Tech Trees

[Meneldil]

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

[uanime5]

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.

[Meneldil]

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).

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 ;)

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 ;)

[DrZoidberg]

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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 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.

[Bwian]

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

[Meneldil]

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.