[Suggestion] Pillage - AI Behavior

from Elemental Forums

After going through a bunch of the xml and looking at monster behavior, and reading the .98 changelog there was one AI monster and bandit behavior that I would love to see, Pillaging. This would be the ability of certain CreatureTypes, think Trolls, Dragons, Bandits, given the ability to extort money and possibly materials off of the player as well as the ability to attack a town but leave it intact and potentially kill a few population points, demo a building, take money, mana and materials.

 

For Instance it would be really cool for Dragons, if your build a city within say 10 or so squares from his lair, would eventually send you an ultimatum, pay him in gold/materials/items/population (sacrifice a virgin or two) or he will pillage your town taking even more resources and causing population and building destruction.

 

Maybe moving within so many squares of a troll causes them to send you a msg demading money or they attack.

 

Bandits that do everything to stay alive and well hidden and specifically target caravans and undefended towns for pillaging.

 

Maybe even use diplo points to make deals with those creaturetypes only to harass specific enemies,etc

 

You could take this pretty far but just putting in a pillage ability and adding the data elements to the xml to with flags for pillaging Towns / Caravans as a priority and a "stayalive" flag would make the environment more alive.

6,034 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top


I like this idea and if there were more triggers for random events you can do this idea that a player with a lot of gold will be extrorted. Don't pay bandit army spawns to collect, or you pay and they go  away. Similar idea as to what you suggested, which I like.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting parrottmath, reply 1

I like this idea and if there were more triggers for random events you can do this idea that a player with a lot of gold will be extrorted. Don't pay bandit army spawns to collect, or you pay and they go  away. Similar idea as to what you suggested, which I like.
End of parrottmath's quote

Where is the bandit army coming from?

I like the OP's idea but it hate it when a game has super bandits coming out of nowhere... how are the bandits going to be equipped? what code is going to be put in place to prevent bandits using tech that no faction in the world has yet to discover?

It makes more sense to use super monsters like dragons. As those are tough to wipe out and their origin can be explained plausibly. They should never be spawned for the attack though, they should just be extorting and pillaging if they already are there.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


I think most of that could be easily handled by the ai routines they have in the game and are balancing for threat and intelligence levels of the monsters but they should be spawning from their lairs. And bandit lairs in particular should be spawning in the least settled areas near enough though that they can attack/pillage caravans and outposts.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting taltamir, reply 2
Where is the bandit army coming from?
I like the OP's idea but it hate it when a game has super bandits coming out of nowhere... how are the bandits going to be equipped? what code is going to be put in place to prevent bandits using tech that no faction in the world has yet to discover?
End of taltamir's quote

Depends on how they are programmed. Here I was asking the devs for more triggers and being able to execute such a random event.

I wasn't asking for super-bandits (nor going to program super-bandits in a mod), maybe the typical bandit army, like the quest with the archer reward (don't remember it's name). These bandits should be easily dispatched by having maybe 1 or 2 units at your city would take care of them.