Recruitment and Buildings

[Bwian]

Been giving this much deep thought and pondering, and I think I have a solution that will work nicely.

1) Core buildings. These are mutually exclusive, and a required element for recruiting your own races troops. This would be represented by a critical building....say, for Dwarves.... Dwarf Hold, or for Orcs, and 'Orc Camp'. This would function like the old town-hall type buildings. To begin making your units in a captured town, you would need to demolish the old building, and put up your own. this would represent 'naturalising' the settlement.

2) Barracks etc. These bui;ldings would also be required to build units other than the most basic militia types. They would be needed in conjunction with the core building.

3) Skills based trees. Things like a blacksmith would be needed to build better units. Once you have a blacksmith, you can build a farrier, armourer and Weaponsmith.
A farrier would be needed to build anything but hte lightest mounted units, and so on.

There would also be hidden or special resources. Tomb Kings could only recruit basic units from a Core Building. this would allow them to raise certain low level dead units outside their core towns. It would be a 'temple' for them where they could store the bones of their warriors. A special resource would be needed for the real war-troops. This would be 'great pyramid' or some such. Those races that would not naturally be all that mobile will have similar options. Very basic units available from the core building...and special resources for advnaced or exotic ones.

Need to work out the fine details, but this is the broad approach I plan.

Thoughts and suggestions welcome

[uanime5]

Well this mostly solves the recruitment problem. But I have some questions.

1) How do you plan to make a faction demolish the core buildings? Unless they cause a problem in the settlement most players will just keep them. In additon the AI will try to take a building that is beneficial to it, though demolising the enemy's buildings will prevent the enemy from making a strong comeback.

2) So certain core buildings be required to build and upgrade the barrack. This can be easily coded.

3) I'm guessing that this will just provide upgrades, rather than additional units.

It would be unwise to use a lot of hidden resources since a player would not know what units they can recruit in different areas. Though holding areas with a valuable resource could be one of the victory conditions for a faction.

[Dogman55]

I like the idea of using special resources for the more rare and uncommon types in armies. Sacred spawning pools would be good special resources! ^_^

[DrZoidberg]

Before we have building lists, and where each unit is recruited there isn't much to talk about. The logic seems solid, and totally doable.

Uanime, we can write on the info card any restrictions to where units who need hidden resources can be recruited.

[Bwian]

If a particular building means you cannot have ANY units built, then I would hope the AI / player would demolish it! That is the idea. If you are playing Orcs, and take a settlement with a Dwarf Hold in it, you cannot build any units until you demolish it and build hte Orc Camp in it's place. Each core building is unbuildable if another exists. Each faction has to have it's own core building to make units.

The hidden resources are designed to limit special units for factions like the Tomb Kings. There special units would be buried deep in the Tombs, and would not be rasied anywhere else. I would assume the spells and relics necessary to raise htem would not be taken abroad for fear of losing them.

Likewise, the Chaos forces 'went to the far north' to gain the gifts of hte gods, so a Chaos Knight would not pop up in a town in the middle of the Empire. Some factions are more flexible than others, but some should not be :yes:

I don't intend to be too restrictive when ot comes to unit recruitment, but I DO want it to be a tactical element in the game, not just a production line :smash:

[Dead Guy]

I don't know how it works in M2, but in Rome the AI practically never demolished buildings. Every time a roman faction conquered barbarian lands, they kept their temples of Donar or whatever it happened to be, in my experience. In M2 the religious buildings are automatically destroyed though if I remember correctly? Perhaps you can work around that, otherwise I guess it's not a huge problem to destroy it on occupation?

Cheers!
:skull:

[Bwian]

The AI behaviour will be the critical factor for this. I need to make sure that the AI will always demolish the building on occupation, or else come up with a way of doing this via scripting.

I need to do a load of experimentation with buildings to understand how the AI works it's build queues and what effect conditionals have on it's choices.

[DrZoidberg]

The AI behaviour will be the critical factor for this. I need to make sure that the AI will always demolish the building on occupation, or else come up with a way of doing this via scripting.

I need to do a load of experimentation with buildings to understand how the AI works it's build queues and what effect conditionals have on it's choices.

In MTW2 churches/mosques are always auto-nuked if conquered by another faith. How does that work?

[uanime5]

If a particular building means you cannot have ANY units built, then I would hope the AI / player would demolish it! That is the idea. If you are playing Orcs, and take a settlement with a Dwarf Hold in it, you cannot build any units until you demolish it and build hte Orc Camp in it's place. Each core building is unbuildable if another exists. Each faction has to have it's own core building to make units.

How can this be coded? Is there a trait that can be added to buildings that will prevent them being built if certain buildings are present, for example can the Orcs be prevented from building an Orc camp if a Dwarf Hold already exists? If not the the AI / player will not demolish the Core buildings because they can build their faction's Core buildings without demolishing them.


In MTW2 churches/mosques are always auto-nuked if conquered by another faith. How does that work?

This is hard coded (the game auto-deletes any religious buildings when a faction of a different religion conquers the settlement). To apply this sucessfully each faction would have to be a different religion.

EDIT 10/09/07: I heard that if you add the prefix 'temple' to a building's group name (not the name of its upgrades) it will be destroyed when a faction of another religion takes over. However I have not heard of any way to change this to another faction taking over.

[Bwian]

Conditionals in buildings are easy to do. You just add in the details ... 'not' worked in RTW anyway!