lwarmonger

Personally I think that the "goals" system like the one you described is one of the only ways in which to execute the "RPG Kingdom" feel that this game is supposed to represent. Each character in the game, to include your children, vassals and heroes, should have a goal that they are attempting to attain at any given moment. Personally I think that these goals should for the most part be pragmatic ones, such as acquire a fiefdom, make money, get married, have children, acquire tre

The idea presented in this thread is absolutely fantastic, and definately fitting in with the theme of the game. Lets modify it a little further along the cause and effect tree though. Taking one example, if you raze a city killing all of its inhabitants, rather than just have a random chance of the dead rising from the city instead say the aforementioned necromancer (himself a part of the game world) came along and discovered this dead city. He then decides to build hi

[quote]In my mind, it seems like in order to make 'going gandalf' functional, the channeler would have to be too powerful to effectively balance against people building up empires. It's the same reason why having 1 dragon is usually a better option than having 1000 knights, even if 1000 knights are equivalent to a dragon in combat. The reason is that as you fight, even if you win, you'll slowly lose knights; whereas no matter how much damage is done to your dragon, as long as it hasn't been k

I think the advantages and disadvantages of such a system have both been pioneered before, just in varying ways. The advantages consist of greater prosperity for your inhabitants, a larger tax base for yourself, and of course the construction of buildings that you don't have to actually pay for. The disadvantages of such a system include increasing quantities of wealth that are out of your direct control, factionalisation of your internal political structure (after all, the char

With vassals and loyalty playing a part, I find it hard to imagine that at least rebellions, possibly (hopefully) civil wars wouldn't be incorporated in eventually.

Hey, if nothing else I've already got your daughter as a hostage! [e digicons];)[/e]

Say I were the said mercenary though. Immortal king, legitimate claim to the throne through marriage, powerful army to help force that claim. I would say that the path to kingship lies through, shall we say, excellerated succession. I mean, as a mercenary my loyalties are already up for offer to the highest bidder, I would make the argument that the highest bidder of all would be direct control.

Indeed. Marrying my daughter to the strongest mercenary in my kingdom is a time honored way of... um... getting overthrown?

If each character has a history that is generated as they conduct actions, gain titles, ect then this would be easily incorporated. All you would have to do is take the predominant traits from that history of the ruler and form a quick narrative based on the most important events (using a weighting system... wars, victories, defeats and quests would be weighted higher than getting married or having kids, ect).

Which is why you give fleets an engagement radius (to prevent the ferry system from sneaking by under the enemies nose). In a medieval game naval bombardment isn't really a factor (as the weapons in question didn't really have the destructive power or the range to be anything but tactical in nature), and water based trade could, in large part, be handled through a ship based version of the wagon transportation system that has been discussed for land based trade.

Personally I think that the realistic aspects of naval warfare and their impact on strategy cannot be overstated, and to simplify this all important aspect of the medieval world (after all it was the only efficient way to ship bulk goods), is an unfortunate tendency.

Personally I think an event chain would probably better represent it (and enable the AI to better cope with it). Religion giving various bonuses to loyalty and morale from similar religion people, while secularism assists with research and money making. However a religious society should have certain benefits like being able to actively spread their religion and influence the spread of all religions within their own territory, wheras a secular society, while less prone to rel

Not to mention holy wars. The question would be, how would one choose to be a religious or secular society, and what would the full consequences of being either be?

Have you ever played Crusader Kings? If you love character development in the context of a strategy game you would love that game, and I think a system that incorporates elements from Crusader Kings and Majesty (for autonomous character actions like adventuring and business development) would add an incredible amount of depth and a great deal of fun to the process. Unfortunately I am unlikely to be around for the beta process ( leave for Iraq in a week), but I hope this characte

I recall hearing somewhere (and no I can't quote the source... I think it was one of the comments made in the commentary to one of the earlier development diaries) that naval combat was going to be pretty much autocalc only, much the way that Rome and Medieval Total War are. Although that being said, having an in-depth naval dimension to the game would be absolutely fantastic.

I wouldn't worry about acquiring SE:V. It was an interesting idea (virtually unlimited 4X Space conquest), but the system was just too complex for the poor befuddled AI to handle. Not to mention it only really has one guy working on the core game, so it is still not optimized and fairly bug ridden years after its release. Even with mods it is not that playable.

Personally I think that heroes (and characters) should grow their own history. One of the few things I liked about EU:Rome's character system (at least compared to Crusader King's system) was that as each character went through life their history was chronicled so you could see when they were granted titles, won or lost battles, acquired land, had kids, ect. And if characters are doing things on their own (like adventuring, running businesses, managing fiefdoms, ect) then this cou

Anyone ever play Victoria Revolutions? Personally I think something like this could be implemented with the hero system (heroes using money granted to them by the player or their family or land possessions to set up businesses, purchase farms and conduct trade, enriching themselves and the cities they conduct business in), however outright venture capitalism would have to be somewhat restrained. It bears remembering that businesses of the time (ie the high medieval era) were

All things considered it would be preferable to have an army remain integral (much in the way it does in TW games) instead of scattering, with the total destruction of the force if it is too heavily damaged.

One mod for Civ 4 that I absolutely love is Revolutions. You may start out with two or three factions in the game, but between barbarians settling down and rebellions/civil wars you can quickly have as many as 48. It also makes it difficult to keep a large disparate empire together and adds a significant amount of replayability to the game. Some kind of dynamic political "growth" of new nations would be fantastic.

Hmm, apparently I can't, however the point I apparently made abundantly clear is still, in the medieval and ancient time periods the objective wasn't to kill every last man of your opposing army.... it was to make the opposing army break and run, and to capture large numbers of them to ransom back for a profit. A medieval warfare game (even one with magic) without a morale system is kind of like having a WWII grand strategy game without representing tanks or aircraft.

Wow, my bad. To be fair, I only clicked "post reply" once. Let me see about deleting 24 of these!

Why not? We're dealing with humans right? Humans run from the fight, they don't just die in place. Since this will be humans and "fallen" humans, it only makes sense that an army routs rather than fights to the death every time.

Why not? We're dealing with humans right? Humans run from the fight, they don't just die in place. Since this will be humans and "fallen" humans, it only makes sense that an army routs rather than fights to the death every time.

Why not? We're dealing with humans right? Humans run from the fight, they don't just die in place. Since this will be humans and "fallen" humans, it only makes sense that an army routs rather than fights to the death every time.