Useful Ruins

[Pillager]

I had a thought about how ruins could be more useful after being looted. Right now they provide a wall bonus, but that seems to conflict with the new towers...and the fact that ruins can't be razed makes them somewhat superior...which makes no sense.

Here a few ruins types that I came up with....

Fallen temple....basically a temple that is infested with undead. Once a hero destroys the foul denizens (and collects the loot), the temple is restored to its former glory and can provide blessings, etc. Yay!

Haunted tower....you probably get the idea..its a tower...undead...hero kills them...loot, and now you have a tower! Yay!

Cursed village/haunted mine....the village is under an 'orrible curse...the populace have been turned to frogs or pigs or statues or are in a magical slumber...a hero can break the curse by killing the undead fiends responsible..and the happy villagers/miners join the hero's cause out of gratitude....you get a village/mine/unnamed economic site! Yay!

Cursed city...not sure this is necessary, but see cursed village above and replace the word village with city. Yay!

Why do I think this is a good idea? Because a looted ruin doesn't just have to sit there looking sad anymore..it (and others like it) can now lead a productive life and serve the community. Yay!

[KGB]

Pillager,

Interesting ideas. Especially the haunted tower (L3 ruin) becoming a regular tower. That would definitely be handy/useful.

But I'd still like to see looted ruins regenerate over time as new monsters moved into them. That provides a fresh source of gold/items/quests in longer games on maps with lots of players. At a 1% chance per turn it means a ruin takes a long time (100 turns on average for 1 ruin, or 20 searched ruins means every 5 turns on average 1 regenerates) to regenerate so it won't be like it happens all the time.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Different types of ruins sounds good. I'd have ideas of my own about the different types of course, and I'm sure many players would. This would probably require some new graphics, and would definitely require some serious thought for balance.

Something like a background glow (or lack thereof) would be really nice, to show if ruins are occupied or not. You don't need new graphics for it.

[Pillager]

KGB,

I think that regenerating ruins could work, but a ruin's state (pristine vs looted) would have to be obvious at a glance, so a player wouldn't have to keep cursor checking to see if a ruin has re-spawned.


Lphillps,

Is balance an issue here? All my examples are just undead-infested normal structures. It is true that they offer the added bonus of looty goodness, but they also require a hero to liberate them in order to be useful.

A baleful, sickly green(?) background glow (indicating undead occupation) would be a good temporary solution to the lack of looted ruin graphics.

[KGB]

Pillager,

I think that regenerating ruins could work, but a ruin's state (pristine vs looted) would have to be obvious at a glance, so a player wouldn't have to keep cursor checking to see if a ruin has re-spawned.

Agreed completely.

I already find it annoying to not be able to tell at a glace whether a ruin is searched or not.

The glow that LPhillips described would work for me since more graphics are going to be a time/money issue. If you recall, DLR/Warlords2 both had a ruin menu that came up at a button press (could be a menu drop down in Warbarons) that showed all ruins as either searched/unsearched by simply putting different colored squares on a mini-map where the ruin locations were. That could work too.

For now, there isn't a pressing need to have regeneration ruins in Beta4 since we'll already have all the other new goodies to test out with regards to ruins. But perhaps for Beta5.

KGB

[LPhillips]

No, no specific objections at the moment. I really like your ideas. I'm just avoiding spamming the forum with my own ideas of what could be done
They won't want to implement any of those immediately if they like the idea, because they have to buy graphics for each and every one.

A minimap option for ruins would be even nicer. The information is already available, so why not make it obvious?

[Moonknight]

What if you could turn on the option to 'stop' a unit once a ruin is in 'sight' (just like if you run into an enemy unit in your sight)? Then you'd at least have a reminder to scroll over it and then decide whether to move onward or not.

[KGB]

MoonKnight,

I'm already annoyed at how often my armies stop for neutral armies. Especially on maps where players have manually placed a lot of neutral armies on ruins/bridges/ports/cites etc. It can take several clicks of OK to move in some cases due to all the neutral armies exposed.

Of course your idea has some merit. What instead I'd want is that the unit only 'stopped' if the ruin was unsearched. Then I'd have an automatic way to know what ruins were searched as I am moving around the map.

That doesn't help in the case where you've already spotted a ruin and searched it and it's regenerated. For those you need a minimap for ruins or a glow/different graphic to indicate it's got treasure and monsters in it again.

KGB

[Moonknight]

Yeah, I get annoyed as well with the stops...