Orc Raids (Idea/Proposal)

[leo.civil.uefs]

I will post here as I already have the entire well stablished concept to describe and it is mostly complete.

I had an idea for creating a new feature into the campaign.

As we know some settlements are far from the war borders so that battles never happen there, I refeer to places like Mithlond and Thorin's Halls. Besides, those places are too "safe" so this gives a big advantage to its owners, they can just leave it ungarrisoned and use it as economical source, thats not fair and boring.



I have the idea mature enought in my head now and it should be like this:


Conditions:

Player owns the settlement
10% of chance of the event happening.

Effects:

If the 10% hits, a rebel orc army composed by warg mounts and trolls will spawn near the settlement.
A event will be shown with a pop-pup announcing the orc raid.
3 turns after, the spawned army attacks the settlement.


Targets should be:

Thorins halls (and there should be chances of the rebel army spawing in either west or east gate)
Mithlond
Dunharrow (and there should be chances of the rebel army spawing in either west or east gate)
Esgaroth
Dale




The true point on this feature is causing battles to happen in those places, they dont need to be difficult battles or really be a threat to the player, its just about making battles to happen there bringing more dynamics to the game.

[Swagger]

maybe give the player a 1-2 turns notice, like "My lord, orc bands have been sighted approaching X settlement/castle/city/whatever"

also, you can script so that more rebels appear in a province if the owner isn't of the main culture, so there'd be a harder time holding those settlements

i'd be up to create a thread for idea gathering, not a suggestion thread that ends up being more of a complaining of stupid suggestions by people who don't know how modding works, but a thread made for people who have a decent idea if it can be done, so that there's well made, upfront sugestions that can be implemented, something like a brainstorm for gameplay/roleplay features

[leo.civil.uefs]

maybe give the player a 1-2 turns notice, like "My lord, orc bands have been sighted approaching X settlement/castle/city/whatever"

also, you can script so that more rebels appear in a province if the owner isn't of the main culture, so there'd be a harder time holding those settlements

i'd be up to create a thread for idea gathering, not a suggestion thread that ends up being more of a complaining of stupid suggestions by people who don't know how modding works, but a thread made for people who have a decent idea if it can be done, so that there's well made, upfront sugestions that can be implemented, something like a brainstorm for gameplay/roleplay features

yes for everything you said. But please lets not start the discussion about the idea thread thing here otherwise my thread will be lost.

If the culture thing is possible then I would like to see it implemented.

[MIKE GOLF]

Actually this could be done for all factions, not just the orc factions.

[paradamed]

That is a nice idea Leo. One thing I always had in min but probably not possible would be having the Invasion targets changing depending on which faction you play. So for example, if I play as dwarves the targets would be Thorin's Halls, Erebor, Dain's Halls. If I play as Gondor, the targets would be Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, etc and so on. This way we could play defensive battles on your cool settlements more often. But since I believe this is not possible I really like your idea but I think a better implementation would be needed like the warnings as Swagger said. Without the warnings, having a huge army popping from nowhere would just create frustation for the player. CoW already have a similar script. They have some Orc invasions but they are preceded by warnings and this way the player has time to prepare. Another implementation the CoW team did was giving rewards in case the player succesfully defends the settlement. We could have a unique unit as reward or maybe money rewards.

[k/t]

There are already Corsair Raids like this when you're Gondor. Don't you have them in 3.2? I have them in the RR/RC Compilation for 1.4.

[Swagger]

let's not forget germanicu5 raiding scripts that can be extended to a more interesting level

there's a condition that monitors if your army is in enemy lands, and if so you gain x gold per turn, now, it would be interesting if that army is X turns in that land (aka province) that the population of the settlement of that area decreases by x% or number and even destroy or damage a few countryside buildings like farms, docks etc.. it would make turteling more challenging and make the player have to go deal with them on the field

this is addition to make the rebel faction more interesting like spawning a lot more local rebels if the faction controlling a region isn't of the main culture, that besides all the unrest thing, you'd face permanent devastation unless you deal with them while converting the province to your own culture... the 'bonus' gameplay thing is that the player will have to deal with things internally and can't blitzkrieg... besides making the ruling a kingdom a lot more challenging

one thing i've always considered to be cool but could be too much against the lore would be having shadow factions to most ones (maybe except isengard, moria..), a script similar to the ones of the britannia campaign, the rebelling of the lords or whatever, so that there could actually be civil wards, while that doesn't necessarily mean civil war per say, it could be made so it simulates strives for power internally, or major houses of a faction rebelling, let's say you lose minas tirith, other houses of gondor wouldn't be happy and eventually rise to gain the control of the kingdom as a way to protecting it, so not really against gondor itself, but against the ruling stewards who can't seem to protect gondor

i'm not really into the lore myself, but i can think of a few factions where this would be cool enough, while others like the elves wouldn't be realistical enough... so if anyone cares to adapt this idea so it fits... might be cool


ps: TATW uses what, 10 factions?, that means 21 left... since each shadow faction takes 1 slot, that's more than spare slots to do this

[orclover5]

Here is the raiding script I use in my personal mod... I only play as Eriador(Dunedain)...and it gets boring and home settlements are rarely attacked.

monitor_event SettlementTurnEnd SettlementName Bree
and I_SettlementOwner Bree != slave
and ! IsFactionAIControlled
and GarrisonToPopulationRatio < 0.25
and SettlementLoyaltyLevel < loyalty_happy
and RandomPercent < 5

spawn_army
faction slave
character random_name, named character, age 25, x 124, y 243,
traits LoyaltyStarter 1 , GoodCommander 1 , ReligionStarter 1 , NightBattleCapable 1 , GoodAttacker 1 , CaptorDread 1
unit WolfRaiders exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Bandits exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Fugitives exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Fugitives exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
end
end_monitor


So this basically makes sure if my garrison is 25% of my population, it always is less with Bree, 4000 people at start and no troops. If my settlement is less than happy, then there is a 5% chance of this raid occuring. Looking at the history of the dunedain, many of their leaders were killed by wolves or trolls in the wild. I have wolves and trolls in other raids in different places like Cold Fells.

If you use the Settlement_mechanics file and increase the amount of damage done by armies it can be quite costly to have them in your territory. Also it limits troop movement as the raid stacks will often hide.


;;;;;;;;;;;;;;Mitheithel;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
monitor_event SettlementTurnEnd SettlementName Mitheithel
and I_SettlementOwner Mitheithel != slave
and ! SettlementBuildingExists >= wooden_pallisade
and ! IsFactionAIControlled
and GarrisonToPopulationRatio < 0.50
and RandomPercent < 5

spawn_army
faction slave
character random_name, named character, age 25, x 158, y 237, label Mitheithel1
traits LoyaltyStarter 1 , GoodCommander 1 , ReligionStarter 1 , NightBattleCapable 1 , GoodAttacker 1 , CaptorDread 1
unit WolfPack exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit WolfPack exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Cave Trolls2 exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
end
siege_settlement Mitheithel1, Mitheithel, attack
end_monitor


This one forces an attack on a village without a wall which is devastating to an ungarrisoned village. So small villages on the outskirts of you empire will need to be well garrisoned or they will be raided and often. In testing I found it really does add to the action, and carelessness is often met with a lost village and some troops.

[MIKE GOLF]

There are already Corsair Raids like this when you're Gondor. Don't you have them in 3.2? I have them in the RR/RC Compilation for 1.4.

They are still there, and they are an script option as well. So if a player doesn't want this feature he/she can choose not to use it. I also like the idea of having this kind of feature as an optional script.

[leo.civil.uefs]

ps: TATW uses what, 10 factions?, that means 21 left... since each shadow faction takes 1 slot, that's more than spare slots to do this

no, we use the other slots for custom settlements, means you can have new factions but their settlements slots are used for our unique settlements, so this factions would end up building minas tirith and erebor etc everywhere.

I checked it when adding the orocarni dwarves, there is still 2 or 3 more unused slots of factions, thats all.

[MIKE GOLF]

Nice avatar! Taking some German lessons eh?

[royal flush]

this would be like reminder to be more carefull to defend settles.
& always to be ready for action. I like it!

[royal flush]

more hard battles, that is what I'm talking about, good job.

[Jmonstra]

I like the idea of Orc raids on Dwarven mountain settlements, but I'm not sure I support them on Elven settlements in the west, such as Mithlond. Sauron's reach wasn't quite so long as that at this point.

[leo.civil.uefs]

ok the concept is ready now and posted in the first post of this thread, any coder interested in it please post the code.
It is simple stuff to be done, I guess.

[leo.civil.uefs]

So no one interested in making this script? I would like to add it to 4.8.

[xHolyCrusader]

i'd love to, apprently i have no scripting experiences tho

[Davek]

I really like this idea of raids, since it makes your homelands a unsafe and harder to keep. Now I just now that the attacking AI armies rarely would bypass the front line settlements and it safe enough to use tiny garrisons.

[leo.civil.uefs]

I would like to get back to modding, just some small things, and this would be a good start, so any coder interested?

[Iron Aquilifer]

I would like to get back to modding, just some small things, and this would be a good start, so any coder interested?

orclover stuck up the necessary script. You just need to edit it to whatever you need. If you dont know how to make scripts, see the relevent tutorials in the modding forum.

monitor_event SettlementTurnEnd SettlementName Bree
and I_SettlementOwner Bree = slave
and IsFactionAIControlled
and GarrisonToPopulationRatio < 0.25
and SettlementLoyaltyLevel < loyalty_happy
and RandomPercent < 5

spawn_army
faction slave
character random_name, named character, age 25, x 124, y 243,
traits LoyaltyStarter 1 , GoodCommander 1 , ReligionStarter 1 , NightBattleCapable 1 , GoodAttacker 1 , CaptorDread 1
unit WolfRaiders exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Bandits exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Fugitives exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Fugitives exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
end
end_monitor


So this basically makes sure if my garrison is 25% of my population, it always is less with Bree, 4000 people at start and no troops. If my settlement is less than happy, then there is a 5% chance of this raid occuring. Looking at the history of the dunedain, many of their leaders were killed by wolves or trolls in the wild. I have wolves and trolls in other raids in different places like Cold Fells.

If you use the Settlement_mechanics file and increase the amount of damage done by armies it can be quite costly to have them in your territory. Also it limits troop movement as the raid stacks will often hide.


;;;;;;;;;;;;;;Mitheithel;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
monitor_event SettlementTurnEnd SettlementName Mitheithel
and I_SettlementOwner Mitheithel != slave
and ! SettlementBuildingExists >= wooden_pallisade
and ! IsFactionAIControlled
and GarrisonToPopulationRatio < 0.50
and RandomPercent < 5

spawn_army
faction slave
character random_name, named character, age 25, x 158, y 237, label Mitheithel1
traits LoyaltyStarter 1 , GoodCommander 1 , ReligionStarter 1 , NightBattleCapable 1 , GoodAttacker 1 , CaptorDread 1
unit WolfPack exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit WolfPack exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
unit Cave Trolls2 exp 0 armour 0 weapon_lvl 0
end
siege_settlement Mitheithel1, Mitheithel, attack
end_monitor


This one forces an attack on a village without a wall which is devastating to an ungarrisoned village. So small villages on the outskirts of you empire will need to be well garrisoned or they will be raided and often. In testing I found it really does add to the action, and carelessness is often met with a lost village and some troops.

While this may be a bit more complicated than you envisaged, it is still a good base.

If I was to make a suggestion: turn the bandit spawning off and instead use scripts to show roaming bands of orcs, dark men, fell beasts ect. ect.