Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[lch]

Doesn't turning up the heat to protect against Murdering Winter make you vulnerable to Flames from the Sky? And other magic paths have remote spells like that, too (Beckoning etc.).

[alexti]

Ballbarian said:

Sort of possible. You can set it so that there are 50% - 8 Golems with each having some/lots/no equipment. But if you chance any equipment, there has to be a commander set to assign it to. There are tricks that you can use like setting a placeholder commander before a golem that will catch any equipment that the golem would have gotten. In this way you can leave each golem at 50%, but any equipment that comes into play would show up on the alternate commander as long as he had the slots. Not a great solution.

I am not sure I completely understand your idea. Maybe it can done differently: create two such provinces: one with Golems, another - without and then set it so that only one of the provinces is selected for the generated map. Then Golems could have had semi-random equipment. Would it work?

P.S. Thanks for the program!

[alexti]

jutetrea said:
The limited list of resistence items is a nice idea though. In my experience (abeit limited) its usually either an SC or an overwhelming army that would take out an a difficult special... and in reality its just a matter of how big the army has to be.

This would be pretty tough for solo-ing SC - a lot of unroutable with a lot of resistances, plus horde of mages firing all kind of spells (assuming AI will be casting something sensible).

Increases in army size stop being efficient at some point, there're only so many that can fight in the gates and number of turns in the battle is limited. In this case it's more of a question of having the right army rather than a large army.

[alexti]

lch said:
Doesn't turning up the heat to protect against Murdering Winter make you vulnerable to Flames from the Sky? And other magic paths have remote spells like that, too (Beckoning etc.).

It's easy for adepts to have 100% fire resistance and most of their troops is also fire resistant, so FftS is not a big danger. From my (admittedly mostly Dom2) experiences other spells are much less efficient - for example beckoning allows MR and morale check, so it's useless against all those inanimates, and mages have a good chance to pass the checks too.

More dangerous is Leprosy, I think.

But anyway, creating unassailable province was not my goal (if it was I would just put few thousand tartarian commanders there :>), I'm just trying to think how adepts of metal orders could defend themselves best (but within their limitation)

[Ballbarian]

I am not sure I completely understand your idea. Maybe it can done differently: create two such provinces: one with Golems, another - without and then set it so that only one of the provinces is selected for the generated map. Then Golems could have had semi-random equipment. Would it work?

You have discovered one of the limitations of the current design. If you create two unique provinces there is a chance that both could be placed on the same map.

Ideally, I should have treated commanders as objects with their attributes attached directly to their selection instead of treating each line separately. Maybe in future versions I can add support for random sections. This would allow multiple internal province versions... Will have to think on that some more when I am awake.

What I was describing before was that if you had a commander of some sort with no or limited slots (I'll call him "catcher") and a chance for a single golem that might make an appearance as a well armed thug, the placement in the file would be something like this:
#commander 101 -- catcher
@2 commander
471 --Golem
--no Golem
#additem "Horned Helmet"
#additem "Fire Plate"
#additem "Fire Brand"
#additem "Charcoal Shield"
#additem "Boots of Long Strides"

In this example, their is a 50% chance for the golem to make an appearance. If he does, then he will be equipped with the listed items. If he does not then the items would be applied to "catcher". My thought is that if catcher has no slots for these items that they simply go *poof*. This depends on exactly how dom3 handles such a situation and is just theory on my part. If the catcher does have slots, but they already have items, I strongly suspect that the existing items will be replaced by subsequent #additems.

Anyone who has had experience with anything like this, please feel free to correct or confirm.

P.S. Thanks for the program!

Your welcome! (and thanks for the thanks!)

[HoneyBadger]

I think a good selection of equipment for a golem would be:

Horror Helmet
Black Steel Plate
Stinger
Ring of the Warrior
Ring of Tamed Lightning
Shield of Valor
Boots of Long Strides

That way, you've got a very nice selection of reasonably thematic equipment, and nothing *too* powerful, since there's going to be 8 of them.

[Ballbarian]

The point of my reply was to demonstrate the technique I was talking about, not to suggest equipment for a golem. I just copy/pasted some lines from a random file.

Edit- removed the rolly eyeballs. Was having a bad week. (sorry HB...)

[Gandalf Parker]

I just tested your concept and confirm it. If the selected commander doesnt have the slots then the game simply ignores the item assignment and moves on. They dont fall to the ground, go in armory, and do not go to the next commander selected.
Oh yeah, and the game doesnt crash.

[Endoperez]

I only have about three hours until I have to get back to the army. Thanks to a combination of a batch of new books (mainly Pratchett) and a friend's graduation party, I haven't even started this project. I'll do my best to write down the ones posted here next week.

[Ballbarian]

Hopefully by the time you get back I will have the province editor complete. I think (if you can run windows programs) that you will find it helpful. Right now it is roughly 75%-85% complete.

-Edit-
Make that 95% complete.

Here is a sample from the first trial run using very basic stuff:

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
SAMPLE999_CLD_IS_U_R_S_SWP_FST_

@1 landname
"Forgotten Isle"
#temple
#lab
#fort 26 --Dead City
#population 0
#poptype 88 --NO RECRUITABLES
#killfeatures
#feature "Chillsick Swamp"
#knownfeature "Haunted Village"

#commander 777 --Tartarian Monstra
#comname "Ess of the Lost"
#additem "Flesh Eater"
#additem "Totem Shield"
#additem "Robe of Shadows"
#additem "Amulet of Antimagic"
#clearmagic
#mag_death 9
#mag_astral 9
#xp 300
#bodyguards 15 526 --Serpent Fiend
#units 20 526 --Serpent Fiend
#units 20 533 --Wight
#units 20 533 --Wight
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I still need to add support for Endo's castle defenders to the editor, but it should be a piece of cake. Which reminds me... I can't believe that I didn't get your "Realm of the Ape King" added to the new release of RanDom. I just checked and it is not even on the site. *slaps forehead*