Disable ability to produce new types of units in MapSettings

[Jeremy]

Feature Request:

In the Map Editor, disable the ability to produce new types of units. I writing a highly themed map, and I want different cities to produce different types of units, but not to be able to produce any other types of units.

Alternatively, you can make the price of units customizable, as it was in the Warlords 2 Scenario Editor. Jack up all prices to 5000 -- and you have functionally the same effect.

Thanks for considering this!

[SnotlinG]

What if you would plunder such a city, it would then not be possible to buy new production to it?
Or if we would customize the cost of units, it would then be possible to buy say elves to an orc-city (in case elves are allowed and you want elves in some other cities etc), i.e. it would be bad for the theme.

Maybe the best solution would be to make it impossible to buy new production, plus those cities can not be plundered, only occupied/razed...

[Pillager]

Perhaps, if a mapmaker selects this option, pillaging always leaves the cheapest unit intact. So, if a city produced scouts, pike men, and heavy cavalry, the pike men and heavy cavalry would be pillaged..but not the scouts. This way you wouldn't have empty cities standing around, but could still do a bit of pillaging.

[Pillager]

Another interesting take on this, would be to allow a mapmaker to select units that could never be built at a particular city. This would be a very versatile tool....

With this tool a mapmaker could remove the ability to build units he thought would unbalance the map (flyers perhaps?).

A mapmaker could also make themed cities. IE a city that begins with elf production and the ability to buy pegasi and unicorn production.

[SnotlinG]

But in that case, wouldnt it be more interesting to have this locked to the diffrent sides instead?
i.e. the Evil side can only produce orcs, giants etc, so if the take a city from the "good" side, the city production should be transfered to the coresponding evil unit. Hmm, gets a bit messy though.

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

What you describe is the DLR model. Each side has a set amount of units it could build and only those units.

If you took a city that didn't produce any of your units you had to buy production of one of the units so you could make something (otherwise it showed no units to produce). So you would normally pillage out production of things you couldn't make (unless you had a capture city quest that forbade pillaging). That could including pillaging out some units that you could make (say a city had Elves and Orcs and you could only make Orcs you might want to pillage it entirely for the Elven gold then re-buy Orc's or just occupy and make Orcs directly).

So there was no need to automatically transfer production and I wouldn't go that route because it's confusing and messy.

KGB

[Pillager]

Yes, defining possible production for a side would be even better.

KGB has it right, don't try to transfer the production.

Perhaps, if you capture a city and can't build one of the units there, that unit would be 'auto-pillaged'.

[Jeremy]

I really like the suggestion of determining exactly what units a city can produce.

Yes, it's quite a bit of work, but a lot of us really enjoy taking the time to make our maps 'just right'.

And with a Select All / Deselect All option, you could include or exclude fairly fast to get to the units you want.

So I can imagine an Elven city that produces just Elves, but also has the capability to produce Unicorn and Pegasi, and that capability is some of the city's appeal.

[LPhillips]

Implementing both would be nice:
The option for cities to have defined production capabilities, and the option for races to have defined production capabilities.
This could go a lot further. Cities could be set with production capacities and limits: to produce up to X-turn units until their production capacity was upgraded, and combined with defined race production, you'd have some very interesting strategy.

Example:
It takes 500 to upgrade this city to produce 3-turn units, and your race can make Pegasi. But that city over there has level 4 production capacity, so if you capture it then you can produce Pegasi without the additional cost of first upgrading the city's production capacity.

This could get as complex and interesting as you want it to, with the mapmaker or gamemaker allowed to dictate it with settings. If you want a very complex game, with cities that have level 1/2/3/4 walls and 1/2/3/4/5/6 production levels, and the ability to increase a city's gold production by 2 for 50 gold, (allowing you to gain on your investment after 25 turns), you can do that. If you want a very simple game, with cities as they are now, you can have that.

Cities could be damage-able, engineering bonus would have a lot of meaning as it decreased repair/upgrade cost, etc. Players could have approved unit sets to choose from on a map (as in DLR), or be assigned preset themed races, depending on the map settings.