NI Indies Mod Pack - Version 0.9

[rdonj]

This is a collaborative effort between myself, Sombre, QM, Ironhawk and a few others on IRC. Basically it adds a few sites with recruitable independents and changes a few normal magic sites, making it possible to recruit some independent units while playing an NI map. Many of the sites also have gem incomes to avoid diluting the gem pool too much. I'm not sure how much use this mod will see, but it is here in any case. Currently there are no underwater indies. If people would like these can be added later.

[Burnsaber]

Do you know if this mod is compactible with the more magic sites mod and/or Holy War?

[rdonj]

This mod should be compatible with both endoperez's site mod and holy war. It is also compatible with CBM. Actually I think it's compatible with most things, since I'm pretty sure most mods don't use the earliest numbers. I can't guarantee that though.

[Gandalf Parker]

NI games have been a very regular subject here. Im sure there will be interest. Thank you for this.

So an NI map is one that adds a line for every province that says something like #pop ## 111 setting the native population to an unused number? Then this is a mod that you can use with such a map to randomly put some back? Are the indepts that it puts back the standard ones or special ones? Is there any consideration for version applicable to each era?

Would there be any interest in an executable to generate a temp game map? Such as taking aran.map and creating an temporary NI_aran.map with 90% NI?

Gandalf Parker
--
per peer-pressure preoccupation
My maps, mods, and mullings can be found at
http://www.Dom3Minions.com

[rdonj]

You have the right idea where it comes to NI maps.

This mod works by sprinkling magic sites around the map. It has 45 new magic sites, which add independents back randomly into the game. Some of them are found automatically when you take a province, but most require site searching. This was an intentional design decision to make them more rare and special. Half or more of the sites also have a small gem income attached to them. Most of the indies in this mod are standard, but there are some that are not quite so standard.

Here's a few examples of non-standard indies:

#newsite 770
#name "Hoburg Workshop"
#path 3
#level 2
#rarity 1
#loc 735 -- any land
#res 25
#mon 982 --clockwork horror
#gems 3 1 --earth
#end

#newsite 761
#name "Pirate Cove"
#level 0
#rarity 0
#loc 64 --coast
#mon 871 --pirate
#com 870 --captain
#gold 20
#end

#newsite 765
#name "Black Lotus Clan"
#path 5
#level 1
#rarity 2
#loc 17119 -- any land unique
#com 1257 --ninja
#gems 6 1 --nature
#end

Typical indies like bear tribe warriors and lizardmen are also represented in the mod, and most of the non-standard ones are rather more rare than the standard indy types. There's not really an era consideration given to the mod, it was made fairly generic to be able to fit in all eras without being too strange. That said there are a few sites that don't completely conform.

There might be some interest in generating maps how you describe, but that would be a somewhat different project than this one, and probably more difficult ;).

[Gandalf Parker]

Hmmm.. well a program to me would be very simple. Only a few lines. If I do it on my system to run maps thru it then it wouldnt even have to be a "program" in a programming language. It could just be a text script.

But on seeing your examples it strikes me that a special "library" of small files including those examples and others could be created for Ballbarians SemiRand program to use. That way it would already have a nice menu for running a map thru it or creating a new map with it. It supports things like "only put on coasts". People who like NI play could install the NI library into SemiRand to get mostly-empty-provinces with special ones scattered to whatever percentage they like. Maybe you could look at that after your map is done. After all, at that point you would already have done most of the work (the designs and map commands).

But I do like the "search for the sites" aspect. Basically it adds a level of effort like in other games where you must build a structure or something to get units there.

[rdonj]

Hmm, perhaps so then.

I have to confess, I have absolutely no idea how to do that. I'm not really very familiar with the SemiRand program (seemed extremeley complicated to use) and creating something for it to pull data out of is completely out of my league. I could go to Ballbarian and say "here, take these files and make a library with them that could be used by your SemiRand program" but that is pretty much it.

[Gandalf Parker]

Basically SemiRand reads a map, and assigns special provinces to it. It can "see" if a province is woods, or waste land, or water and assign provinces that match. It can also see things like coast, island, lake, valley, etc. Each of the special provinces is a separate little text file that gets appended to the map with the appropriate changes for province number. So a province "design" can include any map things like setting the name, population, guardians, magic sites, etc. The more designed provinces we can get for it, the better the maps become.

The hard part seems to be to get people to turn in creative province ideas. Particularly helpful if they are already in map-command form. Since you seem to be doing so many of those I just thought Id try and spark your interest in it. If we could just get every player to turn in just one province we would be setup fantastically.

[rdonj]

I will consider it but it still seems a fair amount of work even if I based provinces off of my sites.

[llamabeast]

I thought I should bump this as it looks pretty nice to use on NI maps, or indeed normal maps.