Enemy Heroes

[Mizkif]

I think there ought to be enemy heroes leading large groups that must be dealt with. They should be tied to specific quests, as in quests that aren't randomly generated. An example being a quest to find and capture/kill a famous and notorious bandit named Mizkif. He's high-level and has a 70 mounted bandits accompanying him. You have to stop him before he reaches Praven. If he gets to Praven before you can stop him, there will be a battle between him and the 10 Swadian militiamen guarding the village that you need to intercept. If the battle ends before you arrive, half of the reward money is lost. Then you will need to catch him before he can reach his mountain stronghold.

The concept could be similar to Rome: Total War. If there is no named NPC leading the group then there should be a generic NPC, such as a "Swadian Captain" who leads a war party, much like caravan masters currently.

The enemy heroes should give large bonuses to the enemy party and could fetch large bounties.

Another idea I had was a pause feature and a battle map. You hit a button and top-down view of the battlefield comes up. You can assign your units into groups and give them movement, facing, and formation orders. This could be related to the tactics skill, which means if you have 0 tactics you can't use the map and only give basic commands.

 

[dhvyse]

I like your ideas. I really like the idea of a party leader for most parties and armies as thats how it would be in the real world. No army fights without a general. Except unorginized bandits who would have a leader every now and then I suppose =)

The tactics idea sounds good but I think just more direct control over your units would be a wiser and easier choice. I dont like the idea of an overhead map because I think scouting the maps should be part of the battle.

Right now it seems the NPCS (friendly and enemy alike) just know where to run and go straight for the enemy. I think a Line of Sight system needs to be implemented in the battle map so ambushing and sneaking around behind hills and stuff can occur. Where enemies go on a search pattern until they spot a unit, and then go towards those units.

 

[dhvyse]

Also i'd like to see alot more battle maps and variations of terrain depending on where the battle occured on the explore map.

 

[Balor]

Well, it was already proposed multiple times, and I'm sure that Armagan will do this eventially. That will involve tweaking random map generator, and I doubt that that a lot of tweaking will be required .
Different grass, earth texture, so on - will have to be done too, though. But I guess it's not that hard too.

 

[Mechstra]

The idea of having a party leader for each of the NPC parties is great. It would really cap things off, I think, and add another dimension to battles.

 

[dhvyse]

Right now it seems the NPCS (friendly and enemy alike) just know where to run and go straight for the enemy. I think a Line of Sight system needs to be implemented in the battle map so ambushing and sneaking around behind hills and stuff can occur. Where enemies go on a search pattern until they spot a unit, and then go towards those units.

Im curious to hear what you guys think about this and if I should start a new post about NPC AI, Line of sight, and pathing.

 

[Mechstra]

Well, the current AI - while competent - certainly needs an overhaul, and this could be part of it, but on the other hand I prefer enemies coming at me in large groups rather than potentially coming in ones and twos once they've 'noticed' me. It would be rather complex to program them to search for enemies and then go back and get their mates.

So I think the AI knowing where the enemy is should stay. I like it that way.

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Having enemy heroes is a cool idea. The variations on how they might affect their war parties and how they might be displayed on the battlefield would be interesting.

Sometimes a leader could be clearly identified by his armor/gear although he'd be a more likely target for the human player. Maybe we could give him much more additional HPs to adjust for that, I don't know.

Sometimes killing the enemy leader could break the morale of his side, ending the battle, in the same manner that knocking out our hero ends combat.

Could the AI handle it? Would a mounted hero simply ride out ahead of the infantry and quickly get killed the same way enemy horsemen are dispatched in battles now?

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing an enemy hero or a friendly random captured hero you could rescue from Dark Knights.

 

[Ilex]

Those fancy swadian leaders would propably stay in their corner shouting with his gentle voice "Charge, o men, charge!", while petting his cat with his silk gloves (or he could have someone else do the shouting).

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Those fancy swadian leaders would propably stay in their corner shouting with his gentle voice "Charge, o men, charge!", while petting his cat with his silk gloves (or he could have someone else do the shouting).

Yes, negative influences could be a factor too.

 

[Sameth]

More control of your troops is important, Ihate it when my archers stand 3 miles outside the protective circle I set up on the hill, or my vague attemps to set up a shiled wall agains sea raiders......why are the troops orders so basic and useless, why can't we use more buttons and form little formations? like ctrl+a number key could be a formations command like the No. keys are basic commands,

1 (hold position)

ctrl+1 (form a line and raise shields)

column, archers stick to the rear, shield wall, cantabrarian circle, form prptective square, do not move from position etc.

Just a thought..... I am sick of having to solo enemies because I am worried my troops eill get masaced because the get surrounded and so on.

 

[Sameth]

By the way, sorry, I didn't see the other topics with the same deas.

 

[Ingolifs]

There are always other topics with the same ideas.

I also agree with having enemy heroes. People who generally cause havok to your faction. You'll see them occasionally attacking one of your noblemen, or chasing you after you raided that town near wercheg.

( i also think noblemen and caravan masters should be heroes)

Should enemy heroes be killable?

On one hand, they should be capabable of everything you are, like lying still pretending to be dead. On the other hand, doing such a thing can be very annoying when you have to beat that guy for the FIFTH time because he's relentlessly pursuing you with what's left of his army.

I dunno, these are interesting issues to discuss.

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Should enemy heroes be killable?

On one hand, they should be capabable of everything you are, like lying still pretending to be dead. On the other hand, doing such a thing can be very annoying when you have to beat that guy for the FIFTH time because he's relentlessly pursuing you with what's left of his army.

That idea's cool: your own private Caladrian nemesis.

"So we meet again JStrange. You've come to Halmar once too often" that sort of thing.

Annoying, possibly, if he were always targetting you like he was Captain Hook and you were Peter leading the Lost Boys. We already have every bandit, pirate, Khergit, etc. targetting us whenever they come across us.

However, if the Enemy Hero were just going about his business and bore us no more animosity than any other hostile warparty, then maybe seeing him going about his daily raiding might make for a change of pace. Instead of the usual anonymous enemies, the Enemy Hero could be on his own career path with his own goals; whatever that might be.

 

[Ingolifs]

I think this idea ties in quite well with another i suggested a while back. Multiple possible fates whenever you lose a battle.

First one: the current 'pretend to be dead and wait for them to lose interest'. waking up in the middle of nowhere with no troops, no horse and no clothes.

Second one: get captured and become a slave. If your captors are bandits or manhunters or something, you get sold off to Ramun or Galeas.
If you get sold as a sea slave, there could be a possibility that you come back as a sea raider or something. If you are sold to the salt mine, you would either have to escape, start an insurrection or get rescued by a buddy or a knight that survived the last battle. This may be too much for the current version of M&B, but i suppose could be easily done with a paragraph of text explaining what just happened.

Third: get captured by swadians or vaegirs and become a prisoner in an enemy count's dungeon. Either your counts ransom you back, or you are forced to join the enemy army. Perhaps if you get captured by dark hunters and you put up a valiant enough fight, they could even offer you a place amon their ranks.

Fourth: Death. This is a fairly iffy one for obvious reasons.

These outcomes, available to all heroes, will make some interesting gameplay. Imagine after getting Borcha an finding out he doesn't have a ransom, selling him off to ramun, and meeting him again as the head of a sea raider party.

Who should constitute as a hero? I think just about any named character if they enter combat at all. For example, You, the people in the Zendar tavern, Counts, Knights, Noblemen, leaders of bandit groups, Caravan masters, and so on. All of which could be meetable in cities. If a merchant caravan stops at halmer, you'll be able to find the caravan master in the tavern.

Oh, and heroes should have randomly generated names.

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Yes, a random hero, friendly or enemy, isn't necessarily a superhero. He or she would/should be usually a fairly medium level character whose primary purpose is to add variety and atmosphere to the game. If we're playing all these endless missions, random combats, endless journeys, it would be so cool to run into a new face to either recruit or kill, from time to time.

Although, there could be a more well-known random hero type that would be higher level or (to compensate for your human gaming cleverness) have more hitpoints or harder-hitting weapons. These could be more rare and equivalent to legendary or infamous bandits or war captains.

Maybe some enemy heroes could only be fought in single-combat: winner take all. That would prevent us from simply swarming the enemy Borcha and taking his stuff: we'd have to risk going it alone against this killing machine.

 

[Cale]

I really like this idea and I think it will probably appear in a later M&B particularly as to a very limited extent it allready happens. Sea Raiders for example always have that one, sometimes two guys fully kitted out with chainmail, norse helms and long bows etc. who've always struck me as the leaders.

 

[Paulir]

Similar idea would be to add copies of unused/deleted characters and their parties to the current game as heroes. Make them roam the map like any other warband or bandit party if nothing else. If your current character is on the same side it should not be possible to attack. Attrition would be a problem if the computer doesn't know how to recruit new soldiers and the NPC hero is unkillable. So NPC hero should act like any other unit in the game and be possible to kill/capture/recruit/slave.

Problem is when they show up. Maybe when your current PC hits the same level as one of your saved slots it gets added as NPC?

 

[Ingolifs]

A thought about defeating enemy heroes: I think they should be killable, but not out in the battlefield. For instance, if you spear a nobleman, he gets knocked out instead of dying. But once the battle is finished and you have him as a prisoner, you could have the option to execute him.

 

[RJK]

Right now it seems the NPCS (friendly and enemy alike) just know where to run and go straight for the enemy. I think a Line of Sight system needs to be implemented in the battle map so ambushing and sneaking around behind hills and stuff can occur. Where enemies go on a search pattern until they spot a unit, and then go towards those units.

Im curious to hear what you guys think about this and if I should start a new post about NPC AI, Line of sight, and pathing.

Great idea.

I was thinking about this the other day: Sometimes the only thing I use my own units for is pointing me to the direction of the enemy. The fact that units know where their enemies are points to a weakness of the AI, in that it can be inferred that the AI is currently incapable of an effective search and destroy mode.

Part of an effective search and destroy would be for the units to actually stick together, so that when they find the enemy they have an army with them. Units currently do not stick together, nor do they travel at the same speed. I'm excited by the prospect of these being future possibilities.

RJK.