Gameplay Expansion and Development

Premise:



You are the king of a realm containing settlements ranging from tiny hamlets to enormous cities. You stake claim to your lands by constructing outposts and forts, governing everything from your throne inside your mighty castle. You conquer adjacent areas with the strength of your armies trained within your powerful forts and castle. Although it is impossible to control every single aspect of your realm, you develop and expanse your territory through research, studies, prayers, and diplomacy.



Basic assumptions:



You start with a settlement and a castle, and additional settlements are scattered around the map. You gain control of them by either constructing an outpost or fort in or nearby them or perhaps flagging them (think Dawn of War) using troops. Settlements automatically produce resources and grow in size over time, both of which can be increased with upgrades (hamlet-village-town-city). Settlements are composed of many buildings and people, all of which can be destroyed or killed, reducing the resource output of that settlement.



Main Idea:



Instead of having a single technology tree to gain access to new units, abilities, buildings and upgrades, these things are accomplished through Technology, Magic, Religion/Gods, and Racial Alliance/Treaties



Technology is straight foward and consists of new innovations and techniques that allow for better and new things. For example, iron weapons may increase the attack of certain units.



Magic can be studied to enable new spells. Some spells might be permanent upgrades to certain units, buildings or weapons, while others may allow for the casting of spells during battles to summon creatures, directly harm enemies or temporarly improve your forces. Magic could potential be grouped into types (dark, light, fire, etc).



Religion/Gods can work in a few different ways. Maybe you pray to a single god and get certain advantages, and are able to switch to another god at any time. Maybe at the beginning of each game you choose one god and they give you select attributes, which might consist of improvements and god-powers (think age of mythology). Another option would be to allow you to gain multiple gods favor, each one costing a certain amount of resources to gain and giving a select number of bonuses and powers. Any of these options may also give access to fantasy creatures.



Finally, Racial Alliances/Treaties are similar to religion/gods. They could be a one time thing, permanent or changable, or allow for multiple alliances. Each alliance would give you access to different creatures and perhaps certain abilities and upgrades. For example, you could align yourself with Lizardfolk and gain access to them as units, while also making all of your normal troops deal poision damage when fighting.







I hope that this would allow for a greater amount of diversity and options when playing and take away the need for levels or ages.|||I agree with the concept of hamlets turning to vilages, towns, and then cities, in principle as not having them upgrade doesn't sound right. However, there's too much detail in the, well, details. Having [killable] peasants wandering around your city sounds really nice, but there's a reason why all the details were cut from supcom1 to supcom2.



I'm just saying, i highly doubt that K&C will be the type of game to have villagers/peons wandering around sapping Megahurtz.|||hailstorm_master|||I had attempted to keep this to one idea, but it seems to be two. To clarify....



The first suggestion involves using an economic system where there is only one resource and it is collected from settlements which each player must gain ownership of. The exact method of gaining ownership is debatable. Regardless, each settlement supplies a constant flow of resource depending upon its size. Settlements grow independently, but can be encouraged to grow faster by certain upgrades. Settlements include people and buildings. They grow automatically by constructing new buildings and having new people arrive. People can be hurt/killed and buildings can be damaged/destroyed by other players to reduce the flow of resource each settlement provides. After a settlement is attacked it may be quickly rebuilt, if given the proper amount of resources, or left to slowly rebuilt itself up. Damaged, but not destroyed building are rebuilt first. Resource flow is dependent upon a mixture of buildings and people. This system allows for an attractive, easy to manage economy that encourages attacking while providing more time for combat.



The second suggestion pushes for a game that is more about creating options than just bigger, stronger and more powerful units as the game goes on. By having multiple methods to customize your race (technology, magic, religion and subfactions) more opportunities will exist to create different playing styles each game. For example, for those of you who have played age of mythology, image removing the ages and having each of the minor gods equalized. You can then choose any minor god with their associated powers, myth units and myth upgrades/technologies for a certain amount of resources or once a certain amount of time elapses. You can choose additional ones given either more time or more resources. Despite the upgrades making units potentially more powerful, the powers and myth units just give you additional options. Something like this could be used for religion or subfaction.



Any comments......|||I really like your idears, and I have nothing negative to say about them.