The Game: A Real Time Strategy Game in veign of the WarCraft series. The Problem: RTS games are over simplified into killing games, with units popping out of nowhere. The Details: Most RTS games have "units" appear from nothing. While not inherently bad, this proposes a question, rather than having units just appear, why not have a full-fledged society? Why not give the player complete dominance of his domain, assigning each newly-born baby a specific task to with which he will fulfill in his (or her) lifetime? Why not have a completely independent society which produces at rates appropriate to the player''s behavior and decisions? This would introduce new elements of strategy into the game. Is it better to create a tyrantial tribe in which your people don''t necesarily produce at their highest, yet you have more complete dominance and are more war-like, or is it better to create a more friendly group, with production high, yet not as powerful? How Would It Work? In veign of the WarCraft series, this game will be set in a more medieval setting. Starting with the basics of a townhall along with several buildings such as a couple farms. At this point, your town has a very low "income" of taxes, as well as a slow but steady supply of new persons to train. At this point you can increase/decrease the percentages of different types of units to create. In the beginning, you have options of construction crew, farmers, and a basic military unit. Then from this spawns other units as new buildings are created, such as miners, lumberman, researchers (blacksmiths etc.), and more advanced warriors. Each unit is grouped into a category, such as peasant, merchant/handyman, warrior, and noble. At any point in the game, if the player finds himself with an excess of any given unit, that unit can be converted into another unit as long as he stays within his class. Also, unit production is based upon output in the society, as well as state of mind of the citizens and economy. Why Do This? It will create a new style of RTS games, and introduce a completely new concept. Also the addition of this new system allows for much more realistic style of gameplay, and added strategy truly creating it a RTS game, and not just some "create 100s of warriors and kill" game. To Wavinator: Sorry I stole your style of posting, I just figured it always produces such good discussion I''d try it .

something similar has already been done. See lords of the Realm 2 (I think it''s the second one. Been a long time). Also civ had that aspect somewhat as well.

"When i was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of
the corner of my mind. I turned to look, but it was
gone, I cannot put my finger on it now. The child has
grown, the dream has gone." -Pink Floyd

I haven''t played Lords of the Realm 2, but as for Civ, that''s turn-based and a lot slower-paced. I was thinking of more of a fast paced game, and something that could be done in a campaign style like Blizzard''s and Westwood''s RTSes. Civ is more of a long-term game that has you controlling the same empire the entire game.

So what you''re basically talking about here is (in my mind) a hybred of a City management sim, and an RTS...

kind of like the Settlers III which does pritty much what you''re talking about.

A few questions though...

* How much empasis would u put on resource managment??

* If you''re trying to prevent things from "poping out of no where" does this include the weapons you equip your troops with? The Iron and coal required to produce them... etc...

* What about ammo (for your archers and artillery) In all the RTS''s I''ve played every unit has an infinite store of ammo... (ok this is really just simplification for the player) How is ammo handeled in your idea

* Supplies... It''s all very well having these farms that produce food, but the food seems to magically get to your army that is several miles away. I would really like to be able to A) Attempt to cut off my enimies supplies by attaking his supply wagons, rather than his hevily fortified base, B) loot any unprotected enimy farms for food, and C) if he''s got better level of weapons, capture them for my own troops.
Which model would your idea use?

And finnally one othe quibble of my own about RTS''s I only have 1 choice when it comes to an enimy building... Rase it to the ground. Which seems completely pointless to me when I burn down an enemy blacksmith, only to put my own up in its place!! [from the point of view of capturing a town]

I like the idea though...

In my opinion it would be nice to have a system which works like this:
first you have only pesants who can be trained in using weapons (you could set the time they will spend training every day), but they would spend most of the time working on the fields. But one day when your society is big enought you can tell some young men to train the whole day and not to work any more on the fields, so they will become better then the others in fighting and so on.
This would mean that you don''t have classes of people and let them only change their job inside of the class but you can let everybody do everything but some would do it better then others. (Don''t ask me how to implement it)

Two of the games I''ve played that might spark ideas in someone''s head...

Knights and Merchants (a lot like settlers, but with better military IMO) required you to build a tavern and keep it stocked with food. Units had a hunger bar, and when this reached a certain point they would stop what they were doing and head for the tavern to eat. You could send serfs out with food for your military units too.

Megalomania allowed you to start each level with a certain number from your population pool for the stage. You could assign these people to doing nothing, researching, building, or being in an army. The more people you had doing nothing, the faster your people breed.

IMO - If you are going to design a game using this Realistic-RTS style, you''ll have to use either an alien species or a futuristic human race. In either case a faster method of breeding and training is required. I believe this because a human has to be roughly 15 years old before they become any good in combat and will begin losing their edge at about age 50. If you compress the time frame enough to allow training a human to occur in a decent length of time, you compress their active life into a space of time only two to three times as long as their build time. Admittedly most units in an RTS game don''t last much beyond that time in a decent battle anyway...

Hope something in here helps someone...
Faradhi

quote: Original post by wardekar

To Wavinator:

Sorry I stole your style of posting, I just figured it always produces such good discussion I''d try it .

LOL!!! That''s cool, I don''t think we need to involve the lawyers!!!

One major thought about your suggestion, tho'': Bounce back. The quicker your production cycle, I think the more potential you have for strategy-less rush games. But OTOH, the slower your production cycle, the harder it is to bounce back from a defeat.

This is a significant issue the newer the player is to the game. If I build mostly archers (as a newbie) and suddenly find that I need calvary, I''m in trouble. How does the player quickly change strategies? If it takes them a long time to grow troops, and the ruinous effects of a bad decision are only detectable late in the game, that''s a recipe for frustration.

BTW, is your goal to move past oversimplification, or to move past killing as the only end goal?





--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Another game like that is Cultures. Published by THQ.

* How much empasis would u put on resource managment??

A lot .

* If you''re trying to prevent things from "poping out of no where" does this include the weapons you equip your troops with? The Iron and coal required to produce them... etc...

Yes, all resources are mined/refined seperately, which requires a player to concentrate on a single or vary little kinds of societies, and not just one build all/destroy all society.

* What about ammo (for your archers and artillery) In all the RTS''s I''ve played every unit has an infinite store of ammo... (ok this is really just simplification for the player) How is ammo handeled in your idea

Ammunitions are produced at their respective buildings, assuming resources are present to produce them. Ammunitions must then be taken to the field of battle in order to supply them.

* Supplies... It''s all very well having these farms that produce food, but the food seems to magically get to your army that is several miles away. I would really like to be able to A) Attempt to cut off my enimies supplies by attaking his supply wagons, rather than his hevily fortified base, B) loot any unprotected enimy farms for food, and C) if he''s got better level of weapons, capture them for my own troops.
Which model would your idea use?

Again, food is the same as ammo, it must be taken to your forces, for if they go too long without food they will perish, or be drained significantly of energy.

And finnally one othe quibble of my own about RTS''s I only have 1 choice when it comes to an enimy building... Rase it to the ground. Which seems completely pointless to me when I burn down an enemy blacksmith, only to put my own up in its place!! [from the point of view of capturing a town]

Yes I meant to mention that before, however I forget if I did or not.
When attacking and taking over an enemy, all their resources and buildings can be converted, unless you do not have that technology. Also a possibility of that town''s citizens can be enslaved.

These ideas almost go into the realm of a wargame.

BTW I thought about making a game like that, and in terms of training troops (for the human-like side) what you did was get peasants (generic people with no specific skills), and train them with the basics - then they became simple soldiers - cannon fodder etc, from there you''d progress in a tree like manner in training your troops for more specific tasks,

i.e.
A pesant -> Soldier -> Archer -> Ranger
Soldier -> Pikeman

And if in a hurry you can always quickly downgrade to the soldier and retrain them from there. so if you made one bad descision it wouldn''t hurt you incredibly, and as a bonus the skills would still be there.

Weapons were also the other factor in the game, you could have as many knights as you wanted, but if you only had 1 sword + shield then you''d be buggered just as well..



Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au