Experiment

[Gandalf Parker]

Never challenge a hacker.
I see in a post in the main forum

from the FAQ:
Q: Why can�t I build enemy national units from castles I�ve conquered from him?
Because the developers did not want that in the game and to keep all nations unique. You can only recruit your own troops and the native population type independent units in castles. This is not going to be changed.

That gets me feeling challenged. I seem to remember a "bug" about assigning sites to start positions which causes them to not work qite correctly. So in the best hacker tradition of turning a thinking about a bug as something useful....

If someone makes a map that has a start position for every nation, uses commands to wipe the province and then rebuild it exactly as it was (such as assigning the same sites back as found features), then would that grant national units if you take their home castle?

Now THAT would be an interesting MP game. Causing veteran players to develop a whole new strategy. Rush to get the home capital of the nation whose units would most likely boost your own units. You wouldnt be able to get their "away from home" units but that one castle would be very interesting if you got theirs and yours. Like playing two nations out of one castle. Jotun and Man? Ulm and Pangaea? Abysia and Sauromatia?

By the way I have no idea if this works or not. If anyone feels like testing it then feel free to.
Gandalf Parker

[lch]

In MoM, you could either recruit the nationals in the town you conquered, or convert the town to your own population. So, you could get powerful units from other races, but since other races have another alignment than your nation, you had had other trouble aswell (income/unrest/etc.) unless you converted the population. I really really loved that game, I guess I'm not the only one who only got to play Dominions just because he wanted to find a substitute for MoM, right?

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually if I remember, its following comparisons to MoM (Master of Magic) and Stars! that led me here (a long LONG time ago)

[Edi]

No, Gandalf. It won't work. Already tested when I did the Site DB. You would have to change the actual code of the sites. With the exception of the LA C'tis Keeper of Tombs, all of the national site recruitable units are hardcoded into the sites the same way the #homecom and #homemon mod commands work. So if that site is not defined as your nation's start site, you will not be able to recruit the units out of it.

The only way you could make it work was modding it, except there is no mod command available for universally recruitable commanders or units for sites yet. You'd need to change the executable.

[Gandalf Parker]

OK.
Well I avoid stepping into mods, and definetly dont want to go near the executable (I get anough flak about hacking as it is).

Thanks for the answer.

[jutetrea]

I liked the thought though. Even just for the situation where you expand your available magic paths. Would be really interesting for a half human/half AI game - race for the AI of your choice.

[Gandalf Parker]

My memory isnt the greatest. I dont always remember the difference between what I did and what others can do now. I tended to do things like this continually during beta testing. Then Id declare what a fun time such a game would be, Johan would cringe, then he would plug the holes to insure the game only allowed more reasonable choices. You wouldnt believe some of the wild games we setup in the beginning. Some are still running (since a plugged hole didnt stop the game from running it once it was started).

[Gandalf Parker]

I guess I can ask here rather than make a new thread.

Im off on a new project. Minor question. Does anyone have a better nation list than mine?
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/nations.txt

Isnt 68 taken?
Is 69 thru 79 still the big empty expanse?

[Edi]

Lanka is 68. The rest are empty.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ok I changed the file. I think the rest are correct.