Questions for EA Gondolin Mod

[Tolkien]

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z134/LordoftheValar/Gondolin.jpg
Nation Description:
When the Noldor returned out of the Ancient West, they fought many Wars against the tyranny of the Prantokrator. Their princes built many great kingdoms and fought many battles in their wars against him, yet slowly, one by one, they fell beneath his onslaught, till only one, preserved in secrecy, remained. It is in Gondolin where the last Free Elves endure upon Beleriand, unchained, be they Noldorin or Sindarin. Guarded by the power of Ulmo, the Lord of Waters, by height of the Encircling Mountains, and by the vigilance of Eagles of Manwe, they thrived. Now, with the fall of the Prantokrator, they have returned out of the shadows of the past, to reclaim lands once theirs under the leadership of a new Herald out of Aman. The Gondolin is a great and marvelous city, famed for it's white walls, clear fountains, and green gardens. The Wardens of Gondolin stand guard upon the walls of the Seven Gates and maintain the secrecy of the City, and their hosts are arrayed in the Heraldry of the Twelve Houses of Gondolin.


Current Questions about modding and development
How would you mod a nation for an increased chance for heroes to appear?
How would you mod a multi-hero to have multiple, random, magic paths (like tarts), yet with restrictions to prevent them to have the magic levels stack in one path?
Any suggestions to allow for distinct differentiation between units of individual houses, as in skills and benefits, etc?
Is there a way to mod a magic site so that it autospawns units (in this case, Eagles), yet only does so for the starting nation (in this case, Gondolin)? Or would there be an easier way to go about this?
Should Earendil be a hero on his ship (and have flying, trampling, and size 6), or should he be made without it (and have Vingilot as an innate flying ship ability)? Also, what epithet should I give him? The Blessed, The Mariner, or The Morning Star?
Am I the only one frustrated with sprite-making?

Main thread:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=70294

[Graeme Dice]

How would you mod a nation for an increased chance for heroes to appear?

You can't.

How would you mod a multi-hero to have multiple, random, magic paths (like tarts), yet with restrictions to prevent them to have the magic levels stack in one path?

This also can't be done.

Is there a way to mod a magic site so that it autospawns units (in this case, Eagles), yet only does so for the starting nation (in this case, Gondolin)?

No.

[Tolkien]

Hmm, I'm going to have to throw out those ideas then.

[Gandalf Parker]

What you are asking is some new territory. Chances are that any answers will be guesswork requiring some experimentation.

Doesnt luck affect heroes? There are pretenders that increase luck, and units (fortune tellers). Increasing the luck of your nation might help.

Instead of random 100 chance of multiple paths, maybe you could do random 50 of blood, and random 50 of nature, and random 50 of water, etc etc.

You could create a site that requires an X mage to enter to get eagles, then try to insure that only your nation can achieve that. Astral, Air, and Holy together? Also there is some recognition of nations. Certain items can only be used by Ctis or by Ermor so there might be a way to lock the benefit to your nation altho it might take an item that only you can make and use. Also you might consider a national spell that is cheap but only your capital units can cast it. Maybe even create a special mage with no movement.

Gandalf Parker

[rdonj]

While GraemeDice is correct, there are a few ways you can try to get around most of your issues. Some of them however there is just no cure.

Before I get started though I'm going to sideline myself for a moment.

There are pretenders that increase luck

Do you mean they actually increase luck, or do you jsut mean fortune telling? Fortune telling only prevents bad events and doesn't do anything to make good events happen more often. And I can't think of any pretender that actually increases the chance for lucky events to happen.


Okay, so here are some potential work arounds to your problems:

1)Hero chance. There are only two things I can think of that would help here. First, make sure every hero slot is filled. I'm pretty sure it won't cause you to get hero events more often, but having lots of hero slots will at least prevent you from running out of heroes. Of course, having any multi hero would do that as well. The second, is to make luck a very attractive scale for the nation. You can do that a number of ways. By giving them absolutely horrible PD at low levels, so they need over 12+ to stop barbarian raids and call of the winds has a significant chance of success at low levels. Another option is to make them a high resource, very low gold cost nation. You don't need much gold so you can therefore take turmoil, which blends well with luck, thereby causing you to receive more heroes on average. Another way to entice players to use turmoil luck would be to give the mages lots of paths with good chances (or maybe bad chances, hmm, not 100% sure about this one) of being able to remotely site search in them, but giving them an almost completely useless starting gem income. Say, for example, letting the elves get all elemental paths, nature, and maybe astral, but their starting income is all in one path. While doing this though you have to keep them from getting too many random paths on one guy or it's too tempting to search manually instead. If you can think of any other ways to encourage the use of turmoil+luck that you think would work better, feel free to go there instead. But I do think encouraging turmoil+luck would be your best option.

2)Multihero randoms. This one is just not possible. The best you can do here is just to make their random paths very, very random. A hypothetical multihero could have 100% AWEFSN, 50% AWEF, 50%AWEF, 50%AWEFSN. There's still the chance that the randoms will add up, but it's pretty unlikely that you'd end up with a hero with more than 2 in any given path with randoms like that.

3) Differentiation between units of different houses. You'll have to be a little more clear on how you want to handle them. I mean, one could be armed better offensively and the other more for defense. One could favor light, faster units with low encumbrance and the other heavier, slower units with lots of armor. One could be better at ranged combat but have lower precision. They could have different mages and commanders associated with them. Especially if one house had stealthy units that could benefit from a stealthy leader. You could try to distinguish themselves from each other visually through their color scheme.... I'm unfortunately not too familiar with the specific lore offhand, so I can't make good appropriate suggestions for you right now. Hopefully I have at least sparked an idea.

4) Magic site autospawning. Again, this is not really possible, but you can use a workaround. Gandalf's mention of a magic site that you can enter to summon the creatures was a good idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually possible. There is no mod command that can allow you to summon creatures from a site in that fashion to my knowledge. I guess if you went and modded a unit that's summoned by a pre-existing site you could summon them that way, but I can't think of any site you could do that with that would be disruptive. Perhaps the one that lets you summon mummies? Anyway, instead of going that route, how about a magic site that lets you summon an immobile, unique commander unit that autosummons, domsummons, or makemonsters the birds? I think that is probably your best bet.

5) Earendil and his ship. I read the wikipedia article for him, then read the article for Ancalagon... again, I've not actually read the silmarillion. I'd go ahead and give him flying, and sailing, but leave out the size 6 trampling. It seems a bit... odd, to trample soldiers with a boat. I'd give him either innate reinvigoration, or encumbrance 0 to reflect his fighting the dragon for a day and emerging victorious, also I would give him an innate larger being-slaying weapon. I would go with the title "The Mariner".


By the way, that link leads to a Space Empires 4 post.

[Stavis_L]

Doesnt luck affect heroes? There are pretenders that increase luck, and units (fortune tellers). Increasing the luck of your nation might help.


I believe the unit luck bonuses only apply to events, and not to the chance for heroes to appear.


You could create a site that requires an X mage to enter to get eagles, then try to insure that only your nation can achieve that.


Actually, I don't think that type of site is moddable into a new site. You could possibly achieve the effect by modding an existing site to be the path you wanted and then use unit modding to modify whatever base unit type was summoned (if you wanted it to still be around for other purposes, you'd need to add it back in as a copy.) Not sure off hand if there are any units that are "safe" for that by virtue of not also being recruitable or summonable elsewhere. Note that I haven't tested this approach, and it would depend on the site summoning using unit numbers rather than unit names.


Also there is some recognition of nations. Certain items can only be used by Ctis or by Ermor so there might be a way to lock the benefit to your nation altho it might take an item that only you can make and use.

Actually I don't think those items (the black laurel and the jade mask) are actually restricted in any way. The former just allows additional lictors to be summoned when summoning lictors, and only Ermor can do that. The latter is just restricted to cold-blooded, iirc (it's been reported that e.g. lamia queens can use it.)

[kianduatha]

If you wanted to be really hamhanded with the turmoil/luck spells, you could copystats a pan or something to make turmoil more attractive by turmoil-summoning giant eagles(an otherwise-useless cap only commander? You'd want a few maybe for initial expansion, but not good enough when you have the money for a cap-only thug commander). Really, your best bet is just a national summon spell.

Maybe give them a really beefed up Call of the Winds national spell. You could even make the commander of it a unique summon, to prevent spammage.

The better option is just to make Gondolin desperate for gems(as the excellent rdonj mentioned, giving only one type of gem but having uses for all kinds) and give kickass heros.

I'm not understanding why Earendil is planned on being a hero for Gondolin, seeming as he was just a kid when Gondolin fell. If you want an immortal badass, try Glorfindel. He even deserves the awe+10, what with the encounter at the Ford of Rivendell.

There are a fair number of distinctions you can make between the Houses: you have two versions of archers(pure and hybrid), the hammer-and-shield guys, Glorfindel's house gets awe(or better awe, if you give baseline noldor awe+0), the Tree guys get clubs and slings(?) and darkvision 100. Maybe stealth for them, too. Mole guys get two-handed axes and stealth, but low morale(comparatively). Harp has a standard effect, and Fountain gets moonblades for their weapons. It seems distinct enough. Besides, you'll never end up fielding terribly many of your rank-and-file troops

I look forwards to destroying otherwise invincible armies of these guys with Iron Dragons, Fire Drakes and some archdevils. Amusingly, elemental spells would actually be the way to take them down.

[Illuminated One]

How would you mod a multi-hero to have multiple, random, magic paths (like tarts), yet with restrictions to prevent them to have the magic levels stack in one path?

Is there a way to mod a magic site so that it autospawns units (in this case, Eagles), yet only does so for the starting nation (in this case, Gondolin)? Or would there be an easier way to go about this?

In a shameless act of self advertising, it's perfectly possible to do both things if you use python. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43892

For the first just create a hero for every possible combination you want (copy and paste - and 100% fawe + 100% sdnb covers quite a lot on it's own) and change the hero number randomly every turn.
It might be possible to get this implemented without when you can cover all combinations without using up hero slots.
Say you want only 3 100% random picks of fawes, max one per path. How many heroes do you need?
3: fa +100%wes, w +100%es +100%fa, es +100%faw.
So the game chooses randomly out of these 4 heroes who have mostly fixed paths (but look the same and the player will never know without looking at the unit number).

The latter can only be implemented by having a script monitor the capital and remove the bonus once the province is taken by someone else afaik.

[Trumanator]

Small correction, but I'm almost certain that the Glorfindel of Gondolin is not actually the same as the Glorfindel of Rivendell.

[Burnsaber]

If you wanted to be really hamhanded with the turmoil/luck spells, you could copystats a pan or something to make turmoil more attractive by turmoil-summoning giant eagles(an otherwise-useless cap only commander? You'd want a few maybe for initial expansion, but not good enough when you have the money for a cap-only thug commander). Really, your best bet is just a national summon spell.


Eh, if you copystat a pan, the copied unit just summons maenads, so you'd need to overwrite maenad unit (and basically overwrite panganea nations entirely).


How would you mod a multi-hero to have multiple, random, magic paths (like tarts), yet with restrictions to prevent them to have the magic levels stack in one path?


Eh, not possible. Although I have some experience with erratic randoms (http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6035/picks497.jpg), due to my Alugra mod. If you watch that link I gave you, you will basically see two options. Either go the "Librarian" way, or the "Gambler" way.

If you really don't want the unit to get lots of power in single path, the "Librarian" way is the best. Although, speaking from experience, it's pretty rare for me to luck out into a gambler that has more than 2 magic in a single path.


Is there a way to mod a magic site so that it autospawns units (in this case, Eagles), yet only does so for the starting nation (in this case, Gondolin)? Or would there be an easier way to go about this?


Reading the stuff that others have suggested, I've come to this conclusion to implement this:

Give them a capital only recruitable unique commander that summons the hawks. Or give that commander to them as a starting commander/scout and don't make it recruitable. Both ways are possible and gameplay-wise, they are pretty much the same thing as the site summon.


Am I the only one frustrated with sprite-making?


You are not. Many other modders are quite frustrated with sprite making. Only thing I can say is to be patient and if you just can't proceed, post your pics in the Sprite Editing thread and I'll give some tips.

I've also been meaning to do a shading tutorial for a long while, perhaps this would be the time for me actually start doing it.

[LumenPlacidum]

Small correction, but I'm almost certain that the Glorfindel of Gondolin is not actually the same as the Glorfindel of Rivendell.

Supposedly this was the intent, but Tolkien decided at some point that elven names should be entirely unique. So, he retconned some idea of Glorfindel being reincarnated and sent back with the Istari or something crazy like that and that the two were the same person.

Nevertheless, Glorfindel the Golden Haired would be at least 75% of the maximum level of badass. Only Fingolfin would get to 100%. Riding alone and pissed off through the biggest enemy army that's ever existed right up to the enemy commander's (who happens to be the GOD of evil things) door, then calling him out to single combat wherein you wound the otherwise unmarred DEIFIC entity seven times before your inevitable mistake? Bad. ***.

[kianduatha]

I actually read the Fingolfin fight earlier tonight. In proper Dominions fashion, Fingolfin racked up fatigue until his defense was no longer impenetrable :(

Having your starting scout be instead a summoner of giant eagles would be kinda cool.

[LumenPlacidum]

I actually read the Fingolfin fight earlier tonight. In proper Dominions fashion, Fingolfin racked up fatigue until his defense was no longer impenetrable :(

Heh, good point.

Having your starting scout be instead a summoner of giant eagles would be kinda cool.

Start with Thorondor, the King of Eagles and then he just spawns more and more?

[Squirrelloid]

I dunno, I'm pretty sure Feanor outranks Fingolfin in badassery. It took a literal army of Balrogs to bring him down by swarming him.

[kianduatha]

Nah, Feanor got taken out by Gothmog. He didn't even get a proper battle narrative, just that he was a dumbass who went in without any support and got taken down. Even in the passage describing Feanor's death, it mentions that Ecthelion was better.

Hurin even is better. You could even justify him being a hero for the nation, as he was a good friend of Turgon and hung out in Gondolin a decent amount. I can't imagine what abilities he might have, though. A bunch of reinvig, a bit of regen, good stats and onebattlespell quickness?

Speaking of which, is it at all possible to have units/heros which start off cursed? I was thinking Maeglin, at least.

[Tolkien]

Well, I think I've gotten some great suggestions in this thread. For the Eagles, I'll probably throw out the site-summoning idea and leave them as national summons. Too much work, and having recruitable autospawning commanders would be too imbalanced, probably.

As for Earendil: the main reason I'm putting him with Gondolin is that, well, it's the only real realm in Beleriand which I can properly associate him with. If I continue beyond Gondolin to create mods for all of them, then it would be impossible to assign him anywhere, as I can assign all of the other notable heroes to one land or another. Plus, he's the Morning Star, and an important part of the whole mythos. And he slew a flying dragon. In a flying ship. And as for the whole trampling thing, it was more the thought of: "hey, he's in a ship. If I had a flying ship when I went into battle, I would use it to run my enemies over. Wouldn't you? :D "

As for Glorfindel...well. He did take down a balrog (albeit with his life), but Ecthelion took down Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, despite having the use of only one arm (sword arm, shield arm was broken during the Fall). Then again, Rog led his House off the walls and into the middle of the beseiging host and killing everyone in sight, including boatloads of balrogs. So in essence, we have a case of too much awesome: everyone (except Salgant, who hid under his bed) were awesome during the Fall of Gondolin, and we only have a limited number of slots. That's the idea behind the multihero: besides for those who are really important, (i.e. Tuor, Maeglin, as both were princes and not standard "high lords") they're designed to cover all of them.

And yeah, Glorfindel is to have been reborn from the Halls of Mandos and sent back as a messenger along with the Istari.


I think what I will do is make it so that Gondolin does not need much in the way of magic from it's pretender. It would lack death and blood and major astral, but instead I could give them perfectly good non-unique, elemental SCs. I can also probably run with the idea of limiting the gem income from the initial sites (but, considering they'll be given access to 6 different paths, it wouldn't be too hard to limit gem income only to only two or three while still starving them of other gems). It frees them up to give massive investments into scales and/or a minor bless, to encourage them to go Order/Productivity/Luck. How effective would this be?

Also, another question. Is there a way to have a unit autocast a set script of spells throughout a battle (or something to that effect)? My thought is to have those of the Harp cast Song (of Bravery/Healing/Soothing/etc.) throughout the battle. If I can't have them random cast the spells, I'll probably just limit them to casting Song of Bravery (in addition to their standard effect), and make them awesome for boosting morale.

EDIT: For Hurin, if/when I make a Hithlum, he'll be on the top of this list. :)

[rdonj]

Well, I think I've gotten some great suggestions in this thread. For the Eagles, I'll probably throw out the site-summoning idea and leave them as national summons. Too much work, and having recruitable autospawning commanders would be too imbalanced, probably.

That's why burnsaber and I suggested that you make them a unique commander. That way you could never have more than one of them. :)
However, doing them as summons instead is perfectly valid.

As for shooting for order/productivity luck, well, it would work. But turmoil and luck are more synergistic, at least when you have a smallish empire. You would get a lot more lucky events with turmoil luck, which means more chances to get heroes, which means overall having a higher rate of acquiring heroes. Once you own a bit more land order+luck will start working out a lot better, but for a significant portion of the game you'll have fairly few lucky events, at least in my experience. So, turmoil luck would get you the best chance for heroes, but if you can convince the player to go order+productivity+luck that's not bad.

Order+productivity+luck is a LOT of points into scales though, and basically, if you want the player to go that route you'll have to make the nation so good it doesn't need the pretender for anything else.


Oh. And my reasoning for not making him trample with the ship was that it seems a bit dangerous flying a ship low enough to the ground that you could kill people with it. It seems like the ship would take all kinds of damage being scraped up by the ground.

[Illuminated One]

I'm spotting the irony just now ... but Tolkien is asking how Earendil should but called? :D

Also, another question. Is there a way to have a unit autocast a set script of spells throughout a battle (or something to that effect)? My thought is to have those of the Harp cast Song (of Bravery/Healing/Soothing/etc.) throughout the battle. If I can't have them random cast the spells, I'll probably just limit them to casting Song of Bravery (in addition to their standard effect), and make them awesome for boosting morale.

I think you can chain spells to create a scriptlike autocast effect but they are all cast in one turn.
Hmm, the shutendoj of Shinuyama does have an interesting every of seemingly casting a spell every turn.

[Burnsaber]

Also, another question. Is there a way to have a unit autocast a set script of spells throughout a battle (or something to that effect)? My thought is to have those of the Harp cast Song (of Bravery/Healing/Soothing/etc.) throughout the battle. If I can't have them random cast the spells, I'll probably just limit them to casting Song of Bravery (in addition to their standard effect), and make them awesome for boosting morale.

Hmm. The only thing I can think of is to give them a custom onebattlespell. Say.. a AoE 25 "Song of Bravery" as a cloud spell that lasts for 8-9 turns. Of course the downsides are that the commander has nothing to do with the cloud once it is cast, (it's not centered on him and will still be up if he dies or flees).

You also could just go the easy way and give them ludiciriously big "standard" attribute.



I think you can chain spells to create a scriptlike autocast effect but they are all cast in one turn.
Hmm, the shutendoj of Shinuyama does have an interesting every of seemingly casting a spell every turn.

Might work, assuming the shutendonj's flute is a spell effect, not weapon effect. This could use some looking into.

[Tolkien]

I'm spotting the irony just now ... but Tolkien is asking how Earendil should but called? :D
Well I have half a dozen epithets and all of them perfectly valid. :p

Actually, I think there may be a way around that: if I mod a new self-buff spell, say...Soul Vortex, and replace the life/fatigue regeneration effect with one that boosts morale, I think I could get it to work.

[Burnsaber]

Actually, I think there may be a way around that: if I mod a new self-buff spell, say...Soul Vortex, and replace the life/fatigue regeneration effect with one that boosts morale, I think I could get it to work.

Sorry to be a party-pooper, but that is not possible. You can't mod buff effects.