MoM IME Expanded

Anything else to do with MoM IME
Post Reply
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

that's why I see this spell as a potential issue. once you start a precedent of summoning say, a spearmen, it's only a matter of time before we end up with spells that summon completely unique units. i.e. summon paladin.

also, the convention just feels klunky and doesn't feel... right.

unless... how about if instead of the queen being able to spontaneously summon klackon units, the queen just confers a production bonus to a city that she's in when the city produces units? As well as say, give a slight bonus to population growth. you see where I'm going from here.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

Yeah... But I don't think there is any such effect in the game now, so you're back to adding a lot of programming again, I'm afraid.

Well, maybe we are better off making the swarm she spawns a separate unit, something like the Phantom Warriors unit. But if there is a problem with summoning more than one such unit per turn, just make the unit a bit tougher, and/or give the queen a large number of charges for the spell.

Maybe the summoned unit should be something like "Klackon Drones"? They could even have Flying movement, since many male ant drones can fly.
User avatar
Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lucern »

Congrats elliot - you're the first person to post images other than me lol. And you even got them into the forum. The dragon you drew is good...I like it, and I think it'll fit nicely. Gnoll's a bit dark, but I bet the base image could be MoM'ed up. The top one I'm having trouble registering what exactly it is out of context...I interpreted it as a dragon, for whatever that's worth. Of course, if it says Ximn the Drone in the hero page, that'll trick us into interpreting it as insectoid. I wonder what the rules are about using other images from games of the time for those kind of character portraits. I don't really know, but it occurred to me that the retro-gamers among us (don't we all count? lol) could probably think of a few likely cases if it's feasible. Daggerfall came to my mind as a basis for a few portraits, not to overuse any one source. Of course, that particular company still exists...

I also wanted to point out that MoM IME actually handles units with many figures pretty well. I know it can do 12 in a unit, but I'm less clear that it can do it when you haven't set the game to do multiple unit sizes. If I hadn't broken the editor...again...I'd test it right now lol. By the way, of the units I've done so far, the Free Men Necromancers will probably summon either skeletons or zombies, which is pretty much in the spirit of what you guys were talking about, at least before the randomization. That would be extremely cool if that ability could be pulled off. That alone would justify creating a powerful summoner unit for some race. "The battle hinged on the Summoner's one random summon. Ooh, halfling spearmen. Tough break."

Of course, your idea of the scaling down would work, so that you'd have one semi- powerful unit, representing the whole swarm. It could be roughly the combination of your separated units there - like with 12 hits, etc.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

oh it's supposed to be an ant. I took this and just ran some burns over it. maybe I oughta clear that up a little... I can try to re-do the gnoll image as well. both were based off of photos of real animals, actually. the other one is an angry hyena.

Yeah, I think it would be far easier implementation to just create a swarm unit, and add a new spell to the nature spell list for now. But yeah, summoner units so far are somewhat lacking in this game. it would be cool to have more units with that type of ability.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

It should be possible to create a spell, or a group of spells, which do not appear in the spell research lists of the wizards, I think. That group could contain spells which are known by heroes and even other units, making them mostly unavailable to those who shouldn't know them. Of course, it is only fitting if they can be found randomly in dungeons! :wink:
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

but wouldn't they need to classified in some section just so we can be clear on what effects what?

or would we just lump them all in "arcane"?
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

I think "Arcane" fits best for summoning regular units, and units similar to them, but what I want is a means to give a hero a spell which cannot be researched by wizards, so that it can be very specific. The ant queen could have her ant swarm spell, but it wouldn't be quite as fun to watch Merlin summoning a bunch of Klackons in every battle... :lol:
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

true, watching a wizard do this would be kind of not fun.

of course, we can always simply create a spell called "summon ally" as an arcane, and have the caster who casts it randomly summon an ally of the same race as them... no wait... this means every human hero who could do this could potentially pull a paladin out of their ass and we wouldn't want that.

for some reason, for a split second there, I had this vision in my head of swordmaster type characters to have "spells" that are really more like special moves... and then the idea of watching a unit go "hadoken" on the battlefield just got too stupid in my head to take seriously.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

Hehe!

We should let the martial types stay spell-less, for sure! Of course, the ant queen wouldn't have any other way to produce extra units, so she might be an exception. The more I think of it, however, the more I see flaws with the "summon random unit" spells. We had better produce a good swarm unit for our queen.
Last edited by Lubricus on Fri Sep 18, 2009 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

yeah...

maybe if I were to just give them 12 hits, 12 attack, 6 shields, and flight, it would be a decent start. (Actually, depending upon the number of usage, it could be kind of good)
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

If the queen's main ability is to spawn additional units, they don't have to be good. She can just stand in the background summoning unit after unit, flooding the enemy with useless little Klackons... :lol:
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

well, my main vision of the queen was to basically do that, but then also be a minor caster too. Of course, I wouldn't want her to be able to do it indefinitely. that's too easy to break. You could always just make them basically a phantom warrior-like spell.

and since she's already a caster, casting her unique spawns (who will be slightly better than a phantom warrior) will just use up mana like normal.
User avatar
Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lucern »

Hoo, I'm fast these days, ain't I?

I've got more than half of another race - Kobolds - complete. That's five units in any case: Slaves, Kobold Short-spears, Kobold Hunting Pack, War Dogs, and Kobold Sorcerers. They'll be swarmy, dirty fighters - ruthless packs of orange-tailed ankle-biters who use animal and slave proxies for the heavy fighting. I'm pleased with the graphics so far. I wasn't positive I could actually pull off something half the size of a man, smaller than halflings even, and still have it look like something discernible. I anticipate seeing a behemoth getting taken down by some ultra-elite kobolds will look hilarious. Tactically, they'll excel at horde tactics with highly populated units that don't cost much nor pack much of a punch individually, buffered by physical and magic missile support and a few key units for busting through the toughest core of enemy forces. Strategically, they'll have very high population rates, probably the highest, but they won't have access to several buildings, and they'll be fairly unruly. They will, however, get at least one unique building, which is a trend that I find more and more appealing so that we're not so automatic with the building of our cities. Of course, this might throw a wrench in city-building AIs. I'm no coder. Feel free to discuss the merits and mistakes of my design decisions - they're not set in stone. They'll be easy to switch up later, and easy for you guys to change for your own single-player purposes. That's why I'm not giving any numbers...I don't have any yet.

In any case, I'm doing my doctoral anthropology research in Texas for 9 months, working towards my PhD. My connection to the internet is limited, but my computer access is full otherwise.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

philosophically speaking, I think making the building order NOT an automated strategy a good thing. after all, this is a strategy game we're talking about here, and any action that is not a strategic one in nature is just a waste of player time. Having an automatically "optimal" strategy regardless of context is a bad thing in strategy games and really, the game would be better off without the need to micro-manage this automated move. After all, automated strats are not interesting.

In fact, one of the things I'd like to see implemented in MoM is the concept of Yomi-3. (Taken from sirlin.net, a website that talks about competitive gaming) here is the article that the concept was talked about.

for those of you who are too lazy to click on that link, the idea behind Yomi-3 is that you want both players to always have 2 potential, strategically viable options, but with vastly different potential outcomes. To simplify this concept, consider the game of rock paper scissors (again, an example used in the article I linked). Now, normally rock paper scissors is just a guessing game as all of your options have the same weight. you either win or you lose. The choice you make here might as well be completely random.

But let's add a wrinkle to it. Suppose that every time you win a game of RPS, you deal a certain amount of damage to your opponent, but depending upon WHICH option you picked, you dealt a different amount of damage. i.e. rock deals 10 points, paper deals 5 points, and scissors deal 1 points.

by pure probability, you would always go for rock as it's expected damage is the greatest. But wait! that makes you very predictable if you're always going for big damage. And against someone who knows your strat, they can simply pick paper and beat you each time. the introduction of inherently unequal values within the options is what makes this an interesting change to the game. now, the guessing game becomes a matter of learning how to read your opponent.
Lupinedreams
Posts: 83
Joined: Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:40 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lupinedreams »

As excited as I am about IME the expanded races projects here looks like it'll breathe even more new life into Implode's creation. I knew when he said it's be modular that people would be able to add in stuff like this, I'm just happy to see people putting effort into it making it a reality.
Post Reply