There could be a small chance of the special unit production capability being destroyed if the minor faction is assaulted rather than bargained with. Special unit production should be limited to minor faction cities, no? Thoughts.
I hear where you are coming from. My take on this is that the numbers can be exciting if they are meaningfully deployed and have other factors (like AI) designed around them. If you're going to have a race that are 'superwarriors', it's got to HURT to fight them. If you have a race of super-creative technologists, they have to reliably have GREAT tech. Races that breed prolifically need to really cover the galaxy. In other words, the number have to matter.
Battlefield markers: I like the idea - it's like 'making your own history [e digicons]:D[/e] ! In terms of game mechanics, this is like unit statistics for me - like having a page for each unit with total damage, battles fought, %damage done for your side, strongest enemy defeated, etc. Testaments to your exploits. My main emphasis is on adding another dimension to the map - Lore. Dragon Age uses the Codex to flesh out the religions (Chantry, Old Gods), the various
Take a page from Dragon Age's Codex and have a system for Lore and flavor text. This would help make the map less generic and give more of a RPG feel. The Card-based way information is already in the game is nicely suited for something like this. Ideally this would be for a pre-designed world map but could be adapted to randomly generated maps. Three possibilities for such a system in terms of complexity: 1. For history and lore only - Cards that describe places of inter
[quote who="PurplePaladin" reply="57" id="2467055"]You have to keep in mind, I loved MoM, but MoM did not have the extreme customization that EWAM will have. That means the more catagories you make, the more difficult it is to make/enchant counters. If you got 6, 7, even 8 attack types, is anyone really going to play defensive whack-a-mole to make enchantments for all the types? You just could not do it, and players would just be forced to go all out offence in the end.
A thought I would like to throw in is having 'mundane' armor giving some partial protections against various magical damage types based on the material and overall quality/expense of the armor. For me, even low values in the 10-20% defense value would be nice. From a game play perspective, it adds something for players to think about. It also partially mitigates against 'cheap' magical means to destroy high quality mundane troops with excellent armor. I haven
Diplomacy is where it is really at. One army per territory... no dice, just good diplomacy
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I'm in favor of a more dynamic tech tree. A more deterministic tech tree lets players try certain 'pre-made' strategies but cuts the replay value down. I like the scheme where when a breakthrough occurs, your decision on what tech to pick locks out the other techs to to one extent or another - so you're choosing between two possible goods but need to take into consideration the opportunity cost of not picking the other tech. If the occasional rare tech comes into p
It would be interesting to play around with the idea of being able to group cities into mega-cities or regions so that they could be managed as a block - essentially showing their combined resources and handling them like a single unit with several build centers. I can see this handled in two major ways: 1. The cities stay as individual units except for the purposes of management. Essentially you just link a few cities together and they all take you to the same man
I can envision many ways having women and men differentiated could lead to cool civilization considerations. One is like tesb idea - trading military capacity (having men and women in the 'armed forces') with threat to the national growth rate. It's a consideration that's been overlooked in civ type games. I remember reading about civilizations who have been reduced by war to 1:10 male:female for a time. Connecting women with the national growth rate is a very "colonial" ide
I think a ranking system with experience is a good thing but better if that unit with all the experience tends to 'earn' it. From my games, in many cases that 'experience' comes from moping up numerous weak enemies (eg Civ, GC2, Sins). Going back to XCom, most combat was deadly enough that a you would lose or have wounded a few troops at least. Your experienced troops earned their increased accuracy and more action points by living through many battles that they actually had a cal
I would like to propose that in most 4X strategy games, war is too aseptic. You can build a super stack or four and sometimes they never lose a unit for the life of the stack. In my opinion, battles should be more down and dirty with both sides taking loses. In part this is designed into a game with the damage model. I'm not advocating that the combat model should allow lowly spearmen to take out battleships... er dragons in one shot. I'm suggesting that all attacks
I agree with Rho. Strategic fun is what will keep me coming back. This game is a blend of strategy and RPG but it is structured mainly as a strategy game. One thing we can take to heart is somewhere along the way, XCOM was mentioned as an inspiration. That was a well designed blend of strategy with RPG elements. Primarily, it did what Rho discussed. The troops you hired could be trained and advanced, but they never dominated the game and were always one goo
Just to refine the idea of 'nothing left to loose' gambits - Making the mop up more interesting and unpredictable is great; however, from a design point of view, the gambit should be a bid by a realm that is getting marginalized to propel itself back into competitiveness or self distruct and thus shortening the mop up . Essentially, these realms would mop themselves up if the gambit fails. However, the more I ponder, the more I t
Some mop up is fun. It's nice to see the momentum swing your way after 'the turning point' and you can pay back some past greivances. After a point thought, it can get tedious. One thing I would like to bring up is there may be ways to make the inevitability of the Win less predictable and thus make mop up less boring. It would be interesting if there were several avenues of magic research or quests available to losing realms that lead to unpredictable results... las
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