Orc cities?

[beogh]

Hello,
I've been thinking quite hard about this for a while now and I've talked about it with a few people who've given me support and suggestions.
I'm finally at a point where it's time to turn the idea loose so it may live or die.

It's no secret that Beogh is a tough god to 15 rune with. Your army will die in pretty much any branch past Lair if you bring them all at once.
In Hell, powerful demons can torment and kill even the hardiest of veterans in one or two shots. Sure you can revive now and that helps, but there's no way you can keep up. Pan and Abyss' multi-level force you to leave your bros behind. Slime's walls eat your guys, etc.

So here's what I propose:

Add a new ability for Beogh at full piety called "Establish village".

This takes one star of piety and you must select a spot on the floor and at least one high ranking named follower who will permanently stay behind in that general area.
After so many turns, the village will begin to build itself up; some useful shops will open and some fruit-bearing trees will be planted.
The more orcs you leave behind in the village, the quicker this process will happen.
Over time, this will provide you with enough quality gear (assuming you have the gold) to give to your followers so they aren't walking around fighting Pan Lords with their fists.
Also, the village will slowly repopulate itself if you take more than half of the guys with you. This will help replace some of your ranks in the endgame when you don't see enemy orcs any more.

Thoughts? I don't know how hard this will be to code, but I assume it's possible based on what little I know of the process.

[milski]

This seems like an unnecessary amount of grinding and backtracking for a mechanic that doesn't really fit Crawl.

A better solution in the same vein might be to either improve Beogh's "grant followers" passive so you don't get crap at max level, or to make "get followers" an ability you can activate to get some decent allies at the cost of a large amount of piety.

[and into]

That a god drops off quite a bit for a 15-rune game is not a problem in and of itself. This happens to some extent with other gods too, while TSO (e.g.) becomes much stronger in many parts of the "extended" game.

However... I rather like this idea. But I would suggest a few changes.

Once per game, at six stars piety, you can found a "city on a hill." This establishes your own "religious community" (/ cult compound) in an area of your choice. (Cannot found city in abyss or areas reached by portal)

The city grows and develops over time of its own accord. You don't make any decisions about it, but slowly it takes over the whole floor on which it was founded.

Beogh gives a high-cost piety ability to "recruit" from the city, which ports in the best zealots. What is available to recruit is mentioned on the ability screen. It replinishes and quality improves over time as more orcs from your city are trained.

I would let the city develop, eg, blacksmiths that automatically equip recruited troops with good weapons and armor. But the smiths would be for flavor; you can't buy stuff from them. (Don't want to step on the toes of Gozag's call merchant ability....)

No backtracking or grinding. You can come back to the city and see how it has developed if you like--all the orcs should be neutral but will not become allies. Only way to get allies from city is through recruitment ability.

[Shtopit]

Addition to and into's idea: make development/replenishment depend on XP or piety gain, so that you can't just 5 until you can get that orc knight.

[jwoodward48ss]

Also disallow creating it in Pandemonium.

BTW, does "Recall Orcs" work when you are in Abyss/Pan/Portal? Does it work when the target orc was left behind in Abyss/Pan/Portal?

[Shard1697]

I would rather spending a bunch of piety to just get like, a warlord and a couple of knights or something, than deal with whatever all this is.

[DracheReborn]

Love the flavour... but as others have said, essentially what you're getting out of it is a "recruit orc" ability, so perhaps it can be simplified to that and Orc City is just a virtual village living in your A menu. Or if it does have to have a physical location then why not just put it in Orc:2?

Allowing it anywhere is potentially problematic and doesn't seem to serve any purpose, unless Orc City is supposed to have a Corruption-like effect on the level. I'm not sure we really need more of that.

[ion_frigate]

I do think that having Orc:$ turn into a (cosmetic) Orc City once you've "conquered" it would be fun and flavorful notion. Like once you have ****** piety and few to no hostile monsters remain there, it spawns a bunch of non-converting neutrals, as and_into said. The only downside is that it might confuse players who expect to recruit these orcs. You could probably solve this with a cleverly worded message upon first entering New Orc City, though.

But yeah, I definitely agree that the ability and the city should be detached from each other.

[Quazifuji]

I'm definitely in the "fantastic flavor, but from a gameplay standpoint this just seems like a really roundabout way to create a `recruit orc' ability" camp. If you have to go back to the city to get things, it's tedious. If Beogh just gives you a remote recruit ability, why not just give Beogh a direct "recruit" ability?

I do think and_into's version could work to preserve the flavor of the ability without adding any significant gameplay downsides (just a lot of dev work), and considering that Beogh is one of the more flavor-oriented gods in the game I do think increasing the flavor is nice. I definitely think being able to create the city is better than Orc:$ turning into the city, simply because I don't think making it mandatory to do Orc to get Beogh's recruits is a good idea (if you're worshipping Beogh you want to do Orc anyway generally, but I don't think there should be an ability that specically requires it). Also, "conquered" isn't a well-defined gameplay notion, I'm not sure what a good non-awkward criterion for that would be.

[Shtopit]

I'd just make it "somewhere in the dungeon" and make it appear in a D level you have already visited. If you get back there, a message appears: "Beogh has willed an orc citadel on this floor."

[lethediver]

That's such a cool proposal it should just take over the main game.

Dungeon Fortress: Stone Citadel.

[jwoodward48ss]

Slaves to MAHKLEB, God of Blood II: Deep Dwarf Citadel

[beogh]

and into, I think your adaptation is an excellent step.

Proposed changes for Orc City idea:
- 'Establish a village' ability is now available at full piety. The cost is two stars. Whatever level you are on becomes the village. It has to be in a dungeon level or branch.
- Over time the city builds up and randomly becomes populated with neutral orcs and cosmetic changes (houses, blacksmiths, trees or plants? )
- When you reach full piety again, you gain an ability to 'Recruit from village'. Depending on the development of the city (this could be measured in steps taken since establishing the village), you will "recall" the strongest troops, like and into's idea. The game will tell you what troops are available first and ask if that is okay.

anything else?

[minstrel]

While it's a big no-no duplication of powers, I can't resist offering the suggestion to copy Lugonu's "Corrupy" ability. Rename it "Invade!" and summon an orc citadel to the current level, once per dungeon level at high piety cost. Fill it with friendly orcs and bring the glory of Beogh to every realm.

If you must, disallow overwriting non-rock tiles so it can't be used to break vaults. But that might be fun too - break open and storm the Tomb for the glory of Beogh!

[Psieye]

This is actually 2 proposals in one. The mechanically relevant one is "I want Beogh to 'port me some elite dudes with badass gear - on demand, not when Beogh feels like it". The other one is a huge amount of code for a cosmetic 'garden' you can't even interact with.

The dev-time conservative way of solving the root cause is "Beogh 'ports you dudes much more frequently when you're in extended".