Hostile neutral units

[L'ethu]

Is it possible for 0 AD to add hostile neutrals into the game like Warcraft III where player could engage battle and gain experience or resources from these hostile neutrals?   

[hhyloc]

I think it's possible, just assign neutral units to the Gaia player

Edited February 19, 2012 by hhyloc

[Spahbod]

There are hostile neutrals in the game. Just add some gaia soldiers. They'll fight everyone they encounter.

[Majicman182]

I think you should add a NPC named Caligula and he just randomly goes around attacking civilians. :-P this is a joke by the way (not a bad idea for a future Campaign map though lol)

Edited February 20, 2012 by Majicman182

[oshron]

i think there should definitely be some units intended for use as hostile neutrals, though could be assigned to any player or even converted/captured. for example, there could perhaps be brigands that a scenario designer would place in a gathering site so that he will attack gatherers which come over there and try to steal their resources. another idea is that there could perhaps be slave units that could be captured for free use. this would work particularly well in random maps which are supposed to take place in regions where ancient cultures traditionally got slaves

using neutrals could also be useful for scenario design. in Empire Earth and other games, there were sometimes events in the campaign in which you would happen across soldiers belonging to a neutral player (perhaps one that serves no other purpose than to provide control for those units) that would be converted to you as soon as you saw them. with a neutral gaia player, these units could be assigned to that instead of taking up another player slot in a scenario

this could also work for a "sites of power" idea i had. basically, buildings which serve the exact same territorial functions as civic centers are included in scenarios and you need to capture them in order to control an area instead of being able to build a civic center. these buildings would include things like inns and ruined temples and would also be built over settlements or whatever else, and if they remain neutral it could influence where you can build (for instance, if there's a ruined temple with a large territorial radius, you could say that you cant build in the area immediately around it because the units are superstitious of it)

Edited February 21, 2012 by oshron

[oshron]

Control gaia's Civic Centre that provides of Mercenary units like Elephants or Numidian Cavalry, Mercenary Barbarians, Italian Extraordinarii socii, etc.

huh?

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I think that triggers could arrange that for you.

[oshron]

i think you could probably assign individual behaviors in that case, or enable or disable attack capabilities

to give a bit of precedent, on the AOM random map "Vinlandsaga", the main landmass (which you had to sail to) was loosely populated by "Skraeling" units, which looked identical to a norse ulfsark unit but which had entirely different traits and description, and the descriptions of which gave a bit of history concerning viking colonization. to justify their hostility towards the player, they were given this one-line summary: "He wants to kill you for invading his lands." the same basic thing could be given to a hostile GAIA-only unit (for example, a random bandit could be described as "He wants to kill you and take your money." and an entirely fictional monster could have "He looks hungry..."

incidentally, ive speculated that a justification for why some wild animals attack the player instead of avoiding them could be something like "Lately, food has been hard to come by around here, so this lion has resorted to man-eating."