Greetings!
We’re glad to see the beta has gone out relatively painlessly. For those of you who have been with us since back in the GalCiv I betas, I think you will agree this one went off a lot smoother. After a decade or so, you eventually start to get the hang of this.
That isn’t to say we are free of hicups. There’s people with video issues. There’s people who can’t even get the game to run. That will be our big priority next week.
Our favorite part of the development cycle began with Beta 2. This is where ridiculously rapid changes to the game start to occur.
Given the notoriously massive suckitude of Stardock betas, we now have the collective opportunity to roll up our sleeves and decrease the crappiness of the game from nightmarish to merely painful.
#1 City Improvements
These are trivial for us to add. And we’ve only started touching the capabilities here.
Examples
#2 Research
The research screen is still pretty rough. The tech tree button is disabled and there’s too little information on it.
Feel free to discuss different ideas on what information you’d like to see. How you would like to see it presented. Bear in mind, we are not going to toss out the general research concept (the one in there came from the 9 month beta 1 cycle and we like it as a game mechanic).
#3 HUD options
Beta 3 will have a Head’s up Display toggle that will allow you to get information about your cities.
#4 NON-HUD Information
That said, we don’t users to have to use a HUD to get basic info at a glance. Thus, feedback and suggestions of looking at a unit, city, etc. and telling if they are defended, how strong they are, the general output, etc. We have our own thoughts on this but we’d love to hear yours.
We do NOT, however, want to have units running around with flags or other things of the sort. We want subtle (non-HUD) and hard core (HUD).
#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions.
The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that).
#6 Other types of World Resources
The Beta 2 series will start to add horses as a global resource that is used to create mounted warriors. But we’d like to hear your thoughts on other resources that one might control – rarer ones.
We have plenty of ideas of things about a given kingdom that might be affected by this or that but we don’t want to bias the direction of suggestions. I will say, however, we want to stay away from the GalCiv “Approval/Happiness” concept.
The XML allows us to create any type of resource, define a graphic, a 3D tile, and what stats it changes and how much. The random generator will make use of it automatically (and this same thing will happen through modding no doubt). So it’s not a big deal to add more resources as long as they’re fun and not simply there for the sake of “complexity”.
Ideally, we can define resources that are all very rare and thus would only occasionally show up in a game (but yet every game would have a couple of these different rare resources).
The Beta 2 series will start to re-enable the other technology trees. Right now, building up your kingdom has limited choices because you’re effectively a mundane. The Magic tech path takes the view that rather than building up your cities with improvements you can also do things to enchant them to do better. It’s just an alternative direction (or you can mix and match).
Next build will be next week.
UPDATE!
One thing I've been reading on the forums has to do with weapons and defenses available. Right now, a lot of them aren't in (for instance, you only get daggers on melee weapons) because we still have to update the UI to handle the different types of damage and defense types.
For instance:
So a club does blunt damage, a dagger does piercing damage, etc. But we need to display this in a way that easy to understand for the user so that when they go into battle, these modifiers can be understood.
UPDATE #2!
Great stuff in the comments area! Keep it up! Now you're getting into the spirit of the beta. We'll look at all of this and see which things make sense to put in, which things make sense to put in after release and which things make sense to put in some future update.
Not having that much time on my hands to read this thread through, here are some suggestions to what I'd like to see in your game:
I would like to see adjecent buildings do more than just boost the production of the special tile.
Maybe have a Steel Refinery next to a mine would make the quality of the items made in the city better (boosting their stats), or other buildings in that flavor.
Maybe even a certain building that could decrease the amount of food needed, in order to build a house in it's city, half the amount.
It would also be nice to have some way of generating more food/building other than gardens, if you don't have the tile available for this.
I must admit, I haven't looked into the enchanting bit again, but I'd like to be able to branch out in what types of enchantments I would like to be able to do in my cities. Say, I want to focus on enchantments that specialize in doing fire damage, then I would have to brance into a fire-element foundry, but also one that specializes in damage, in that school. This could enable you to make enchanting more potent, because you would be sacrificing other types of enchants, to get what you want.
Concerning research and suchlike:
a fully detailed tech tree, with links to an elementalpedia (think civilopedia), in which you can look up all descriptions and stats of every element of the game.
I would like the tooltips for things you can get with the techs (buildings/items/etc.) to show what they do (eg: looking at a market, having the economics tech selected would show you what the building does, and how much income it gives you (in this case) in the tooltip).
For techs, I'd like to see a short flavor text to each (not needed, but would add atmosphere), then below, what said tech enables of units/buildings/upgrades/items/further tech advancements.
I would like to see certain, significant unit improvements to require two separate paths of teching, within the warfare (or maybe warfare-magic/adventuring) to be available. This would create more options for strattegy, and a good sense of anticipation, when you intend to use these opportunities.
the HUD info you get should be detailed, but comprehensible. You should not have to click the city, in order to get the info you need (when you say HUD, I think of it as a mouse over tooltip) So, it should contain all significant info you need about the game element you're hovering over.
Outside of the HUD display, I would like to have the ability to enable certain options to be seen. Especially how much revenue/research/prestige each city makes, the amount of units stationed in the city, and what type of unit they are (offensive/defensive/spellcasters), and the strength of these, based on certain brackets (1-5;5-10;10-15 offense, etc.)
this could be done by making icons above the cities, and a number besides them. When it comes to stationed units, I'd prefer dots, that will collapse into each other, if there are a lot of stationed units. Color coded depending on type (red for offensive, green for utility, blue for magic, yellow for defensive, eg.) I do not know how to indicate the strength of the units in the city, but it may not be needed outside of the HUD.
When it comes to resources, I'd like to see maybe 3 levels of quality of each resource. So, for mining, we have: Iron, Mithril, Elementium? This would, first of all, make better quality items, and maybe be needed in order to create certain items/buildings/whatever you can think of.
Maybe have certain spells use rare resources as components for them (eg: certain earth spells may need you to have mithril or elementium available, in order to cast them).
Or, what about certain resource types needed, before you can make certain types of enchantments on them, or resources that attune better to enchanting, but in it's natural form (without enchantments), they wouldn't be as good as items made of steel.
All of these special resources should, of course, be quite rare. This is in order to not trivialize their potency, but also in order to give players to alter, or improve their strattegy, should they find one of these rare resources. Having rare resources that impact the game in such a way, would also create a very nice logistics and mobility management aspect within the game. (as these resources would only apply to the city they are found in)
Ah, I forgot to add something.
I've suggested something a while ago: Army Management Screen
I think that an "informational screen" like this is a must for many reasons, but the most important reason is, that it would be much easier to organize your armies and champions as well.
Frogboy et al,
Here's my $0.02 -
#1) I like this concept a lot. Like was mentioned previously, auto upgrading of several buildings would be nice to see too. Something like a study, a library and 2 schools to a university. Or 4 houses to a "neighborhood" with extra max housing. I think that there are even some really unique configurations that could be thought-up. As for your specific points:
1-1) Farm\Gardens - Windmills\wells, silos\granary, ranch\herdsman, market
1-2) Mine - smelter, prospector, metallurgist, forge
1-3) Crystal - armory,
1-4) Shards - wizards tower,
#2) Definitely like better explanation of "why would I want this" from the tech info. Some sort of mechanism that lets us know if this is a building block for better things (other techs?) to what benefit a specific tech allows us to do (e.g. what bonus does the building(s) provide if built). Would be nice to get a pop-up of that type of info when I mouse over the building icon in the tech tree instead of having to consult the hiergamenon. I'm also in the camp of figuring out a better way to get weapon tech instead of the dagger->sword->long sword route since I agree with another poster that it is not necessarily intuitive that you'd want to research the dagger before going after a long sword. Something a little more generic seems like it would work better (e.g. small/light weaponry (daggers), medium arms (single handed swords and axes), two-handed weapons, pole-arms, etc.
#3 & #4 - no opinion presently
#5) Aside from the obvious of variations in colors, building/clothing design and flags, I'll have to give it some more thought.
#6) Just some quick thoughts:
elephants, rhinos, & giant lizards (mounts)
hemp field (better rope for siege weapons bonus...) & primordial forest (stronger or quicker wood/materials production & better siege weapons/production)
river & mine tiles physically adjacent (mining bonus)
ancient ruins (prestige & research bonus) & ancient battlefield (bonus weapon design/damage, prestige bonus), ancient world wonders (prestige & population bonus)
rare ores (building mine or forge/smithy on them allows special/unique weapon construction)
City improvements:
Research:
Other types of World Resources:
Regarding the newer items/weapons/damage types, an idea struck me...
Why are units all the same? By that I mean...if my kingdom builds a knight in full plate with a longsword and a shield, it's the exact same as any other kingdom's unit with full plate, longsword and shield. Sure, I can give my knight a different face...but what's the point? He's still the exact same as anyone else. And it seems fairly strange that my units are all so plain - just a guy in armor with a weapon.
What I'd like to see is the power to give special abilities to my units. Alpha Centauri had something like this during unit creation, and it really made each unit different and unique if you wanted it to be. Elemental could implement this as unique training methods.
Examples...
You could also implement stances, which each unit has the ability to learn, furthering specialization.
Initially, these would be just normal techs in the warfare tree, and you could only add one to a unit - a stance or a training, not both. Given more work in the three, you'll be able to add one of each, allowing for further specialization.
Do you want to have units of superior defense? Heavy plate mail, defensive training and Knight's Stance - your unit is now a tank. Or give him plate mail, offensive training, and Duelist's Stance - you have a strong attacker with decent defense. Duelist's training + dagger training introduces a unit that doesn't have strong attacks, but can attack four times. Have archers that fire further than anyone else, or train them in ambushes and Berserker's Stance and start combat with a potentially deadly volley.
Having more abilities would give players a stronger ability to customize their units to their playstyle, not to mention adding distinction to each army, AI and otherwise
Capitar - nobles, right? Then I wouldn't be surprised to see them using dual weapons and fighting with the Dance stance, to keep their hides from danger, or doing longswords and fencing like a number of medieval noblemen.
Ironeers - Known for their mining capabilities. Could have some strong defensive units, or perhaps favor the extremes - units that are very strong with little defense, shielded with units that are very defensive with little strength.
Tarth - Rebels. Stealth training and/or ambush training, with superior archers (Archer's Stance) and swift warriors (Blade's Stance)
Altar - Generalists? Not a lot known here. I'd imagine a few ranks of knights supported by spearmen and archers.
Pariden - Protection of their lands seems to really characterize the Pariden. Knight's Stance used with Dance Training.
-N
I think this idea is really awesome, just wanted to give it +1
#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions. The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that)
The Beta 2 series will begin to show how factions are different from one another much better. However, we’d love to hear your thoughts on making different factions more distinct and interesting. Bear in mind, from a RAM point of view, it’s not practical for every faction to have a completely different building design setup (when we’re all 64-bit then we can talk about that)
I admit that I just found Civ4 Fall from Heaven 2 last week. The thing that I find most impressive is exactly that. All the units form all the factions look different from each other. Even all the workers look different from eachother. Does that not suggest that it could be done?
I love how in FFH my ranger looks different from your ranger, my warrior different than your warrior...
Also the cities do look different as well.
Just giving an example of it being done in an older game. A lot of work on the content side though,
With regards to adjacency, should we choose to do this, I'd still advocate that it should be the other way around from the way Frogboy's proposing, in that the established producer gets enhanced by proximity to an enhancing structure, like a plaza, rather than building multiple plazas around a single farm to augment the farm).
However, let me throw a different idea out there: zoning. At each level up, you can choose to "premap" a segment of the city (say, a 3x3 tile for L1 and 2, a 4x4 tile for L3 and L4, a 5x5 tile for L5) that provides a specific benefit to any building of a given type built within that zone. Once the city levels up, you can choose "zoning" from the build menu, and plop down a set of tiles that changes color (green for agricultural zone, blue for production zone (materials, ore, or crystals), red for educational zone (bonuses to research, prestige, and spell points) and yellow for housing zone.
If you build a building within a correct zone, it gets a bonus of some level. If you build a building of another type within the zone, it doesn't suffer,but it doesn't get any bonuses, either. It's just a small reward for the sovereign to do a little urban planning up front.
There's a high concentration of good ideas and comments in this thread. Personally, I found several of my views and thoughts reflected in MadMagnus' ideas. In particular on:
Either that, or I would go with housing area instead of just a single hut or house. And make it upgradeable, so that if I have huts and research villas, I can improve my four tile housing district to the next level, rather than demolish and rebuild.
As pointed out by several people, building and upgrading housing is not the most interesting of passtimes. From my view, as the grand wizardlord I'd really like to be able to spend my time more on the bigger picture (i.e., world-domination through whatever means - magical research, diplomacy, warfare) and not be forced to make decisions every other turn on bread-baking or city-planning. So as MadMagnus suggests, having housing grow automagically is an interesting idea from my point of view.
On the other hand, there's the whole interesting aspect of strategically having you city grow into a particular shape, and (depending on how sieges and city tactical battles will work) laying out the buildings in a city for defensive purposes.
A simple solution could be to allow designation of whole swathes of unused areas around the current city as possible housing sites. Then, as the population grows, people will build their houses there. That's essentially a small step in the direction of macro-level city governors.
I'm also quite concerned about distinguishing cities from each other. I'm strongly in favour of having few-but-noteworthy cities rather than many-and-bland. I'm a huge map-fanatic - and thinking back to the maps of the many fantasy-novels I've read, these did not count a huge number of cities. Rather they counted a small number of very special and unique cities (Rivendale, Minas Tirith, King's Landing, Winterfell, Beryl, Juniper, ...) - and a lot of backwater provincial areas... not unlike true Medieval times, I guess. I'd really love for the mechanics and landscapes of Elemental to lead to maps like this.
For this to happen, I see several issues:
#6 Other world ressources
I seem to recall having seen - in very early screenshots or comments - that the world-generator would generate or place named macrofeatures, such as "The Forest of Incrediblyness", "Bad-Ass-Dragon Mountain", "Valley of Vile Humours", or "Wet River". Is this feature still in? Recalling both Alpha Centauri and FFH2 such grand features serve both to add to the feel and richness of a particular map and - if said features give special bonuses - add to the grand strategy.
There could also be (the option of having?) even larger features, large enough to focus a particular game around. Think an incredibly powerful evil imprisoned-but-might-escape magician such as the Dominator in the Black Company series, or a quest for the control of a little ring that might just rule them all...
Dat Babylon 5
(Disclaimer: Long Spammy Post)
1. City Improvements:
I personally am in the camp that I would like the city management to be a more complex part of the game. I've seen several people warning against that; but I beleive the reason they don't want that is that they're used to Civilization and similar games where city management is a chore and all cities are roughly identical; I'd really like to be able to differentiate my cities in what each of them do...and have city management be both strategic and fun.
This to me means more types of buildings. Also, though; it seems that there's far too little space and by the time I've built several things I'm completely out of tiles. I would like to see either more tiles open up or a larger cap on maximum city size because I'd really like to be able to create sprawling cities that specialize in: Industrial Production of Resources, Military Production, Food, or Trade...with specialized buildings to help with each...but each city should still be able to have space for some basics.
Even with a military town or a trading town they likely have a farm or two, and likely a farming town or an industrial town have a garrison.
2. Research:
So far with research I understand/realize a lot of the techs are placeholders. I think though that the game would benefit from an expansion of far more technologies but making sure every one has a tangible benefit; not just lead to another good tech later on. I personally /like/ having a tech for every individual type of armor, weapon, etc. I think that in long Epic games /more/ will be needed to keep them from making it so all civilizations are identical in a few hundred turns.
I like one of the ideas I read about 'sub-categories', and I also think that there should definitely be some hard choices in research and it should be possible for research to better define what a faction is; rather than every faction wanting to research the same things. Different techs should provide bonuses which can work together so a faction can rely on them. Is this a faction which raids, a faction which trades it's minerals for food, a faction of forest hunters?
I also think that technology differentiation, in a similar way, could be used to make distinct the buildings of different factions. Taking certain techs and 'branches' in research making subtle changes to the underlying structure of your buildings so you can tell the difference between the hide and wood huts of forest hunters and the thatched roof cottages of farmers.
Lastly; as for more techs; I personally would like to see say 'padded cloth' before hide, leather before studded leather, scale before chain, chain before plate, etc. I'd like there to be different materials that could be used to create items such as wooden shields and bronze/copper armor and weapons if you don't have access to sources of iron. I'd also like to see more tactical and statistical differentiation between equipment.
4. NON-HUD Information:
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing banners; or seeing large groups of troops show up like armies on the map.
I also have quite a bit of trouble distinguishing 'goodies' when not on the cloth map. They really blend in to the rest of the 3d view for me and I can't tell what is just a bunch of rocks and what is a magic item/cave. I'd like to see those more clearly highlighted.
5. Visual Distinctions between Factions:
I was talking about this earlier in my research suggestions but I'll expand it here; I think that there should be minor cosmetic distinctions in the 'base models' of buildings, not only based on the size of the city (or outpost) they belong to, but also based on certain techs the faction has researched.
Similar to Civilization (but without ages) I think factions who research certain types of strategies, or concentrate their research in different subsistence or production areas should differ. A faction based on bows and hunting and logging should have hide roofs and wood walls. The buildings can otherwise be identical but little things like that really differentiate. A Faction which has focused on metal-smithing and industrial production should have more smokestacks, sooty buildings, and a more sturdy construction. Owning certain resources can also add to this but personally I'd like tech and strategy to be a deeper part of the game; at the moment it seems like everybody researches the same things and has the same overall strategy.
6. Other types of World Resources:
Being the tactician I am, I'd like to see more resources period. I don't know how the coding works but perhaps there are resources that can serve multiple purposes; such as honey being both a food and a trade good. If there's enough food then the most valuable 'food type' is traded for money.
I'd like to see specific types of resources like 'Strongwood' which is like normal wood but gives units who have weapons made of it more damage, or more accuracy. Perhaps a certain especially strong breed of horses which take longer to train as mounts but are much more effective.
Lastly, I'd just like to see more resources. If there was copper or tin in addition to iron and gold then it'd allow certain civs to control certain more useful resources. Other civs would have to use technology or ingenuity to either get access to that resource, or come up with different techs to make up for it.
I'd like to be able to see a civ with tin and copper and gold build a merchant empire with bronze clad troops and then attack the iron holding empire and be able to do okay through having more troops due to superior funding; but with inferior equipment.
Variety is the spice of life; and in a strategy game variety in factions, units, and techs...means more fun and more replay value.
Yeah, I've really been hoping this gets implemented. It would add a huge amount of flavour to the world. Naming geographic features yourself is fine, but I really think there should be a pool of pregenerated ones that it draws from. It makes the world have a lot more character if you stumble across features that already have names. Giving some of them unique properties would be great too.
I'd also like to see large battles received names, perhaps based on the location or other things. These could not only show up in game history logs (and even labeled on game history graphs), but could also be referred to by the AI during diplomatic encounters. ("We mean to avenge ourselves upon you for our defeat at the Battle of Freeman's Down 12 years ago. Prepare for war!") Anything that ties the AI's precanned dialogue text to the current game world would go a long way to making it feel more alive and engrossing than your typical 4X game.
City management:
You should strive to be more MoM-like there.
Remove all that tile thing except for special stuff like orchards/mines/shards/oasis...
It's a real pain right now. On the cloth map, the buildings sprawl was ugly but bearable. In 3D, it's otally ugly and hard to "read"/understand. I suggest to just get rid of it totally. Have a city radius grow like in Civ and let only special, unique/meaningful buildings be built on the map (wonders, shard harvesting buildings). Remove all the houses/markets/gardens from the map and abstract them.
So far, LOVE the game!
CITY BUILDING- Love the system. Currently am no spamming cities, AND each one is getting rather specialized. I like the idea of 'merging' smaller buildings into a bigger one with the bonuses (ie my merchants merging into a market with the bonuses). This should be in place WITH the curren restrictions (so you have to have a city of a certain size in order to get bigger buildings). This will prevent cities from getting too complicated, but at the same time encourage planning.
I like buildings (such as the palace) were you can only have one. Also love the 'wonders of he world' idea.
Building were we can make items for our NPCs rather than just buying (although that was a great touch!)
RESEARCH- In the description, a little blurb about the tech, followed by with the aforementioned 'New Weapon: Dagger'. At the bottom, make a mention that it will unlock certain other techs.
World Resources: Special metals (like MOM's adamantium/mithril- i loved getting uber weapons with those guys!), special woods. Are crystals going to be required to give units magical abilities?
other world resources: mounts are an intersting idea, but special economy resources (gold/jewels) would be valuable, as well as trade goods (like civ). Ie silks could be traded to another faction to give you both economy and diplomatic boos (more for the one with the resources).
Training: Agree with abilities being unlocked and trained into units, such as stealth or 'trample' for cavalrymen. Chainmail please? i love how it looks, and i know it doesnt really matter with modding
Dynasties- I love this system. I also like how when your soverign picks a spouse, you can pick a champion with merchant/lore/royalty skills/etc. Maybe allowing your heirs to marry 'common' loremasters/administrators to add these skills to their lines would be good.
RPG- Agree that there should be more 'monsters' of mid-low level, and more quest options beyond those nobles who cant seem to take care of themselves, yet their father 'says theyll be a knight one day'.
Just played King Arthur the Roleplaying Wargame, and the quests in that game had a neat 'dialouge selection' option to play out the quest (similar to some of he quests in this game, like choosing to take the knight's sword or to help him ou).
Loving the latest Beta with the sexy graphics.
For cites it would be nifty if when you built walls and fortresses the "defended" area didnt expand as the city did. So if i have my beautiful city all geared up for war and build another slum i would have to build it outside the walls. Then later if i wanted i could rebuild or build another level of walls to cover the undefended ring.
Right now the tech seems to go way to fast for way to little results. Not sure if its just because the other techs are turned off but at 150-200 turns im able to do any tech in one turn and even with a horde of troops i get squashed by some random lone troll or something.
A resource i would like to see it a defensive spot. Say i have my city in this nice little vally, there would be a spot i could sent my pioneer to and build a watch town near the mouth that could be stationed for a small defensive bonus.
And that, sir, is a very good idea as well!
Everything that helps build the illusion that we game in a living world gets my vote.
City building seems to be the topic of the day here, I thought I'd add my two bits and expand upon some of the other ideas here. I too am concerned about cities becoming carbon copies, requiring repeated, micro management to be effective. MOO3 went with the option of leaving the redundancy in, but allocating it to a governor as you saw fit. We all remember just how well that went over. It became a game of "write your own AI."
I like the idea of varying the cities based on the resources available. Special resource tiles could enable entirely different building TREES instead of a single building. A Horse resource for example could allow first a horse ranch. Then having a horse ranch could allow research of Wagons, ferring (horse shoeing, not sure of the spelling) with the combination of iron, animal pulled wagons, Horse trainers, barding, etc. The one resource could offer several different new building options. The key would be to allow for more options than there is room for in the town, and only allow a limited number of them per resource. You might have to choose between adding a barding smithy, a plow maker, a breeder for making elite horses,a slaughter house to use them for food, and a wagon builder. There just aren't enough horses for all of them. Each building could have empire wide effects, or some of them could have more powerful city only bonuses like the slaughterhouse. Decisions like this are much more fun than "Where should I place my next house?"
Change house building to an automatic setting. "how large would you like to fund your city's growth?" then select the size. make building the houses an automatic thing that just "happens" and allow construction on tiles 1 further out. You'd still have the same control over the shape of the city growth, and the housing could fill in the gaps dynamically.
AVOID things that players will want to automate! That includes things like spamming housing & farms. As it stands the only reason we'd want control of it, is to work our way to resources. Allowing us to build 1 square further away from a current square, and having the computer fill the voids with dynamic housing until you build something else there later, fixes this. It also allows you more options for "addon" buildings that you'd want to construct next door to specific tiles. Allow the optimal build queue for each city to be different. Anything that shows up identical in each city, needs to be changed. Perhaps to a setting for the city, like I suggested with housing. Perhaps someone else has a better idea.
A crystal could offer a huge number of options for additional construction. A forge that increases the benefit of enchanted units. A refinery that increases the benefit of the crystals production by a percentage. A research facility that increases the benefit of all research producing building in that city, that is mutually exclusive with a facility that does the same thing empire wide with a much smaller percentage. A generator, that would allow you to build a defensive tower somewhere on the planet (multiple generators could be built, but you're limited by the number of structures the city has room for, and by the number of structures the crystal can power.) Depending on the crystal, it could power different sorts of towers. One that damages units for fire, one that slows them for ice, one that dampens magic for air, one that damages water units for water, one that causes animals to aid your armies in range for green, etc. etc. etc. You'd have to choose a few of these options per crystal. If you sacrificed all of your other options to spam towers, you would be losing out on some potentially awesome benefits.
My point to all this, is to have a good reason NOT to build any structure that is under the players option to construct except special resources... By having them be mutually exclusive with other construction options. Anything that you always will want to build, have it be automatic, or come up with a good reason to not build it sometimes.
Adjacency bonus! This needs to happen. Anything to mitigate the haphazerd style of city construction. Buildings which produce a like resource (like research, money, Ore, ect) should get an additive bonus by being next to each other. Nothing multiplicative, but enough to encourage (not force) the player to create market districts, iron districts, research districts, ect. Which leads me to my next point.
Questing! Right now quests are acquired completely randomly or through you stopping by inns. Quests need to also be sparked randomly from within your own cities and empire, based on the buildings that are present and concentrated. Example. In your capital, gangs have begun to set up shop in your market square, taking control and requiring "protection" money from your merchants. This has the effect of reducing your guildar income until it is dealt with. Regardless, you now have three options. First, you can send in troops that are based in the city to provide protection for the merchants (sparking street battles with the gangs, opening up tactical battles). This will cost your city money over the short term (lost business) and cause you to have to fight inside of your own city, but will resolve the problem assuming you win. Second, you can send in an adventuring party. They can do a number of things, including assassination of the gang leader, negotiations to coopt the gangs (providing special benefits at a special price), ect. Third, you can do nothing. The problem here is that your income from these areas that the gang is taking over will be further reduced, and they may spread in an attempt to control other areas. Or rival gangs may set up who dominate other sections of the economy, and the two begin to compete with each other at your cities expense. Or another nation may be given the option to send their own adventurers to move in and begin influencing the gangs, thus giving them certain benefits and access to your city.
Your cities, towns and villages need to be tied into the questing system, and the questing system should branch out a bit into the operation of your empire. This would greatly help with the "living world" feel, as well as give the player something interesting to do other than fight other nations and questing as detached from the well being of their nation (as it is currently). These would be quests directly tied to your cities, and you effecting the internal workings of your empire.
Research: echoing the need for a real tech tree just so you understand where you are going. Incl. info on what each tech does (link to encyclopedia info).
Resources:
- Crater with meteor stone or metal (better weapons or armor, and usable for some magic spells)
- Crater with stardust (+ 1 essence when first annexed, usable for some spells)
- Precious stones: diamonds, emeralds etc. (gold income + usable for some spells)
- Mithril / noble silver (self-explanatory)
- Adamantine (super weapons/armor)
- "Elven" wood: super bows and arrows.
- Bones of the Titans: better weapons / armor + usable for some spells
- Pearls (e.g. giving income + usable for some spells)
- Pool of the wise waters: + research points
- Gold fish (i.e. fish with real gold on them!): increased income
- Everlasting ice (doesn't melt so can be found anywhere): for weapons, amor and some spells
- Poison spring (poisonous weapons, some spells)
Mounts:
- Wolves (a must)
- Dire wolves (even more of a must )
- Ranyhyn (blessed horses): like horses but faster and stronger and overall much better
- Lizards
- Camels (needed for desert travel without penalties)
- Nightmares (hell horses, only usable by empires)
- Sea monster: can be used as boat!
Heh, I like this idea, also it'd be cool to occasionally be attacked by Kraken's and other sea monsters when traveling across water.
You forgot bears
I was thinking it... but wasn't going to go there lol
Combining resources and Collect the whole set!
Have a rarer resource unlock when all other resources have been acquired. It can be a boon for those diplomatic minded leaders who can negotiate their way into a limited supply of everything.
A few ideas for City improvements: (i'm in the "More is better" camp btw)
Fisheries: Brings in food
Boat-Houses: Allows a house to be built on the water (costs more than a house)
Salt Distillery: Through magic, separates salt from the oceans water (increases the time food lasts perhaps or perhaps salt would be a good resource (for magic users etc.))
Marina: Increases prestige - requires higher level city
Hm, I just thought it had already been pretty well covered!
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