[eMOD] Permanent Death for Champions for FE 0.915

Great idea.  I'll try it out.  

Seems like there used to be a sticky in the Mods forum on how to install this, but I can't find it... Do I just unrar this in ../My Games\FallenEnchantress\Mods then select "Use Mods" in my game options?

Yes.

I would probably prefer they die after fewer injuries but I was just thinking about this yesterday so cool to see it here.

What happens to a champion's items when they die? 

They are destroyed. His spelltraits are also lost, so it's a huge setback for a faction.

This is definately something that I've raised my eye about in FE. The leaders don't die. Why? They're on the battlefield. They are a unit. They should be able to die. It might really really suck for your leader to die.....but that's life. 

I propose "succession planning" be implemented.

Let me explain.

Your leader has just fallen. Woe is your great nation. What ever will you do?  Do you give up? Do you concede? Sure, that might be an option...but what if your more determined than that. What if you want your society to thrive. Why don't the people choose a new leader? One from the many champions that you've gathered along your journey??

Keep the injurys in place, but implement a % chance of death. If hit, a screen pops up informing you that your leader has fallen and that you are to:

1) Surrender (aka end game)
2) Choose a new leader

The new leader options will be those of the champions you've gathered so far.....or create a new champion. Yes, a NEW champion.

Pros and Cons to either option. The new champ, for example, will not be anywhere close in power to the champs you've collected along the way....however you get to detail his design.

Also....chance of civil war could be VERY nice.....if not REALLY hard.....to lose your leader AND half your empire....ouch. Maybe save this for insane difficulty.

Anyways, those are my thoughts....

Right now immortal champions are the only thing making the AI even remotely competitive. You will quickly end up in a situation where the AI has only trained units. That will be extremely easy to counter. I think once the AI is at its full potential, this will break it. To each their own.

Yeah, I second that opinion. This will substantially make the AI easier to fight.

Sure, but AI isn't going to suck in the final release, is it? Stardock could design with that in mind.....simply making the 'new leader' stronger if the AI had lost the leader....

The AI probably will suck. Most 4x games have weak AI and I see no reason why FE would be different. Maybe if post-launch there is a dedicated AI patch it could be improved greatly...

And Heavenfall... is it possible to make the items drop on death? From what I have seen, neutral champions/monsters have a single item on their drop list, is it even possible for a unit to drop more than one item on death? 

It is possible to make units drop more than one item, but not in this specific scenario for permanent deaths.

The reason I am still playing this game is because there are so few TBS games with good AI. Frogboy is more than capable of doing this. That said, the AI will be programmed with immortal heroes in mind. My point is that suddenly becoming mortal will throw a serious kink into the AI's strategy. 

Yes, heroes were made immortal not just to prevent the "let's reload because my best hero just died" reasoning but to help the AI remain competitive.  So there are (at least) two important reasons for heroes gaining injuries rather than dieing, and then just being immobilised after attaining all possible injuries.

I would be in favor of there always being a chance of a hero dying.  Perhaps starting at 10% chance and going up 10% per defeat, up to 90% max.  While I find it comical that a hero can get repeatedly beat to shit without dying, it's very strange they can't ever die. If this messes with the current AI setup, then maybe the AI setup needs to change?

I would be ok with rare items granting immortality, or maybe a choice few heroes possessing immortality.  This would make it a real treat to be lucky enough to find such an item, or be able to recruit, say, the immortal illusionist Elron Hubberd.  

To be fair... if a champion has 10 injuries, he is going to be really weak anyways. The penalties combined with recovery time that could be spent leveling up is going to make them mostly useless. So i think its fine for heavily injured champions to die even if the AI doesn't manage them properly 

Exactly. When the AI has been panned in the past, the battle cry around here has constantly been that the AI will be worked on towards the end. If that is the case, enabling the AI to deal with heroes with many injuries will probably allow it to deal with death as well.

The AI needs to handle injuries better, yes. Preferably by not getting them.

If the vanilla game is going to have permanent deaths, then the AI needs to be ready for that too. But it is not reasonable to expect AI changes based on a very small mod like this.

Out of curiosity, what exactly do people think Brad has done programatically to do deal with the AI champions racking up injuries and to keep coming back for more.  Remember many of injuries affect not only the champion, but the champion's army too.  So when I have to fight an enemy champion for the sixth time and 2 of his 6 injuries weaken his army, you tell me what Brad has written to help the AI in that situation.  C'mon peeps!

I have learned to carefully manage my trained troops from the beginning and they become major forces during mid and end-game.  Why not program the AI to do that instead?

Good point.  But how do you program the AI to take good care of troops?

Right now the AI seems to only use power rating to decide army strength. So getting lots of injuries is not considered. You need only subtract power in the injury xml and make sure the AI reads this properly. But as some may recall, Brad is waiting for the game to get nearer completion before he comes back to do more work. Something about running a major company. 

Getting the power values perfect is something that can only be done later in development. As far as AI logic on when to attack and when to be defensive, we don't have anything like that in our current AI. The AI only knows to form armies with high power ratings and send them at an enemy. Another good thing would be if the AI could check the power of its target and the surrounding area's enemy units. Seems that the AI does not take that into account when attacking a target. It does sometimes skip cities though that have a very high rating. 

The basic problem is that not enough work has been done on the AI and Brad is not currently working on it last we heard. It would probably take a considerable amount of beta tester feedback in beta 4 to convince Derek that AI is impeding the development process and I am not even sure I would agree. I see beta 5 as the place to work on AI.

On a side note. Is it possible to watch AI-factions battleling as an observer. In Sins of a Solar empire you could resign, but at the same time beeing in the game. When you resigned in Sins of a Solar Empire you could see the whole map. Something like this would make it possible to see what the AI does and give comments on it in the forum. Or is there a key-combination like ctrl-n that gives that reveals the whole map?

Ctrl+U reveals the entire map. Ctrl+z is AI vs AI mode, your sovereign is moved to bottom left corner of map where none can reach. The AIs are left on the map to battle each other, but this unlocks some cheats for the AI as well such as being able to rush everything they build.

If by saying "Preferably by not getting them" you mean the AI should proactively avoid putting their champions in situations where losing and gaining injuries are likely, I agree with you. And in turn, that will sort out any issues the AI has with dealing with dead champions. because once the champion is dead, really what does the AI have to cope with?

On the other hand, if you mean the AI should be immune to injuries, I disagree.

Hmm.. Only ctrl-n and ctrl-g seem to work. (ctrl-g activates the grid). Also, the ctrl-z mode seems strange, letting the AI rush-build everything... Thanks anyway! ^^