I'd agree that it's very uncommon to win a strategy TBS by surprise. But some games do a better job of preserving drama in the end game than others. The Civilization titles by Firaxis always suffered from end game grinding. So did Stardock's own Galactic Civilizations . The Heroes of Might & Magic games did a better job of preserving drama through the end game, when you had a titannic collision with your opponents. Less
I'm not trying to be a hater here, but I've played Legendary Heroes 3 or 4 different games (about 50-60 hours of game play total), and while I love the sandbox mode of the game, I'm finding myself not encountering much suspense once I clear out my initial settlements. I really enjoy the Player vs Environment piece of the game--the first 40 or 60 turns of the game are engaging, tense, and full of dramatic surprises and discoveries. But after that, I'm jus
Yeah. I'd also appreciate it if, when you end a Turn and units complete their designated moves, you're given the option to spend any remaining movement points (when available). Especially dealing with movement on broken roads, you can leave a lot of squares unmoved if you're unlucky and/or not paying attention.
I'd agree. Only been playing for a little while, but v 1.5 seems significantly less stable for me than v 1.4. (2 CTDs in about 8 hours of play since installing 1.5, versus no CTDs in the previous 20+ hours of play)
I think a great map can provide very interesting "ambience", but ambience and game play are often pretty far removed! The OP here talked mostly about ambience, which can always be touched up. But, games with good ambiance and uninspiring game play don't last very long on hard drives. If somebody wanted to get fancy, they could start out with a 3x3 square that gave certain bonuses, followed by a 5x5 square that folded in other bonuses (probab
That just killed me! Funniest part: I've been a part of those conversations w/my spouse... playing the part of Brad's wife! I love her dearly, and she's a heck of a professional, but once she sinks her teeth into something... [e digicons]:moon:[/e]
I love the way that imaginations are running wild in this thread, but I think there are really two separate themes that the design team has to make some choices on: Story-telling / flavor If we're using a Channeler's background to create a more colorful back-story, then I think the choice of personal history/background is more important than the choice of profession. At the end of the day, "profession" is too often just a fantasy cliche these days and adds
I like the notion of trying something new. The Civ model is fun, but... been there, done that. I also really like the notion of limiting the number of cities. It reduces micromanagement, it adds more character to individual places, and it makes players evaluate trade-offs--I LOVE computer games that make me make tough choices and live with the trade-offs, rather than having enough of all things. I wonder how they'll balance that with conquest? What happens if
I echo the concerns about stockpiling spellpoints and then spending them all at once to get whatever spell comes in handy. That very much disples the imagery of Gandalf sorting through the libraries of Minas Tirith or a channeler huddled over his workbench, heating up a flask over a small burner... It also spares a player having to make hard choices, which is half the fun of a 4x game. Lastly, it feels kind of contrived to me. As was the case during the technology
I 100% echo the various comments in this thread made about "daisy-chained" quests, where your choices in one quest affect downstream episodes. And you'd need some kind of randomizer, so the same choices don't lead to the exact same results every time. I love the notion of each quest having a couple options/outcomes, and you aren't even sure whether they're the end of a quest series or not. Similar to what others have suggested: A town's mayor comes to you an
Excellent and thought-provoking thread, everybody. A few observations. I'd echo Kael's statement from the first page--in the abstract, #1 seems like the best, but we need to think long and hard about how it integrates with the other gameplay before we go that route. Along those lines, I think #1 would be a lot of fun to build, but would turn into a MESS as soon as raiders broke lose in my countryside. This gets especially pronounced if there are two
The "everybody loses" possibility is an interesting one, but it might be tough to program the AI so it would be able to intelligently weigh the "I don't want to lose" option versus the "I think somebody else will take care of this problem so I'll go on pursuing my own goals" option. I think the "capture all enemy towns" option is a bit lame. As Brad said back when they were first talking about 4x games, by the time you control 50% of the map, the exponential growt
[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="13" id="2086362"]That sounds like something out of Castles II: Siege and conquest. Great game, and I loved having the storylines.[/quote] Ron, that was the game I was thinking of, I just couldn't remember the title! The storylines were the most fun part of that game, and definitely added some flavor "on the cheap", from a development standpoint.
In terms of quests, I've often wondered if there's not an opportunity to weave gradually developing, multi-episodic quests into a game like this. This would be similar to the "Good / Neutral / Bad" episodes that came up in GalCiv 2 , but with a thread running between them. So, if something comes up, and I send a character out on a small quest early in the game to rid the countryside of a marauding band of Orcs, maybe I see a reference to an Orc chieftain named "Thugrak".
I'm not sure if it's in your scope or not, but I've always enjoyed TBS tactical battles where I had some oversight and influence on the turn of events, but I couldn't simply step in and order immediately detailed, wonderfully clear, and 100% followed orders to all my troops at the drop of a hat. I'm not talking about a Domininions style of play, where almost all battle behavior is scripted, but maybe something where there's a real opportunity cost for changing orders or devia
I like the notion of customizing each faction. It hinders the "clean slate" philosophy where a player can play any style they want, but I think a very challenging part of any strategy game is to work out the strengths and weaknesses of your own side. If your side can be any thing / all things, then there aren't so many weaknesses period. MoM did a great job here, because it allowed you to pick a race, and then pick your skill points to allocate acros
Interesting, Brad. I've been hoping somebody would find some way to tweak the 4x production model beyond just "If you have Iron, you can build Swordsmen instead of Militia" (which was a very nice tweak in its own right)! I love the notion of limited resources and transportation abilities creating bottlenecks for what you can produce when and where. A few thoughts/suggestions: I hope you're able to tweak the system so towns have a limited supply of resources