Greetings!

For the past two weeks, I have been working on two new additions to the
game. This post, and the following one, will explain them both.

The first addition involves guards. Each guard can now be upgraded to an
elite status, and elite guards are packing quite a punch. The cost is
double the cost of an initial purchase of the guard - which means 20,000
gold for the commonly used guard types. Elite guards have considerably
higher health, and they inflict more damage.

The syntax would be CITY/TOWNE GUARD UPGRADE <name>. The command is
intelligent enough that you can simply use "guard" as a name repeatedly
and upgrade all the guards within a room - if you have enough gold. Gold
is taken from the Security account (for cities), or from the bank
account (for the townes). Security / governor aide status is the minimum
requirement for this.

Additionally, I have implemented a couple of fixes for various
guard-related problems that were uncovered over the years:

- Attacking a guard will automatically brand the attacker an enemy of
the guard's city/towne, if not yet

- You can no longer be forced to attack guards

- Guards will stop following a player who moves to another area

- If an elite guard is damaged and does not have any target to hit, it
will shield. The shield will fade away once the guard recovers health to
full, moves, or if it attacks again. Applies to elite guards only. This
is designed to prevent the technique known as "yank-bashing".

- Evileye cowardice will no longer work on guards


Related to these changes, I have changed the way how towne fear works.
Fear will now be negatively affecting production - the more fear a towne
feels, the lower will be their production. Fear is reduced by presence
of towne guards within the towne, and increased by their absence, as
well as by presence of hostile players within the towne. Anyone of a
different circle than the towne, and anyone who is a towne enemy, is
considered hostile.

A new command, TOWNE FEAR, lets you see the fear of your towne, as well
as the towne you are currently standing in. TOWNE MAT SUMMARY displays
this information also.

The other significant change will be explained in the next post.

Garryn


Penned by my hand on the 16th of Fas, in the year 588 AD.