Hello all - Some time ago, I embarked upon a rather ambitious project for the Defend a Spot competition. I never completed my full scenario, but what I did complete, I liked very much, and I thought I might release it for the community's consideration and feedback.
What I envisioned was a map type where there would be several small towns scattered about the landscape, and two opposing armies battling for control of these towns. Depending on which side controlled more territory, they would train new units more quickly. New units would be created in their towns, and would be somewhat randomly selected - thus, a town containing an archery range might create Longbowmen, Skirmishers, or Archers, depending on how the triggers were set up. Obviously, the two sides could quickly become very unbalanced, but triggers were put in place to temporarily stop the spawning if the sides' unit counts were more than 50 units different.
In this particular scenario, an enemy, computer-controlled army was to invade the player's island and eventually push him back to his stronghold in the extreme north. At this point, the game would shift to a smaller scale, and the player would have to command his forces to defend the town around this final castle, then the castle walls, and then within the castle itself until the final unit was killed. This was never completed, however. While some of the map for these latter stages was completed somewhat, for the most part, the only functioning part of the scenario is the world map. I am no expert with AI scripting, so I was unable to get a custom AI that could intelligently select and attack targets. I have not much worked with balancing the two sides out, but this wouldn't be so hard to do, I would suppose.
I imagine this system would best be used in multiplayer game, and so long as there are two teams and up to 4 players actually in combat, the system should not need any great deal of modification. It would also be best if the map and starting positions were relatively balanced, so that one side would not have to be artificially augmented at the start to achieve an equal footing. A custom AI could very much help this battle system as well, but even the standard AI did reasonably well in my testing. I also imagine that if a gold-for-kills system were added onto this, a rather interesting gameplay could develop - the losing side could purchase heroes, units, items, and magic spells to help rally their troops and turn the tide of battle. All I ask is your feedback and recognition if you choose to use this system or some derivative of it in your creations.
JamesOfJames's New Battle System
Note that this is a very rough and in-progress version of the scenario; I had hoped to polish it up before uploading, but that version seems to have been corrupted. Hopefully, this one will work as intended.
What I envisioned was a map type where there would be several small towns scattered about the landscape, and two opposing armies battling for control of these towns. Depending on which side controlled more territory, they would train new units more quickly. New units would be created in their towns, and would be somewhat randomly selected - thus, a town containing an archery range might create Longbowmen, Skirmishers, or Archers, depending on how the triggers were set up. Obviously, the two sides could quickly become very unbalanced, but triggers were put in place to temporarily stop the spawning if the sides' unit counts were more than 50 units different.
In this particular scenario, an enemy, computer-controlled army was to invade the player's island and eventually push him back to his stronghold in the extreme north. At this point, the game would shift to a smaller scale, and the player would have to command his forces to defend the town around this final castle, then the castle walls, and then within the castle itself until the final unit was killed. This was never completed, however. While some of the map for these latter stages was completed somewhat, for the most part, the only functioning part of the scenario is the world map. I am no expert with AI scripting, so I was unable to get a custom AI that could intelligently select and attack targets. I have not much worked with balancing the two sides out, but this wouldn't be so hard to do, I would suppose.
I imagine this system would best be used in multiplayer game, and so long as there are two teams and up to 4 players actually in combat, the system should not need any great deal of modification. It would also be best if the map and starting positions were relatively balanced, so that one side would not have to be artificially augmented at the start to achieve an equal footing. A custom AI could very much help this battle system as well, but even the standard AI did reasonably well in my testing. I also imagine that if a gold-for-kills system were added onto this, a rather interesting gameplay could develop - the losing side could purchase heroes, units, items, and magic spells to help rally their troops and turn the tide of battle. All I ask is your feedback and recognition if you choose to use this system or some derivative of it in your creations.
Note that this is a very rough and in-progress version of the scenario; I had hoped to polish it up before uploading, but that version seems to have been corrupted. Hopefully, this one will work as intended.