Idea thread: special provinces, unique defenders

[Endoperez]

SemiRandomizer is a great program that can read special province settings from text files, and then add these provinces into exiting Dominions maps. Aran with random provinces tough enough to work as chokepoints? Independent castles with powerful defenders in both sides of the walls? Robin Hood and his merry men? Bunch of Abysians defending a fire site? It can be done. It isn't easy, though, so I though I'd start an idea mill and then translate the ones I like to the correct format. I probably won't be able to do quite that many this weekend, but I hope there will be quite a few ideas next weekend when I have more time.

Now, what tools you can use when desigining your provinces:

ANYTHING in the mapediting document. This means:
- adding to, or replacing, the original defenders
- adding any unit as a commander, with the spesific magic paths, items, amount of experience and name you want
- giving any unit(s) to a commander already in the province (you always have to add at least one commander), as either normal troops or bodyguards
- adding any existing magic site, either hidden (normal) or pre-searched
- adding any fort and/or a lab and/or a temple to the province
- defining different troops for inside and outside of the castle. Technically, one will be besieging the other, so the ones inside the castle need items to avoid supply problems.
- set the owner of the province, as well as its poptype, population amount, starting unrest and PD (if it's owned by a nation).

In addition, RanDom/SemiRandom allows these advanced options:
- randomly choosing this province instead of it always being in the exact same province of the one map you added it to (with various values such as terrain affecting where it can appear)
- adding "any one of [a list]" instead of "this one", whether we're talking about a name, a unit, an item or a castle. You can define the lists and use them in multiple instances. An example of a list would be three different sets of equipment for a thug.
- giving an AI player a pre-determined god

What you CAN'T use:
- mods. No modded units, no modded sites, no modded nations, because the special province would crash the game unless the spesific mod was active.




That's it. Please, post your ideas. Here're two examples of what the result will look like:




example 1: Robin Hood and his Merry Men
only available in medium and large forests
Has a Longbowman commander with 150 points of experience (3 stars). His name is Robin Hood, and he has a Longbow of Accuracy. He leads a group of 20 Longbowmen, 20 Woodsmen (with shortbows), and 20 Villains.
The province also has a known magic site called "Hall of Ancient Oaks", and the following commanders:
-a Monk given H2, Endless bag of Vine and a Cauldron of Broth. His name would be Tuck.
-a Ranger Captain (LA Ulm crossbowman) named Red Will,
-a Warrior Maiden (of EA Ulm) named Marian,
-and a Light Bandar Archer named Little John.
All of them have 100 points of experience (2 stars). Little John would have 50% chance of having a Storm Bow. There would be a 25% chance for Maid Marian to have Nature 2.

This would be made as:
filename: Endo8_R_U_N_FST_.gan
eigth province made by Endo(perez), replaces the original defenders, is unique, appears in normal-sized forests.
Code:

---

#commander 59

#name "Robin Hood"

#xp 150

#additem "Longbow of Accuracy"

#units 20 59

#units 20 "Villain"

#units 20 "Woodsman"



#knownfeature "Hall of Ancient Oaks"



#commander "Monk"

#name "Tuck"

#xp 100

#additem "Endless Bag of Wine"

#additem "Cauldron of Broth"



#commander "Ranger Captain"

#name "Red Will"

#xp 100



#commander "Warrior Maiden"

#xp 100

#name "Marian"

@4 

#mag_nature 2

- three times 

- out of four

- she has no magic



#commander "Light Bandar Archer"

#xp 100

#name "Little John"

@2 

#additem "Storm Bow"

- half the time, no bow

---

Examplem 2 (taken from the SemiRandom post in the mod forum):


Code:

---

#god 11 138 -- PANGAEA GORGON

#clearmagic

#mag_earth 9

#mag_nature 4

#dominionstr 11 10

#scale_chaos 11 3

#scale_lazy 11 1

#scale_cold 11 -1

#scale_death 11 -3

#scale_unluck 11 -2

#scale_unmagic 11 2

---

You could add items if you were feeling fancy:

Code:

---

#additem "Shield of Gleaming Gold" 	-- hand slot

#additem "Sword of Sharpness"		-- hand slot

#additem "Black Steel Helmet"		-- head slot

#additem "Robe of Invulnerability" 	-- body slot

#additem "Boots of the Messenger" 	-- feet slot

#additem "Amulet of Antimagic" 		-- misc slot

#additem "Amulet of Missile Protection" -- misc slot

---

[jutetrea]

I was looking at these the other day on Gandalf's site and was intrigued. Are you saying you'll code it if we come up with good suggestions? If so, shweet! Limiting to units within the game or deciding if something can fit and whether or not it needs a new unit?

Some easy examples:

Camelot -

19 Knights of the round table outside a Forest Citadel
http://www.timelessmyths.com/arthurian/roundtable.html
Troops of some sort/# inside the citadel with Guinevere and Merlin.
Chalice like site
White man hill
aaand something.

19 knights (of Avalon) still aren't that terrible. So possibly give each knight 5 other basic knights - squires?

Each knight of avalon (round table) wouldn't necessarily get additional equipment, but i would add 2 misc per. RoRegen/luck/bracers of prot/RoWarrior/etc. Could get specific to the literature on each of the 18, but seems like a lot of work. King Arthur would be fitted out fully, with either a new (AN) sword or sword of quickness/sharpness.

Merlin would be a high level mage, RoWizardry and something.
Guen would be a combo mage/prieset (??), RoSorcery and something.

I've always been a big fan of really powerful random provinces, but good rewards if defeated.

----

Hawaian fire-god volcano
Dragons lair(s)
Forest of spiders
The unearthed pit
Mayan Temple theme and an angry Quetz..

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats the idea of it all. If we all designed ONE province then the SemiRandomizer would be able to create some very interesting maps. You could set it to add 3 percent special provinces and play your favorite map over and over with fun surprises.

Just for ideas, look at the magic sites and build a province around them. Especially if it allows summoning or recruiting certain units. Doesnt that mean it would be guarded by them? Or certain units as a theme. A werewolf village, or dragons lair, or giants cave.

PLUS one of the big complaints against the AI is that it creates bad gods and chooses horrible scales. If we all made gods for the AIs then it might improve them.

All of this is only going to be fun if we have enough variety so we can keep the game random without it having to be stupidly random (like my old programs were).

[jutetrea]

I like stupidly random

But I liked thematic better. Could someone post the format for a complex province with comments per section? I can copy most of an existing complex province but silly questions like... bodyguards come after commander, then commanders items..eh? Terrains still confuse me as well.

I've got the DB, the format is daunting.

Is the site modding in the mod guide as well? For instance, I think the camelot province should have recruitable knights, probably not of Avalon..but similar.

[Endoperez]

Jutetrea - I'd like to get MUCH more detail. I'm not going to go through a site just to find 19 names. If you'd like some of the knights to have a bit different equipment, mention it. Is King Arthur inside the castle with Guinewere/Merlin, or outside with his knights? What sites, exactly (there are just two healing sites according to Edi's list, and because I doubt Lyfjaberg would fit, it'd be Healing Spring). What magics would the mages have?

So, sites: Healing Spring, White Man Hill, probably a site with a Lake in its name (The Forest of the Lake (!), Bottomless Lake, Lake of Mists, Lake of Reflected Time, Lifeless Lake (Death gems, not good), Mirrorlake (allows recruitment of Illusionist, so not good), Overgrown Lake (not what we're looking for). I want DETAILS, because while I could do all this myself, I'd like to get enough details that I can just read through it, perhaps add something of my own while implementing it, and then move on to the next suggestion.

Hawaian fire-god volcano
Dragons lair(s)
Forest of spiders
The unearthed pit
Mayan Temple theme and an angry Quetz..

And what would these be, then? Volcano and a Sun Disk? Rain Forest, Jungle Temple, something else? What is an unearthed pit? If you have an idea, give details. If I go to the details myself, I'll do it for my own ideas.


Also, map "modding" is very, VERY simple. Adding commanders adds them to the last province you selected, regardless of how you did it, and there's no #end command for provinces. All commands that work on commanders (including commands for adding units under their control) work for the commander that was added last. Order doesn't matter. You can give a commander an item, then set bodyguards, then set his magic and experience, then his units, then add another item and add more units and add holy magic and then add another squad of bodyguards. You could also do that in reverse, and it would still work.

And as said above, modding SHOULDN'T be used. This is for semi-random only, and while you can do interesting stuff with mods, it'll get too complicated too fast.
Site modding is in the modding guide, but it's only partial. We can set capital-only recruitables, but not units recruitable everywhere. However, Camelot could be given the knights/longbowmen poptype. That is good enough, because this will be a high-pop province in a forest (at least from what I understood), and thus have much more resources than a farmland (only terrain knights are usually recruitable in) would.

[lch]

Endoperez said:
Jutetrea - I'd like to get MUCH more detail. I'm not going to go through a site just to find 19 names. If you'd like some of the knights to have a bit different equipment, mention it. Is King Arthur inside the castle with Guinewere/Merlin, or outside with his knights? What sites, exactly (there are just two healing sites according to Edi's list, and because I doubt Lyfjaberg would fit, it'd be Healing Spring). What magics would the mages have?

Let me counter to that: Endo, I think you'll have to give a greater detail of what exactly is possible and how with these semi-random province settings, especially for people with zero knowledge about map editing. What you gave was a rough draft and that was useful to get some idea about what's possible, but it's no wonder that you get vague ideas as response to that, too. People have ideas, they just don't know how to submit them in the way that you want them. Where is that format that you want to have documented with all its features? A copy of Edi's database would be very much needed, too, I guess? Are all the sites in there?