So I was messing around with the unit editor, making an incredibly strong Fortress sitting atop a mountain with only a narrow valley as its entry point (and this entry point is of course covered in Fortresses, archers and artillery from all 4 races) and triggering armies into assaulting it in a never ending balancing game of adding more Fortress and adding more legion until one of the automaton legions clashed with one of the myrmidon legions and they began to oscillate violently and create a singularity of melee units which swallowed the game up.
Which is when I decided to make a new map, one which made more sense.
The map is almost entirely ocean, right now there are little to no trees, very little space for farms, fish are sparsely dotted around the map and all of the map's gold mines are monopolized by the Egyptians, safe behind their wall of Migdol Strongholds.
The player owns this monstrosity:
Which houses all the things a pirate could possibly want. Except maybe gold, but it does have a market - a player could potentially try to build an economy off of peacefully gathering fish and selling it for lumber and gold, or they could use their very special pirate ship seawolf...
To raid the lands of evil villagers stockpiling resources for nefarious purposes (probably just trying to survive winter, but we're pirates so everyone is acceptably evil in some way or another to be perfectly pillagable in the eyes of the gods) and build up an income by using their resources. Seawolf is itself rather nice, it's a pirate ship so it can hold troops like a longship, has a few more arrows per shot and bonus attack against ships and is the fastest thing in the ocean. It can reliably one/two shot fishing ships and nothing ever escapes it due to its speed, it can hold its own against two triremes and win and also has a slow regen so it'll eventually reach full HP out of combat. That said, it's an absolute glass cannon. A single sentry tower is enough to keep it away from your island (it won't stop it from landing a dozen hoplites though).
Not being a hero boat like the Argo, it can also be one shotted by krakens and carnivoras, flung about by giant turtles and generally destroyed by all other things mythical.
This means that when it comes to fighting the Egyptians (who have just under a dozen strongholds facing the sea, warship patrols and sentry tower outposts) you need to build up an armada with the resources gained from despoiling villagers.
Then with all haste you need to sail your fleet through their fleet, their defences, blow up their dockyards (this makes space for a landing zone as the rest of the coastline is unassailable cliffs), land your troops and pray that enough of your fleet survives crocodile laserbeams that you can take out enough of their city to win. Pic here is of the AI slaughtering the last of my triremes with the ancestor GP, trapping my troops on his island with the crocodile laserbeams.
The thing I've spent the most time on this map making though is the sunken city of name not yet decided.
It's the largest city on the entire map and is a navigational hazard for all ships; a fleet will not sail through these waters with any grace, and even for a lone ship it's hazardous. That's not even taking into account the fact that the city is full of angry sea beasts which literally feed on ships for lunch.
While it's not in the direct center of the map, it is in such a prominent location that all ships that attempt to sail from Pirate Capital to Egypt Capital will have to skirt the edge of the sunken city - it's so large it's impossible to miss. And it's eerie, even as the map creator, first seeing it appear out of the dark fog of war.
Those empty waters, those deep streets filled with the ruins of a bygone era and the shades of their damned souls, those souls watched on by their immortal guardians, still guarding a lost city... Even sailing through it forces your ship to slow down and take in the decay.
Sailing through it is not advised. One can end up chased by one evil sea beast into another and another and another...
Scattered amongst the ruins are also hints, hints of what befell this city. To a pirate, this means hints of TREASURE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES!
[At least, consequences in the present]
Here and there there are also obvious reminders of the unnatural nature of the calamity which befell this city. Said reminders may become helpful, or violent at times. Maybe both.
DID I MENTION TREASURE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES? Well, you want to take that Egyptian gold don't you? You've got to invest in some fleet before you can fleet off with that gold!
All in all I'm quite happy with this; the third map I've made properly that wasn't just dicking around in the sandbox and it's the first map I can without hubris call good, so strike me down Zeus (don't strike me down Zeus).
To do list:
- Find some way to simulate sea trade between the farmers and Egyptians.
- Find some way to continually spawn fleets for the Egyptians (since on their own they're not fond of building them)
- Find some way to simulate mercenaries, rival pirates, sea police
- Add more island civs (three civs each with a monopoly on fish, on farms and lumber seem obvious on mind)
- Bosses (the sea beasties of the sunken city are already de facto bosses, but human admirals / monster hunter rewards are planned)
- A hero pirate captain who resides in Seawolf? Maybe. Could juice up one of the Norse hammer heros and give him a name, a moustached pirate captain with a warhammer is a glorious sight to behold. Maybe I should keep in the spirit of things and make him a human soldier, not a hero. Yeah, that sounds better. Pirate Captains don't need to be heroes! Heroes are fishfeed!
- Trade convoys which continually sail from one end of the map to the other and can be intercepted for wealth.
- Find a way to make ships killed by the Seawolf reward with gold or even better, simulate being captured and switch sides.
Also, I'm definitely going to add the possibility of awakening the city.
[The city itself will not awaken, at least, I will think long and hard about it first. There is some odd buggy behaviour regarding underwater units, especially underwater melee units. Worst case scenario I'll just have the same side that controls angry sea beasties awaken something horrible on the world. This buggy behaviour could actually be beneficial - melee units underwater are effectively invincible against all ranged projectiles from the surface, as these projectiles cannot go beneath the ocean. If melee units can move around and fight underwater just fine then great, but I've seen enough bugged egyptian axemen underwater to know not to be hopeful just yet. If they just stand around doing nothing it'll hardly be apocalyptic].
Any help on how to get the triggers constantly spawning armies would be great, I kinda want to get what they have going on with that one map with the slow camel caravan in that twisty map in the campaign with the endless respawning cohorts but with ships.
*EDIT
I have decided to model the Captain of the Seawolf on a militia soldier. Because the notion that the sea's most fearsome pirate is an angry man with a pitchfork and a straw hat is too good to pass up.
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Topic: Age of Mythology (Read 16840 times)