challenge of making a necromancer map

[myythryyn]

hello, so im making a single mission story map, and i chose necromancers as the faction.
and im discovering you have to make the map completely differerent than you would any other faction.

first off, can everyone who reads this answer this question -

when you play undead, and you attack a neutral army, and you get the option that they want to flee, so you dont need to fight the battle, do you pursue them, or save yourself the hassle of the battle and let them flee?

its very important i know what other players do, because if you let them flee, you dont get any archers.
so, in order for me to balance the map, i have to assume that every player fights all neutral battles, or else the player that doesnt will end up having alot less archers. im guessing everyone fights neutrals when they are undead. am i right?

so this leads to what the real challenge is, and that is how to prevent the necromancy skill from making the map boring and too easy.
in my first test of my map, with the way i make maps, about half way through the map(its large size) i had 9000+ skeletal archers doing around 70 000 damage. basically every battle became way to easy, so i just turned the map off.

so i reduced the amount of neutrals on the map, and reduced the amount of low lvl neutrals. but for my map style, i like objects to be gaurded, and you dont want the map to look and feel bare. so its been tough trying to place just the right amount of neutrals.
even things like putting hundreds of mages or other ranged units to cause problems doesnt work, with raise dead i was able to kill 565 mages, with no causualties, and then raised the mages afterwards and increased my archer stack even more.
not even sending large AI controlled armies against the player worked, since the larger the army you send in, the larger amount of archers the player gets after.
so its been really hard to try to prevent the player from getting zounds and zounds of archers and make the map unchallenging.

so then i decided to put scripted events, and with logical reasons behind them happening, that removed archers from the players army.
like when they approach the sylvan city, snipers shoot and kill their archers, and then removeherocreatures takes archers away.
would that annoy you if you were playing the map? its the only thing i could think of.

and whirlpools, those are great, when i 5000 archers at one point, one whirlpool took out about 2000 of them. so i put a whirlpool in the player has to go through.

i dunno, how would you handle an undead single mission map?

[Gaidal Cain]

so, in order for me to balance the map, i have to assume that every player fights all neutral battles, or else the player that doesnt will end up having alot less archers. im guessing everyone fights neutrals when they are undead. am i right?

Nope. I usually skip those fights as soon as I feel that the extra skeletons aren't needed.

[myythryyn]

so, in order for me to balance the map, i have to assume that every player fights all neutral battles, or else the player that doesnt will end up having alot less archers. im guessing everyone fights neutrals when they are undead. am i right?

Nope. I usually skip those fights as soon as I feel that the extra skeletons aren't needed.

ok so for the first few months you fight all neutrals to gain archers?
then at a certain point you stop? how many archers? 2000? 5000? 10 000?
and how do you know when you have enough archers, do you decide based on your army strength?
hmmm, so this make the map even more harder to make, because im sure there will be players that will fight every neutral stack and build 9000+ plus archers, but i shouldnt balance the map expecting people to do that.
so its going to difficult setting up things like final battles not knowing what to expect hte player to have for an army.

i have thought of making a script that checks the players archer count, then adjusts the AI heros army according to how many the player has, but that might end up being over complicated.

[theLuckyDragon]

You could also use a flavour thing like "there is a disturbance in the Dark Forces in this area; Necromancers cannot adequately control more than 1000 skeletons; if they have more than that, a horrible rift will occur in the magical loom of the land and all will be lost". In editor terms, this would mean of course that >1000 skeletons = defeat.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Here are a couple of ideas.

You could set up conditions such that archers had to be sacrificed a quest hut to open a gate that the player has to pass through or as a condition of not losing (placing a ward to prevent an overwhelming enemy invasion or something) or to transform a certain town to undead (make a condition so that the town must be transformed within a certain time frame.)

Maybe the player would be required to place some archers in a garrison from which the troops can't be removed.

So that the player doesn't get too iritated allow him to select from different stat /skill bonuses, artifacts, creatures, resources (if the map is very resource poor, a powerful secondary heroe, a free level up, ect.

Fix some (but not too many) of the guardians to be creatures that can't be raised.

Edit: Oh and maybe let the player trade some archers for some of the neutral undead troops (mummys, dark knights) so the player has the ability (or requirement) to use those troops.

GOW

[myythryyn]

ok, im not sure about a defeat script if the player has a certain number of skeletons. it could cause problems if the player fought a large battle and afterwards got alot of skeletons and then lost the map because thier archer count exceeded the limit.

So that the player doesn't get too iritated allow him to select from different stat /skill bonuses, artifacts, creatures, resources (if the map is very resource poor, a powerful secondary heroe, a free level up, ect.

GOW, im not sure i understand what you meant by that

but i think i could implement your idea about garrisons. there are several borders that need to be secured that could be made into an objective with perhaps a timer attached to force the player to complete it within some timeframe.
can you have a garrison selected "cannot remove creatures" and still be able to place creatures in it, which you cant remove after?
then i could use the checkobject script to determine when the right amount of creatures is added to complete the objective.

and i might be able to work in a seer quest type objective too. may as well put these thousands of archers to use

what i have done is that i have created my own whirlpool scripts, like elven snipers, a cavern with fire traps planted, that sorta thing.
what ive done is first check the total amount of archers in players army, then based on how many, i remove some.
like if there is 5000+ i remove 2000, if there is 2000+ i remove 750, ect.

its too bad you have to do this, i myself never realised just how many archers a player can accumulte over a large story map.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

So that the player doesn't get too iritated allow him to select from different stat /skill bonuses, artifacts, creatures, resources (if the map is very resource poor, a powerful secondary heroe, a free level up, ect.

GOW, im not sure i understand what you meant by that

I mean that as you are taking archers away with quest huts or whatever, you are providing the player with a negative event. In at least some of your negative events (maybe at a quest hut that is a sacrificial alter or whatever) give the player something positive, maybe even letting him chose the positive bonus, in exchange for the skeletons. Too many events that are just negative will irritate the player.

Maybe he has to sacrifice skeletons at an alter periodically to appease his angry god or whatever. The god gives him some sort of benefit each time (it could be random or the player may get a choice.)

but i think i could implement your idea about garrisons. there are several borders that need to be secured that could be made into an objective with perhaps a timer attached to force the player to complete it within some timeframe.
can you have a garrison selected "cannot remove creatures" and still be able to place creatures in it, which you cant remove after?
then i could use the checkobject script to determine when the right amount of creatures is added to complete the objective.

Yes, when you check the "cannot remove creatures" option you can put creatures in the garrison but can't remove them.

GOW

[meows]

when you play undead, and you attack a neutral army, and you get the option that they want to flee, so you dont need to fight the battle, do you pursue them, or save yourself the hassle of the battle and let them flee?

you make the setting for the neturals that they always fight and remove that problem. Just balance the neutrals to the archers they are to get.

[myythryyn]

when you play undead, and you attack a neutral army, and you get the option that they want to flee, so you dont need to fight the battle, do you pursue them, or save yourself the hassle of the battle and let them flee?

you make the setting for the neturals that they always fight and remove that problem. Just balance the neutrals to the archers they are to get.

im not sure that would go over well. i think most players feel that fighting neutrals is the most boring part of the game.
(actually waiting for the AI to take its turn is THE most boring part )
if i play anything other than undead, i look forward to when my army gets large enough that i can skip neutral battles entirely.

so to force players to fight every neutral battle would i think become annoying.
what do you guys think? would you like playing a map where you had to fight every neutral battle and were never given the option for them to flee?

[winterfate]

Depends. On a normal Free For All or multiplayer map, I would eventually get tired of fighting the neutrals. However, in a story-driven scenario, I'm usually so hooked on the story that I don't care (must kill Priests...must see what happens next ).

[Thelonious]

As tLD said, you can limit the skellies, if you don't want to, you can choose to alter the number of skellies in another way; maybe add more higher leveled creatures, or golems/undead. Then you could try and script the creatures so that at the end of the battle they'll take a few skeletons.

Perhaps make a few area's on the map which are 'holy' but have to be passed (frequently) which decrease the number of skeletons. Or make some border guards as a ransom of a 100 skeletons every time you want to pass...

[myythryyn]

yah, its been a hard map to make. i even have problems with other undead units like zombies, which mostly just sit around and gather dust. so in a large, long story based map the player can amass a large amount of those.
in my current test about halfway or so through the map, i have 960 zombies. And ghosts and vampires can be hard to kill as well, so i have 780 ghosts, and 350 vampires.

the undead faction played right will mean the player will have very minimal casualties, so their army just builds and builds as the map progresses. i even made the mistake of having two cities the player could control...i wont even tell you the insane armies i ended up with then. so i had to get rid of that city. i also had to remove alot of the creature dwellings off the map since they now stack and can be all converted and used to make the undead army even larger. caravans dont help either since now the player has access to every dwelling they control.

but i have come up with ways to combat this. for instance giving the AI heroes expert defense with evasion and vitality, and a high defense attribute helps alot, and giving things like the unicorn horn bow to sylvan heroes, (and making them unlootable) all are great ways of undead population control.
and as other posters have mentioned, i have placed scripted events for logical story based reasons why they loose troops.
but whirlpools have to be my favorite, 50 percent skeleton archer lossess:)

so anyone out there that plans to make a large long lasting map with the undead faction, be prepared, your player will have zounds and zounds of udead

[finkellll]

o snap did not think of that at all... wow

i test my maps by sitting off in a corner with a castle and a cartographer and watch an heroic computer play through my map... and they did it quickly so i didnt see a large build up of troops. but now that you mention that it might happen... my map will get interesting

[myythryyn]

i definetly have to say that undead is not a good faction to choose for a long lasting story map.
my map goes on for about ten months. maybe more if the player takes longer. so the players undead armies can get into the zounds making the map unchallenging for the player.
in my current test, i have 1300 zombies, 6700 archers, 560 ghosts, 363 vampires, 156 liches, 45 wights, and 30 dragons at month eight.
you basically have to use scripts to reduce the armies, especially the archers. i had over 10 000 at one point.

im getting frustrated too, cuz now another problem has come up.
the random monsters that appear on the map. week of gremlin, or week of imp, or whatever.

there is a section of my map where the player does not get to till much later, after month seven usually.
at that point, all those weekly spawns have grown very large. some of htem have been there for months. when the player gets to that part of the map, all those stacks are easily killed and converted to archers.
there just seems no way to control or predict that.
in the test im doing i got about 3000 archers just from killing weekly random stacks that pop up in that one area.
and since this is something totally random, it makes balancing the map very hard, the map maker can never know how many archers the player has.

[okrane]

You might wanna wait until 1.5/2.1 gets released. I heard the size of the raised skelly army will be capped at a certain number per week. I guess that will pretty much help you in anticipating their quantity

[myythryyn]

You might wanna wait until 1.5/2.1 gets released. I heard the size of the raised skelly army will be capped at a certain number per week. I guess that will pretty much help you in anticipating their quantity

Noooooooo!!!

After i spent the last two months balancing this map to the current rules?
arrgghghh
---> ---->

(sorry, but making this undead map has been killing me....)

a cap per week? how is that going to work?
you mean you can only have say, 1000 raised skeletons a week, no matter how many stacks of things you kill?
im sure this rule change will bring out all the nerf criers, but
i can see why they are making such a rule, it really gets incredibly out of hand how many archers the undead can have.

anyone know or can cofirm if these changes are official?
and can anyone give a guess as to when the patch will be released?
huh....so now i dont know what to do. if this is change happens, ill have to change alot of things.

[okrane]

See JJ's second post from this page:

viewtopic.php?t=5550&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

I don't know about numbers, I just hope they are at least week dependant...

[finkellll]

the only 2 ways i can guess that u will b able to get around it is to either not allow weeks where random groups appear, or somehow make a region where they cant appear (is this even possible)

myythryyn r we making the same map? ive got one of those sealed off regions towards the end as well...

[myythryyn]

well the patch notes have been released and the only mention is...

Necromancy principles changed

so i guess its going to be a suprise as to what that means.
i wish they would have been a little more desciptive as to what that is.

perhaps ill have to add a post in reply to the patch notes to see if i get a reply.

for now, i guess ill have to wait to continue on the map im making until i know what that means.