Creatures of the Night

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Not so sure about the name of the mod, just made it up now. This is the fourth forum I've posted this in. Anyway, I had a dream last night about a RTW General who became a Vampire. At first he feared his new powers, but after not too long he came to embrace them. Later on, however, the people learned of his dark secret and turned on him. This inspired me to create this mod. This will be for RTW version 1.5.

How you become a vampire

Alright, I'm thinking that you have a chance of contracting the vampire disease any time one of your generals, spies, diplomats, or assassins end the turn outside of a city. There will be a small chance (higher for spies, diplomats, and assassins) every turn that you wait outside of a city.

Now, when you first get "bit by a vampire", you get a trait that says something like "taken ill". The description will be "This man has contracted a strange illness, but no one knows what it is", and will lower the guy's movement points. After a few turns, his trait will change to "Creature of the Night", and he'll be a vampire.

Effects of "Creature of the Night"

For Generals: I'm not so sure yet. I'm thinking It'll give them many more hitpoints, since vampires are strong. A drop in Influence, but a moral boost for the troops.

For Diplomats: It'll just give them a drop in Influence. Or perhaps a raise, since he could use fear to help negotiate. I'm not sure.

For Spies and Assassins: It improves their skills.

Retinue effects of Vampirism

Alright, I think being a vampire should attract certain ancillaries (ancillaries are things like aged retainer, bodygaurd, etc) and scare away other ones. I need some ideas for new ancillaries to get for being a vampire.

Any ideas are welcome!

Update: Here are some of my newer ideas:

- A "secretness" level of your Vampirism. The longer you've been a vampire, the higher the chances are that people will find out your secret. The more of a secret it is, the less effect it will have on your Influence and Public Order. Once the secret is out, your vampire general will get much lower influence, law, and things like that.

- A "thirst" level for your Vampire General. The longer you go without winning battles, the thirstier your general gets. The thirstier he gets, the weaker he gets. You won't die from not fighting, but you will suffer some ill side effects.
- A Vampire epiphet (the title given to them), like "Decimas the Bloodsucker"

- Having it be genetic (not sure about this one) as well.

Any ideas are still welcome!

[Makanyane]

I'm not actually suggesting you pinch all the ideas people came up with for our mod - but you might get some ideas from this:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=107517


(vampires are quite good fun - but werewolves are better )

[Fate]

Wouldnt it be better to run it through BI 1.6?
You could use night battles then, something id imagine to be reasonably fundamental with vampires.

[Makanyane]

Or there is always:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59950
which shows how to add night battles to RTW....

access to night battles is controlled by the character traits, so it would be something that would fit quite well, if your general got the trait when he became a vampire.

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Are you sure that would work, even without BI installed?! I have BI installed, but people that download my mod might not. THANK YOU either way! Now I just need to figure out a way to make the vampires actually weaker in day battles and stronger in night battles.

[Fate]

Or there is always:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59950
which shows how to add night battles to RTW....

access to night battles is controlled by the character traits, so it would be something that would fit quite well, if your general got the trait when he became a vampire.

You had to go and show me up didnt you Makanyane!


But nah, if it works like that, then do it on the RTW engine, though i do think that BI could offer other things (such as legendary weapons) etc

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Thanks, Makanyane! It's working fine. Now I'll include Night Battles in CotN, too!

UPDATE: Spies, Assassins, Diplomats, and Generals can now all be vampires. I am now working on going more in-depth with Vampire Generals.

[Caius]

You will need new skins, I guess...

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Why is that?

[Caius]

I mean, how could I recognize if a general had became a vampire one?

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Checking the traits.

[Makanyane]

If you give your base vampire trait an epithet (can't remember if you mentioned doing that anyway) like "the bloodthirsty" then they'd be more obvious on viewing the general.

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Yes, but one of the ideas for my vampire mod is that the vampire generals try to keep their dark gift a secret, but people figure it out over time. So once the secret is out, I may do that.

[Makanyane]

ah I see, in that case I assume you could have some of the initial traits hidden? So the player just starts to notice the suspicious behaviour with no apparent cause.....

sounds rather fun

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Sort of - but not really. Maybe I should do that, however. But I'm thinking that the player plays through the eyes of his generals, in which case he (or she) would know that he's a vampire, but his troops and citizens would not.

[Myrddraal]

I'd agree SSJVegeta, traits already exist saying "Secret Heretic" or whatever.

As for new skins, you can't have new skins appearing for just a set of generals with a certain trait, you can either have a blanket new skin for generals or no change.

I think epithets are a good way of distinguishing the vampires though. Maybe you could add some even for the 'secret' traits. Something like: "Boris the Secretive" or "Boris the Dark" would become "Boris the Bloodsucker" if his secret was revealed

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Good ideas. Update: I've made the "Vampire Thirst" traits and tested them a bit, so I am now working on the Vampire Secret traits. It's interesting having to think of different ways to insert these into the game using the trait system.