Earthquake, flooding, lightinings & c.

[pauxlo]

Im glad I found this, I was just about to ask if I could replace the day night cycle with a weather cycle, to represent longer battle. Many battle were fought over the course of weeks if not months. I would love a simple weather system that could replace the day night cycle, or even seasons, if playing an 'Epic' campaign, to represent years of war. This can be done as of now right ? using WML, and such ? I thought I read you can customize the time cycle.

Yes, can be done. There is some survival MP scenario which uses this extensively (with random changes every some turns), additional to the day-night-cycle. "Dark foreshadow", or so. (Look on the Multiplayer server, there is often a game of this going on.)

As for effect on battle, some rain making most land tiles take an extra MP to traverse would add a lot of depth to the game, and I think it could be done while keeping KISS in mind. I'm all for this idea, what would it take to implement weather and disasters in battle ?

In the mentioned map, it simply changes the terrain to another one. In your case you would have to replace all terrains with variations, and create new movement types for all of them, as a variation of the old ones. (Cave and other "indoor" terrain should not change, I think.)
Hmm, another idea would be to use move-events and subtract MP on any move of any unit. (This is only in the 1.5 branch.)

[uzytkownik]

Perhaps a factor can be introduced for rain to make it fall every 4 days of gameplay(after 8 turns?), and if the campaign takes place in the far north or far south, then snow can be introduced every x days.(I use x as I live in the southern US and snow doesn't fall here but once in about 4 or 5 years)

I live in Central Europe and the snow can be very random - this year the main part of snow we had in March as far as I remember. It is not a periodic phenomena...
How is it in Scandinavia/Canada/Norther Russia/Greenland/... I don't know.

But what I fear is this will intoduce other factors into the strategy and may be too much. For "realism" players would complain that on rainy days:

1) bows are heavier(as they're made of wood) and therefore far less accurate

Ranged attacs should be penalised - even after rain. I don't remeber which medival battle(for sure it was connected to history of UK - may be people from there knows something?) was lost due to exposing bow string to rain - the (cross?)bows becomes useless. I know it would violate KISS but in fact it was important factor...

2)Movement is halved or taken away by 1

It should affect different units and terrains in different ways. For example during rain (or storm) the mountains/seas can be dangerous. On the other hand in forest there are less mud as earth is bounded by roots. (I know I know - KISS).

3)Armor would rust(yeah, I know it's silly, but I'd bet money someone would put this on a thread)

I guess - not in short term. I guess there were methods of protecting them (at least in short therm). If the unit is not a single person/monster but a unit it probably settled the camp in which soldairs daily shaves, polish armour etc.

4)Flying units can't fly in rainy or snowy weather. It makes sense, but this would be a pain in the posterior to implement

May be they could use cave movement?

5)Mermen and Naga get some sort of advantage.

6) Dwarves can't move in the mud or some such nonsense.

As the most common use of mud is for roads it'd rather painful for them...

This is all I can think of at the top of my head. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate, so don't get mad.

7. Woses regenerates faster (trees likes water)

[scienceguy8]

Could we just ignore all that and simply add a particle effects generator to the engine? I just want the sky to darken and water to fall. If someone wants to make it in their campaign that a storm is particularly horrible and has a negative effect on units, fine, add it to the scenario WML. However, I say that normal storms (rain, snow, dust, locusts, etc) should have no effect on gameplay, just story and atmosphere.

[irrevenant]

Could we just ignore all that and simply add a particle effects generator to the engine?

What he said. The core idea is useful. The minute specifics of how it'll be used is irrelevant at this stage.