Giving magic items

[Ironhawk]

I am putting together a new MP game where each nation will possess several artifacts from the begining. What is the best way to mod this into existence? My hope is that there is a way to place the items directly into the lab of each nation. Please advise.

[Chazar]

The easiest way that I am aware of how to do this, is by editing the mapfile. However, this requires that you know the exact starting position of each nation:

If you know the starting position of a certain nation (for example let's say province 23 for Caelum), then place an additional scout in this province and give him the item:
Code:

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#setland 23

#commander 426 

#additem "Hunter's Knife"

#additem "Pocket Ship"

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places a scout in province 23 and gives him a Pocket Ship and a Hunter's Knife. If this province 23 is then owned by someone right from the start, so is the commander and his belongings (#start,#specstart,#owner can all be used for this, see examples further down). Be sure to use "#setland" instead of "#land", for "#land" will wipe everyone else from the province (e.g. a pretender and initial troops).

For an example of this, take a look at the V4.2 mapfiles for my maps Drea and Chandrea, which place PocketShips and some magical trinkets within all possible random starting locations (specified by #start 23). You could easily alter my maps for your purpose for a testrun by removing all #start commands and replacing them by an appropriate number (one for each participating nation) of #specstart commands. Then add the #additem commands for the items/artifacts you desire after the added pocket ships into the sage's pockets.

Furthermore, if you want special items for special nations, you must place the captials of each nation manually:
Code:

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#specstart 7 23

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says that Caelum will start at province 23. The number for nations are explained in the mapedit.pdf, which comes bundled together with the Dominion patch (at least the archive for the Linux V2.16 patch contains and installs it in dominion2/doc).

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Another lenghty way for obtaining random starting locations and prohibiting the item-scout to be of use, would be the placement of 17 additional white dots in the upper right corner of the tga file (so that the new dots get the highest province numbers and do not mess something up). Place scouts and items into these provinces, remove population and magic sites from these additional provinces and do not connect them to any other provinces, so that the scout is stuck there being useless, the provinces not contributing at all:
Code:

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#land 234

#commander 426 

#additem "Hunter's Knife"

#additem "Pocket Ship"

#lab

#owner 7

#population 0

#poptype 26

#killfeatures

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However, this is rather a cumbersome work-around and quite some work. It would only pay of if you plan to play the same map with similar item distribution more than once or if you want to make your mapfile available in the community so that everyone can enjoy an easy-to-use item-preplaced game...

[Ironhawk]

Great! Thanks for all the advice and code Chazar this will prove invaluable. Its unfortunate that you can't place items directly into a lab but I'm sure that the scout thing will work fine.

Oh.. but what about the cursed artifacts tho? For normal artifacts its all well and good to put them on a scout cause you can dump them right back in your lab on turn 1. But what about the cursed artifacts like the Harvest Blade or Amon Hotep, which you will most certainly not want stuck on some scout. Is there any way around that?

[Chazar]

Sorry, I didnt think about cursed items... Maybe using a voluntary shape-shifter (werewolf) will help, because they can get rid of cursed items by shifting, but I am at a loss how to assign cursed head gear in a useful way.

[Alneyan]

You might wish to set up a Wish madness on the first turn, by making Wish a free spell already researched and easy to cast. It would work much better with an indie nation set just for that purpose, though.

If you are playing in the game, you might do that still, give yourself a few mages to get all the artifacts on turn 2, and send them on turn 3. Since you are the host, you can already chat like there's no tomorrow, so it should be fine. In this case, you should make Wish your national spell (only you can cast it, and it's pre-researched), and switch it back to a level 9 spell costing 100 pearls once you are done with Wishing.

Wish is the only way I see to allow *any* artifact in the game at no cost (another way would be to make the artifacts at level 0 of research, but they would still cost something, and everybody could make them).

[Ironhawk]

Ah, shapeshifting! Yeah hadnt thought of that. I'll give the nations a free shifter. If everyone gets the same unit it shouldnt alter the balance at all. Why can't they manage headgear? Do werewolves not have a head slot? I never even thought to check...

[Alneyan]

If the two shapes share a slot, the item won't be dropped after shifting. You should simply create a new unit (or alter one) and remove all slots from its second shape, and it should work out quite well.

[Chazar]

I would think that shapeshifters retain cursed headgear during shifting, unless they lose/gain a head during shifting (which shifting critter does such a gross thing anyway?)...

You could try to put the item on a commander who has no head. Maybe then Dom2 would put the item directly into the lab. So try it out with a unit that has only misc-slots (remember, the ''#commander'' directive works with any unit number and gift-of-reasons if necessary).

Otherwise, maybe a disease-inflicting item might do the trick, provided that disease-killed unites put their items into labs...

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Then again, Alneyan's suggestion seems quite sensible to me! [Edit: I intended to refer to his initial suggestion by using an extra nation and a few extra-turns to send the items to everyone! But his second suggestion (modding a shifting-scout-with-no-slot-second-form) is quite good as well and works for a resuable generic setup!]

[Alneyan]

Headgear is dropped if the second form lacks a head; Lamia Queens do that, in particular.

Units dying of disease behave in the same way as units dying of something else: their items are dropped in the province, and may be picked up by a random commander (as shown when using Fever Fetishes on scouts).

[Ironhawk]

Is it possible to actually make a unit with no slots? I thought that in modding terms "no slots" means "no slots but the 2 misc slots"? So that there would still be no way to get rid of things like The Green Eye or The Forbidden Light and other such cursed miscs?

Hmmm... maybe I could make a unit with 4 miscs and fill up the first two slots with junk and the third or fourth with interesting items so when they shift they will drop those two?