shaolin with disciples and monks. (EA Tien Chi)
Village defended by seven samurai. (MA Bakemono)
Cimmeria, land of barbarians, with Conan as one of them. (EA Ulm)
Kirke's island from Odyssey, sorceress and a horde of beasts and foulspawn. (Transformation, as a spell, exists so boars/iron boars are fine)
Holy sanctuary with clerics, flagellants and paladins. (Marignon)
Transylvania with a vampire count leading an army of infartry, peasants, villans and wolves.(LA Ulm)
Highlands with banshee's and barbarian swordsmen. (Banshee: LA Ermor summon Wailing Lady, EA Ulm/indep barbarians)

For underwater:
Land of the drowned - full of undead.
Sunken city - mechanical men, golems and other animates. (the animated things are called inanimates in Dominions )
Lair of the kraken - pretender-sized octopus with items (there is an octopus pretender)

All are good ideas, but need some fleshing out. R'lyeh is a sunken city, but I guess another would be fine if you don't find an alternative name. I mentioned good sources of fitting units in () symbols in the quoted part. Also, Circe is a Sauromatian hero who also affected LA Arcos Sibyls IIRC.

lch said:
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.

Idea is good, but new units would need to be done as mods. Many heroes can be done with a combination of items and suitable unit types. Examples: Cyclops - Rod of the Phoenix. (Arch)Angel - Stymphalian Wings. Wolverine - maybe Troll with ring of regen, hydra skin armor, lycanthropos amulet and two Duskdaggers (curses everyone touched, AN) - something with both regeneration and rejuvenation would be best. Jean - Phoenix Pyre the spell would be very good, but we can't force her to cast that. Nightcrawler - Fiend of Darkness, chainmail of deception for glamour. Iceman - maybe a Caelian temple guard with Rime Hauberk. Storm - Staff of Storms.

Turin said:
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

Both are very rare and VERY powerful sites. Would these be in addition to the existing units? Even so, I'd say they need to be a bit more powerful. Your call, though.



Except something late Friday or Saturday. And please keep the ideas coming, and flesh out the existing ones.