MasterofDisasta
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2008
- Messages
- 355
Oh please not a third dead FFHNes. 
I think I would completely lose it.
I think I would completely lose it.
Pre-EkoNES: Fall From Heaven
- Thread starter Ekolite
- Start date
kenkrajen
Prince
Yeah, don't sound the alarm without tellling us what's going on
Kyzarc Fotjage
Rise Up
(wipes forehead in relief)
Yay!
Yay!
Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
Like I have said to many of the players for this NES, I am an ideas man - not a details man. When it comes to thinking of new game mechanics and better ways of doing things I can end up completely overhauling the way the game works in a coouple of hours, but when it comes to the details, the balancing, the nitty-gritty afairs of balancing and statisticising, I'm stumped.
For a while, this seriously threatened the life of EkoNES, and if these changes are not successful it may continue to threaten.
These changes also have the brilliant side-effects of considerably seperating EkoNES from FFHNESII (Hey, it was an impossible act to follow), as well as opening up the game for extra creativity.
So without further ado, the cuts:
-Espionage Points
-Tax Rates
-Improvements
-Fertility
-Buildings
-Units
-Population
Now, you may think that what I have essentially done, is removed more or less the entire game - but in reality none of these have been removed, simply destandardised.
Espionage will be done in a similar way to how you might complete a project. I will give you a minimum cost, and you will pay what you want to pay and hope for the best. There will still be buildings (woops, did I just say ''buildings''?) that improve your chances of successful espionage, meaning that less resources can be spent to achieve the same effect.
Tax Rates, well, you can still change the taxes a city, region, or even the entire nation must pay, but the effects will no longer be standardised. The effects will depend on the individual circumstances.
Improvements are out. EkoNES faced the exact same problem that FFH, and even CIV4 have - the fact that it is incredibly difficult to balance things which have an effect that is fairly similar over all (a Farm and a Fishery, a Mine and a Workshop) in a way that makes a player have to think, and have an interesting decision to make. FFHNESII managed this, somehow, although we never saw things like lumber mills or workshops, but such quantitative skills are beyond me. Improvements will now be treated as mini-projects. You tell me what you want, I give a base price, you pay some resources, here-on ''Outputs'' to avoid confusion, and give a short blurb about what you want doing, and we'll see what happens.
Regions will now have a ''Regional Output'', which can be affected by building things like farms and mines, or by harvesting resources that are present there. All regions will have a fairly even base Output, although the amounts of gold, production, and food they produce will vary. Particularly fertile regions might provide more food (and therefore less gold and production), and might have a ''wheat'' resource, indicating that this is a particularly ideal place for wheat to grow. This will provide another couple of food to the region, and more food, as well as a resource to trade, when it is harvested effectively.
Buildings. Like Improvements, buildings will no longer be standardised. If you want a city to hold a great market every year, then you arrange that and myself and the dice will decide what happens. You should always give a short blurb about how a buildinng should be designed, what it would be used for, or anything else that you might think relevant, and the more informative this blurb is the more likley things will be to go your way.
Units. Heh. Obviously units will still be around, but every last one of them will be custom-designed. Once you design the unit, it will become a DoD (Discovery or Development), which will allow you to train more of that unit, with the same stats as the last, unless you pay more resources, in which case perhaps they're weapons are a better quality or so on. I would prefer that you give most of your units mundane names, eg. ''Bannor Spearmen Division'', and save the fancy names ''Spears of Fury'', for special one-off Elite units. Again, when you design a unit, give a blurb! I want blurbs! How many men per unit, how long do they train for, what are their main tactics etc etc.
Population. Not entirely sure about this one, but population may become simple city sizes, which can be increased in similar ways to buidlings and improvements.
---
There will be more details later today, but until then please ask any questions that you may have, and give opinions and suggestions. Feedback is needed.
For a while, this seriously threatened the life of EkoNES, and if these changes are not successful it may continue to threaten.
These changes also have the brilliant side-effects of considerably seperating EkoNES from FFHNESII (Hey, it was an impossible act to follow), as well as opening up the game for extra creativity.
So without further ado, the cuts:
-Espionage Points
-Tax Rates
-Improvements
-Fertility
-Buildings
-Units
-Population
Now, you may think that what I have essentially done, is removed more or less the entire game - but in reality none of these have been removed, simply destandardised.
Espionage will be done in a similar way to how you might complete a project. I will give you a minimum cost, and you will pay what you want to pay and hope for the best. There will still be buildings (woops, did I just say ''buildings''?) that improve your chances of successful espionage, meaning that less resources can be spent to achieve the same effect.
Tax Rates, well, you can still change the taxes a city, region, or even the entire nation must pay, but the effects will no longer be standardised. The effects will depend on the individual circumstances.
Improvements are out. EkoNES faced the exact same problem that FFH, and even CIV4 have - the fact that it is incredibly difficult to balance things which have an effect that is fairly similar over all (a Farm and a Fishery, a Mine and a Workshop) in a way that makes a player have to think, and have an interesting decision to make. FFHNESII managed this, somehow, although we never saw things like lumber mills or workshops, but such quantitative skills are beyond me. Improvements will now be treated as mini-projects. You tell me what you want, I give a base price, you pay some resources, here-on ''Outputs'' to avoid confusion, and give a short blurb about what you want doing, and we'll see what happens.
Regions will now have a ''Regional Output'', which can be affected by building things like farms and mines, or by harvesting resources that are present there. All regions will have a fairly even base Output, although the amounts of gold, production, and food they produce will vary. Particularly fertile regions might provide more food (and therefore less gold and production), and might have a ''wheat'' resource, indicating that this is a particularly ideal place for wheat to grow. This will provide another couple of food to the region, and more food, as well as a resource to trade, when it is harvested effectively.
Buildings. Like Improvements, buildings will no longer be standardised. If you want a city to hold a great market every year, then you arrange that and myself and the dice will decide what happens. You should always give a short blurb about how a buildinng should be designed, what it would be used for, or anything else that you might think relevant, and the more informative this blurb is the more likley things will be to go your way.
Units. Heh. Obviously units will still be around, but every last one of them will be custom-designed. Once you design the unit, it will become a DoD (Discovery or Development), which will allow you to train more of that unit, with the same stats as the last, unless you pay more resources, in which case perhaps they're weapons are a better quality or so on. I would prefer that you give most of your units mundane names, eg. ''Bannor Spearmen Division'', and save the fancy names ''Spears of Fury'', for special one-off Elite units. Again, when you design a unit, give a blurb! I want blurbs! How many men per unit, how long do they train for, what are their main tactics etc etc.
Population. Not entirely sure about this one, but population may become simple city sizes, which can be increased in similar ways to buidlings and improvements.
---
There will be more details later today, but until then please ask any questions that you may have, and give opinions and suggestions. Feedback is needed.
Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
There will be a greater focus on improving what you already have. You can't just keep adding farms to a region indefinitely, or other things will start to suffer. Instead, you might want to create a Discovery such as ''Horse-Drawn Plough'' which will improve you farming output. Of course, how much it improves it by is controlled by how much effort you put into it, the more resource outputs you put in, the more you will get out. Again, blurbs are needed. Send me a wiki link if you want, but still give a summarising blurb.
Remember that discoveries can spread to other players.
Remember that discoveries can spread to other players.
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
i'm still in.
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
Okay, here is more constructive feedback:
Re: improvements/buildings
Economic development in MilarquiNES was based on projects where 4EC input equaled 1EC outpout/turn regardless of the project. He too did not have buildings.
I'm not sure if what you described would be implemented in a similar way or not but for me, personally (and this is just opinion) it was too simplistic. Having said that, i'm not sure if your system will be comparable to his or not (i think you obfuscated the exact mechanics of this process on purpose) but i hope it will allow for more diversified results.
Re: units:
I think i like this to be honest.
Re: improvements/buildings
Economic development in MilarquiNES was based on projects where 4EC input equaled 1EC outpout/turn regardless of the project. He too did not have buildings.
I'm not sure if what you described would be implemented in a similar way or not but for me, personally (and this is just opinion) it was too simplistic. Having said that, i'm not sure if your system will be comparable to his or not (i think you obfuscated the exact mechanics of this process on purpose) but i hope it will allow for more diversified results.
Re: units:
I think i like this to be honest.
Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
It definitely will have more diversified results. Remember that you can not forsee the exact effects a project will have, so a project intended to increase the gold output of a region could end up having other effects too. Also, because I am not using the pathetically simplified Economic Point system projects will have different effects depending on what they actually are, as opposed to all of them giving one extra EP. The exact effects of a project always depend on how much you pay for it, the level of tech you have, the quality of any story or blurb relating to the project, and partly on the roll of the dice. If you score a very bad event the turn you complete a project then it is likely that something will go disastrously wrong.
Sounds like you were meaning to say that you don't like the unit idea. Why is that? The units will still have stats and so on, they will just be less standardised. It allows different races to gain their own strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield - Goblins might be crappy when used to fight in melee, but goblins may make excellent slingers or scouts due to their ability to blend in with their surroundings. Which part don't you like?
Immaculate
unerring
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2003
- Messages
- 7,623
No. I meant that i DO like it. It will diversify units further and i think thats great.
Diamondeye
So Happy I Could Die
I agree with Immac, I like the unit system aswell. And I'm still in, ofc 
This suits me fine. I just have two points to raise:
- Regarding units, if you ask us to provide numbers, you should give us some idea of what numbers are reasonable. For instance if the population is abstracted to a pop size, and I decide to field 100-men units vs. someone who decided 10000-men units, I'll lost just because I thought the pop size ment something different from what the other player thought. So please give guidelines about unit sizes/costs. I mean Civ models armies as standing armies which last over generations, and standing armies are a relatively recent thing. In the middle ages, you didn't have knight units but bunches of knights that were called by their lord and came (or not) to fight, along with serfs and mercenaries. So I'd like to have guidelines about what an army unit size should be if we are having the usual Civ-like standing army units. If not, I'll jsut say that 1% of my population is made of trained knights and they go to war with 5 or 6 peasants to a knight, peasants who had to train with a longbow by royal decree, or some such and you translate that as you can into a number of units.
So, I'm ok for designing units, but give us standard sizes given our empire sizes or the cost of training X units (i.e. I want to pay 10 economic output/gold/resources/whatnot worth of spearmen - tell me how many spearmen I get for that, given the details on equipment and training I provided).
- Any idea about start time?
- Regarding units, if you ask us to provide numbers, you should give us some idea of what numbers are reasonable. For instance if the population is abstracted to a pop size, and I decide to field 100-men units vs. someone who decided 10000-men units, I'll lost just because I thought the pop size ment something different from what the other player thought. So please give guidelines about unit sizes/costs. I mean Civ models armies as standing armies which last over generations, and standing armies are a relatively recent thing. In the middle ages, you didn't have knight units but bunches of knights that were called by their lord and came (or not) to fight, along with serfs and mercenaries. So I'd like to have guidelines about what an army unit size should be if we are having the usual Civ-like standing army units. If not, I'll jsut say that 1% of my population is made of trained knights and they go to war with 5 or 6 peasants to a knight, peasants who had to train with a longbow by royal decree, or some such and you translate that as you can into a number of units.
So, I'm ok for designing units, but give us standard sizes given our empire sizes or the cost of training X units (i.e. I want to pay 10 economic output/gold/resources/whatnot worth of spearmen - tell me how many spearmen I get for that, given the details on equipment and training I provided).
- Any idea about start time?
Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
I think you should just aim to give a vague guideline and I will translate that into an appropriate size. I think the largest units will be around 1500, with most being smaller, and units like Mages and Scouts being as low as 20 in some cases. A small unit that costs the same as a large unit will tend to have been better trained, better equiped etc.
Small units are more expensive to heal per person, so it is important to keep them fairly safe, whereas large, cheaper units can just be thrown away.
Small units are more expensive to heal per person, so it is important to keep them fairly safe, whereas large, cheaper units can just be thrown away.
thomas.berubeg
Wandering the World
I'm still in, of course.
Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
If things go to plan we can start in a couple of days. Sunday I think.
I'm thinking that we might start at a slightly higher level of technology. Perhaps 5 or 6 starting techs instead of 3. Also, one thing you should know is that most techs will be completely qualitative. They will come with little descriptions saying what they provide for your people and you can plan your projects based on that.
Remember you can design new discoveries as projects as well.
I'm thinking that we might start at a slightly higher level of technology. Perhaps 5 or 6 starting techs instead of 3. Also, one thing you should know is that most techs will be completely qualitative. They will come with little descriptions saying what they provide for your people and you can plan your projects based on that.
Remember you can design new discoveries as projects as well.
Kyzarc Fotjage
Rise Up
YES!!!!
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
KF, you are in one of Group Bs, you can't play yet
