Tech Trees

Hello, I'm currently trying to come up with original ideas for WTW Tech Trees, and a bit of help would be appreciated.

ATM, I'm aiming at doing a Skaven Tech/Building Tree.
What I'd like is to simulate the rivalry and internal struggles between different Clans. So, I had to idea to allow the Skaven faction to hire unit from only one clan per city (aswell as the common warrior clan units : slaves, clanrats and stormvermins). That way, the player would have to make a choice : does he want Clan Moulder's abominations, or rather Clan's Skryre's powerful weapons ?

I'm also facing another issue : should skaven get cities aswell as castles ? I'm not sure Skaven would make such a difference.

So, right now, the plan is something along those lines :

Tier 1 :
Slave pit - Tier 1 :
Skaven Slaves
Increase trade income

Altar of the Horned One :
Increase Public Order

Tier 2 :
Slave pit - Tier 2 :
Skaven Slaves
Further increase trade income

Warrior Clan Network - Tier 1 :
Clan Rats

Church of the Horned One :
Grey Seer (diplomat)
Increase Public Order

House of the Council :
Spy
Increase Public Order

Tier 3 :
Slave Pit : Tier 3
Skaven Slaves
Further increase trade income

Warrior Clan Network - Tier 2
Clan Rats

Eshin Training Ground - Tier 1
Night Runners
or
Moulder Experimental Pit - Tier 1
Giant Rats
or
Skryre Warplock Laboratory - Tier 1
Poison Wind Globadiers
or
Pestilens Church of Decay - Tier 1
Plague Monks

Temple of the Horned One :
Grey Seer (diplomat)
Increase Public Order

Embassy of the Thirteen :
Spy
Assassin
Increase Public Order

Tier 4 :
Slave Pit : Tier 4
Skaven Slaves
Further increase trade income

Warrior Clan Network - Tier 3
Clan Rats
Storm Vermins

Eshin Training Ground - Tier 2
Night Runners
Gutter Runners
or
Moulder Experimental Pit - Tier 2
Giant Rats
or
Skryre Warplock Laboratory - Tier 2
Poison Wind Globadiers
Warp Lightning Canon
or
Pestilens Church of Decay - Tier 2
Plague Monks

Tier 5 :
Slave Pit : Tier 5
Skaven Slaves
Further increase trade income

Warrior Clan Network - Tier 4
Clan Rats
Storm Vermins

Eshin Training Ground - Tier 3
Night Runners
Gutter Runners
or
Moulder Experimental Pit - Tier 3
Giant Rats
Rat Ogres
or
Skryre Warplock Laboratory - Tier 3
Poison Wind Globadiers
Warp Lightning Canon
Warplock Jezzails
or
Pestilens Church of Decay - Tier 3
Plague Monks

Great Temple of the Horned One :
Grey Seer (diplomat)
Increase Public Order

The Skaven's tech tree seems well though out but I would like to make the following points.

Firstly can the Skaven recruit priests? If they can then the priest agent should be added to the religious buildings.

Secondly the spy / assassin buildings only have 2 levels ('House of Council' and 'Embassy of the Thirteen'). It may be better to have more levels of these buildings, with each building providing improved benefits (see my third point).

Thirdly will constructing improved buildings increase the experience of the soldiers and agents, eg would a 'Skryre Warplock Laboratory - Tier 3' produce more experienced 'Poison Wind Globadiers' that it's Tier 1 version?

Fourthly can the Skaven improve their weapons and armour?

Fifthly I don't think it's possible to prevent the construction of a building due to another building being present (unlike in RTW where you could only have one type of religious building). So you couldn't prevent a player building a 'Eshin Training Ground' and a 'Moulder Experimental Pit' in the same settlement unless both of these buildings are classed as guild buildings.

I'd also like to point out the the following factors can easily be changed with different building levels: unit cost, recruit time, refresh rate (how often you can recruit them), unit and agent experience, and agent limit (for example 1 per merchant per Trade building).

While the following effects can be added to any building: ability to recruit units and agents, improving weapons and armour, generating money, improving or reducing law and order, coverting the population to the faction's religion, trade bonuses. These effects can affect a settlement or the whole faction.

TBH, I haven't yet add a look at M2TW export_descr_buildings file. Not being allowed to use a building conditionals such as "or not" and "and not" would be quite annoying, yeah.
I'll just try to create 2 new exclusive buildings and see how it goes.

As for Priest, yeah, Skaven have priests. Grey Seers or Clan Pestilens' religious characters could act as priest agents, but then, I don't know what's the final word on religion (hence why I haven't add religious conversion bonus to the religious building).

Originally Posted by :
Secondly the spy / assassin buildings only have 2 levels ('House of Council' and 'Embassy of the Thirteen'). It may be better to have more levels of these buildings, with each building providing improved benefits (see my third point).

Yeah, it's just that I had not other name idea for further levels ;)

Originally Posted by :
Thirdly will constructing improved buildings increase the experience of the soldiers and agents, eg would a 'Skryre Warplock Laboratory - Tier 3' produce more experienced 'Poison Wind Globadiers' that it's Tier 1 version?

Yeah, later tier will probably grant more experienced units, with better refresh rates and higher unit limits. It wasn't included here because it's a bit too early to think about this ;)

I think Skaven clan specific unit-reqruiting-buildings should be guilds. The reason is because a city only belongs to one clan. Except Skavenblight that belongs to neither.

You need to be careful over the number of buildings you are using overall. If there is a cap ( and there was in RTW ) then you may find that you are trying to define too many buildings, or that there are too few buildngs for each faction.

You can specify which faction has which building, and what units they can build there .... but make sure we are going to be able to make things work with a whole set of factions defined in the same way.

Thing is, Guilds are rewarded fairly randomly. Yeah, of course, we can edit the way guild points are granted, but that would affect all factions, and not only the skaven one.

In vanilla game for example, Merchant Guilds are fairly common (to the point where nearly every city will be offered one), while some other like Theologian, Explorers or Macons, are hardly ever seen if you don't know what are the requirements.

Hence why I decided to make exclusive, yet non guild buildings. It allows us to limit each city to one clan (two in fact, a warrior clan + a major one, but then, all major clan hire slave and clanrats from Warriors Clans, so that's not really an issue here), and to still use guilds as special gifts/rewards.
Ultimately, and since the only person I'm in contact with is Bwian, I'm awaiting his opinion on the whole tech tree.


I'm currently trying to come up with some skaven equivalent for farms, academy, ports and blacksmith, if you have any idea, you're welcome ;)

Edit, since I just read Bwian's answer.

Yeah, I'm well aware there's a limit to the amount of buildings available. Most of those would be based on vanilla buildings, but with different descriptions/pics, depending on factions' culture.
The only new building planned would be the four clan specific ones.

Well, after a few tries, not only I made 4 different clan specific buildings that cannot be built in a same city, but I also did it with only one building complexe slot.

Theres nothing in the armybook which suggests clan troops are limited to one type per settlement, in fact the wfrp second edition sourcebook says skaven citys can be home to a number of clans. Some are completely dominated by one like hell pit but some like skavenblight and black chasm are split between 4 or 5 clans. Likewise theres nothing in the armylists which stops you fielding different clan types in the same army so I dont see why we should impose any limits here. Its not like theres a massive troop selection when you take them out, just 3 basic units.

On the castle thing I dont think what to do with them has been decided on yet, bwian had one idea for the different types of settlement and I had another, cant actually remember either of them at the mo :juggle2: Dont think the relatively small number of troop types available to each faction really justifies using them as they were in medieval though, not to mention that none of our faction really uses that sort of system.

Having broken down the buildings text file, the differences between castle and town in the build queues is simple. There is a 'flag' that says castle or town, and which castle converts to which town in terms of build queue.

It would be simple enough to remove the castle/town references, or to make it so that both buildings build identical things. You then set the castle and towns to be built by different factions.

I will look at this a bit more closely now I have them broekn down into an excel file

Originally Posted by Casuir:
Theres nothing in the armybook which suggests clan troops are limited to one type per settlement, in fact the wfrp second edition sourcebook says skaven citys can be home to a number of clans. Some are completely dominated by one like hell pit but some like skavenblight and black chasm are split between 4 or 5 clans. Likewise theres nothing in the armylists which stops you fielding different clan types in the same army so I dont see why we should impose any limits here. Its not like theres a massive troop selection when you take them out, just 3 basic units.

Well, I beg to disagree here. Children of the Horned Rat doesn't say that all settlements are ruled by only one clan, but that due to rivalry/hatred, some clans just can not and will not stand living with another one.

CotHR and other Black Industry source also introduce a heap lot of minor clan, sometimes composed of as few as 1000 members. These clan usually do not own their own cities, and live with other clans, as they fill essential tasks and jobs : they make maps of the underempire, provide food and warpstone to other skavens, take care of hygiena issues, acts as the Council's secret police, make sure secrets won't be forgotten and what not.
So yeah, many clan can and do live in same cities. But having the four major clans getting along fine in a single city ? Apart from Skavenblight (who is not owned by a clan but by the Council), I don't see it happening.
As for Black Chasm, last time I read something about it, it was said that Clans Eshin and Pestilens fought over it.

As for the army list, it's just a generic army list. Some clan specific lists were released (AFAIK, for Pestilens and Eshin), and they were more restrictives than the generic one.

But yeah, restricting to one major clan per city wouldn't have a huge impact, given that about 10 units are planed. I just thought it was a nice idea, fluff and game wise ;)
We can aswell use the generic MTW building, make new descriptions and pics, without bothering about the different clans.

And yeah, it's apparently quite easy to not use Castle or City, by deleting references to castle, castle versions of each building, and the city to castle building.

They dont have to get along fine, they just have to be in the same city. The player is essentially the council of thirteen so if they order the clans to stop fighting each other and march out together they'll do it. Also another thing from the fluff you're not taking into account is the under-empire, regardless of where the clans are based they can be moved anywhere else at the whim of the council. None of the clans are above hiring their troops to each other. Couple all this with the fact that you've only got three non-clan units and the disparity of the skavens starting settlements and I think you'll end up unbalancing the skaven in comparison to other factions who dont have the same sort of clan structure.

On the castle/city thing, they're essentially two seperate core buildings trees, the only difference I think is castle tax rates are hardcoded. The problem with having two seperate trees buildable by two seperate factions is that if one takes over the other they wont be able to upgrade it.

Here's a suggestion. Why don't we just make a list of buildings each faction is likely to build and later worry about which units gets built by what. Since almost every building mentioned in the source books are specific to a particular unit I think it'll sort itself out. All we need is, lets say 20 special buildings per faction and then just take it from there.

Since the source books only superficially go into the economy required to reqruit each unit, there's IMHO no point dwelling on it. We have to make it up.

Originally Posted by Bwian:
You need to be careful over the number of buildings you are using overall. If there is a cap ( and there was in RTW ) then you may find that you are trying to define too many buildings, or that there are too few buildngs for each faction.

I don't think there is a cap on the number of buildings a faction can have (I haven't tested this by building every building that is available in a settlement). I don't think there is a minimum limit since Mesoamerican's only have one building (though they can upgrade cities and castles).

Originally Posted by Meneldil:
Thing is, Guilds are rewarded fairly randomly. Yeah, of course, we can edit the way guild points are granted, but that would affect all factions, and not only the skaven one.

Guilds, like all buildings are faction specific. This is why only the HRE can get a Teutonic Knights guild.

Originally Posted by :
I'm currently trying to come up with some skaven equivalent for farms, academy, ports and blacksmith, if you have any idea, you're welcome ;)

How about Foragers (search for food), Researcher, Skaven Port, and Armourer; respectively.

Originally Posted by Meneldil:
Well, after a few tries, not only I made 4 different clan specific buildings that cannot be built in a same city, but I also did it with only one building complexe slot.

Can you please tell me how you did this. It would be useful to known should I ever want to limit the buildings that can be built in a settlement.

Originally Posted by Casuir:
On the castle/city thing, they're essentially two seperate core buildings trees, the only difference I think is castle tax rates are hardcoded. The problem with having two seperate trees buildable by two seperate factions is that if one takes over the other they wont be able to upgrade it.

Also a city has more levels than a castle so any building that requires a huge city cannot be built in a castle (the building description says you need a starfort).

Other problems associated with a castle faction conquering a city is that even if they can convert the settlement, for example a large town to a wooden castle, any buildings without a castle equivalent will be completely destroyed. Even worse large and huge cities cannot be converted to castle buildings, making them useless to a castle only faction (I don't believe this is hard coded, so it can be changed).

Originally Posted by uanime5:
Also a city has more levels than a castle so any building that requires a huge city cannot be built in a castle (the building description says you need a starfort).

Any reason we cant just add a starfort to the files?

Adding a startfort would not be like adding a new building or an upgrade to a building, it would involve creating a new level of castle for battles. I don't even know if it's even possible to unlock this level (it obviously exists because the game didn't crash when I said a castle building could only be built in a huge city).

To add this level it would involve modifying descr_settlement_mechanics.xml (settlement levels and names), export_descr_buildings.txt (building types and upgrades), and probably descr_building_battle.txt (settlement's defence). You'd also have to add it to the 'settlements' folder for all cultures (so it would appear in battles) and to all the 'building' and 'cities' folders for all the cultures in the 'ui' folder (gives the building it's icons).

Of course even if you did this it's unknown if the game will accept this. If you can add the starfort create a thread about it in the Modding Research Wiki (adding extra settlement levels will be useful to someone).

Reality check time.

If you are planning to make a unique building set for each faction, with unique buildings and unique unit recruitment, I suggest you think very carefully about whether this is the way we are going to go.

What happens when a settlement is taken by another faction. You are forcing destruction and a complete rebuild. If you do not, then you have a building that you can recruit no troops from.

Since no-one has actually tested this...how can you assume there was no limit to the number of build trees. I am NOT referring to the number of buildings you can build in a settlement. I am referring to the number of buildings that can exist in the text file. RTW had a limit on total build trees, and by definition, the number of buildings that could exist in a unique form. Do not assume they have removed this limit. You are trying to run here before you know you can walk, and I do not want to see lots of wasted work here. Why do you think so many of MTW2's buildings are 'generic' or culturally controlled.

I need the following:

1)Outline structures. Not specifics, not fluff, not complex fancy and untested ideas. I need a list of buildings, with the upgrade levels in a proper build tree ( as the stock ones are ) with ideas as to what units and stat bonuses go with the buildings. Do not focus on the detail... we need the basic structure.

2) Tested ideas working in game. Put your build ideas in game with stock units in them and see how they play. Do the combinations work. Do they produce the units and stat bonuses you want, and do they work as expected. What build conditionals work. Start with the RTW known commands and see if they work.

3) PM me with an outline of what you are trying to do. This goes for ANYONE wanting to head off on a new area. You cannot construct a build queue without knowing the units. You need to consider the unit bonuses.

I do not agree with the direction this is taking.

I want to know exactly what you are planning, and how you envisage this working before work progresses.

Originally Posted by Bwian:
If you are planning to make a unique building set for each faction, with unique buildings and unique unit recruitment, I suggest you think very carefully about whether this is the way we are going to go.

Has anyone even proposed this ? The only new building complex I planed to add was the clan specific one (furthermore, it could probably have been used by other factions with clan/city or governement variations), and according to Casuir, that's a no-no.
So well, you can aswell use vanilla M2TW buildings and make new descriptions for the skaven faction/culture, and voila, you're settled.

Originally Posted by Bwian:
What happens when a settlement is taken by another faction. You are forcing destruction and a complete rebuild. If you do not, then you have a building that you can recruit no troops from.

It is possible for different factions to recruit units from other faction's buildings, possibly even if they could not construct this building (I have not tested this). Even if they cannot recruit soldiers from the existing buildings they can still construct their own buildings that let them recruit soldiers without demolishing the existing buildings.

This reminds me of a problem we had right at the start of this mod, which was should different species be able to recruit their units in areas that belong to other factions (I believe the example was can Dwarves recruit Dwarves after conquering a settlement controlled by Orcs, or do they need to construct new buildings to train Dwarves).

Regarding the number of buildings you can add I was able to added 12 new buildings (3 tech trees) to my Mythological mod and 38 (10 tech trees, though half the buildings were the castle equivalent) to my Titanocene mod (both worked fine). However I do not know the maximum possible number of buildings that can be added.

Perhaps I am not making myself clear here:

DO NOT carry on with this until the overall approach to recruitment is decided. This has not happened, and I do not want to start trying to design faction build trees one faction at a time with no clear idea what we are doing. Hence my requests above. The postings in this thread seem to indicate that this is a subject that is being decided upon...and it isn't.

This is not work that should be done without reference to the bigger picture, and I do not want it moving in this direction. I can't make it clearer than that.

Originally Posted by Bwian:
Perhaps I am not making myself clear here:

DO NOT carry on with this until the overall approach to recruitment is decided. This has not happened, and I do not want to start trying to design faction build trees one faction at a time with no clear idea what we are doing. Hence my requests above. The postings in this thread seem to indicate that this is a subject that is being decided upon...and it isn't.

This is not work that should be done without reference to the bigger picture, and I do not want it moving in this direction. I can't make it clearer than that.

Bwian, wise as always. If I have understood vanilla MTW2 correctly most buildings are the same for all factions but just named differently. We can do the same here. And off-course have one extra special per faction, just for fun.

So infantry recruiting buildings can be for:

Empire
Garrisson
Garrisson headquaters
Urban Barracks

Skaven
Slave pens
Clanrat armourer
Clanrat training grounds

Dwarves
Dwarven blacksmith
Dwarven armourer
Clansmen training grounds

I didn't give the names much thought by the idea is that each level corresponds to the other factions buildings. Which means they will not have to be raised when conquered, and then later can be uppgraded.

How about that Bwian? Will this work do you think?

Zoidberg...yes...that is the way the buildings work. This is what I mean by the basic structure.

IF you have a 'barracks level 1' then you a building to recruit basic troops for all the factions. The way this structure will be built up has to be sorted out before the detail layer can be added.

Some factions will need to have special build trees, purely because they do not fit hte standard pattern. Tomb King's for example, would need to have a Zone of Recruitment approach, rather than simple build tree. The resources for their army come from limited places.

This would require, probably, a special resource for recruitment or a building that can only be built in certain places. These things need testing and proving before we start to flesh out the detail.

Yes...this is work that needs doing.... but we can't rush into it.