I have an idea on how to add a building to a city with an alternative creature.
I've wanted this for a long time, and I'm probably not the only one, to add an additional building for hiring new creatures in a city.
It seems that it's impossible to create a full-fledged additional building, but there are a couple of ideas on how to create an alternative one.
I'm warning you in advance and apologizing for the long text.
First, I'll briefly describe what I found out.
1. A creature appears in the hiring window based on the ID of the building it's attached to (i.e., if a level 7 creature is in a building with the ID dwelling_1, it will still appear in the first row of the hiring window).
2. It's not possible to assign new IDs, i.e., you can't just enter dwelling_8 or special_8 for a building; in my case, the game crashes.
3. Non-upgraded, upgraded, and alternate upgraded creatures appear in the first, second, and third slots in the hiring window, respectively. This is tied to the creature itself (i.e., if you assign an upgraded creature to a level 1 building without an original, it will still appear in the second slot, not the first).
4. You can assign no more than two creatures to a building per level.
5. All buildings can theoretically be built up to level 5. The building plan and the dependence of buildings on each other can be changed as you like, but I think everyone already knows that.
6. If you assign levels 3 and 4 (with a new original and two upgrades) to a building with creatures built up to level 2 (original and two upgrades), they will replace the primary creatures in the hiring window. This will happen as follows (according to the points above): first, the old, non-upgraded unit will be replaced with a new one, while keeping the upgrades from the old creature. Then, the upgrades will be replaced with new ones.
I understand that this is not exactly an alternative building, but rather a building "on top." And the third level of such a building looks terribly awkward (a new, non-upgraded unit and its old upgrades).
But this situation can probably be fixed with scripts.
(I'm not very good at scripts, but as far as I know, what I'm describing is actually possible). You'll need a script to destroy the building, a script to rebuild it, and a script to assign a new allowed level, but let's go through it step by step.
If anyone can help with scripts, I can create a couple of mods for an alternative building.
zahar0z, it's been 1.5 years since your suggestion. I know that your modding skills have grown significantly during this time. Also, you have already been able to implement a number of interesting mods. Have you thought about returning to the development of the NTBF mod? Perhaps now you can solve the problem with scripts.