Ive been thinking about my favorite genre of games, Turn-based strategy and another one of my favorite games, the Sims. Don't laugh, the Sims is a great game. Why I like the Sims, has to do with it's incredible open-endedness. My goals in the game are of my own choosing, there is no "Win" to the Sims, only playing and playing and having fun coming up with my own personal goals in the game. Then I thought about my favorite Genere, TBS, and how the goal of "Winning" often gets in the way of my fun. That made me think of Crusader Kings. You don't really win a game like Crusader kings, you play and play and the time runs out maybe, but you also create your own goals. the last time I played, I united Ireland and then made my bastard son the king of Finland. Gaining all the Spanish crowns was one goal I had. But the idea is, I want a TBS where the only real goal isn't creating the biggest, baddest kingdom to crush all other kingdoms.
I want a TBS with a dynamic world. One that is filled with many races, kingdoms, and factions, where I control a kingdom and try to make it prosper, I make alliances with neighbors, or maybe even war, but the focus of the game should be INTERIOR, not EXTERIOR. Most games, all danger comes from outside, and everything you do is in response to what is outside your nation. I want to focus on governing the nation, improving the land my people live in, making policies, laws, maybe there are multiple factions, like in Tropico, that want multiple things, so its hard to keep them all happy and there are riots, revolts, those kind of things. Maybe the kings brother is trying to assassinate the king, maybe the governor I appointed to a village is ruling with an iron fist and the people hate him, maybe a horde of monsters from the West is on its way, I better send diplomats to our neighbor nations to form a unified front. Maybe the forest in my kingdom has a secret village of Elves, should I befriend them and hope the friendship becomes beneficial, or maybe I need the wood for resources, or maybe the elves would make great slaves. And then maybe turns down the line, if I do enslave them, the elves could have a revolt, take a city, and make a new nation of their own. And maybe, I could have the ability to stop playing my nation, and play the new nation of ex slave elves? But the best part is, the world continues, the game goes on, and is dynamic.
Thats my idea for today, I will probably add more later.
A big problem in a lot of games is how magically a conquered people become "your" people. If I am of the Race of Men and conquer your city of Dwarfs, we have a different race, culture and religion, and the game shouldn't assume that I magically turned my conquered foe into my race. I conquer a city of Stone loving Dwarfs, they don't become Sun loving humans automatically. Well, what should happen instead?
When you conquer a foreign city, you should have the choice of, A) Holding the city, assigning a governor, sacking the city of its wealth. You should really not be able to completely destroy a city, you can kill a lot of its people and destroy a lot of it's buildings, but cities tend to rebuild as the people who lived there, lived there for a reason (resources to live) and its difficult to get rid of them all.
Holding the City, comes with many difficulties. One, how different the culture is. If they are of a different race, culture, and religion, that would be very difficult. But, what if you allow the conquered people to continue to speak their own language and worship their own gods? They might not revolt, but they will also never fully assimilate. If treated well, they might be loyal, but even then their will be a faction of them that want to rebel, remember their glory age of independence. Now, what if you take the city and the land, want to keep it, but want your own people in. Ethnic cleansing the city and land of the Dwarfs, well they have to go somewhere. Maybe another nation will take them in willingly, or grudgingly and now are angry at you for flooding their nation with refugees.
Sacking the city of riches won't gain you land, but you also don't gain the headache of governing foreign population, but its not riches free of charge. Maybe other niehgbors see you are dangerous now and conspire together against you. Maybe factions in your own country see you as a warmonger and riot against you.
Many possibilities.
Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece did an awesome job with this concern. Some cities that were obviously Macedonian were yours, others it wasn't so easy. Some cities would ally with you upon conquering/freeing but you couldn't recruit Macedonian troops you had to use theirs instead which weren't as good as yours (though sometimes they had better in cavalry/skirmish units). Others would have tendencies to be rebellious if you didn't keep a big enough garrison there and keep them fed. You could modify how rebellious they could be by removing the walls but that made them easier to take over by your opponents so you had to be careful with some of the frontline cities. Its a fun little indie RTS.
I recall one game did a very good job with imperialism and occupation; Age of Wonders. Whenever you conquered a town you generally had to leave a garrison behind, because normally the people are going to resent you and probably revolt and take the town back. This is especially true if your races alignment/beliefs is strictly different from that of the conquered race... For example, because the Elves are a good race and Goblins are an evil race, one conquering the other needs to leave a sizable garrison. Neutral races generally have an easier time with imperialism and getting along with both sides. I've played Orcs and successfully dominated Human towns, using their troops. Thing is morale doesn't just affect the city... it affects racial troops as well, and there are alignment concerns too. You will never be able to keep Goblin troops in an Elven army, for example, the Goblins would revolt immediately. But do a lot of things a race likes, and you can improve your reputation with them, which extends to units and cities. For example if you wanted to be friends with the Dark Elves, you would kill a lot of Elves (and probably Humans).
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Not true. I agree that is wrong, but usually in games you have to keep a garrison in a freshly conquered city because people revolt (Age of Wonders, all the Total War games etc...).
Only Elemental is so weak from the political perspective that allows something like that.
You are talking about Dwarf Fortress, sir.
It does sound, kinda like DF. And I know of no way to change 'sides' (for lack of a better word) in DF, but I am so new to the game, I still cant tell most of the units from one another...
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
