Hi everyone,
I was brainstorming about support armies, and it occured to me there might be good way of lessening the need for support armies and the agressivness of the faction AIs, for the Orc factions.
The idea is that on 'good' regions that are bordered with regions of Mordor, OOTMM or Isengard, there should be bandit armies generating who would just 'raid' around causing financial strain, population death and other trouble on the region. These would be small stacks of orc or dunlenden raiding parties.
In this way raids can be represented more acurately, because they are more disorganised and not lead by a major faction. Therefore we can lessen the need for AI factions to generate small stacks that seem to attack cities aimlesly, inevitably to be defeated, making the game feel less tedious because there is a more diversified type of battle: raiding battles/skirmishes and major faction battles. This parallels well with the movies/books because for example, in Rohan there is alot of raiding skirmishes with warg raiders and Dunlenings but the climactic battle is fought at Helms Deeps which is against a much larger and well trained army.
Furthermore this can be developed into removing bandit 'raiding' stacks from regions that are allied with the orcs.
What do you think guys?
Evan
EDIT: this would require a script of some sort I think...
Here is a summary:
Scripts:
-A script Mordor, Isengard and OOTMM, possibly Rhun and Harad surrounding enemy regions to have an increase in bandit units generating that will contain typical raiding units (e.g. Small bands of Ocrs and Trolls, small bands of Cosairs, Wildmen of Dunlend etc...) that will move around the region obstrucing or attacking armies of that faction, and rarely cities, that would override the purpouse of AI spam-attacks...
-A script to limit Faction AI spam attacks and limit them to mainly large armies.
EFFECTS ON REGION:
-Reduce Income
-Reduce Population Growth
-Increase sabotage of buildings
-Increase in unrest and population unhappyness
-Increase in corruption of armies, generals (not the heros) and on rare occasions cities
-Attack your passing armies (frequently) or cities (rarely)
-Obstruct you large passing armies
-Obstruct major passages e.g. mountain passes, bridges
TYPICAL SCENARIO:
You are Rohan, and your regions border with Isengard.
Isengard declares war on you. You see that more Bandit stacks appear around your region. Your income decreases and population growth decreases. You decide to attack Isengard and head towards the river Isen. One of the bridges is blocked by a Bandit party of Dunlendings and a few Uruk Hai Warg Scouts. In order to cross the bridge you must defeat them. Once defeated you pass across towards Isengard and have a large memorable battle with Isengard.
Meanwhile, back in your region you decide that corruption has got too high and you needto put an end to the raiders. You put together a 1/2-3/4 stack of cavalry and forcing the bandits from yur borders.
Now, does this seem like a more enjoyable war scenario, without having several Isengard spam-stacks sieging the Hornburg every few turns. The uniqueness of faction battles is maintained because you fight bandits with a better incentive rather than just to rmove annoyance and pointless nusance
BENEFITS:
-More logical explanation for small stacks to appear
-Small stacks not always targeted at cities (less annoyance)
-Small stacks behave like bandits, they rome the region obstructing and looting (seen through financial loss)
-More unique battles are fought against Factions so the less exciting ones are left for bandits
-Defeating these stacks has further benefits (e.g.financial) to your nation rather than just to remove annoyance
*Overall your war scenarios feel more meaningful and unique