Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Meph]

MAKE ALL THE NEW THREADS!

And another new concept. You run a reaction to spawn a group of highly trained, well-equipped mercenaries on your map that fight with you. Because of the coding background behind it, they would be counted as merchants with bodyguards, so they have merchants, pack-animals and bodyguards.

I would give them warbeasts as pack-animal that become enraged and join the fight (if it works out correctly) and give the guards very high skills. Merchants would have these skills as well, but I dont think they will join the fight as easily. I have to test with prone-to-rage.

I can also give them interactions and make mages of sorts.

I hope to use a script to reduce their amount of tradegoods so that they wont really do much as traders, and wont leave much loot when they die.

Current ideas (I already scrapped the wagons):

Code: [Select]

Human Bandits Units: Melee & Guns Wagon: Looter Wagon Skills: Average Combat Skill Mats: Rusty Steel
Elven Ranger Units: Fast Ranged Wagon: Ranger Supply Wagon Skills: High Archery Mats: Leather, Mitrhil
Drow Assassins Units: Poisoned Melee Wagon: Corpse Cart Skills: High Dodging/Melee Mats: Bloodsteel
Dwarven Legion Units: Heavy Melee Wagon: Legion Supply Cart Skills: High Shield/Armor/Melee Mats: Steel
I could even do more specialised versions, like Drow Melee, Drow Ranged, Drow Mage, Drow Anti-Undead. Or race-specific groups, mercenaries that are specialized in fighting greenskins for example, but are bad against other races. "Hire group of priests to fight warlocks", that sort of thing. But honestly I'd rather keep it simple with the 4 I mentioned above.

This is all theory, but testing the basics looks promising. (Background info: I use a new entity for every group that is allied with you, but has no active seasons. This way they never send caravans or diplomets to you. But with the force-event script I can spawn their caravans with reactions, like "Call the dwarven legion patrol for help" or "Hire Underdark Assassins"

EDIT: I can also restrict the caravans from allies this way. You would only get caravans if you order one, not one every season. I know some people will love this, other will hate it, so I will only do this to the Gnome merchants. They will get more high-end stuff, but only appear when you invite them. The pros of this is that I can more easily balance when you get the caravan, that the player has control over it, and that random caravans dont spawn right into the megabeast/siege that is waiting for them. And that you wont get caravans if you dont want any. The negative side is of course that is requires more attention by the player, and that it will be more costly.

I could also seperate them into: "Call human caravan" - 1000 gold, and "Call human caravan with guards" - 2000 gold.

EDIT2: OMG. I just realized that I can do sieges the same way. Sieges of unique civs that are only spawned when your dwarves do a specific thing.

 - Use the vampires crypt a lot? Spawn Vampire ambush.
 - Meddle with the dark arts? Spawn lich/revenant army.
 - Invent Steampunk/Warpstone/Golemtech? Spawn "tech looter" ambush, that want to steal your knowledge.
 - Cut too much wood? Spawn Ent ambush.

[Vabalokis]

That would be great , just need to find balance in price of the hirelings and their effectiveness

[silentdeth]

It would have to be incredibly expensive to be balanced. Getting a squad well skilled and armed takes years. If I can throw 20-30 gold bars at the problem and get the same result, that is way too cheap.

Just kicking around ideas, maybe something like the trading license but cost much more, like 1,000,000 dwarf bucks for a mercenary contract that gets consumed in the reaction. That's only about 10-20 barrels of masterwork prepared meals.  Maybe have different tiers, tier 1 for early games, an unarmored group with a lot of warbeast, all the way up to tier n welded mithril clad weaponlords. Or perhaps 1 reactions with the contracts and another set without for those oh, shit moments.

[Meph]

The squads wont stay in your fort. They only appear at a random location on the map, pathfind to your depot and back, and leave. And they are small, like a caravan.

wtf, 1000000? Thats 2000 gold bars... Edit: I think you misunderstood. Its not by value, it uses coins for the reaction. Prepared meals wont do anything for you.

[Meph]

I related news, a good ambassador might spawn FRIENDLY caravans, with or without guards, of hostile civs. This means your dwarven fort that is fighting goblins, kobolds, orcs, warlocks... could actually still trade with them if you trust them.

[silentdeth]

No, I did not misunderstand. I meant you trade with a caravan for a 'mercenary contract' which cost 1,000,000. You then use that contract in a reaction to produce the mercenaries. I understand they are temporary. I think 1,000,000 would be a fair price for a skilled squad in steel plate, the armor alone is probably worth more than that if it is well made. 2000 gold coins? That is only 4 gold bars. It cost more than that just to have someone join the freaking legionnaires. If it was so cheap, why would I ever bother to build any military of my own? Maybe a cheaper, really poor skill option for early in the game, but for a fully geared and trained squad it should be expensive. If you are hiring mercenaries you are desperate, no sellsword is going to refuse to exploit that fact.

[Meph]

I think I am talking with a wall. 

YOUR EXAMPLE IS 2000 GOLD BARS OR 100000 GOLD COINS. THE VALUE OF ITEMS DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL FOR ANY REACTION WHATSOEVER!

Sorry, had to be said.

Edit: Wait, I take that back. You want traders to bring an item worth 1 million? Like... those traders that you can easily kill, get killed, or steal from? I talked the entire time about reactions in the embassy.

[Varyag]

I related news, a good ambassador might spawn FRIENDLY caravans, with or without guards, of hostile civs. This means your dwarven fort that is fighting goblins, kobolds, orcs, warlocks... could actually still trade with them if you trust them.

I accidentally discovered that you can get hostile civ caravans too when i tried to figure out why 3e was crashing. I did neglect to mention that though. Will try to remember to mention oddities like that in the future.

I think 1,000,000 would be a fair price

So how often do you just happen to have 2000 gold bars or 2000 stacks of gold coins just lying around?

[silentdeth]

Edit: Wait, I take that back. You want traders to bring an item worth 1 million? Like... those traders that you can easily kill, get killed, or steal from? I talked the entire time about reactions in the embassy.

Yes. It is no different than if you made it use gold and one steals gold from the traders. Though killing traders, which can lead to a siege, to get something to help protect you from a siege doesn't seem like the wisest course of action.

[Vinum]

While the idea of mercenaries sounds awesome to me (at the condition that you can actually provoke huge clashes composed by armies of all races), the fact that you can call any kind of merchand at any time for an handfull of dimes could actually lower the level of difficulty: order crates and crates of gold, steal buy them for a few well crafted goblets and you have a gajillion of bars in exchange of the products of a few, and then you have access to foolish preys of your greedy dorfs moving targets an insane amount of different and probably valuable things, with little effort.

I understand that this is a possible way of playing the game but not the only one, that you can make everything optional, etc. but with the recent trade for coin system, which led to gold bar crates and emporiums, the trade depot system is getting tedious to me. Select and buy all the crates and food, maybe pets, then select and sell loot from the last traders the goblets, then re use the embassy and repeat.

I might sound annoying because i already mentioned it, but i would see much more rewarding a richer merchants' stalls system, where you could research via !!SCIENCE!! or diplomatic "experiments" (which can also go very very bad) an appropriate "trade license" for friendly and otherwise hostile races, in order to build many different bazaars which sell common or rare but unique items whit a personal currency each: imagine the orcs or goblins trading for rusty iron/steel coins, elfs for silver only, or warlocks selling magical items for bones. The possibilities are quite a lot IMHO and i would see this system as a quite changelling and enjoyable way to get the richest fortress in the whole known world, both dwarven and not.

[Meph]

Vinum: Such a trade system would be immensely difficult to balance. Its easy enough to write, if you want, you can have a go yourself. Its just copy+paste the two "buy/sell" and then changing the item and amount of coins. Thats it. But balancing is would be something I'd ask Dustin Browder and his Startcraft balancing departement for. Because I sure as hell cant balance it.

The current system is unbalanced as well, I do know that, but people requested it, the feedback was positive, and it will be optional, so why the heck not.

Balancing the actual mercenaries will be easier.

[Meph]

I am just starting my first real test.

I allowed the embassy to bring kobold, goblin and orc traders, which are usually only hostile. This way you have more, optional, trade partners.

I disabled natural occuring gnomes, which are my high-end trading-only race. Now you need to actively summon their carvans, otherwise you wont trade with them at all. This is done for obvious balancing reasons, because they have good and unique tradegoods. One could use the same system for magical summonings. "Make a pact with the devil", and a demon liaison will appear, and the hell-traders bring nice stuff. Or, for Warhammer: Open a rift in the warp, and chaos-traders appear.

I also wrote 4 new entities. The Dwarven Legion, The Human Bandits, The Elven Rangers and the Drow Assassins. These are the mercenaries I mentioned. I will test these now.

[masterdiscord]

I would, personally, love the ability to at least reject caravans without letting them be massacred. The caravan will spawn in my protected route (cheating but  it makes sense from a RL standpoint, smart traders will come up the guarded, fortified road, not the forest behind the castle) but the diplomats spawn wherever they damn well please. Which leads to the morons getting their heads bitten off by giant drowspiders and werellama titans, or pincushioned by goblin archers.

If I decided to seal off from the outside world, or were I besieged with a superior force, I'd rather not be responsible for traders and diplomats getting slaughtered every season and thus their civ getting more and more displeased with me.

[Apani]

For Kobold Camp, restricted traders might fit perfectly fine. For all the traders of all races coming every season, I feel like a trade oasis. Especially when you already have in your own race caravan coming every season as well.

[dukea42]

It would be amazing to have it so your normal market activity is the shops you have created and then caravans are only arriving when requested because your embassy decided to "Hold a Fair with Humans" or "Throw a carnival with the Drow" or "Summon Dwarves for the Oktoberfest" (or stone month equivalent). All excuses to bring a little more trade to the area - which is a historical important purpose I such things.

For elves  -all those animals and dancy elves.. Circus! Not to be confused with you know what.
For Gnomes - An exposition or convention...how about ExpoCon, the largest technology and dice game gathering in th lands.