Minor Factions and unique features

from Elemental Forums

A lot of random map generators make a strange and kind of bland world. I was thinking that it could incorporate some unique features with quests and inhabitants. Say a mist shrouded island full of corsairs or a mountain valley with rich resources and some caverns containing a goblin horde. The minor factions could be mostly restricted to a small area and either protect unique technologies or other rewards. Conquering the corsairs could both remove them as a threat and provide you with technology to improve your navy. A forest full of friendly beings could provide a unique bonus in return for protection. Protect the hobbits and they trade a happiness increasing beer to all your cities. Maybe a deadly desert that will kill your units unless you trade with the desert nomads for the tech to allow safe passage. Each set piece would be designed by developers or fans and you could let it be dropped into an otherwise randomly generated map. A fantasy world should have unique features rather than a civilization style map.

5,242 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes. I would go further and say that there should be many ways of interacting with most of those minor factions and unique features. I could defeat the corsairs and perhaps take their store of loot as my prize, or as you say get some nice naval tech from it. Or maybe I could pay them tribute in return for leaving my ships alone; and pay higher tribute to leave my ships alone and protect my shores! Or pay them to specifically target your enemies. Or if you have a powerful enough navy, you could threaten them into leaving you alone, or threaten them into targeting your enemies. So many options!

A lot of minor factions and unique locations that you can interact with in many different ways would provide an immense amount of replayabiility. It's a somewhat different genre, but HoMM for example has lots of ~unique map features, but there is only ever one thing you can do with them. You can fight the dragons and the dragon cave for great artifacts and lots of resources; you can defeat the guardians of the Cloud Temple for control over a Titan/Colossus/Storm Giant producing structure, etc. How much more interesting would it be if there were many different ways of interacting with these structures?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

This is the basis, to a broad degree, of the 'SimFantasy' fans - what I'd like to see is less minor factions, more lairs being able to form minor factions. That is, if you have three groups of goblins in three separate lairs, they could unite into their own little group and suddenly, you are competing against the other Sov's with a handful of goblins telling you their demands.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Exactly having multiple ways to deal with each situation would make things much more interesting. Having minor factions would also make diplomacy more valuable. Dealing only with the other big factions limits your options. This would also make modding easier because it is easier to design a single unique feature than a whole map and if you could download these to incorporate into the random map generator it could make really interesting maps.