Idea for New Units

[Justcallmeike]

I am in no way good with this kind of thing, and so these ideas will prbably never become reality. I just wanted to let you know that, lol. If anyone is interested, by all means, go ahead and try to do it, although I don't even know if some of these things can actually be done.

Ok, this idea is for a new group of rival units for magitech.

Magic gains Necromancy, and Tech gains Religion...


Necromancy

The building block of Necromancy is the Necromancers' Tower. Appearance-wise, I would think it would be a bit like the Archmage's Tower, except with a more evil look to it. Its cost and 'hp' would be about the same as the Archmage's Tower.

The tower has two uses:

It can create Necromancers for 300 gold

It can give a Necromancer's minions +10 damage, +10 armor, and +25% health for the cost of 200 gold. This effect is connected directly to the undead created by one Necromancer. Each Necromancer must have the effect activated separately for his own minions.


The Necromancer
The Necromancer has no attack capabilities. He has relatively high armor and health stats (I won't specifically say how high, because I am not sure how high would be sufficient). His abilities include summoning Undead Infantry, summoning Undead Behemoths, and mass-healing of all units.

It must also be known that a Necromancer's minions must be within his range of vision, or suffer deterioration of stats, armor, and health. If a Necromancer is killed, though, all of his minions are killed as well and 50 gold for each is returned to the player's coffers magically.

a. Undead Infantry
Skeletal soldiers clad in rusty, dirty armor. They have the stats equal to those of a a Tech Swordman, and cost the same as well. They have the ability to burrow underground, becoming essentially invisible and untouchable by enemy units. All Undead Infantry must burrow at once, and their Necromancer also gains the effect (although he simply becomes invisible). It should be noted that Undead Infantry still have mobility while underground, although they are only about 2/3 as fast. The effect would only be used for a few minutes, after which a similar period of time would be needed to 'recharge' the ability.

b. Undead Behemoths
Zombie-like giants in chain armor, they wield large battleaxes and have some magical ability. These beasts act as a superbly destructive force against buildings. Their health, armor and damage would be similar to but slightly weaker than that of the Daemon Giant. Cost would be about 550 gold. Besides the general melee attack, the Undead Behemoth would sport a magic-based attack called Rampant Flare. This attack would decimate any building close to the Behemoth, and would also do damage to enemies nearby. The attack would leave all units under the Behemoth's Necromacer's control dormant and immobile, easy targets for attack. Overall the Undead Behemoth could be best described as a destructive yet sacrificial unit.

c. Mass-Healing
A Necromancer may sacrifice 7 units and half his health to heal all units currently controlled by the player by 650 health for 300 gold. Again, sacrificial, but well worth the units and gold during a large conquest.




Religion

Religion revolves around the Abbey. The Abbey is a building with a similar cost and health value to the Magic Library. With it, you can produce monks and it gives two upgrades known as  Blessing of Good Health and Blessing of Safety. Each blessing costs 100 gold. The first adds 10% health to all units, including workers. The second adds +10 armor to all units as well.



Monks

Monks have stats similar to that of the regular worker, and cost 350 gold.
They can heal units, repair/build all buildings that a worker can, and can give a Horseman or Armored Swordmen their blessing. This turns Horsemen into White Knights and Armored Swordmen into Holy Warriors. A Monk may bless only 3 Horsemen or Armored Swordmen at a time, and the blessing is revoked if the monk is killed.

a. Holy Warriors
These abbey-funded infantrymen are essentially as powerful as two Armored Swordmen. Their damage, armor, and health would all be twice as high. Their field of vision is dramatically improved over other units, and they can occasionally spot burrowing Undead Infantry. They can pray for revived health, but this leaves them vulnerable to attack until they are fully healed.

b. White Knights
These units are still calvary, but they are clad in white armor and ride light gray horses. Instead of a spear, they carry a halberd. Their stats are twice that of the regular Horsemen, just like the Holy Warrior. If they charge at a foe, there is a chance of the enemy simply being trampled by the horse. Like the Holy Warrior, the White Knight can pray for health but is left vulnerable.

So, what do you think? Feel free to respond in the poll, and sorry for such a long topic.

[Vixis]

Units will need more balancing, but main idea seems good.
Maybe undead will attack when burrowed or immobilise enemy.

And who will do it?

[Justcallmeike]

I know, it's pretty still pretty rough, and does have a lot of balance issues.

At this point it's all just speculation, really. If anyone wants to do anything with it, by all means go ahead.

[wciow]

If anyone wants to do anything with it, by all means go ahead.

This is such a cool idea! I made a necromancers tower for this and I'll try to make a whole mini-mod based on it.

[theotherhiveking]

wow!, thats great!

[KyuubiNaruto]

wow nice it looks great i hope u continue the idea but what about a demonic group like umm well hold on i'll try to find a good screenshot or picture of it

EDITED: that idea for the blessing is kinda dumb if the monk dies because what if there was alot of monks wouldn't that cuase a problem?

its a nice idea for a monk though it should be a upgrading skill and make it so when they die it turn it off

[betonboor]

I think it's a good idea, I would however change one thing:

If a necromancer is killed all it's minions become enemies to you and your enemy. A sort of loner group of minions which will attack all players but have no other capabilities.

 :twisted: You lose control if your necromancer dies or after some period of time.

[wciow]

Well heres the abbey model for the tech faction:



I've been thinking about how much of the original idea is actually acheivable in glest without any C coding.

Tech:

Blessings: should be able to implement these in a similar way to the library upgrades for magic faction (energy compression, etc)

monks: Its not worth making monks have the ability to heal buildings since workers and technicians can already do this. I'm not sure whether you can limit the number of certain units that are allowed i.e 3 white horsemen/warriors ?

Holy warriors: sounds fine but they'll have to be very expensive for the power.

White knights: will have to be VERY expensive. I don't think the charge ability will be possible but I will try to implement it.

Magic:

Minion upgrade: This will work similar to blessings however it is not possible to only affect the minions of each necromancer seperatly.

Having a necromancers minions stay in a certain range of the necromancer is not possible I think :/

Undead infantry: The burrowing idea is interesting but it is impossible to make units invisible to enemy units in glest It is possible to have a rechargable morph ability which will make the undead harder to kill though.

Undead behemoth: Simple to implement. Just a slightly weaker daemon giant that does lots of damage to buildings.

Mass healing: Don't think this idea is possible in glest but its last on my todo list anyway so I'll look more closely when i come to it.

[daniel.santos]

I love the direction this is going and I love the models, but I don't like the overall feel.  From a story-line standpoint, this sort-of paints magic as being "bad" and tech being "good".  None the less, I think the basic idea of the necro and monk are very good.  Thus, I have something to offer  The magic faction can call these the "Path of Corruption" and "Path of Nature" and the tech faction can call them the "Path of Enlightenment" and "Path of Reason."  I've only filled out this concept completely for the Path of Corruption, the rest are at varying stages of incomplete.  I realize that by introducing more possibilities, it's almost like having 4 different factions and they all have to balance in the end while maintaining their uniqueness.


Magic Faction: Path of Corruption

While I think we should leave the Demon (50g unit) as is, we should maybe associate Hell Gate (and daemon giant) with Path of Corruption and use Treant on the Path of Nature.

Building: Necromancer Tower - requires Library and Ancient Summoning?
+ create Necromancer or morph from either Initiate or Summoner.
+ research: Summon Undead Behemoths
+ research: global enhancement (workers move faster and carry more because of fear?)
+ research: Lich - very slow upgrade and requires archmage tower, maybe dragon call and necro extension building (below)

Building: some necro extension (graveyard? crypt? morgue?) - requires Necromancer Tower
+ research: Lich attack B (see Lich unit below)
+ research: Lich can move slowly while controlling enemies instead of being immobile?
+ research: improve some other Lich ability

Unit: Necromancer - pretty much as previously described
+ Summon Undead Infantry
+ Summon Undead Behemoths (researchable)
+ some ability to heal their skeletons & zombies (researchable)
+ Morph into Lich (researchable)

Unit: Lich - Lich looses summon abilities, moves slower than necro, has a little lower HPs and (no?) armor, but may possess some other defensive properties like a researchable damage shield or deceptive defense like an illusionary "shadow" of the Lich that follows him around and fools attackers into attacking it instead of the real Lich.  When such a "shadow" is close to the Lich, spell effects from the Lich's casting will only appear from one or the other, randomly alternating.
+ magical attack A: For a name, I was thinking "Decay", "Venom", some kind of fire that keeps burning. - initial damage plus damage over time, 4-ish splash radius, moderate EP cost, slow recast rate. Possibly a researchable effect that decreases some stat of opponent.
+ magical attack B (researchable): "Enveloping Despair", "Leech" or something - damages opponent and lowers a stat temporarily while transforming some of the damage into health for the Lich. higher EP cost.
+ "Control" or "Dominate" (innate): Can control up to 3 enemy units.  Monks and all "holy warriors" should be immune to this effect (but not scientists).  Controlled units will suffer constant health drain from the effect, but will be able to siphon *some* of the life from their opponents in battle (a small percentage).  Can control up to 3 units at once and cannot attack while controlling other units.  For balancing, may make him immobile or move slower while controlling if needed.  The Lich's EP should also suffer while controlling units, relative to the number of units controlled.  Perhaps 1 unit causes slow regen, 2 units no EP regen and 3 units causes EP drain.  Running out of EP while controlling 3 units will cause one of the slaves to be released.

Unit: Undead Infantry -- pretty much as described
+ submerge/bury: as described or where the ability is free and unlimited but they are immobile and cannot attack but ambush the enemy if the enemy comes near or have some limited (researchable?) attack while submerged.

Unit: Undead Behemoth -- pretty much as described


Magic Faction: Path of Nature

Initiates gain ritual to summon a treant from a tree.  I'm not certain how to work the costs on this one or rather or not it should use up the tree, but I'm thinking it should just use wood and leave the tree.

Building: Grove - requires library and manna compression (or something else like that).  Can only be built on existing trees or must have at least one or two trees in the place where it's built.  Workers can damage the building by harvesting wood from it, so be careful.  This building regenerates.
+ create Druid or morph from Initiate.
+ research: "Gift of Nature" - all organic units (humans, drake rider, etc.) gain regeneration and maybe gain the ability to travel more quickly through forests.  This might be tricky to implement without just letting them walk straight through trees (which is a possibility).  The later might also be a separate upgrade.

Building Change: Mage Tower
+ upgrade to "Blessed Mage Tower" or "Entwined Mage Tower" - requires Grove

Building: Entwined Mage Tower - appearance changes so that vines cover the building and it should get some shrubbery or something.
+ research: "growth"-ish name - a small amount of wood is automatically added to supply every few seconds.

Unit: Druid
+ Healing Ceremony: Heal a friendly non-demon unit as well surrounding units, but at a slower rate than the target.
+ Can travel across treetops and is an air target when above trees? (researchable)
+ Summon Sprite/Pixie?

Unit: Treant - Replacement for Daemon Giant on Path of Nature summoned by Initiates from forest.  Is an expensive, slow moving, heavy warrior unit with regeneration.
+ ability: Take Root (researchable) - while rooted, the treant appears to be a normal tree, but can attack enemies that come near it and gains regeneration and armor.  Rooting and unrooting should not be instant.

Unit: Pixie/Sprite? - I was thinking some type of very delicate, fast moving helper unit that brings enhancements (but not healing) to friendly units when near.  Maybe Druids obtain these and they fly around and visit friendlies within a mid to large-sized radius giving them some enhancement.


Technology Faction: Path of Enlightenment

I was thinking that this would be mostly as originally described except that "holy" units shouldn't be as powerful.  Rather, I think they should just gain defensive improvements, prayer and maybe some other researchable blessing.

Building: Abby - Requires Barracks & Farm (something like that).  Any holy fighting units should require "Training Field" from Barracks as well.
+ create Monk
+ research: global enhancement (bonus to armor and health as an upgrade instead of blessing?)

Unit: Monk
+ Heal friendly organic units.
+ Ability to repel undead units and perhaps free units from Lich control.


Technology Faction: Path of Reason

I don't have this one well thought yet, but the science route brings fewer new units and more enhancements to existing units through advanced technology.

Building: University - requires Blacksmith & Technodome.
+ create some unit?  maybe a physician?
+ research: advanced tools - workers and engineers build and harvest faster.  Engineers may get some other benefit from this
+ research: poison arrows - limited (maybe each archer gets 3 of them), will do damage over time to target.
+ research: compound bows - increases range and damage
+ research: aerial units move faster

Building: Academy or War Office - requires University and maybe Advanced Tools.
+ research: advanced offensive warfare - lowers the number of kills required for a unit to advance.
+ research: advanced defensive warfare - castle drops burning oil or rocks on non-ranged attackers?  Defensive Towers do more damage?
+ research: maybe catapults are upgraded to cannons?  Does that break the era this game is set in?

I hope I'm not going off the deep end here, but you may have started something really cool.

Edit: Added more stuff

[daniel.santos]

OK, now that I'm re-reading it, I'm having a few more ideas.

• To balance treants getting the root ability, maybe demon giants can get a "grow scales" enhancement, which turns them into scaly demons with higher armor.  However this balancing is done, it's better if it distinguishes them more from undead behemoths rather than making them more alike.  Either way, they should probably get some upgrade somewhere to keep them useful with the undead behemoths around.
• I didn't mean to leave out the +10 damage, +10 armor and +25% health bonus for necro minions, but I think the damage should be a percentage presuming that undead behemoths will do more damage than the skeletons.  Also, I think it should be permanent once researched.

[wciow]

Thanks for all the ideas!!

My basic idea was to follow the structure layed out in Justcallmeike's post. Basically adding a few new units to each faction as a mini-mod. However I can definetly see that there is room to build a whole new tech tree based around necro/religion. So I have decided that I will start by just building the 'path of corruption' and 'path of enlightenment' tech trees and then focus on 'path of nature/reason when these are finished.

The biggest problem with this is whether it is possible to deactivate a tech route i.e make it so that if you select the religion route the science route is automatically blocked. I don't think this is possible with the way glest is built. An alternative is to make each route expensive so that players can only realistically afford to go one way or the other during a game.

Some of the stuff ideas I liked

Heres a sot of my progress so far:



Finally heres a pic of the undead behemoth unit (I know its a crappy texture but I got bored making it )

[daniel.santos]

wciow, you ROCK!!  I agree with building out a little at a time.  I'm pretty sure that there is no mechanism in the code now that will allow you to disable a tech tree or have damage over time effects.  However, my line of work is software development  (just a joke though)

Also, my time is a bit limited until mid February, when my project (at work) is due to be completed.  I was thinking we could put a wiki page up with the specification so that we could all edit it and exchange ideas that way.

[@kukac@]

Daemon Giant is now called Behemoth,

are you sure, you want it to be named Behemoth?

[wciow]

@ daniel.santos

Yeah a wiki would be a nice way to organise the project. I have no idea how to make one but I'll look into it.

@ kukac

I'm not sure who said that, but afaik the daemon giant will stay exactly the same as it is!
The behemoth is a completely separate unit but will have similar (weaker) stats.

[daniel.santos]

@kukac@,
I was entertaining the idea of changing the requirements for Demon Giant so that they aren't available when choosing the Path of Nature.   But I feel like we're still very early in the process of exploring a 4-faction (i.e., 2 factions that have a branch later in development) mod.  But I think we're all going to just focus on Justcallmeike's original buildings & units and expand from there.  Justcallmeike's original ideas wont require any C code changes, except for perhaps the undead burrowing.

But did you mean that the Daemon Giant is now called Behemoth?

wciow,
There's actually already a glest wiki, we just need to create a page for our project   https://docs.megaglest.org/Main_Page.  I'll see if I can get something rudimentary up today.  My thought was a wiki table with each building & unit, what phase we want to target, how much of each part is done (models, skins, animations, sounds, xml, etc.) and how much agreement there is on it.

Also, tell me where the info is on your space-Glest project.  I would love to see what you're doing with that.  I have a friend who's an amature animator, but has good graphics skills, has done some film, etc.

Do you know where there are some stupid models I can use for placeholders for experimenting with the xml stuff?  I was thinking along the lines of a cube, sphere, pyramid, goofy stuff like that, just so I can tell them apart.  If not, would it take you long to create a few like that?  Nothing anywhere near fancy, maybe just a few different colors of a single cheap model.  Thanks!

[daniel.santos]

I've started a *very* rough draft here: https://docs.megaglest.org/Four_path_magitech.  Please feel free to edit and clean it up in any way that you see fit!  I'm not sure that I like how I attempted to use the tables there at all.  It might be best to just have a subsection for each new building and unit and embed a table from there for examining their traits.

[wciow]

Good job on the wiki , I made a small edit to show the status of the models but I'm not good with web editing and I didn't wanna break anything so I left most of it alone.  

I made you a set of simple placeholders for testing. Just put them in the folders like normal glest models and they should work.  (um, I need somewhere to host them and all the other stuff ? )

I'll make the construct/destruct models for the necro tower and graveyard soon then they'll be ready to go in-game!

As for the Sci-fi project theres no real info about it on the net since I don't really consider it finished enough for a beta version yet and I didn't want to announce such an ambitious project and then not finish it. Work continues but this mod is actually taking up most of my modding time now

[daniel.santos]

OK, I have cleaned up the wiki page and it looks a lot better and, I think, easier to manage.  I would like this, and the discussion page, to be a place to work out the details of these new units.  I'm sure we'll have to actually try them out in a game before we can decide if it feels right or not, but I think it's a good place to start and collaborate.  I posted a bit of feedback on the talk page https://docs.megaglest.org/Talk:Four_path_magitech and I would appreciate some feedback.

Also, I think I got all of the Path of Corruption details, based upon what we have discussed thus far (both agreed upon and not), so I think the next one to detail out is the Path of Enlightenment side.

wciow, can you just email me the little placeholders for now?  My address is daniel dot santos at pobox dot com.  Thanks!

[daniel.santos]

OK, I've been experimenting some with the xml for implementing these units (on the corruption side).  Thus far, the Necromancer is pretty underpowered, will have to work on that.  Also, I added a few more ideas for the path of reason: a mobile storage unit to facilitate faster mining/harvesting for workers, that can later be upgraded to a type of slow moving seige vehicle that can hold 2-4 units and allowing ranged units to attack from the vehicle while not getting hurt (until the seige unit is destroyed).  That one would require a bit of coding to implement as there isn't any way to do that as of yet, but it's out there as an idea anyway.

[wciow]

Heres a small update on some of the models:

Firstly the construction and destruction models for the necro tower:



Secondly a W.I.P shot of the graveyard. This is definitely not finished but I can't quite decide what to add to it.



Lasty the undead infantry/skeleton. This is also somewhat w.i.p since im not really happy with the skin,  it will get an update at some point.



Hopefully I will finish the models for the Lich and Necromancer soon!

[weedkiller]

Looks cool, i think you have talent. Don't stop with you work.
Have you already started animating?

[daniel.santos]

you rock man!

Ya think we can stick a rusty looking pauldron on one shoulder of the undead infantry or something?   Just a thought it looks awesome

Also, I figured out what they were talking about with the "behemoth."  Apparently, the daemon giant has been renamed to behemoth, so we probably want to call our new undead behemoth something different.  I've been sick so I haven't done much since the last thing with the effects.  I need to put up a place for us to host files on my server though.

Daniel

[daniel.santos]

Oh yea, for the graveyard, how about rickety a wooden fence and more graves, just make them smaller?  I'm not sure there.  Also, on the mounds, instead of making them square-ish, make them more rounded and deep so that they look ok on uneven ground (some will just stick up more than others.  When you get around to the building phase of the graveyard, maybe it can be where the graves are being dug (nasty!).

Great work!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I was thinking it would be a 3x3 space building like the library with the same cellmap as the mage guild, so units can traverse through it.  But again, I'm open-minded.

[wciow]

@ Weedkiller: Thanks for the comment. I haven't started animating yet because I want to finish all the model/texture work before I start.

@ Daniel: I'll stick a pauldron on the skeleton. Also I'll try to optomize the model a bit so it doesn't end up with any extra polies. It's nearly 900 now!
This isn't such a big deal for myself but people on slower rigs might start losing frames.

As for the grave yard I'm not sure whether to stick with the above model and add some stuff or start over from scratch  

[daniel.santos]

hehe, well to put my feedback into perspective, I don't have the kind of talent you already have.

Also, I usually get 190 FPS at 1920x1200 on my rig, so I'm not feeling it either.  I'm on an AMD 64 running at 2.2GHz some fairly recent nVidia PCI Express 16 card (I can't remember which one).  I'm guessing that with any recent nVidia or ATI card and a 1GHz + system, you are going to get pretty high frame rates on this game, it's very lean.