Hinterland

from Elemental Forums

Hinterland is a pretty fun little game, check it out. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterland

Now that you're up to date on the what of Hinterland, it's time for the relevance!

 

Elemental is a game about heroing around, conquering and fighting and such. Hinterland is too, but at a much smaller scale, where your blacksmith is also a weekend warrior helping you smack skellingtons around. 

It'd be nice if Elemental had a similar focus on the quotidian, so that the peasants could also be fully realized folk capable of kicking some serious gluteus maximus when necessary. Now, obviously Elemental isn't going to be a Diablo-esque adventure, so how do you make peons relevant while still maintaining the concept of peonage? 

 

Time for another game reference!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_(game)

 

Colonization is neat because it managed the whole 4x thing while simultaneously keeping the peons relevant. You needed those guys working in the cities to pop up and take arms, or get edumacated and larn stuff gud for u. Instead of building straight up soldiers, you built the gear and equipped the general population -- or, if you wanted a more professional force you could have some of them spend all their time training to be soldiers.

 

What are the advantages of this system for a game like Elemental over the more traditional Civ system?

 

Infinite! For starters, it keeps that "down to earth" local feel so essential for the fantasy genre. Sure, you're a world breaking abomination of magic whose merest whim could destroy all those smelly pig farmers, but that's no reason for them to be faceless chumps. Plus, you get the fun of fighting off hordes of orcs with nothing but the actual people who were in the town working away, equipped with whatever happened to be lying around. It also adds relevance to battles -- losing fights means losing actual population who were previously working away, not just production points.

 

What are the disadvantages? 

 

Well, for starters, this sort of system just doesn't scale well to large empires. Who knew managing hordes of serfs is mind bogglingly tedious? On the other hand, that almost warps around into an advantage again -- large empires wouldn't need explicit penalties, as the implicit penalty of having to deal with all those producers tends to force players to either accept lowered efficiency of output or maintain a smaller empire.  

 

It seems like a win-win-"oh crap sire the dragon nom'd the blacksmith" to me, but I'm not entirely right in the head. 

 

5,964 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top
Interesting idea. I am not sure I would like it to be that personal though, but I do like the idea of population as a resource
Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Strangely reminds me of ye old Starcraft methodology.  You could choose between out macromanaging your opponent or out micromanaging him instead.  This would be determined on all players skill balance and the situation.  Unfortunately Starcraft 2 appears to have introduced some very halfhazard mechanics that fall far short of the original and have little appeal in general.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

To be honest i haven't played much starcraft, but the sequel at least looks mostly similar. What is different?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Since I was a hardcore Starcraft MPer back in the day (where do you think I got this username, eh?) it's not shocking that I think of time as a valuable resource that can be used to force people into making rough decisions.

 

I do really want to push the idea that the population should never ever ever ever ever be a faceless set of numbers whose sole purpose is generating resources. At the very least they should be ready and willing to riot and rebel, or take up arms against invaders. At best, a system along the lines of Colonization should be used, where every job has a skill set that requires training or a willingness on the part of the player to accept sub-par returns.

There is another advantage that I skipped over to reduce the size of my OP: semi-realistic population concentration. In Colonization, it simply made more sense to focus the majority of your dudes into a small number of highly productive cities, with a bunch of small feeder towns established nearby to provide them with the raw materials and food they needed to be effective. So rather than every city blowing up like a balloon, you'd get megalopolises surrounded by teeny cities. 

Uneven population distribution plays into another essential fantasy game concept: the frontier. In games like Civ4, there is a tendency for Civilizations to start shouldering into one another, with no empty space left between them. Mods like FfH2 attempt to maintain the "empty space" between civilizations for the wild things to roam about and cause havoc in -- through random destruction via armageddon, disincentives to oversettlement, and aggressively dangerous wandermobs. Frontiers are important places in fantasy, as they're the places adventurers go to find loot and beat up scawwy monsters. But they also have value in game terms, as they're the primary drivers of early game conflict, when enemy cities are too well protected for your utterly inadequate military machine to engage them.

 

So, to recap, individualized populations aid in maintaining the frontier and adding personality to cities and towns, as well as providing a more realistic population distribution. They also encourage the development of a more complex market system with greater variety of goods and equipment, since they themselves pretty much require specialization -- not much point in having lots of farmers to move around. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Long story short Starcraft 2 has become so automated versus its prequel that macro efforts do not have the game winning benefits like before.  That's fine because it makes the game in some ways easier plus less tedious especially to new players and I like it however Blizzard's game mechanic attempts to restore macro have been silly.

One difference between Elemental and most other E4 games (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) is that the military will be population driven.  It's not some unit you just crank out of a factory.

How about a population that gives some damage to an occupying army per turn until quelled?  That includes each unit that initially invades the city.  Factors that could influence this are relations to that specific race or perhaps what type of military unit is present.  For example if race X hates you to the point of blood feud mortal enemy then the city population will fight all the way to the death like Galactic Civilizations.  Definitely a Good vs Evil influence and diplomacy mechanic.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

well, the population could injur a semi-random number of occupying soldiers each turn of non-stable occupation, which can potentially lead to soldier deaths (although hopefully not killing off unique soldiers and high-level platoons).

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

If that blacksmith helps us often enough on our quests, and if he is a pretty unusual guy to start with, maybe he will grow into a minor hero.