One of the challenges we’ve had in War of Magic has been making the world interesting.
On the one hand, you want a world that looks ruined. But on the other hand, you don’t want a world that looks boring.
During the betas of War of Magic, we had rivers in the world. Unfortunately, they looked horrendous because they couldn’t easily change the way they looked based on the morphing terrain system.
For those of you not familiar with Elemental, in War of Magic, the terrain is totally morphable. It doesn’t just change shape but changes texture and such. We couldn’t get the rivers to look satisfying with this system and took them out. Unfortunately, this only made the world look even more uninteresting to players.
One thing we could/should have done was have paths and roads right from the start.
In Fallen Enchantress, a major effort is being put in to have truly randomized landmasses. In War of Magic, the worlds are randomly generated but the land masses are not. Part of this was an issue of how long it takes to generate land (anyone who’s ever coded fractal code knows what I mean). It’s certainly not undoable. Civilization does it and there are some freeware tools that can do it as well. It just takes time and optimization (i.e. budget) which has been allocated for Fallen Enchantress so that we can get our roads, rivers, and randomly generated land masses. For us, the challenge isn’t to create randomly generated maps (the editor does it already) but to make them fun and interesting and pretty (hence no rivers in War of Magic).
As War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress diverge, it’ll be interesting to see how different they end up being in the long-run because War of Magic will have its own source tree and continue to evolve on its own while Fallen Enchantress has its own path as well.
I am feeling the same way about city placement.
It's elusive indeed.
The beauty of say Civilization is that every tile in the game potentially has use. In Elemental, a tile is basically generic unless it has a resource on it.
That, of course is true. You still can't deny the fact, that oranges are clearly superiour.
It's not like I demand balanced maps from the random map creator, but I would like maps which would make a difference to gameplay. Even in CivV it is important wether or not I have acess to a resource or not and wether I can get it by trade. With the curent resource system in Elemental it doesn't really matter.
It matters in CivV wheter I can get minor civs (seafaring is ones are still op) near me and to my side or not. Minor factions in Elemental...yeah... does ever spawn more then one?
It matters if I chose a pangea map or archipelago for my strategy. One means lots of land to build a many and great cities, the other means naval combat and smaller cities. Dry maps are different from wet maps in how much food you get. Building near mountains or near plains is important. In CivIV, thanks to zone of control, it matters where I station my units in the field.
All of this doesn't matter in the slightest for Elemental at the moment. The only resource that slightly matters (in theory) is Iron (which you'll get through tech anyway or through a smart start bonus picking) or horses resp. wargs, which seems to be very random if even one of it exists on the map... you build your cities wherever convenient to cover the map in your influence and that's it.
I.e. what I'm talking about having choices and differences on a map, meaningful choices, forced by the layout of the map. SC gives you that plentiful, the random map creator in CiV can give you that too (though with it's mostly... bad AI, it's not that important often ofc). Elemental? None, nada, zilch.
The only thing that matters is, how much ground is there between me and the next enemy to spam cities? That determines how fast the AI will declare war on me by reaching me. Thus, if I have seen one map in Elemental, I've seen 'em all.
Edit:
On the other hand, imo, the cloth map in Elemental still looks great. (Please, add roads and caravan indicators to it too. Pretty please? )
I must say, I love working with terrain generation. It can take a while (depending mostly on the size of the world you're generating) but it doesn't take long to write, and you can do some really interesting stuff with it.
I wrote a diamond-square (simple fractal) map generator once that did the following:
* Cliff map decides where cliffs, valleys, and sloping terrain go.
* Height map takes influence from cliff map.
* Fertility, temperature maps take into account the height map (lower temperature in high places) but are generally just diamond-square.
* Forestation, terrain texturing, etc. take into account the height map, fertility map, and temperature map all at once.
The end result was something that produced natural-looking, interesting maps quite suitable for use in RTS games. Not every map was playable, but for my purposes (where the player would be able to preview the map before jumping in, to make sure it was acceptable) it was sufficient. (I'm currently tweaking it to generate a fun map for a third-person RPG, which is a whole additional kettle of fish...)
The problem, of course, comes when trying to ensure that the maps are well-designed for play: that nobody starts in an enclosed valley with no way out; that nobody starts on the top of a mountain with no flat area to build in; that all the resources are evenly distributed; that paths are possible between all players (if, for example, you have no ships, you can't start people on separate islands!); etc. It's much harder to create a map that plays well than one that looks good.
Basically, you need to make sure that every single map that comes out of the thing is completely playable. 'Cause if someone - anyone - starts their first game and gets presented with a one-tile islet and no way forwards, you've created an angry customer. If it's a reviewer, it's even worse - that bad map in all likelihood goes into the game score, and you lose sales.
I also remember that the Anno series tended to do the same thing as you have - the maps were, officially, randomized; but the individual islands were designed, and finite in number. I'm not entirely sure which approach I prefer as, while the randomized approach offers constant variation, the preset approach made for some very interesting, unique places to build in.
As a sidenote, one approach I find conceptually interesting is asymmetry in map design. Let every player have access to essential resources, but perhaps split essential resources into several categories and just make sure every player has access to at least one. If one person has horses and one person has iron, the one can have a strong cavalry while the other has strong swordsmen, and the one with cavalry may try to conquer one of the swordsman-player's cities to secure the iron as well. This is the way the Civilization series tends to do it, particularly in later periods with oil and aluminum, and it has almost entirely positive effects on the gameplay structure. An easy way to link this in with map generation is by making resources dependent on climate, thereby eliminating the repetitive nature of play noted by Vandenburg.
And that's my twenty-two cents.
What I'd love to see is, instead of a cosmetically diverse and interesting landscape, a strategically diverse and interesting landscape. Something that makes me really have to think about where and why I'm placing a city in a given spot. Rivers would be great, and I miss them, but what effect will they have on gameplay and city placement? Will they provide a trade route, or increased gildar or something like that?
I'm very glad that you said this, Brad. Is something that may change in Elemental?
I really enjoy the look of the map. However, my primary complaint would be the liniarity of the random maps. It seems like the majority of the available area is water and the available land mass is limited in places to expand. Frequently, other factions spawn very close my own location, making expansion difficult due to the liniarity.
Frogboy, I think accurately, points out that the available resources are also fairly limited. If a tile is blank, it's useless.
Despite all that, I think the idea of rediscovering a lost world is unique. Most Civ type games have you discovering a world that is largely blank. Stumbling upon ruins of old civilizations is kind of exciting, Even more diversity in that area would be great, perhaps finding old ruined cities that you can reoccupy after clearing out some enemy.
How about if blank tiles were useless until your area of influence "healed" the land, then it started producing something...?
I for One think that there are going to be enough differences between the games that I will probably will enjoy both. And, to throw away the ideas of E:WOM for the shiny new E:FE is not good. Just because something is newer does not automaticly make it the better game.... just my opinion.
Beakie
I'm a bit confused about Fallen Enchantress and War of Magic splitting up and becoming divergent. Is the intent that FE is NOT an expansion for WOM, but it's own game? If so, are the expansions we hear about for WOM, or for FE, or will they be applicable to both? It would be nice to understand SD's strategic plan for their property going forward in some detail.
Why not take a page from MoM and gives bonuses to cities depending on their surrounding?
For example, for every tile of the given terrain in a 5x5 square around the city, you could get the following bonuses:
Obviously, such a system would require some way for the player to know the bonuses before founding cities (like the MoM surveyor), but it would go a great way distinguishing different locations and making local terrain relevant (beside resources).
City placement certainly needs to matter more than it does currently, but the problem with this system is that it would need to vary by faction or race. Some races may be desert dwellers or swamp dwellers. If your society evolves in that context, doesn't seem like you'd have penalties for living there.
I think one thing that would subtly make city placement more important would be for tactical battle maps to reflect the world at large (by more than just token images). If your city is up against the mountains on one side and has a swamp on the other those should come into play when you build your city. It's hard to say, given that we don't know much about how the tactical battles will change, but it would be nice if the tactical battle maps were expanded to make strategic location choices relevant for tactical battles.
In theory this is good, but don't forget the game gives us terraforming spells...
This is true, rivers need alot of consideration(processing time) to look good and make sense. Raising a hill in the middle of a river valley means either recalculating the whole river network, or accepting some really dumb looking river fragments. Recalculating is doable, but then there are fictional consequences to be dealt with, like what happens to the town in the path of the new river! Total chaos that's what! Good for a few laughs, but probably not worth the effort.
Edit: I just realized that the above scenario is a big reason why I'm a Dwarf Fortress fan.
I think the Morphing landscape should take into account textures for rivers(Flowing Waters) and lakes/Swamps (pooled waters) as it already provides for Seas and Oceans.
The morphing should have an altitude attribute and water should collect in the valley's between mountains and flow to the lower elevations and if it reaches a plain before reaching the sea then it should pool into either a lake or a swamp.
This is all just my opinion but it should morph with the terraforming spell usage. There should be a strategic use (such as city enhancements) in addition to any obvious tactical use. (altering rivers to create a natural barrier/obstruction the enemy must overcome. The AI could do the same to players)
MoM had them too, so that system will simply encourage you to terraform your land to make it better, and terraform your opponent land to be worse (then the desert spell will be useful).
Well, that would seem easy enough to do when defining a faction, would it not?
A faction with "Swamp Master" could turn the negative into a bonus for swamp, but if they get put on Desert (or terraformed into), the penalties could double and the bonus for grassland could turn into a penalty.
So the system, at least in concept would make what you bring up (which is a good point) more easily possible, imo.
The problem would be avoided by either using values as a base and allowing traits (and spells of course) to play with them or define them within faction definitions and have no "in general" numbers.
This would be especially good if races/monsters had modifiers as well. So while the Swamp Master race would have an easier time recruiting Heroes that also liked Swamps, others that prefer the Desert might not be so loyal/keen if approached by the Swamp Masters. Or the unit in question would be modified by terrain according to race (so a unit with race_swampmaster trait would get the bonuses of the swamp terrain regardless of the faction he's loyal to).
Glad to hear about rivers. They will definitely make the map look more natural interesting.
Some scattered roads at the beginning that have been largely destroyed would be welcome as well.
Also making terrain matter more and city placement would make the game more fun for me.
Thanks for the update.
Last night we had a fair amount of snow, enough for me to call into work, so I busted out AoW:Shadow Magic to see if it holds up to to the infamous rose colored nostalgia glasses...and it does. It had such beautiful maps, city sieges were a different type of battle all together, and the magic spells are sweeping, the differnt races, neutral cities, recruiting camps, game changing things that made the world more than a pretty map.
Then I fired up Elemental... My only plea is that everyone working on FE, go play one, just one, game of Shadow Magic.
As an added bonus this would go a long way to making the factions feel different. If your system gave different bonuses to different factions atleast.
On Topic:
Glad to hear about the rivers. I think I saw them in one of your early demo vids and I can honestly say I'm glad you removed them.
They will make a good addition once they're polished up a bit though. It would become a great addition if they were given tactical/strategic value also.
i.e:
Strategic:
Any army that crosses a river gets some sort of penalty applied for the following turn (fatigued?) and looses all their movement points.
Trade Routes?
Tactical:
Rivers could appear on the tactical map. Depending on the depth of the river it could be only crossable in certain places or it could apply the same penalty (fatigue?) to the unit that crosses it.
Have to agree with Lord Xia and TheProgress on what needs to happen though. The world looking interesting and acctually being interesting are very different things.
Yup.
Maybe there should be a sovereign/faction specific bonus applied to terrain/resources/notables? Sort of like Dominions3's dominion system.
This gives us hope.
A hint at tile-based resource gathering? Let's hope so!
Beauty of CIV IV is that only not only do tiles have different yields, they have stacking "decorators". (i.e. Grassland Hill). It also has features interacting: tiles bordering rivers provide +1 commerce. This is further improved via different tile improvements that can be built by the player (this can get tedious once the empire grows).
Elemental has...nothing. Any city anywhere is no different from any other city.
I agree 1000%. i have been playing AOW II:SM recently as well and I'd love to see Elemental become more like that awesome game. ^^
Age of Wonders Shadow Magic is fairly unbalanced, has weak AI, and isn't designed to work on wide-screen monitors.
But it has been my favourite game since it launched for the reasons you listed. The game is now 7 or 8 years old but it is still the best game I've played for immersion into the game world.
What I find interesting is that Brad and the dudes claim to be fans of AoW, and still completely missed to put some of the key features of that (and other similar) games into Ewom. Like nice colorful graphics, unit abilities, good tactical combat etc.
Also, fire up the Shadow Magic editor and take a look at the features. Tons of triggers and events for mapmaking, built in modding interface...
Elemental has a long way to go to reach the same level as this eight year old game.
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