The glorious Evolution of Master of Mana - The Red Desert of Cruoris / First screenshot of standalone version / Feedback needed

[Calavente]

interesting !
how will the combat play out ?
like a card game (MtG) like ? zoomed combat; turn per turn, chosing action from a deck ?
a HMM like ? (zoomed combat, turn by turn per units/ unit stack, with movement
total war ? zoomed combat, real time combat ?
Civ 4 like ? map-level combat ?
intermediate : zoomed combat, turn by turn per player (civ like) ?
other ?

 

[OzzyKP]

Ooooh, Wondrous Locations sound really cool.

 

[Sephi]

interesting !
how will the combat play out ?
like a card game (MtG) like ? zoomed combat; turn per turn, chosing action from a deck ?
a HMM like ? (zoomed combat, turn by turn per units/ unit stack, with movement
total war ? zoomed combat, real time combat ?
Civ 4 like ? map-level combat ?
intermediate : zoomed combat, turn by turn per player (civ like) ?
other ?

It's other. The battle system is quite unique. It is inspired by the role that generals played in battles before the worldwars. You can see examples like that in videos like this:

As a general you are not a micro manager. You cannot tell your units where to move or whom to attack in the heat of battle. But units have a deterministic behavior in battle, so you can make a plan based on that. Units gain ability points during the battle and you can use them to order them to execute abilities to modify the flow of battle. You could order your archers to shoot a volley at a high priority target or order your knights to rally the army and improve morale.

Units have 4 different behaviors: bruiser, ranged, skirmisher and assasin. Bruiser units attack the closest target and if there is no target in range they move to the closest enemy. Ranged units attack the unit that they can deal the most damage to. If they have no targets in range they will move towards the closest enemy. Skirmisher units attack the closest target and if there is no target in range they move to the closest enemy. However they will always try to attack from max range, so if their target moves towards them the will move back. Assasin units always target the weakest unit in the enemy army. There are also abilities that change the behavior of units during battle. For example Cavalry has a charge ability that allows you to change their target during battle.

It's probably easier when I make a video someday. There is a lot of depth in the battle system. All units are different and all have pros and cons. It's the complete opposite from civ where you only use the newest and shiniest units. You can also customize units by giving them unique equipment (that is procedurally generated) and attach battle captains to them. Caravan guard for example is a defensive tier1 unit. They have a payday ability that increases morale at the cost of a few gold coins. This makes them useful even in the mid to late game when you fight enemies that deal a lot of morale damage. Hellbats for example have a whisper of madness ability that does area of effect morale damage.

 

[Sephi]

First iteration of the combat ability animations if finished now. Last thing missing for a demo is sounds and then a lot of polish. I have also improved the style of the mouseovers. It did not want to give them a minimalistic style like all other games use. I tried to make the background look like a page of some tome of forbidden knowledge about demon summoning.

 

[Calavente]

thanks a lot.
generals is how Civ does it... you move battalions by unit types and then, either they win or not, no micromanagement.

regarding the mouseovers, i've to admit that it's hard to read.
most likely because I don't know what is relevant/important information or not.
but sometimes "better is worse than good".

or like Kael said.. Sometimes, you have to change the lore/the dreamed complexity, just to improve gameplay.

 

[Sephi]

yeah, civ4 does not have that much micro when it comes to warfare.

as for the mouseovers, the question is: what is the important information for you? You should be able to play the game without mouseovers, but you might want to know something additional that doesn't fit into the gui. Like you open the city screen and you want to know why the unrest is so high and how you can reduce it. Then you mouseover the unrest rate and look for whatever information you want to know. The mouseovers inside of mouseovers are really nice, I wish we could bring that to civ4

 

[Sephi]

time for some more updates. I found a good style for displaying lists of things. Often times you need an interface where the player can select one out of X items. Many games just use small buttons and if you do not remember what the button does you have to mouseover all of it. On the other hand I want to the UI to be immersive and not look like glorified excel.

Here is the simplified tech selection screen. I made this screen so new players do not have to worry about a techmap with 250+ techs. The screen can be disabled in options in case you always want to use the techmap but I found it quite useful while playing.

This is from early game where you only have a few choices depending on where you start on the techmap. Lategame you probably end up with 15+ choices where it might be better to just use the techmap (by clicking "Show overview").

 

[Sephi]

Strategic Exploration​

Exploration in most 4x games is moving individual scout units over the map. It's great and fun in the earlygame but usually becomes tiresome really fast so that there are often automation options. I wanted to try something else for a change. One main idea is that you never fully explore the lands, there is always some mystery waiting to be discovered and secrets hidden that should not be forgotten. An experienced explorer will discover treasuries that a nobody would never notice.

Goals​

• Less static metagame. The way exploration plays out should not be the same in every game. The amount of xploration that you do in a game and your aims and priorities while exploring should change from game to game.
• Exploration should provide fun and meaningfull decisions instead of micromanagement that mostly just ends up getting automated. Exploration missions should be tied to concrete goals rather than just removing the black parts of the map.
• Exploration should provide opportunities for role playing. How do you treat the creatues you meet? Are you a conquerer or a liberator? Do you seek cooperation or domination?
• Risk and Reward mechanics. The world holds many ancient secrets, but disturbing them can lead to real trouble.
• Make Exploration powerful and rewarding and at the same time expensive and limited so that there is still exploration in the mid to late game.

Exploration Opportunities​

Instead of exploring the map tile bytile you explore through exploration opportunities. They are diplayed on the map and give a hint on the terrain that is still unknown. However the information is not always accurate, an exploration opportunity that shows a desert could be a 1 tile desert or a 30 tile desert. The information is accurate enough that you can make strategic decisions and inaccurate enough that exloring the terrain can still surprise you. Here is a screenshot of one exploration opportunity.

When you explore terrain there is a high chance that you find resources related to that terrain, so exploring forests yields lumber, exploring mountains yields stone or metals and so on. It's always a good idea to focus on exploring terrain whose resources you need the most currently. Grassland for example yields food which increases population so it's a good choice to explore grasslands in the beginning of the game or whenever you have a city that can support more population.

Explorers​

Exploration is not done my normal units but by explorer heroes. Explorers have certain skills that help on their exploration missions. They gain experience from exploration missions and become more powerfull over time. At the start of thegame you can select your first explorer and you will gain more when your Leader gains levels. There are also techs that allow you to select another explorer. In this screen you can select which promotion to pick for your explorer on level up.

Exploration Missions​

To use an exploration opportunity youassemble an exploration team. You decide which Explorer leads the mission and which units accompany him or her. You decide how theexplorer should treat inhabitants (aggressive/cautious/friendly) andyou can task the explorer to find specific things like resources,events or ancient ruins filled with treasury. There are also a few race specific options so you do not have the same options every game. Woodelves have different exploration methods than dwarves. In the exploration party screen you can see what effect all these options have on the expected results.

 

[Sephi]

Exploration Results​

Once you send out an exploration party you have to wait a couple turns until they return with the results. Any unit you assinged to the exploration mission will not beavailable for military operations in the meantime. When the explorer returns the findings are displayed on the map.

Now you have a bit of a puzzle. Each finding will disappear after a few turns (indicated by the number inthe top right corner. You might not have enough time to deal with all findings since your leader and your explorers can only do one action per turn. So you have to decide which are most important for you. Resources you can retrieve by either the explorer or your leader. If you assign your leader to the task you can use on of his skills to try to get more resources. Only your leader can interact with events. You might find an artificier who offers to craft a powerful item for you for a price. Or you find a trade caravan that you can buy resources from cheaply. Well you can also just pay the iron price and take their stuff after battle. There is an event where you can hunt some monsters. That initiates a special battle where you cannot use your whole army, only your leader and his or her bodyguards.These battles are a lot more difficult and might not always be winnable. For example if your bodyguards use melee attacks and the monsters are flying. As compensation you get much better rewards from monsterhunts than from destroying monster lairs where you can use your whole army. Another event is where you come accross soldiers from another leader who got lost. You have the options to help them get back to their leader which gives you better diplomatic relations or you can try to convince them to switch sides and follow your cause from now on.

The event options are randomly drawn from a larger list so the event does not play the same every time. For example sometimes the soldiers might have some wounds and you can try to convice them to join your side using your medicine skill. Once you select an option a skill challenge is initiated and the results are displayed.

The events are always designed around empire building. You do not run around helping random inn keepers with their giant rats problems.

 

[OzzyKP]

Very interesting!!

 

[OzzyKP]

I put in a plug for your work (both the mod and this standalone project) with Kael.

 

[Sephi]

I put in a plug for your work (both the mod and this standalone project) with Kael.

Thanks for the support friend. Once I have the steam page going with a good development demo I will also focus on spreading the word and hopefully building a community.

Currently my focus is to make sure the graphics performance is good so that a lot of people can enjoy the game. If you have a large area of deep forests there are over 10k animated trees on the screen and it caused some issues with the framerate. Low quality shadows now are a lot faster than high quality shadows, even up to 30%, and they still look good. I have added some testsetting so that I can easily test and compare the performance of different trees, grass, etc. That helps a lot. Also figured out how to make better grass and added it to grasslands so it doesn't look so empty.

There was also a weird bug with the water. Each lake was a water instance. But unity water system only allows to display a few water instances at the same time. It is a weird limitation but for most games that limitation is ok I guess. However since you can have quite a few lakes on the screen it caused lakes to disappear when you scrolled. Now most lakes share a single water instance and it's all good.

 

[Sephi]

Sorry for the silence, I am quite focused currently to get everything ready for the demo. Sounds are done, I made music tracks for each leader. That's one of my favorites about ffh, that every leader/civ has it's own music. It makes it very flavourful when you for example meet the Hippus and their leader talks to you. I have finished the terrain for the demo. Here are the plains with some "grass".

Last testgame was quite well, I only changed four things. Two small balance tweaks, I changed how explorers collect resources and another Iteration on the AI. Manual tactic combat is something that still needs to be improved, both in visuals and UI. But the gameplay of tactical battles is fun and there is good auto option.You can just click auto and it will show you the results and you can then still decide to fight manually.

Played a little bit of CIV 7, but there is not that much I could learn from it. I like that you can close menus with rightclick in civ7 so I added that. The other thing I learned is: "Don't rush it. Don't even think about it"

So before the launch of the demo I will add all mechanics that full version should have. First I did an upgrade to leader diplomacy which I did the last two weeks. Then there are couple of small mechanics that I want to add to fill in some voids in the current game. For example currently the way you get battlecaptains is that you get one more battlecaptain every second time your leader gains a level. This is just a placeholder mechanic and after a while it is a bit boring because you will gain the same amount of battlecaptains at a similar time every game. I will add a global resource called "glory" which is very valuable and rare and there will be only few ways to get it (battles against bigger armies, constructing epic buildings, rebuilding wondrous locations, military alliances with other leader, vassal pacts and a little bit of glory every time your leader levels up). You can then spend glory to attract a new follower (battlecaptain, explorer, diplomat, ...) or gain access to an organization (guilds, etc.). I also want to add in small council mechanic where you can appoint some of your followers and each appointed follower will increase a certain leader skill. Battlecaptains will increase combat related skills like tactics or discipline while diplomats increase skills like persuasion, reasoning or intimidation.

This here is the current roadmap to demo.

 

[Calavente]

great news !!!

 

[Sephi]

So I got most of the gameplay features from the roadmap done atleast to the state where I can test them. Here are some information on the current state of the small council.

You get the small council when your leader reaches level 4. You can initially appoint 2 followers and as the game goes on you can appoint more followers. Currently the calculation is (member count = half your leader level), so in a normal length game you might end up with 6-8 positions on your small council. Appointing a follower to the small council gives two bonuses: Each appointed follower gives a +3 bonus to a leader skill. Also every appointed follower enjoys a +100% bonus to experience gained. Since followers are procedurally generated the parameters for the decision which followers to put on your small council will be different every game.

Appointing a follower to the small council is not a permanent decision. You can change it any time. However each time you make a change to your small council you will suffer a 5% unrest penalty which decays by 1% every turn.

 

[Sephi]

I am currently working on the Combat graphics and UI while playing a testgame. I made another iteration on the unit graphics and for most it probably is their final iteration. I will play some more to get an idea if some graphics feel out of place, it is difficult to judge from just looking at a picture.

Here is a collage of a few of the units/monsters in the game, there are currently about 80 unique units in the game. The borders look weird on white background, just ignore it. Ingame it's much different with real background and frame borders.

 

[OzzyKP]

They look great!

 

[Sephi]

I hope you will also like the other units. The good thing about this less realistic and more illustration style is that the unit portraits also look good when they are small. For example I made an UI overview where you can see all monster lairs known to you.

The overview shows all monsters living in each lair. And they all give very good loot .

 

[Sephi]

So I spend about a week polishing the mouseovers and adding a few missing ones. There are currently 86 different types of mouseovers. Links in mouseovers that can open new mouseovers is a huge help. Too bad we cannot mod that into civ4.

Some mouseovers display a lot of information so I worked on the layout to make it hopefully easier to read for new players. Also added a picture here and there to make them more pretty. The 8 base stats for units now got new Icons. The old icons I made a long time ago. They were low quality (37x32 size) and not ready for 4k

The most important information of the unit is the unit tier which you can see at the amount of the gold stars. There is also a description below the portrait to help new players. The eight basic combat stats are damage, hitchance, crit chance, hitpoints, dodge, armor, initiative and range. Behavior defines how the unit moves and selects targets during a battle. There are ways to override that, for example you can give a charge command to a cavalry unit with a charge abiliy. Abilities can be activated during combat by using ability points. Passives show combat stats that are fairly rare. Things like spell resistance or ignore morale or in this case low fortitude. Some combat abilities can be resisted with a fortitude check and if the unit has low fortitude the chance to resist became much lower. I have also made a custom layout for the ability mouseover.

The most important information is displayed below the portrait and on the right side you can see details like requirements or in this case that spellresistance applies. Items also got a similar mouseover

In the lategame mouseovers can sometimes get quite long when you stack a lot of modifiers. For trade city specialization is key. By default a merchant converts trade goods to gold only at a rate of 1:1, but if you stack enough bonuses...

One thing I want to try and see if it helps player is tutorial information in mouseovers. These are short texts that explain how different entities like buildings, skill, city enchantments, etc. interact with each other. There will be an option to enable/disable the tutorial texts.

Another thing I want to try is to display possible options as greyed out. For example the unrest mouseover will display ways you could use to lower unrest. So you do not have to search for these options in the techmap or the lawscreen.

In this case if I wanted to lower the unrest I could mouseover the Military Law or the Imperial Glory Law and I get some information how that works.

 

[Sephi]

I have now started the polish phase. Playing games from start to finish and fix everything I come across. Priority is bug fixing, AI, balance and UI. I have updated the notification grahic.

Added horsies as a resource to the game. The way it works is that if a city has horses in its territory you can employ a few horse shepherds in the city. Each of them will produce a horse as a yield. Currently the only use for them is to train scout cavalry. But you can also sell them at the local market for a nice sum of gold.

Also added an alchemist unit. Reason for that is that the race needed another unit with a damage type that is not physical. There are a lot of combat mechanics that allow units to hard counter other units. For example Fire elementals have immunity to physical and poison damage. This makes it important that races have access to units with a wide range of damage types.

Alchemists throw acid flasks at their enemies and thus deal acid damage. But to do so they need to get close into melee combat and they do not have the hitpoints and armor to survive there for long. But there are ways to fix that. The game allows you to customize units with battle captains and magical artifacts.

Army Management​

Soldiers​

The smallest part in your army is an individual soldier. Any soldier you train or gain otherwise is added to your army reserve. From the individual soldiers you create divisions which consist of 10 to 100 soldiers. The exact division size depends on the unit type, in general it is 100 soldiers for tier1, 75 for tier2, 50 for tier3 and 10 for tier4. Some combat abilities are very efficient against divisions of small size and other combat abilities are good against large divisions so you typically want units of all tiers in your army. If a divison takes casulties in battle, it will automatically be refilled from your army reserve after battle or whenever new reverse soldiers become available.

Divisions​

In battle you can command a limited amount of divisions. This number starts at 3 and increases as your leader increases in level. Each division can be given three magical artifacts which can greatly enhance its power. Magical artifacts are typically looted from battle/dungeons and procedurally generated.

You could equip your swordsman with an armor of flying that gives a +50% dodge change against melee attacks or a ring that reduces the amount of morale damage they take. Give an armor to your mages or an amulet that allows them to cast more spells? Since the magical artifcats are procedurally generated you have access to different magical artifacts every game.

Types of Divisions​

You can get soldiers from different sources and the division type will depend on the source.

1. Standing Army: Soldiers you trained in your cities or recruited into your standing army in events.
   Most powerful and most expensive type of division. Stats can be improved with technologies and a battle captain can be attached.
2. Mercenaries: Soldiers recruited cheaply with a bit of gold.
   Cheap but limited in power. The main way to gain mercenaries is to recruit them a the mercenary market. Technologies can increase the amount of mercenaries that are for sale at the mercenary market.
   The leader skill mercenary contracts provides additional stats to mercenaries.
3. Vassals: If you sign a vassal pact your vassal will send you a vassal division. If you sign a military alliance you will gain multiple divisions.
   Free units that require investment into diplomatic relations before.
   The leader skill warlord prestige provides additional stats to vassal divisions.
4. Summons: Creatures you summoned to do your bidding.
   Summons usually have supernatural abilities that make them very powerful if the enemy cannot counter it.
5. Fortifications: When you defend one of your cities you gain free divisions from the city for the duration of the combat. You gain additional fortifications on lower difficulty levels.

Battle captains​

Battle captains are a follower type that can be recruited with Glory. A battle captain can be attached to a standing army division to provide stat bonuses. Battle captains gain experience during battle and can be promoted when they gain a new level. Each battle captain also provides a combat ability to the attached division. Everytime a battle captain levels up you can attach him or her to a different division.