How much would you pay for an ettin? or I want a merc hut

[Roderic]

Times ago I tossed an idea of a new type of shop in which you buy the services of mercenary monsters (randomly generated) that would be permanent allies until they die.

It's a nice feature inspired in Warcraft3 and useful if your god or your magic cannot provide some additional help.

The main difficulty is to establish the price of the monsters. How much for an ettin ? how much for a plain orc ? how much for an elf sorcerer ? and so on.

I open this thread to share thoughts and to define the cost of mercenaries.

[pratamawirya]

inb4 "permanent allies are troublesome" posts

[Blade]

permanent allies are troublesome.

[Roderic]

If this is the only problem make them loyal for a given number of turns and then: a) it turns neutral and looks for an exit b) it turns Jiyva-like ally and doesn't care of you anymore, c) it disappears, probably going back to the hut again to rest and not being able to rehire or somewhere else, nobody cares.

To make the change less traumatic, a warning should appear to inform that the ally's time is going to expire.

[Kate]

I don't know about having them in a shop, but there was an idea for something like this as a card that summons some monster or monster band, if you pay them then they're friendly and if not they're hostile. Permanent might be okay in that case (obviously it wouldn't be in a Nemelex-gifted deck if so). Cost would be some function of XP value, I guess.

[XuaXua]

I request no more new permanent allies till Ally Reform.

[Kate]

Well I was bored and new cards are fun to implement, so tough.

I went with using straight XP value as the cost for allies (randomised a bit of course), it seems surprisingly reasonable. I wouldn't mind making them long-lived but temporary instead and reducing the costs if need be, but it's probably okay to at least try it with permanent allies since it's in a deck that Nemelex doesn't gift. For the monsters I went with player species, since that made it easier to compile a selection and there's a good range of strengths available - so no ettins, but you can pay 4000 gold for a deep elf blademaster maybe.

[XuaXua]

Well I was bored and new cards are fun to implement, so tough.

I went with using straight XP value as the cost for allies (randomised a bit of course), it seems surprisingly reasonable. I wouldn't mind making them long-lived but temporary instead and reducing the costs if need be, but it's probably okay to at least try it with permanent allies since it's in a deck that Nemelex doesn't gift. For the monsters I went with player species, since that made it easier to compile a selection and there's a good range of strengths available - so no ettins, but you can pay 4000 gold for a deep elf blademaster maybe.

Or if you don't have the money, the now immediately next-to-you monster attacks the crap out of you.
Hooray, Blademasters.
How about a check against Evocations to determine if it will end up being hostile or neutral?

[galehar]

Or if you don't have the money, the now immediately next-to-you monster attacks the crap out of you.
Hooray, Blademasters.
How about a check against Evocations to determine if it will end up being hostile or neutral?

Evocations already determine the power of the card which affects the power of the mercenary. If Evocations also determine the monster's attitude, then it's just another summoning card.

[mageykun]

Welp, that's it then. We officially need to add a charisma score.

[XuaXua]

Welp, that's it then. We officially need to add a charisma score.

Comeliness

[XuaXua]

Or if you don't have the money, the now immediately next-to-you monster attacks the crap out of you.
Hooray, Blademasters.
How about a check against Evocations to determine if it will end up being hostile or neutral?

Evocations already determine the power of the card which affects the power of the mercenary. If Evocations also determine the monster's attitude, then it's just another summoning card.

The potential for being unable to pay the merc makes these decks a heck of a lot more dangerous than helpful to Nemelex followers.

[nicolae]

Well I was bored and new cards are fun to implement, so tough.

How easy is it to implement a new card? What source files are the main ones?

The potential for being unable to pay the merc makes these decks a heck of a lot more dangerous than helpful to Nemelex followers.

Guess you'd better be careful about drawing cards, then.

[cerebovssquire]

Or if you don't have the money, the now immediately next-to-you monster attacks the crap out of you.
Hooray, Blademasters.
How about a check against Evocations to determine if it will end up being hostile or neutral?

Evocations already determine the power of the card which affects the power of the mercenary. If Evocations also determine the monster's attitude, then it's just another summoning card.

The potential for being unable to pay the merc makes these decks a heck of a lot more dangerous than helpful to Nemelex followers.

Draw three and stack five are not there just for decoration, you know.

[galehar]

The potential for being unable to pay the merc makes these decks a heck of a lot more dangerous than helpful to Nemelex followers.

How is it more dangerous than getting hostile summons for a summoning card?

[njvack]

Well I was bored and new cards are fun to implement, so tough.

How easy is it to implement a new card? What source files are the main ones?

If you follow that link, you'll see exactly what changes MarvinPA made to the source to implement the new card.

[nicolae]

If you follow that link, you'll see exactly what changes MarvinPA made to the source to implement the new card.

Yeah, I realized that right after I posted.

[Kate]

How easy is it to implement a new card? What source files are the main ones?

You can see from the commit page that this one was entirely in decks.cc, as was the Alchemist, the last card I added, and as are many of the existing cards. The other files are just all the descriptions - annoyingly, you have to manually update the description of each deck that a new card can appear in, nobody's gotten around to automatically generating those yet. Ease of implementation depends on what you want to do, but there's lots that can be accomplished with existing mechanics, and you can just read through decks.cc to get quite a good idea of how existing cards work.

The potential for being unable to pay the merc makes these decks a heck of a lot more dangerous than helpful to Nemelex followers.

Nemelex doesn't gift it. And Nemelex or not, if you're drawing blindly from unidentified legendary decks then there are plenty of worse things that can happen than maybe needing to teleport away from a monster. Cards are risky!