Caverns and tunnels

[magian]

I had a few ideas about adding underground areas to Warbarons. The idea has two distinct parts that work together, one is caverns (a terrain type), the other is tunnels (a pair of locations).

Caverns would work a bit like water currently does. When a making a map, you place down a square of cavern floor which is surrounded by cavern walls (much like a square of water is surrounded by coast). Cavern walls would be impassable, cavern floor would have a movecost of 3, with some creatures getting a reduction (I'm thinking dwarves and maybe orcs). Flyers would move slowly through caverns.

Tunnels would be locations (like ruins and gold sites). They would look like a cave entrance. When making a map, you would place a tunnel mouth, and then immediately place a second tunnel mouth. These two caves would be connected. Entering a cave would cause those units to be vectored to the connected cave. There would be a default travel time (based on the distance between the two caves), but you could change this as a map-maker by clicking on the cave and typing in the number of turns desired. If your units enter a cave from one end, and an opponent's units enter from the other, an underground battle would take place, and only the winner would emerge from the other side.

How do these two parts work together to make a seemless whole? Well, you can place caverns on the map edges (or wherever they won't impede movement) and have tunnels that lead into them. You could create a whole underworld this way, with various entrances strewn around the map. Or, you could use the parts separately, adding in a few tunnels that connect to each other without worrying about caverns. Or just adding caverns here and there around the map. Whatever you like, lots of options to play around with.

As an added (but not strictly necessary) idea. Tunnels could have a danger value associated with them. This would be a percent chance to encounter some aggressive subterranean beasts while traversing the benighted depths. Maybe recolor a few monsters (white cave spiders, purple worms, dark elves, grey dwarves) and use those as the creatures one could encounter underground. The payoff would be that these baddies would give you gold (or maybe even items) if you defeat them.

[magian]

I would also add an underground gold site in the form of a cluster of glowing crystals, maybe mushroom forest terrain, and dark elves as an underground specialty unit. People love dark elves, have for a solid decade. I see no reason why one of the most popular fantasy races is absent from Warbarons. Make the darkelf unit a female (the drow were matriarchal in AD&D). If you want to increase your player base, having a few lithesome darkelf women around couldn't hurt.