nation 23

[Gandalf Parker]

Since Nation 23 (independents) is susceptable to random events, and is available to certain uses (such as map scenarios)...
How anyone actually tested to see what happens if spells, heroes, and new gods, are assigned to nation 23?
We discovered some great uses when the map command is used to assign provinces and castles specific to placing units there (such indept-owned castles with both inside and outside units). Im wondering if there might be some other useful hacks.

[Valandil]

I see no reason why independants shouldn't recieve national spells as if they were a "real" nation.

[paradoxharbinger]

seems to me that if they made them a nation it would be an enormous hassle to make them real special aside from the sort of special effects that other nations get (ie mictlans goofy dominion rules). to take away all of the stuff that is available for modding nations would almost defeat the purpose of making the indies a nation.

on this topic though, if the indies are truly a nation, would it not be possible to make them attack others and behave as other nations?

some dev commentary on this would be interesting.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually that was in place at one time but proved to be beyond even what my level of insanity could handle. The indepts marched across the map and you ended up being attacked by an army that included everything! Cavemen, backed by amazons, with mounted knights, crossbowmen, elephants, etc etc etc. And it all happened before you got thru gathering the provinces around your castle.

But what is in the game code now is that the indepts gain certain advantages in the game, but are not quite treated like one-empire.

Im just wondering if Johan patched up ALL of the holes. Since indepts DO have a nation code, if something is assigned to it then does it show up in the game in any way? It sounds like something worth taking a hack at just in case it works. Could be useful for throwing a fun twist into things.

[NTJedi]

Yes it would be nice to improve the independents battlefield spells and even setup a better game blessing for the independents.
It would have been nice if a map edit command existed which allowed specific independent parties to randomly travel on the map.

[Sombre]

You technically can make a list of spells for nation 23, but I doubt the indies in game would use it.

What you'd have to do is first remove all the vanilla spells from the game - easy but time consuming. Then you'd remake the entire library of spells for each nation, making one version of fire flies etc for each of them and restricting it to the appropriate nation number, perhaps even calling it N11 Fire Flies, N12 Fire Flies and so on.

When you come to nation 23 you only give them certain spells. Entirely possible. IMHO a waste of time and effort though, especially as it might not even work to restrict indy spell lists. They might be working off some other spell list entirely. When I've added non nation restricted spells to the game, I have never ever seen indies cast them.

[Gandalf Parker]

@NT Jedi:
Hmmm.. if you modded something based on a wanderer such as Devourer, then map-command added it to the map, that might do.

@sombre:
Well Im not trying to limit them to only certain spells. Just add to it. Maybe even give the indepts songs just to see if they would use them.

[HoneyBadger]

It seems to me the thing to do here wouldn't be to make the Independent nation 23 view itself as a single nation-because you then end up with the aforementioned "Amazon-cavemen-knights-riding draconians-and dropping hoburgs on their enemies" problem.

The thing to do would be to make all the special unconquered, independent provinces their *own* nation, as in, a Capital with a Fortress and a Temple (no lab, normally), with the ability to build Capital-only troops (Capital-only troops that could then be produced by a player/AI nation). One Caveman nation, one Draconian nation, one of each of the Amazon nations, one tougher than average Hoburg pigknights-and-crossbows nation, etc.

And then give them the ability to move troops to the less exotic independents, so that you get a certain amount of flow going on-but!-DON'T incur a combat when they do so, or give them the advantages that harder difficulty settings normally gives to standard AI nations, and make them defensive-minded to the best of your ability, so they can get stronger, the longer they go without being attacked.

Some independent nations would thusly have the potential to become fairly formidable, to a lesser degree than the AI nations in an SP or mixed game.

Finally, the independents could draw from the same pool of "independent-nation" spells, maybe in the process removing ones that would only hinder an AI, and from the same pool of heroes, but in this case, the "heroes" could infact be a big set of powerful, custom-built, SC monsters on the loose.

The small chance of running into a fully armed poison golem or vampire queen or whatever, where you'd never expect it, would make independents-and the gameworld itself-a whole lot more interesting.

The independent nations would still *stay* independent-independent in province A isn't going to get mad at you if you annex province B, even if they share the same race/culture-that's what real nations are for, but they would be able to move troops from one province to another, for attack/defense, to suppliment the provincial troops already existing there.

So you might see a lion tribe province backed up by caveman irregulars, or a group of knights being led by a green dragon hero. It's all good.