Getting them educated

[Verdun]

Hi again

Completely different subject than my last post.

I was always wondering about something.

In one of my favorite games, 'Battle Realms', you get higher-level units by sending lower-level units into certain buidlings. For example, if you send the peasant into the Dojo, he will come out a swordsman, if you send the swordsman into the Laboratory, he will become a crazy drug-addict psychopath, and so forth.

It reminds me a lot of the 'Sacrifice' Ability of the Acolyte in Warcraft III. However so far I have been unable to modify this ability to do what I want.



Do you think this can be solved by edditing abilities, or will I have to use triggers?

And is it even worth it? Personally I love the idea of seeing your units "grow up" instead of just training anonymus new units from scratch. However some people I have talked to thought this was both boring, time-consuming and useless.

 

[Tozza]

Just make a trigger that "Replaces the Unit" when it "Sacrifices"?

 

[Verdun]

Just make a trigger that "Replaces the Unit" when it "Sacrifices"?

That sounds fairly reasonable. However I'd still miss the part where it is actually "trained" inside the building. Should I make a trigger that orders the buidling to train a certain kind of unit while another type of unit is "sacrificed"?

 

[Kino]

No.

Just replaced the sacrifced unit like he said.

 

[Anchorist]

Or for example

Farm:
- Can produce peasant

Dojo
- Can produce Ninjas (but it's not available unless You have "peasant"

Now the trick is that everytime peasant "enters" building a dummy is created, that dummy is "peasant" needed for ninjas
when ninja is created dummy "peasant" is destroyed.

 

[Mechanical Man]

The problem with sacrifice ability is that it's hardcoded.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Triggers are definatly needed.

The problem is there comes a point where the user asks this.
"Why must I train 1 unit and move it to another building to upgrade it to another unit... Why not just train it from the other building upgraded already and the games does all the movement for me?".

Times it is useful though are when the base units are very limited in number. If you only have atmost 5 survivours then you are willing to spend extra time training them and making sure they are useful to you.

If you have 100 survivours and they spawn every dozen seconds then the average player is just not willing to micro each one up through training.

You can combat this by automating training into chains (requesting trained unit automatically gets free survivour and upgrades it to prequisit unit etc until finally upgraded to requested unit). However is there a point to doing this? Usually the buildings are so close together that snipping units in training is near impossible so the result usually is a redundant game mechanic which ultimatly resolves into a fixed training time.

 

[defskull]

Test map is attached.
I suggest that the Acolyte hides the "Sacrificial" ability in a spellbook
Making it, more neat, to be sacrificed

 

[-Kobas-]

Why must we use sacrifice?
Items are much better to me, you can include gold/lumber cost, cooldown as well as number of charges!

Problem is slot I know, but you can always create dummy unit with slot near building when specific unit come close

 

[defskull]

Why must we use sacrifice?
Items are much better to me, you can include gold/lumber cost, cooldown as well as number of charges!

Problem is slot I know, but you can always create dummy unit with slot near building when specific unit come close

I need to know this.
Have you played Battle Realm, before ?

 

[Verdun]

thanks for your map, defskull! I didn't expect anyone to actually create a sample system. That's more then helpful. I'll see if I can work with that. I'd advise the others interested in this subject to check it out as well.