Sieges by the goblins

Hi Everyone,

Has anybody else here built them selves a wall and turned their game into a sandbox mode, all the enemies just wait out side the walls and puff out of existence over time.

I am looking to see if there is a way to allow the goblins to break down the walls the player builds,put up ladders to climb over or dig a tunnel under. I saw the introduction of vines which will be possible to use as ladders, we could use some of that code to allow the builder goblins to plant vines at our walls :smiley:

Let me know what you think

You can also play the game in Peaceful if you don’t want invaders :smiley:

Some enemies are able to destroy gates and such. With the latest ACE update (0.9.4), Goblin Sappers were introduced and they will also break your gates.

Goblins able to build ladders and such is a cool idea that we wanted to add to ACE as well but we ran into some AI issues when trying and as such it has been paused for now. It is possible but not so simple, unfortunately. But maybe at some point? :smiley:

Thanks, for the reply :smiley:

I will ask my brother to look into this he said he wanted to help and create a mod that allows the baddies to cause more trouble.

This guy had a very good description of something that would be amazing in game :smiley:

Just browsing through that old thread, a couple of simpler ideas spring to mind:

  • necromancers could fire a projectile (IIRC they already have a ranged attack) which, upon hitting a hearthling, has a %chance to summon “undead hands” at their location (basically it creates an entity which is like the engineer’s traps – the hands reach up and grab the hearthling’s legs, holding them in place.) On its own, this would be a great way to disrupt the movement of guards and civilians (currently you can, with minimal finesse, simply set target priorities to the most important enemies like healers and be confident of victory, unless you’re baaaaadly out-matched)… but if given time to dig their way to the surface, those hands prove to be fully-fledged zombies who are now inside your defences! This would work best if necromancers were added to a late-game undead raid/invasion, since they’d be a focal point for the encounter… obviously make sure they bring along a big zombie/skelly who can break down gates like an ogre, too.

  • it’s already possible for enemies to destroy buildings, but not partially – it’s all or nothing. Currently this is only seen in the end-game titan fight, and the enemies which do it give plenty of warning/charge-up time so you can stop them. The dev team were really hesitant to have buildings be outright destroyed by enemies, since that could mean a lot of the player’s work and care being obliterated in one fell swoop… but of course, since this would be a mod it would be “opt-in” so players who don’t want to risk that don’t need to. Or there could be a version of the mod with building destruction and one without – simply leave out the enemies who would destroy buildings.

  • possibly a really dumb idea, but one thought I had was for goblin workers to simply place “watchtowers” randomly – if they happen to build one next to your town’s walls, then it’s effectively a siege tower instead! They would be a large entity rather than a building, and use the ladder component so enemies can climb them (visually they’d look like they support this, and they’d have a flat top so it would make sense that they’d be a good place to keep lookout)… instead of the goblins trying to place ladders against your walls and thus having to deal with all the AI involved, they’d effectively (from an AI standpoint) just place giant ladders randomly. As an added bonus, they could have some relevant “firepit” components added so that goblins treat them the same way they do their campfires – sending patrols out to them, gathering around them at night, etc. With clever design, you could make it so that when the goblins create “standing positions” around the campfires those positions are on the top platform rather than around the base; that requires digging into how the model works and doing shenanigans with its hitbox but it’s definitely possible… this whole idea is basically a ‘cheap hack’ to work around the AI difficulty of them placing ladders intelligently, but every sub-thread of the idea gets more and more complicated hahaha. That said, I reckon it could be convincing – the goblins rock up, they build their camp, and if you leave their workers alone they start building watchtowers all over the place to solidify their territory… goblins aren’t known to do things the smartest way, but eventually if you have camps on either side of your town then goblins will wander/patrol between them, and that increases the chances that they’ll put a watchtower in a fortunate/unfortunate place. Of course, then it’s a race against time to have your soldiers knock it down before the goblin warriors show up to use it…

  • kind of a cheap one, but what if entlings simply spawned from trees? Most players like to have some trees in their town for decoration… normally, invasions won’t spawn near buildings (or within the boundary created by your buildings – so yes it’s possible to cheese this by building small structures dotted around a large area to prevent enemies spawning anywhere near your town), so I think this idea works better as part of an event… probably an upgraded version of the “1000 logs” event. If you anger the forest spirits badly enough, even the young trees you’ve planted in your town might start sending their spirits after you. There should of course be plenty of warning for this, so that players aren’t caught un-awares, and probably some branching options (so it’s a mini-campaign)… perhaps you get a certain, obvious tree spawning which sends entlings and giant entlings at you, and if you cut it down you get a quest-line which basically splits into two branches (pun not intended!) – one is to appease the forest spirits by planting the seed of the ancient tree and looking after it (requires a high level herbalist to complete the later quest tasks); alternatively just fight off the forest spirits until you beat them. Again, a potentially simple idea which can become very complex (and very rewarding for players) but it’s all using existing stuff which could be copy/pasted with basic know-how, it’s more just tedious/a lot of work rather than really difficult. If the modder is prepared to get really into the campaigns for it, then the “good” ending could teach the herbalist how to grow Ancient Trees which are allied to the town and will spawn a few entlings that hang around it as defenders (which are allied to the town too), so it’s basically a natural defensive turret/trap.

  • I’m not familiar enough with the NA’s “farms being attacked by animals” invasions to be sure, but it seems like those raids use the farm zones as a “spawn target” for enemies, and that they allow the enemies to spawn within the boundaries of the town (unlike camps which can only spawn away from the town)… that would definitely be worth a look at too if you wanted to do any kind of “enemies appear inside the town” shenanigans. I agree with the general idea that any such enemies shouldn’t be powerful, it’s more that it’s a good way to distract the guards and civilians from external threats for a bit. Or, I guess, at least encourage the player to make sure that their guards are stationed around the town and can quickly respond to events like this and then get back to their posts to defend against outsiders.

  • enemies building siege weapons (catapults/ballistae) which force you to leave the safety of your defences to deal with them. Again, it need not be “intelligently placed”, simply having enemies place them during their normal movement should be good enough… they’re already moving either towards the town, or between their own camps. Having a couple of these spawn as part of camps makes attacking them a more interesting prospect, too… there’s already a mod to add a ballista to the hearthlings’ arsenal, the hardest part of giving the same thing to enemies is simply giving them a way to place it. You could have it spawn as part of an event (the same way the camps already spawn), or you can have enemies place it as they’re fighting/as they’re walking around, and neither of those requires any extra AI it’s simply an extra item to generate with the camps or a “passive” effect that spawns siege engines as an entity. Or, worst-case scenario, a new enemy type which looks like a siege engine (with a crewmember to push it/fire it) which has a really long range and is dangerous enough that you can’t ignore it. Enemies and hearthlings will shoot at each other even if they physically can’t pathfind to each other, the only reason it doesn’t happen more often is that enemies who can’t find a path to you usually “poof” before they get in range of their weapons. If the range is, like, really far though…

These are all ideas based on already-existing methods within the game, so modding any of them in is just a matter of using existing stuff as inspiration/a guide. It’s entirely possible for someone who knows what they’re doing to go way beyond this, adding whole new capabilities to enemies and the game (e.g. custom pathfinder to allow flying enemies or enemies that can crawl over walls, working on the enemies’ AI so they recognise obstacles and will build ladders to bypass them, or changing building destruction to allow arbitrary voxel destruction)… but these things require a good knowledge of how the game runs and programming experience beyond simply adding new content that copies/follows the pattern of existing stuff.