Greetings!
So I've been thinking a long while about this, and a major missing factor in Elemental - at least in the skirmish games - is the overwhelming evil. That is, the world is based around the same formula: you build a city, you expand, you possibly conquer, you possibly make friends. The world only truly affects you insofar as it is a consistent stumbling block. Claiming territory and expanding is limited by the denizens of the wild.
Thus, I propose World Events, based around a Nemesis Faction. These are the Sauron to our Middle-Earth, the war of our third age that units the races against the dominion of Mordor. Events can be triggered by set conditions or occur at a later stage in the game, and are meant to be threats that, alone, the player cannot defeat. Stand against, perhaps, but not actually beat, and is meant to unite the factions - kingdom and empire both - against the greater threat. The Lich King to our Alliance and Horde, a third faction that pauses a war.
The mechanic's goal is simple - to give the epic quality that stories have but is generally lacking in skirmish maps. It is done through spicing the game up, and actually giving a strong reason to work together for a truly common goal. Of course, there are other benefits - while your 'allies' are busy fighting, you could be preparing to overwhelm their broken defenses and build your own nation on their weakened backs. Perhaps true alliances come forth while others dissolve. And, naturally, those who fight are rewarded with artifacts, tools, weapons, and magic of an ancient age that could be pivotal in your conquests.
World events would be toggleable when making a map. Just want a default skirmish? You can have it. Do you want a World Event to occur, but not be a victory condition in and of itself? Also an option. The power belongs to the players here.
Some examples of world events...
1) The Fallen Enchantress. I can't speak much to this one, since we've not had much/anything to go off of. But in this World Event, somewhere in the world a great tower appears under the control of the Fallen Enchantress. From this tower, minions pour forth to do her bidding. I felt that, since the game is called Fallen Enchantress, she should probably be involved.
2) A Dread Lord. One of the still-surviving Dread Lords makes his return, and seeks to bind the races of men and fallen to his bidding. Armed with legions of demons and terrible magic, his will to dominate is stronger than many can imagine, and he will not stop until all the world is under his boot. The Dread Lord is less about having legions of his own followers, and more about turning the races against each other, often creating Fallen vs Human conflicts - those who will not bow will die.
3) The Shadow of Death. A great warlord from across the seas has landed with an army, garbed in black cloaks. With magic and steel, he will sweep away the tattered remnants of humanity and raise his banner atop the fallen. The Shadow of Death challenges everyone equally, his sole purpose the destruction of opposition.
I hope that others find this at least interesting.
I love stuff like this that make the world actively hostile. I know Frogboy mentioned a scenario were a messanger pops up asking for 10% of your income and if you refuse castles pop up and start attacking everyone.
I'm not sure about this. It sounds like a neat idea, but it's probably more suited for a "campaign/story mode" - rather than the sandbox mode the game is generally based around.
I'm not a fan of large scale uncontrollable events. I don't mind a local earthquake or something, but huge game-changers are not my cup of tea. Having said that, if people really want this, then I would like a switch to toggle them off.
There actually are world events in game. They just happen to be very very rare. I've only encountered them twice while playing all my games, both of the time it was the Eclipse event, which increased the level of all monsters. I have a feeling that this is just a placeholder event (because it really doesn't do all that much) and that they will be adding in more of them in a later beta when the mechanics of the game are sound.
Such events were one of the things I loved in GC1. I remember a game where my relentless war against the Drengin had reduced them to their homeworld. At some point I received a message that the Drengin were doing something truly evil. A while later, the Drengin erupt from their homeworld with some uber ships that completely change the dynamic of the game. My alliance went from "wipe them out" to "how long can we fend them off." It was awesome!
Elemental would only benefit from such dynamism.
Maybe such an event could be combined with the current diplomatic victory, meaning that forging alliances and then defeating a major threat together instead of simply bribing everyone to be your allies.
I too enjoyed some of the events from the galiv series. Particularly the found ancient ranger ship (if it was early enough in the game to matter) or if it was a minor race giving them some staying relevance power, minor race stealing techs, the race alignment switches. The more frequent less game changing choices were also cool when they made me feel I had just gotten something useful. Often they didn't have much effect and lacked personality
Unfortunately in my games most of the new factionX arrives tremble and fear happened late game and so turned out to be stomp and enjoy a nice planet. Similarly the fear faction y msgs for they will slowly increase in power until they dominate happened when they were loosing, was only right about the slow increase in power while the rest of the universe was quickly increasing in power.
It always seemed the AI typically had a difficult time adjusting to the new altered rules of the game (which I guess is to be expected). A number of events just felt like filler events with little consequence. In my opinion, event should always make a difference, if at this stage in the game this event won't make a difference it shouldn't happen. A new faction with powerful bonuses but no army appearing late game will just get stomped, likewise probably most city improvement events won't make much difference on a large map if it isn't early game (though early game it might be overpowering? seems that type might be hard to get right). major landscape changes could be cool even if they don't change the game much. If I think about the original master of magic their events like heroes offering to join, magic items for sale, and mana shorts were some of the most interesting/fun ones.
It could work quite well for sandbox mode however it should be a toggled option. And if an option then I want the ability to declare how many World Events a game can have (I'd always pick max.)
I like world events in general, but some of the ones in GalCiv2 just made me groan, guffaw or reload. The one where “weird radiation” doubles fertility rates was just a joke in a supposedly serious game. If you’ve got an intelligent system that maybe unleashes a demonic invasion on a faction who is in danger of winning the game and steam rollering everyone, then it can be really fun. If they’re done well they don’t need an off switch.
On a related note, I’ve been thinking recently that the game would really benefit from a few more “history” messages with cool art work to give a sense of the passage of time and fill out those long passages of empty turns stuff like:
“The first metal armoured unit has been trained, the era of warfare has begun.”
“Kraxis has founded it’s second city. The world of X is being tamed”
“Verga has completed the first Epic Quest.”
“Cyndrum has become the first great Metropolis of the world” (reached level 5)
“All the wildlands have now been tamed.”
Etc.
Whoa, whoa... wait... GC2 was a SERIOUS game? What? Did I dream up all those silly flavor text?
As for your messages idea... as long as it's off to the side and I can safely ignore, I don't mind. But please don't make it pop up and interfere with gameplay.
Yeah I know what you mean. Perhaps I just wanted it to be serious, because I find that more immersive. I enjoyed the silly stuff sometimes, but more often than not, when i'd get a message along the lines of "you have discovered frazzlybloop! +5% economy!" i just facepalmed. So much for the wonder of the cosmos.
Regardless, they don't seem to be going for that angle in FE, which is more relevant.
My point with the history stuff is that, it would at least give the player a better idea of what was going on out there and if they were ahead of or behind the curve. Too often I hear new players saying "I don't know what's going on out there, or what I'm supposed to be doing." And it's a fair point, because all you know beyond your borders is AI power ratings, because you can't enter hostile territory, and there's no population / income / military timelines like in other games.
I really like the idea of a common nemesis, but I have yet to see a computer AI handle this well in any previous games (e.g. MoO2).
It would be cool if one player (based on some stat or resource like diplomatic capital) would be elected the supreme allied commander.
They would then be given control of the units that the various AI players have designated as allied forces, with an option of more to be added based on progress against the nemesis.
All the various options I have seen when a player and an AI team up against another faction have always fallen short of the potential of this mechanic.
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