Need some ideas

[FeelsGoodMan]

Hit me with your best (or worst).

I need some ideas to what I can include in a city siege. You play three human heroes who are invading an undead city. The city has 4 gates, and the siege starts with a ram being sent to the front gate to break it down. You need to protect the ram until the gate is broken.

The main event of the siege will be taking down something called a plague spreader where you need to protect one of the heroes while he is "purging" the plague spreader.


Now what I need is some cool mechanics that I can include, and some stages before you get to the plague spreader. Almost like a puzzle, or something you need to destroy before you can get there, but not in regular dungeon style, more like city siege style. Not sure how to properly explain it.

The city layout is not linear, you can pretty much go anywhere in the city. Screenshot for layout:

(The rock chunks you see laying around will be removed)

Spoiler

1 - You arrive here.
2 - This is the plague spreader.
3 - This area is not accessible.

 

[AesirJenssen]

Hi dude!

I don't know if this ideas are of your utility,but here they go:

1. You can make each Hero unique and special. This is, take the four Heroes as a team whit his respective abbilitys of class. Given the genre of the map is a siege, I have in mind 4 class:

• Sieger/Engineer - Unit that can attack specific objetives like structucteres, fences, wall, towers... also build some "fences" or defensive structures no over powered.
• Healer - can heal the allied Heroes and give buffs to them(maybe also some auras)
• Warrior/Tank - high capacity of fight, melee, skills of pure damage
• Tech unit - a unit that can put traps, mass control, summon pets, maybe craft potions or some cool items of support or somthing like that.

2.In relation to the stages before destroy the plague spreader, maybe you can put 4 pillars of power that they must destroy. This pillars give invulnerability to the plague spreader; Sieger Hero has advantage for destroy them . The pillars can be defended whit any cool boss, where every Hero can "glow", to avoid that only one of them is the one who can fight without problems with the 4 bosses.

3.After destroying the pillars and killing the bosses, the plague spreader itself can have certain phases besides enemy waves. The first phase could be to destroy an outer shield (where the warrior hero is essential), while the shield is active, there may be special enemy units defending it, unable to be killed until it is destroyed.

4.After it could be like a "turn off the bomb" (I don't know how to implement this, so I don't know if it's possible); for which, the technician needs specific objects that will be looted killing specific enemy units of the enemy waves. While all this happens, the plague could be a constant debuff about the lives of the heroes, making the priest aware of preventing the disease from killing them, and the Tech would be responsible for controlling the enemy waves.
After deactivating it, the plague spreader can be attacked, while a last brutal enemy wave comes.

I can't think of much more.

I hope it helps, good luck with the project and regards!

 

[Veritas 117]

What about having 4 switches or points that need to be controlled to be able to shut down the plague spreader. You have to capture them and defend them to shut it down?

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Hi dude!

I don't know if this ideas are of your utility,but here they go:

1. You can make each Hero unique and special. This is, take the four Heroes as a team whit his respective abbilitys of class. Given the genre of the map is a siege, I have in mind 4 class:

• Sieger/Engineer - Unit that can attack specific objetives like structucteres, fences, wall, towers... also build some "fences" or defensive structures no over powered.
• Healer - can heal the allied Heroes and give buffs to them(maybe also some auras)
• Warrior/Tank - high capacity of fight, melee, skills of pure damage
• Tech unit - a unit that can put traps, mass control, summon pets, maybe craft potions or some cool items of support or somthing like that.

2.In relation to the stages before destroy the plague spreader, maybe you can put 4 pillars of power that they must destroy. This pillars give invulnerability to the plague spreader; Sieger Hero has advantage for destroy them . The pillars can be defended whit any cool boss, where every Hero can "glow", to avoid that only one of them is the one who can fight without problems with the 4 bosses.

3.After destroying the pillars and killing the bosses, the plague spreader itself can have certain phases besides enemy waves. The first phase could be to destroy an outer shield (where the warrior hero is essential), while the shield is active, there may be special enemy units defending it, unable to be killed until it is destroyed.

4.After it could be like a "turn off the bomb" (I don't know how to implement this, so I don't know if it's possible); for which, the technician needs specific objects that will be looted killing specific enemy units of the enemy waves. While all this happens, the plague could be a constant debuff about the lives of the heroes, making the priest aware of preventing the disease from killing them, and the Tech would be responsible for controlling the enemy waves.
After deactivating it, the plague spreader can be attacked, while a last brutal enemy wave comes.

I can't think of much more.

I hope it helps, good luck with the project and regards!

Sorry I should have mentioned that this is only a part of the main quest line in a map I am making. The heroes are already made, and the siege is just a small part of the main quest But great ideas nonetheless. I especially like the idea with the pillars.

What about having 4 switches or points that need to be controlled to be able to shut down the plague spreader. You have to capture them and defend them to shut it down?

This is a good idea!


Thanks for your ideas, a siege design is starting to take shape in my head.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Have optional areas that can provide help or remove some obstacles. For example, purify a Fountain of Health so it heals only you and not the zombies, clear a shrine of undead to receive an automatically-recasting buff, set a graveyard on fire to prevent reinforcements from spawning, destroy tunnel entrances so the undead can't flank you, etc.

Make the city towers accessible as defensive and scouting outposts (such as with a Call to Arms ability). Make the walls walkable as well.

Have piles of debris that can be attacked to provide (temporary) obstacles to prevent being swarmed.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Have optional areas that can provide help or remove some obstacles. For example, purify a Fountain of Health so it heals only you and not the zombies, clear a shrine of undead to receive an automatically-recasting buff, set a graveyard on fire to prevent reinforcements from spawning, destroy tunnel entrances so the undead can't flank you, etc.

Make the city towers accessible as defensive and scouting outposts (such as with a Call to Arms ability). Make the walls walkable as well.

Have piles of debris that can be attacked to provide (temporary) obstacles to prevent being swarmed.

I really like these ideas! I will probably use the purify fountain of health and the clear shrine for the auto cast buff. Burning a graveyard seems interesting too, I can definitely make something out of this. Thanks

 

[Oliver]

Maybe you could have some push/pull offence/defence attack/defence vs counter attack pacing like Football or Rugby. The longer it takes the humans to do the event the shorter time they have to attack (eg dps the boss)

Offense ideas-
Take over a gate
Kill all zombies in area
Storm a fortification
Destroy power generations for a shield
Burn dead bodies (to stop them being raised)
Do damage to final boss (final boss stays alive throughout the game and shouldn't be killable in one event alone)
Fight toward various undead stockhouses and mark them with coloured smoke so artillery can destroy them

Defence ideas-
Defend a temporary base
Guide A pack mule to a captured area or to restock a siege weapon
Defend against x waves of undead
Kill necromancers who send waves of undead until they're killed
Defend a previously captured fortification whilst it is being repaired
Defend a siege weapon while it destroys something

By designing the events separately you could have some larger game loop above that which assigns events (when an event finishes the game loop picks a new event), so every playthrough will be slightly different. Perhaps between events players will have a minute or so to explore or visit shops. Failing an event puts you into "defence mode" where you can't make any progress forward till the defence is finished.

 

[Lord Siler]

You can make each event where the hero takes down the plague spreader like a mini-game where you have to protect and heal the hero while he deals with the unit, also you could add some mini-game type events into it like fixing a bridge, etc. that will make the level funner to play.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

I like the ideas, keep them coming!

Here's a video of what I have so far. There will be four Plague Obelisks that needs to be purged before you can purge the Plague Fortress. They will have varying difficulties where the first you purge is the easiest and the last one is the hardest one. They will also have unique "gimmicks" that needs to be handled, like in the video where you have to kill the portals fast enough. Also there won't be that many units when it's finished, this is just a test


(skip to 1:17 if you don't care about me killing towers and guards)

Spoiler

 

[Trill]

1) Light smoke signals to call artillery bombardment upon an area. Kill enemies carrying water buckets to put the smoke out.

2) There's a gate/door but no ram. Allied sappers will try to dig a tunnel. Destroy nerubian patrols so they don't sense the sappers digging. If a nerubian senses sappers and starts burrowing, you have a short window of time to drop a sapper charge into burrow hole to kill the nerubian before he reaches the tunnel.

 

[cleavinghammer]

^ ... I'm stealing those. Those are brilliant.

Collapsing walls: Attacking a wall section will collapse it (debris remains walkable), dealing enormous AoE damage to any units nearby. Could be used for bossfights (in which case it deals high damage and stun instead of a one-hit kill). The downside is that the undead can then come through the breach as well, and can access the walltops as well.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Evacuate survivors: Some survivors are trapped in a zombie-infested house. Kill all the (stronger-than-average zombies) and the survivors will join you/will leave but give you something.

Reverse Zombification Potion: A wizard is working on a cure inside his house. Defend him for long enough and he'll give you an item/spell that reverses the plague, converting groups of zombies back into villagers.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

Thanks for your ideas. Maybe you can help me some more. What you can see in the video below is what I have completed so far, plus one other obelisk fight. It is all still very unbalanced, but that will be fixed in the end.

As you can see the Paladiness has a "Cleanse" spell that she channels for 10 seconds before it kills the target. It can only target undead objects, not units so it is meant as a game mechanic to be used throughout this whole siege. In the video it is used to disable an undead amplifier crystal that makes a field which increases damage taken by x3 and decreases damage done by x0.5.

In the other obelisk event there spawns portals that spawns units rapidly. The portals must be closed using the cleanse spell.

Now, I still have two obelisks left to make events for, the main event (plague fortress in the middle of the city) and a boss fight. I have ideas for the boss fight and the fortress, but I need a cool gimmick for 2 more obelisk events.

Spoiler

 

[cleavinghammer]

Obelisk of Necrosis: The obelisk projects a field that causes negative HP and mana regen in non-undead units. The longer the obelisk remains tainted, the faster the degeneration (-1, -2, -5, -15, -50 HP/S, etc.)

Obelisk of Growing Dread: The obelisk attacks slowly, but with every attack made gains a small amount of damage and attack speed (it has a cap, but it's very high, +500 or something), and must be cleansed before it becomes utterly unkillable.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

The obelisk attacks slowly, but with every attack made gains a small amount of damage and attack speed (it has a cap, but it's very high, +500 or something), and must be cleansed before it becomes utterly unkillable.

This is awesome, I am implementing it as we speak. There will be an additional unit that "aids" the obelisk by stopping the purge timer so you have to cleanse it to resume the timer. That way you're always fighting against the clock. Nice one!

 

[cleavinghammer]

You could also have it indiscriminately target the zombies to gain damage faster.

Obelisk of Reanimation: Obelisk is guarded by a few elite zombies. Whenever all these zombies are killed, it revives them all at full health and mana. While being cleansed, the obelisk takes longer to revive the zombies or starts reviving them one at a time instead of simultaneously.
* Alternately: Whenever only a single zombie is left, the obelisk revives the dead ones at full health and mana. If all the zombies are killed (the last two within a few seconds of each other), the obelisk starts channeling to revive them simultaneously. The zombies' revival time is increased while the obelisk is being cleansed.

Corpse Pit: The Obelisk is surrounded by corpse piles, from which it continuously summons undead minions. As soon as it starts being cleansed, it takes less time to summon them but the summons' duration is shortened, and every X seconds of cleansing causes it to lose a minion type (for example, at full "health" it summons Abominations, Crypt Fiends and Skeletons, then just the latter two, then just skeletons.