Empire Design Thread

Psychic_Llamas

Wizard in the Making
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Im going to regiment the design process of these civs, no more jumping around and wildly brainstorming for us ;) :whipped::trouble:
i want to get our ideas in a form that we can get working easily before we move onto the next civ, so we will work on one or two civs at a time until a relatively balanced, playable, and fun civ is made. (hopefull most of these ideas wont be too hard to do without python)

I thought we could start designing the Empire first because its the most well known, 'generic' (for want of a better word) civ.

i've layed out this design in a specific format to make balancing between civs as easy as possible (theres probably a better way but this will do for now ;) ) :
-the genric trait that is common to all oldworld civs (ie Brettonia, Estalia etc)
-the unique trait that is only given to the Empire
-the Unique buildings that the empire get (more than 1)
-and then the Unique King units that are specific to the different leaders (this should be how we destinguish between leaders) the leaders section is divided into:
--- The Leaders name
--- the stats for the unit in ach era (the king units should be upgradable when a new era is reached)
--- the unique items that the king unit starts with (like Orthuses Axe)
--- other bonuses specific to that leader.

also note that the numbers are only examples.

PS, sorry if i sound like a nazi, i just want to have some structure to this design :p

Civilization: Reikland
Spoiler :

-Generic Trait: Old World Customs
--- + 1 happiness from military units stationed in cities (max 3 happiness from units)
--- + Farms produce an extra +1 gold or food with the 'city states' civic (taxing the peseants)
--- + replace fort improvement with 'castle' improvement that provides +1 hammer, +75% defense bonus (dosn't remove forests), area of control effect (enemies nearby are damaged) cannot be build within 2 squares of another castle improvement, can also be built outside of cultural borders, provides units with sentry 1 promotion (like ancient tower) avaliable at monarchy tech.
--- - Corruption religion acts as a culture draining force (same as cult of the Dragon) in Old World empires, but spreads 15% faster than normal.
--- - civ is more succeptable to rival spies stealing techs (weaker espionage defence against tech theft)
--- - all farms cease to produce benefits when enemy unit is in city border (not only on the specific tile, (this symbloyses the pesants being brought inside the city centre and castle for defense. however enemied dont get cash for pillaging farms))

-Unique Trait: The True Empire
*The Capital Changes: we can use new event that removes the palace from the capital and rebuilds a new one in the next biggest city every few turns, about every 75 - 100 turns?
--- +The empire palace provides an additional +10% bonus to prod and gold, and +2 happiness.
--- -The old capital gets a -2 penalty to happiness (penalty ends when a new capital is again chosen)
*Grant Colonies: Cities with 5 or less population can be given independence (this city becomes a colony, additional colonies join the same ‘civ’ as the first colony)
--- +you gain 50-100 gold / population point of this city.
--- + the castle improvement can be built on resources outside of cultural borders, linked via roads, and have one of your units stationed inside it to gain access to that resource, however if a rival stations a unit inside it and joins it with a road then they get the resource instead.
--- - workers are consumed when they build a castle improvment.
--- -all other cities with population 5 or less get +2 unhappiness for 10 turns if a city is given independence.
*Elector Counts: The 5 first cities that are built start with an "Electoral Manor" building which enables building of an ‘Elector Count’ unit (1 / city)
--- +The Elector Counts unit can be given the hero promotion with combat 3 and standard bearer promotions. The Elector Counts start with moral bonuses.
--- -If the elector count dies the city who built him riots for x turns (where x is the level of the elector count) and a new elector count can be built by this city.

-Unique Buildings:
---‘Engineers School’ replaces siege workshop, grants +4 EXP to siege units built in the city
---‘Gunners School’ grants +4 EXP to gunpowder units built in the city
---‘Execution Stand’ Replaces Gallows. +1 happiness, -50% corruption, increase chance of revealing enemy spy (or chaos cultists)


KING UNITS

-Leader 1: Karl Franz
-Era 1: On foot model, 1 movement, 2 strength.
-Era 2: Mounted on horse model, 2 movement, 5 strength.
-Era 3: Mounted on Griffon model, 3 movement, ignore impassable terrain, 9 strength, 1-2 first strikes.
-Unique items:
---‘Ghal Maraz (hammer of sigmar)’: +2 holy and +1 fire strength.
---‘Gromril Armour’: +1 defensive strength, +25% magic resistance.
---&#8216;The Silver Seal&#8217;: +25% magic resistance. 20% chance of surviving battles (&#8216;retreating&#8217;) when (<10% original strength)
-Other Bonuses:
--- can cast a &#8216;spell&#8217; that grants +15% boost to all research in city he is stationed in (like the &#8216;inspiration&#8217; spell)
--- no -2 penalty to happiness when palace changes if Franz is stationed in that city.
--- increase GP point growth by +20% when stationed in a city
--- Counts as an elector.

-Leader 2: Magnus the Pious
-Era 1: On foot model, 1 movement, 1 strength.
-Era 2: Mounted on horse model, 2 movement, 4 strength.
-Era 3: Mounted on horse model, joined a unit of warrior priests, 2 movement, 6 physical and 2 holy strength.
-Unique items:
---&#8216;Ghal Maraz (hammer of sigmar)&#8217;: +2 holy and +1 fire strength.
---&#8216;The Gilded Armour&#8217;: 15% chance that attacking enemy unit cannot hit Magnus, and thus combat ends (no fight).
---&#8216;Shroud of Magnus&#8217;: Unit is immune to dark, chaos and skaven magic, and immune to death and unholy damage.
-Other Bonuses:
--- can Inquisition unwanted religions without sacrificing himself.
--- may trigger events that recruit random units for 1 population point when he is stationed in a city and at war with someone. (units gained this way have no upkeep and can re join cities to increase population again)
--- Counts as an elector.
--- Warrior Priests bonuses (only applicable for 3rd Era)
-----+25% magic Resistance,
-----can cast all 4 Prayers of Sigmar spells (I will write them up later)
-----Righteous Fury (Hatred of all Chaos, Undead and skaven units)

-Leader 3: Sigmar Heldenhammer
-Era 1: On foot model, 1 movement, 2 strength.
-Era 2: Mounted on horse model, 2 movement, 4 strength.
-Era 3: Mounted on Griffon model, 3 movement, ignore impassable terrain, 8 physical and 3 holy strength, 1-2 first strikes.
-Unique items:
---&#8216;Ghal Maraz (hammer of sigmar)&#8217;: +2 holy and +1 fire strength.
---&#8216;Sigil of Sigmar&#8217;: spells cast on the unit or adjacent units have 15% chance of being a misscast.
---&#8216;Crown of Sigmar&#8217;: this unit and all friendly adjacent units are immune to fear and negates moral penalties.
-Other Bonuses:
--- &#8216;War Cry&#8217; ability that improves moral of units in his stack by +20%
---&#8216;Righteous Smite&#8217; spell that allows Sigmar to sacrifice his movement for this turn to &#8216;throw&#8217; his hammer at nearest enemy to deal the following damage:
-----iDamage- 20%
-----iDamageLimit- 50%
-----DamageType- Holy and Fire.
--- +2 happiness to city that he is stationed in (this bonus is countered on palace change, ie palace change ignores the +2 happiness bonus)
--- Counts as an elector.



Oppinions, changes, additions, removals, creative criticism etc etc all encouraged :)
 
Fine but for the elector counts i think they should act like GG (joining another unit). Indeed a single unit in civ represent a whole regiment and i hardly see a single man killing a whole regiment (apart from sigmar who was a primarch...).
 
Frankly PL I think it's too early to start anything like this. Almost all of it will require new mechanics and we didn't even make use of half the mechanics already there. Lets focus on basic stuff like buildings, units, civics well and ok yes traits but only as they are possible with what we have now.That is a lot!

That shouldn't discourage you, on the contrary make yourself familiar with what's possible in xml and try to design around that;)

Edit: Same as with spelldesign, check the tags in xml first. If you're unsure what a particular tag does feel free to ask me!
 
Ok Ploe :) i would love to help with getting spells into the XML (after i finish the flags etc), i would just need instructions on how to, do so. im familair w/XML so it woundnt take long to get the hang of it. i just need to know what files need to be changed, and where in those files :)
 
just had some more ideas for the old world generic trait:

-Generic Trait: Old World Customs
--- + 1 happiness from military units stationed in cities (max 3 happiness from units)
--- + Farms produce an extra +1 gold or food with the 'city states' civic (taxing the peseants)
--- + replace fort improvement with 'castle' improvement that provides +1 hammer, +75% defense bonus (dosn't remove forests), area of control effect (enemies nearby are damaged) cannot be build within 2 squares of another castle improvement, can also be built outside of cultural borders, provides units with sentry 1 promotion (like ancient tower) avaliable at monarchy tech.
--- - Corruption religion acts as a culture draining force (same as cult of the Dragon) in Old World empires, but spreads 15% faster than normal.
--- - civ is more succeptable to rival spies stealing techs (weaker espionage defence against tech theft)
--- - all farms cease to produce benefits when enemy unit is in city border (not only on the specific tile, (this symbloyses the pesants being brought inside the city centre and castle for defense. however enemied dont get cash for pillaging farms))

what do you think?
 
The castle seems over powered, I mean, damaging units as they enter its zone of control? Can you imagine just littering your land with castles? An enemy stack would be half dead by the time it reached your city walls!

Also the farm thing. Every farm stops producing? So the cities hundreds of miles away pull there peasants in when a Barbarian goes to attack them in a remote area? Seems too highly abusable and frustrating. I know I'd just park a Hidden Nationality unit on someones borders just to piss them off and make there cities starve.

There was a mod somewhere that was working on applying Culture to Forts, that would be a better solution then dealing damage and help Old World Civs win culture fights with larger cities and when trying to push back the borders of newly captured cities.
 
your right about the castles area of control. and the culture to the casltes would be cool

i think you miss interpreted what im thinking for the farms. lets say that you are an empire player, you have 3 cities, your capital with a radius of 4 squares of culture, a second city with 3 squares of culture and a third one with 1 square of culture. a barbarian unit goes to attack your capital, he enters the cultural border, nothing happens, next turn he moves forward into the second ring of culture, still notheng. howver, the next turn he moves into the cities workable tiles (the cities fat cross) and the pesants panic and flee to the city abandoning their farms. the barbarian runs around pillaging the farms, but gets nothing in retern. this only happens in the city the barb is in, not all throughout the empire.
i thought this would be a good negative to balance the farm bonus of +1gold or food, which makes them a very good improvement, but only in times of peace, when no barbs or enemies are near by. this also gives the empire (or any oldworld) player incentives to have units patrolling their borders frequently to repell barbarian advances (and other enemies;) )
 
hmmm Castles should have a zone of control... represents units sallying out to attack enemies... and as a note it would make it work taking fortresses... i just steam around and ignore them... Blitzkrieg FTW!!!
 
zone of control has its appealing side, but it will just make them too overpowered like DeaEx said. perhaps it would be fine if you could only build them at least 3 squares appart, but im not sure if thats possible (ploe?). i would liek them to have it if they dont make castles too strong.
 
I dont think they would be... you could build lots of castles... but in all honesty it would cripple your war effort... think of them for a moment as normal forts... they may be able to hold terrian (and btw Forts are useless...) they dont give you extra shields or more food... you could spam them... but your cities would probably hover at no more than 6 pop (assuming you worked wheat etc...) which to me would limit your ability to produce military units and adequetly defend your Castles... (assuming of course that the ZOC requires a unit present in the tile to work?) you can have 20 castles... but without adequeuete garrisons they wont be much use if you cant hold them... and they will aid the enemy by providing them with a point at which to hold your counterattacks...
 
ah, but the Oldworld replacement for the forts, the 'Castle' (which is a unique thing for them) should provide +1 hammer, which wont cripple a city, especially if its on the fringe of the emipre where it needs to focus on defence more than food.

how about this as a compromise:

Oldworlder 'Castle' improvement replaces fort with the discovery of the Monarchy tech.
-The castle provides +1 hammer (or gold or food, im not sure which is more fitting, but they should give a bonus of some kind)
- The castle has 75% additional defence bonus on top of the terrain bonus and dont require a forest to be cut down.
- castles have a zone of control which causes harm to nearby enemy units if (and only if) one of your units is fortified inside it (not just standing there or healing, they must be 'fortfied')
-castles also act like an ancient tower improvemt (grants sentry 1 promotion to units fortified inside it)
-castles can be built outside of cultural borders.
- however, if an enemy unit fortifies inside the castle, then they get the zone of control which damages your units, and they get the sentry and defensive bonuses.
-castles could have a limited garrison, say 3-5 units to prevent massive stacks?
 
That seems fine by meDeaExMachina (dont know about being able to build it outside your land... that would have balance issues... ie filling up masses of fairly bad land with castles just to annoy enemies...

I would also hesisitate to say that... maybe they should give Shields... just to make them more useful.. although gold has its benifits...

hmmm im leaning towards gold... since if its built on a forest then you are still able to get shields... and 3 of one plot at that... might be a tad overbalanced in that case... and gold isnt all that useful as an incentive on its own to spam them because of cottages...
 
i wonder if it is possible to impose a limit on the number of improvents there can be, say 3 castles per city? so that way there wouldnt be much building of castles outside of borders for the sake of it.
 
Gold makes more sense, its saying the amount of commerce thats being generated by the new Castle's lord and his serfs. While whats up is perfectly acceptable balance wise I'd still prefer to stick away from external damage sources like that. After all we get enough from magic.

I have an idea, for forts in general as well as this. The first is that you could create it so that tiles around Forts and Castles count as non-movable terrain for anyone but the Civ(or Civs during peace time) who have units garrisoned in the structure. This represents the forts zone of protection and forcing units to take the fort before they can continue on (or if not accompanied by other forts to go around which wastes a couple turns, and that in itself can be extra helpful to a war effort).

Then the special thing about the Castle Upgrade is the extra 25% Defense, a +1 Commerce (triggering financial traits on any tile which already generates +1 Commerce) and GROWTH of the Castle. It could then turn into a Citadel after like 20 turns of being worked where it gains yet ANOTHER 25% defense and the Commerce increases to 2 (triggering financial traits in tiles that don't produce Commerce).

By this you would make Forts infinitely more useful and make the Castles and subsequently Citadels decent upgrade so you would be annoyed by having them built too close to your cities like you would a Fort.
 
im not sure i understand what your saying about the immovable terrain around a castle... if the 8 squares around the castle are impassable, how would the enemy get to it in the first place to eliminate defenders?

So now:

Oldworlder 'Castle' improvement replaces fort with the discovery of the Monarchy tech.
-The castle provides +1 gold
- The castle has 50% additional defence bonus on top of the terrain bonus and dont require a forest to be cut down.
- castles have a zone of control which causes harm to nearby enemy units (or forces them to attack the castle/ renders them immobile????) if (and only if) one of your units is fortified inside it (not just standing there or healing, they must be 'fortfied')
-castles also act like an ancient tower improvemt (grants sentry 1 promotion to units fortified inside it)
-castles can be built outside of cultural borders.
-castles will upgrade to a citadel after 50 turns of being worked by a city, Citadels provide an extra 25% defence bonus on top of the castles 50%.
- however, if an enemy unit fortifies inside the castle, then they get the zone of control which now affects your units, and they get the sentry and defensive bonuses.
-castles could have a limited garrison, say 3-5 units to prevent massive stacks.
 
@Dea i dont understand that immovable thing either...

@PL seems about right...
 
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