Brainstorming
Could we powssibly create missions out of this? Like a town is being attacked by (enter local creatures here). Save them in 5 turns, ect. If we can't do missions, I think events would be cool also. It could be called, "Creature Attack!" and it would specify which city. It could lower happyness in the town that is being attacked, also buildings would get damaged once in a while. Some civilians would be killed every turn. The only way to end the event would be to kill the creatures in the territory of the town, or wait a certain amount of turns when the creatures loose intrest.
It would be possible. I even think it's a good idea, except for two things: the fact that the creature might disappear over time, and a reward for killing it. You think spiders and wargs carry gold with them? But perhaps there could be a few traits for characters who fight/kill the creatures (like 'Bitten by a spider', 'Slayer of Spiders', etc). I could make the such traits (and the triggers) if alreadyded also thinks it's a good idea.
Or maby the creatures should be really low in numbers, like 10 spiders or whatever, but have good stats, because an army of 500 giant spiders spawning and attacking from nowhere seems kinda random. But i guess that's the aim of the mod.
the fact that the creature might disappear over time Simple lock the general with a Trait so that he canīt move. or wait a certain amount of turns when the creatures loose intrest. Thats not so easy because you can not simple remove the army. Kill the general is possible, but the units which are left... not so easy or rather a little bit problematic. Either you must duplicate the Unit in the EDU or you remove with destroy_unit all type of this units. So destroy_unit spider will remove all spiders from the map. So you have to prevent this by duplicate the unit and give them another name. I donīt know how much units Third Age has, but the maximum in the EDU was 500.
I planned on using the fire drakes for invasions from the North but I am still dwelling on all the problems I would have to overcome. But these creatures can't attack cities with walls, so they would only be able to siege, which would be about the same affect as a "creature attack" I suppose. I don't see the need to remove them though, you should still have to kill them whether you get the reward or not. I would like to have missions similar to the crusades in vanilla, where you destroy a dragon horde or something and your troops gain experience and certain traits. Maybe even give them a dragon scale armor, helmet, or shield upgrade. That would be pretty neat and easy to do. 'Bitten by a spider', 'Slayer of Spiders', etc. are also great ideas. The reward in gold you get from such missions will probably only be enough to replenish your forces, if you don't lose too many troops that is. A mission and gift from the council of nobles for taking care of their problem I suppose. There will be missions and large rewards for taking certain settlements, but the cost may also be great. The majority of missions will probably be to just kill certain armies or take certain settlements. Also I am going to give each faction more unique starting positions, so there will be much more missions in the beginning of the game, such as "kill Smaug," or "unite Eriador." Which will not be terribly easy to do. Overall, it should add a lot of replay value to the game and spread the campaign game out a lot. Amon has already added one more free upkeep slot per city and I will make further changes to make the game more militarily realistic from a lore perspective. The aim of this mod is to have lots of armies everywhere, large and small depending on where they are. So, no you will not see huge armies of spiders outside of the deepest forests of Mirkwood. But if you want to take Mirkwood over, you will be fighting a lot of spiders of different kinds.
We could also get rid of the barracks event and just make the availability of recruitment slower depending on how good the units are. This would mean you could use all the units during the whole game, but you would need to be more careful with certain units because they are more rare, not just more expensive. And they would also not be re-trainable until you have all the necessary buildings to retrain them, which we could also make it take longer to upgrade to them. I think it seems more realistic and would add more immersion and challenge to the game. Just an idea that came to mind, I haven't thought it through yet. But it already sounds better than the barracks event to me.
Barracks event i think should stay, because lets say, you have young drakes early on, once the second barracks event happens which is few years i belive in-game, adult drakes become available because of the years it took them to grow from being younglings. So the barracks event makes sence for the creatures also.
The barracks event will not apply to the creatures, the varying unit numbers already handle the "time it takes to age" thing. I am referring to all the playable factions already in the game. Or does everyone here like the barracks event script? Because I think there are better ways to do it.
The barracks event is alright, but then again i quite like your idea, as long as it is properly balanced. But I think the focus should be to get the creatures in the game, and then extra things like changing recruitment can be added
Maybe even give them a dragon scale armor, helmet, or shield upgrade. That would be pretty neat and easy to do. 'Bitten by a spider', 'Slayer of Spiders', etc. are also great ideas Shall I make some proposals for the traits?
Im fine with the barracks event, it makes waiting for end game more fun. And yes, Draco is right, just focus on rigging and getting all the creatures balanced before you start changing things like barracks events and whatnot.
Propose anything you like.
Well it's your mod Well i think for the first version everyone has imputted what needs fixing. So theres not much feedback we can suggest for the spiders, apart from future ideas. Looking forward to seeing the spiders being improved on, as currently they are a blast.
About the spiders, i don't suppose you have finished tweaking them yet? because if so can you update the beta file so we can re-test them, because as Starwen just said pretty much everything that needs changing has been noted, and we need more!
This area is for ideas, even if they aren't well thought out. It's one big brainstorming session so post any ideas you like. I will post in the main thread whenever there is a new download, which will be tonight or tomorrow. I still can't get some tweaks right, such as axe men not being able to hit them. Once I get it fixed I can put all the units in the game. In the mean time please discuss some ideas. They will need to be implemented very shortly so if you want to include your opinion you better do it now. Otherwise it will just be my way.
Perhaps the Matriachs should have armour piercing, becasue of their huge fangs, and because they are underpowered at the moment, in my opinion they should be slightly less poweful than trolls, and small in number, like 30 or so.
I had an idea, it may be time consuming though and will have very little effect, but i was thinking with that new custom settlements tool that has been released/being developed, it would be great if someone (i wouldnt know how ) could make the ruins/caves etc. actual ruins/caves, it would greatly add to the immersion and would look cool. Could even use the ruin model for osgiliath, or if KK or someone is making osgiliath then you could use that. I appologise if this post sounds like "I have a really awesome idea, but im too lazy to do it, can someone do it for me?" i just meant it as a suggestion of an improvement that could be added in the future.
I have been dwelling on it since the beginning Draco. I will probably learn how to use the tool myself when I get some free time, or I can just ask King Kong to whip me up something real quick. Probably won't be for at least a month, but it will happen for sure. It just isn't a priority yet.
@Draco: the battle editor can be used to create stuff like that, and it's also possible to put them on the map. This would be quite a task, though, since every spot on the campaign map you want to be 'custom' has to be added into the files. It takes time, but it's possible. @alreadyded: If there's anything that has to do with traits, ancillaries and other coding stuff, I can do it. I'm afraid balancing/modelling/skinning isn't something I'm good at.
