The glorious Evolution of Master of Mana - The Red Desert of Cruoris / First screenshot of standalone version / Feedback needed
- Thread starter Sephi
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Milliopolis
Chieftain
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Let's look this video made by Battlemode who write for eXplorminate.
Recent strategy game developers make games just fullfiling 4X factors with fun to play. Strict defined 4X needs decisions to choose necessary stuffs and not to superfluous ones (i.e. wonders).
They may be afraid to be complained from players who want to choose eating taco or hamburger as lunch not to letting your mother or wife die for saving either one.
It was destined that buttering up those mass gamers when civ5 was sold 10 million units on Steam and civ6 was best seller on Switch.
No one under stock market can't deny to make pseudo 4X games.
OzzyKP
Deity
This game isn't a new version of Fall from Heaven 2. It is an entirely different game. The factions and lore are all new.
Yes, of course. Having said that, I wanted to say beyond FFH2 as such, that I appreciate the classic factions, the classic axes of good versus evil, chaos versus law. And the usual fantasy races, humans, elves, vampires etc.. FFH2 has taken up these classic codes.
I've played some current games where these classic distinctions have disappeared. Orcs aren't really evil any more, and there's no such thing as good and evil. Personally, I don't like this development at all.
I've played some current games where these classic distinctions have disappeared. Orcs aren't really evil any more, and there's no such thing as good and evil. Personally, I don't like this development at all.
Sephi
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There are different high fantasy races like orcs or dwarfs or woodelfs and they all live mostly in isolation. Some have a unique twist to them but I do not want to spoiler things. You pick one of them and you play them from start to finish, no switcheroo. But how you play them is largely up to you. And your choices will decide whether you survive or not. With every research you evolve your empire. With every law you pass you set its future. Each fantasy race is radically different from the others. They have their own buildings, their own units, their own laws and unique ways to advance. Some study the world and discover new technologies, others advance their society with blessings or through valor in combat.
Sephi
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It's a difficult question. What I do not want are things like demons getting happiness by building opera houses. The quickfix would be to just add a copy building with the same function and different name/art like sacrificial pit. But 4x games aren't about building buildings, they are about building empires and buildings are just a tool to it. Building a demon empire should feel different and have different obstacles and challenges than building a dwarf empire. So you could just give every race 50 unqiue buildings all with their own mechanics. But then you run into other issues. Lets say there is a city enchantment that boosts farmer and other one that boosts hunting and so on. It's ok if you find a scroll with a city enchantment that you cannot use every now and then. Just sell it. But if everything is so unique that you can use only 10% of all the city enchantment scrolls you find because there are so many different unique race mechanics you are locked out of that would also be a bad thing. At that point you would barely every find a useful city enchantment. I guess the answer will be somewhere in between. A few iconic unqiue buildings with their own mechanics. Some buildings shared like in Master of Magic. And maybe the ability to research a selected set of buildings from neighbour/similar races.
I like the bit about the demon empire. We can imagine that their happiness depends on the number of prisoners they take, and the destruction they cause to the natural world. We can too imagine that the demons might be discontented, but not the "damned" part of their population, who are worst than slaves.
There will be strong imbalances between the factions intially, but that's not a problem, as things will even out over time as players give feedback to the game.
I remember the first time I discovered the Warriors of Chaos as "horde faction" principle in Total War: Warhammer. I thought to myself, "Wow, this is brilliant! It's so unlike any other faction!"
Too many games don't offer enough difference between factions, it's a shame!
There will be strong imbalances between the factions intially, but that's not a problem, as things will even out over time as players give feedback to the game.
I remember the first time I discovered the Warriors of Chaos as "horde faction" principle in Total War: Warhammer. I thought to myself, "Wow, this is brilliant! It's so unlike any other faction!"
Too many games don't offer enough difference between factions, it's a shame!
Sephi
Deity
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I have been quite busy with a few things. First I updated several interfaces of the UI. Some of them now joined the dark side and changed from a light schema to a dark one. For the followers I gave their portraits no backgrounds and I think it works quite nice.
One mechanic that took me quite a while to get right was the promotion system for the battle captains. The biggest issue with the civ4 system was that the generic combat promotions are just too good. I also did not want a system with a static optimal solution so that once player find their preferred setup they just use it every game and promoting units becomes mostly busy work without much decision making. I tried a couple of systems like using for example a point system where you get x points every level and different promotions cost different amounts of points. But these systems for the most part just complicated things and I wanted a system where the player can make a decision fairly quickly. If you can promote three battle captains after a battle it should not take 10 minutes.
I ended up using a system where each level up you choose between 5 random promotions. Here you can see an example. The battle captain screen shows a summary of all bonuses provided by a battle captain and currently available promotions:
Now these 5 promotions aren't fully random. Players would just figure out which promotions are the best and pick them every time they are available. Instead each battle captain has a class and you want to promote different battle captains differently based on their class, the unit they are attached to and what role you want them to assume within your army. In this case the battle captain has the fanatic class. The fanatic class gives two bonuses: You ignore morale and you get a synergy bonus: for every point of damage that you have you get half a hitpoint. This not only applies to the promotions of the battle captain but also to the base stats of the attached unit and any equipment. You could turn the fanatic into a very beefy frontline unit with additional hitpoints and immunity to fear/morale effects or a deadly skirmisher or assasin with increased survivability.
Here are some more details about the promotion system:
Promotions are catogorized into three types: offensive, defensive and utility. Battlecaptain classes make certain types of promotion more likely to show up.
There are three tiers of promotions: generic, perk and specialization
- generic promotions provide a small boost and can be taken an unlimited amount of times. This makes sure you never run out of promotions or forced to take stuff that does not fit your battle captain.
- perk promotions are stronger but can be taken only once. The chance for a promotion perk to show up at the selection increases with the level of the battle captain but also decreases with the amount of perks already selected.
- specializations: these are very powerful promotions available only at high level but you can only take one. So pick carefully.
One mechanic that took me quite a while to get right was the promotion system for the battle captains. The biggest issue with the civ4 system was that the generic combat promotions are just too good. I also did not want a system with a static optimal solution so that once player find their preferred setup they just use it every game and promoting units becomes mostly busy work without much decision making. I tried a couple of systems like using for example a point system where you get x points every level and different promotions cost different amounts of points. But these systems for the most part just complicated things and I wanted a system where the player can make a decision fairly quickly. If you can promote three battle captains after a battle it should not take 10 minutes.
I ended up using a system where each level up you choose between 5 random promotions. Here you can see an example. The battle captain screen shows a summary of all bonuses provided by a battle captain and currently available promotions:
Now these 5 promotions aren't fully random. Players would just figure out which promotions are the best and pick them every time they are available. Instead each battle captain has a class and you want to promote different battle captains differently based on their class, the unit they are attached to and what role you want them to assume within your army. In this case the battle captain has the fanatic class. The fanatic class gives two bonuses: You ignore morale and you get a synergy bonus: for every point of damage that you have you get half a hitpoint. This not only applies to the promotions of the battle captain but also to the base stats of the attached unit and any equipment. You could turn the fanatic into a very beefy frontline unit with additional hitpoints and immunity to fear/morale effects or a deadly skirmisher or assasin with increased survivability.
Here are some more details about the promotion system:
Promotions are catogorized into three types: offensive, defensive and utility. Battlecaptain classes make certain types of promotion more likely to show up.
There are three tiers of promotions: generic, perk and specialization
- generic promotions provide a small boost and can be taken an unlimited amount of times. This makes sure you never run out of promotions or forced to take stuff that does not fit your battle captain.
- perk promotions are stronger but can be taken only once. The chance for a promotion perk to show up at the selection increases with the level of the battle captain but also decreases with the amount of perks already selected.
- specializations: these are very powerful promotions available only at high level but you can only take one. So pick carefully.
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