As an old-school gamer who played Master of Magic to death back in the day, I really like this game, even in its current state (1.07). After about 20 hours (which is more time than I spend on 90% of games that I buy), I’m enjoying it more than Civ 4 and GalCiv 2.
Since this game has nothing if not future potential, I thought I’d share some ideas for future additions/expansions/games.
1. I really like the dynasty system, where you have successors in line to the throne. So why does the game end when your sovereign dies in enemy territory? Why not allow their children to pick up where their parents left off, having epic games that span generations?
2. Since the player is represented physically in the game by their sovereign, I would love to see a more dynamic political system, where instead of starting off as the sovereign, you start off as a minor noble and work your way up to becoming king/emperor, gaining increasing control over the kingdom/empire as you do. This could become a sort of “cooperative competition” in multiplayer, where different players compete for the throne, but still work towards their kingdom’s/empire’s common goals.
3. It would be amazing to see actual dynamic factions that split and merge (and perhaps change their names) over time. So you start off as a bunch of scattered tribes that eventually unite to form a nation, and have rebellious factions occasionally split off and become enemy nations. The possibility that your sovereign could even defect to an enemy nation also intrigues me.
4. Being a fantasy game with RPG aspects, I would love to see the sandbox mode include more story-driven aspects. Have a bunch of scripted overarching storylines that the player can select (or perhaps assign them randomly), kind of like the origin stories in Dragon Age, but not as detailed. They would then play out over the course of the game in the form of quests and storyline-specific heroes or monsters. These would obviously have to be designed in such a way as to avoid impinging on the emergent freeform nature of the sandbox mode.
Yeah I realise some of these ideas may be too vague and ambitious, and may not lead to actual fun gameplay in practice, but hey, ambitious ideas are the ones that interest me!
