• 🏆 Texturing Contest #33 is OPEN! Contestants must re-texture a SD unit model found in-game (Warcraft 3 Classic), recreating the unit into a peaceful NPC version. 🔗Click here to enter!
  • It's time for the first HD Modeling Contest of 2024. Join the theme discussion for Hive's HD Modeling Contest #6! Click here to post your idea!

Mercenary Wars

Status
Not open for further replies.
Level 9
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
465
Alright, I'm not sure if a map already exists of this name but here goes ^^

- Mercenary Wars -

I think of this as a mix of both a hero arena, and island defense (I think that's the name ^^)

Description - At the start of the game you will be given a choice of races. Once you have chosen your race, you will start with two units, a builder and a mercenary.

The builder will be specific to the race you have chosen, as will the mercenary. I'm hoping that both will provide unique experiences. The builder will provide you with a nice set of buildings to set up a base. A fuller description will be placed with an example tech tree. The Mercenary will serve as a sort of hero unit.

He will be able to build military related buildings, as the builder can not. The Mercenary will also have a small set of skills, either spells revolving around combat, or their central use, recruiting units. (I think I may not have the mercenary build the military buildings, but the idea is to have a unit which you will use as a hero type unit, but he isn't going to be able to run into a group of enemies and decimate them, it's not his real purpose.)

The game play will be basically, build yourself a strong base, send your mercenary to recruit units to your forces, and destroy the other players. Pretty straight forward, but that would just be the default mode, if I'm able to add more modes. Other modes would possibly be an arena mode where you start out with a large amount of gold, and only a Mercenary. Your goal then would be to recruit units quickly, and proceed to fight in larger more exciting battles. Maybe then new units would be available like new hero types? The final mode idea that I've come up with would be team battles, simply merc wars but with teams.
Any other ideas are appreciated.

The Races that I've thought would work in the game are as follows, the order is also the order that I would add them to the map.

1 - Orc
A strong race of warriors. They specialize in strong melee attacks. They also have high health and can withstand larger groups of units compared to a smaller order of them. They are rather expensive to hire however, but even with few they can put up a good fight.
2 - Human
An equal race, they boast having the most diverse group of units to hire. Melee, ranged, and some magic, they can provide everything, while truly excelling in nothing. They are rather cheap, allowing you to hire larger groups of them, and their diversity allows them to still prove difficult to defeat. They are also one of the highest armored races, so they will have high resistance to attacks.
3 - Night Elf
Although the mercenaries of the night elves are normally shunned by their own people, they still find plenty of gold lovers to hire. They provide superb ranged talents and a mix of stealth to take out stronger foes. They do provide melee fighters, but they are not to be focused on when using, as they can not withstand a melee assault from most other races.
4 - Undead
Strange that the undead would find any use for a mercenary, let alone gold. The mercenaries don't "pay" their soldiers however. Undead warriors are summoned through the harvest of souls, not the payment of gold. (I'm working on how this would work ^^) The Undead boast very cheap costs and can be easily massed to create a larger army to overwhelm their enemies. They do have a few exceptional units but they tend to be very expensive to summon, but they are to be well worth it.
5 - Shadow (Assassin?)
Being a secret group, they do not have a very large selection of units, however they tend to be exceptional in all areas of fighting. Most of the units have good melee skills, as well as a few ranged warriors, with all of this on top of their stealth they are quite the force to meet in battle. They will prove to be most effective in ambushes and lightning fast attack and retreat tactics.
6 - Demonic
The demons are possibly the race with some of the strongest melee abilities, not from raw strength, but from the magic that they enhance their attacks with. Some of the demons have lower health, but they still boast high damage. Along with this high damage, they also have a higher cost. The demons also have another difference from the other races in that their buildings have abnormally high resistance to non-magical damage, making them tough to destroy for some races.
7 - Holy Order
This race will be most effective when allied with another, but they will do just fine on their own. They boast tank type units, who also use support magic to assist themselves. They can heal one another and also enhance each others power with inner fire type spells.
8 - Troll
One of the more interesting races, the trolls don't boast high damage, nor high health, but they are a highly agile race which can evade attacks. They have a mix of ranged and melee, but they all have a chance to evade attacks. Their attack speed allows them to get off many attacks while slower races will have to rely on their slower, but stronger attacks.
9 - Goblin
The weakest race, health wise, they have some of the strongest attacks. They can be bought easily as they are rather inexpensive. They are mostly ranged with a few melee style units, but their attacks can produce great amounts of damage, and since they tend to be ranged they can escape melee attacks as well.
*10 - Barbarian*
I've decided that this race will be a non-playable race, but you will be able to recruit them. They have high damage in melee and are also a rather quick race, although they have lower health, they still will be nice additions to your forces.
11 - Naga
This race is still being worked on but I know that they will provide units with many effects and abilities to counter the fact that they will not be substantially strong compared to the others.
12 - Magi
They will have a plethora of spells and talents to help you battle your foes. They will be slightly more expensive than others, but when used correctly they will be a powerful race to face off against.
13 - Blood Elf
Similar to the demons, they will enhance their attacks with magic, however they will have other skills as well, on top of the melee and ranged attacks.
More to come?

Hopefully all of the races will have unique units, buildings, and talents as well as uses. It would take lots of balancing but I'm pretty sure it could be done correctly.

I'm sure a lot of people would look at the races, then the name and say, why would a demon be a mercenary? The idea is that, say, the demon race doesn't pay in gold but in another form. They could simply be recruiting the units through threat or through promise of power. This would be explained better through example abilities for the mercs.

That's it for now, I'd love some feed back. I'm hoping to work on this map, and get some fair work out of it. I may look for help from coders for the skills, but otherwise I'm going to work solo until I choose to either get a team or a partner. Anyways, feedback is appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Level 7
Joined
May 28, 2009
Messages
241
My suggestion for you would be to trim down the race choices to only a few (like 4-8) which all revolve around something and share some kind of story together. Having more often leads to some races being similar or just being a blend between different races. But other than that there's some nice thinking your're at there and I might think up a mode that would kick more ass than a donkey wrangler (I love strange metaphores).
 
Level 3
Joined
Jun 30, 2010
Messages
75
^I agree with his post. But with the shortening I suggest, if, you want a lot o' races, that you write down each race before you start making them. What should the be based on like strong buildings and weak towers, strong towers and weak buildings etc. etc.
If you get what I mean by writing what I just wrote. :)
---
Dejavuu
 
Level 9
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
465
Well in terms of the races, I do plan on making them all unique, so they won't be similar. My idea would be to start work on the map, and once I've got it finished with a set few races done, probably the first 4 or 5, then I'd release the map, and with patches would come more races and fixes.

The uniqueness will be deeper than just the races have different models, abilities, and buildings. They should have different play styles.

Say you play as the orcs. The ideas I have so far is that you will be a strong race, who is well versed in melee warriors than magic users or ranged fighters, although you'll have some of all, you'll be pushed to build a strong foot army. Also, since the merc plays a big part in the game (of course), his abilities will also be vastly different from another's.
To me the orcs are a brutish barbaric race and they would seemingly be wooed by things like coin, threats, or persuasion. The orc merc will then show this. Basicly like the pillage ability that you can use on normal melee maps, the orc will have an aura for it, and with each hit from a unit on a building, he will gain gold. This will make the player see the importance in fighting with the orc. By doing this you will gain more gold, meaning more soldiers and better defenses.

Even if some of the races don't seem to be one that would use a mercenary, it still revolves around the use of gold and other persuasive tactics.

A race like say, the Holy Order, would be VASTLY different from the orcs. Instead of using brutish tactics to gain gold or military, the Holy Order would promise protection with the power of religion. Therefore, Holy Order units would have increased armor protection compared to other races. They would also specialize in healing and power manipulation magic (inner fire, slow).

The only thing that will be the same between all of the races is that they will be able to recruit any type of creep on the map. I'm planning on their being small camps of creeps that you can either attack for gold, or "persuade" to join your team. (ogre camp, gnoll camp, ect.)
 
Level 7
Joined
May 28, 2009
Messages
241
Well, you've made your point. Just keep them different! But I would like to see a story behind it all that connects all the races to each other, like:

Splitting this in 3 different groups, native, non-native and in a lack of other name "Created".

native:
Barbarians
Trolls
Goblins
Humans
Night elves
Blood elves
Naga

non-native:
Orc
Holy Order
Demonic

"Created":
Undead
Magi
Shadow

Holy Order, big bunch of humans (and elves? (or some other race?)) that marched into "insert zone name here" and sought to cleanse the zones various population. The barbarians in particular is not so pleased with this.

And a bunch of "he's pissed of that cause of that" and so forth...

Note that this is just an example.
 
Level 9
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
465
Ya I'm still working on the story. My first idea had been a really cheesy clique one, saying that it was a big tournament between the races for a grand prize of (insert gold amount here) because they are mercenaries after all.

So I'm still working on the story idea ^^ thanks for the help though, that's a pretty good idea.
 
Level 9
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
465
Well once I start it, I'll probably get help in the trigger, jass field but other that that I should be able to handle most of it on my own. I'm not going to ask for help until I'm really stuck and I need it or a decide a team would work best with it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top