Moving Cities - a heads up 16SEP10

All i can say is...


AWESOMENESS

Beengalas wrote: I don't know if I missed it, but will the faction have pockets of power so to speak? Will there be an area of, say 25x25 that is habited by one faction and another next to it. Or will they have one or few amount of places? (if they have small pockets of power)Also, will one be able to destroy or, for a time, disable a part of a faction? Say that me and my friends want to help the dwarfs in the area cleaning out that closeby section of filthy and ravaging goblins, and we succeed, what will happens? May the dwarf faction perhaps expand a little, or will they be static? Or maybe the goblin king will send and huge army to defend his little outpost making it temporary supercastle, or what might happen? So many possibilities! :)

Hi Beenglas,

Yes, very much so.

Factions will have main hubs (their alliance capital hub, so to speak) which will be their main trade point, and will be there main base of operations.  These hubs will be invulnerable (to stop a faction being entirely wiped out).  But the faction hub will grow and the faction will spawn additional cities of their own nearby. 

You can find more detail on some of our plans for factions here.

KillerPoodle wrote: I think you need to change that 9/14 restriction.   The restriction on city ownership ought to coincide with the date you bring out the teleport spell.   There's no good reason to penalize people wanting to settle/siege whatever between now and then. In terms of sov - I hope that rescinding sov is simply part of the teleport spell.  trying to get sov 5 down to zero is going to seriously cut into the 4 weeks available to move. I have other thoughts, but they probably fit better in the suggestions forum so I'll post them there.

I'm not sure what 9/14 means in this context... can you clarify which restriction you mean?

On the sov front, that's a good idea - we'll just have the sov auto-cancel when you teleport, and I'll amend the main post to reflect this.

bartimeus wrote: This looks like promessing upgrades, but I don't understand something; why would you make allhostile faction. whats the point? who would bother settling there? I suppose you could give a meaning to these faction if the council of illiriad ocasionnaly organises crusade against them, to gain artifact (I'm just brainstorming here).

Well, there'll be very few all-hostile factions.  A good example of one such faction that fits this category is, perhaps, the Undead.  Or The Netherworld Demons.  But there will be very few of these factions, and they will be very sparsely and carefully placed.

And yes, they will fit in with plans for quests and storyarcs - as well as being the source of rare item drops for crafting.  But this is looking a long way ahead.

Brids17 wrote: Is it though? You'd need a boat to cross a river would you not? Our alliance is potentially about to go to war with an alliance on the other side of the map, if units couldn't cross rivers would we not need multiple boats to get our armies there? And please don't suggest that we could always "go around" them.

On the island front, yes you would need water transport if you or your target were based on an Island.  As far as your specific example goes, there will be bridges and fords provided by some of the factions, and these will interconnect all the mainland areas.  We're not planning on cutting any areas off from players in their entirety (from land-based movement), except islands and further continents - which will require water transport.  But who knows? Perhaps some nice faction will organise ferry transport for you, invisibly in the background, for a small fee - so you won't even notice the requirement to use a boat except for the additional time it takes your units to get there whilst they wait in a port for the boat to arrive?

Regarding your caravan example - we've subsequently decided that different types of caravans for carrying different things is an over-complication.  However, we already have carrying capacity and speed ingame, and we already have gold upkeep - so the only change we're really proposing is different volumes for different carried items, and changing caravan carrying capacity to be volume-based rather than unit-based.

So long as the user interface to move things into caravans on a volume basis rather than a unit basis is very simple, the only real change is that we're adding gold upkeep to caravans; which I don't think is too complicated. 

Your comments about how you go about raising that gold: "Are my taxes going to need to be raise to make these caravans? Do I need to kill off my troops or diplomats or get rid of one of my sov squares to afford them? If I raise my taxes will my food go negative? Will it kill my production?" are questions you have to go through every time you need gold. 

I *love* these questions because they make me say to the game design team: " Brilliant job, guys - you've given this player multiple choices about how he or she can achieve a goal and they have to think through the ramifications of their decisions and prioritise what's important to them; thank the heavens we haven't produced a run-of-the-mill 'do X to get Y' game."

I'd also urge you not to judge things as over-complex before you've seen the implementation. Oftentimes the explanation of the concept sounds more complicated than it actually manifests itself ingame.

lep wrote: Please don't go overboard in the explanations and guides, leave that to the forums for players to post when they find out the intricate details. Makes the game a much more wondrous journey of discovery.

That was certainly our original interpretation, lep - but we do recognise that a lot of the concepts and procedures ingame aren't adequately documented anywhere that's easy or handy - and we have a project for context sensitive help pages ingame to explain the basics of how to do certain tasks that aren't currently particularly obvious unless you search the forums.

Thanks all for the comments - they're all very useful.

Best,

SC


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 16 Sep 2010 at 22:50

KillerPoodle wrote: GM Stormcrow wrote: *snip* Sorry - too much time in the US.  I'm referring to the September 14th restriction for owning a city in order for it to be eligible for teleport.

Got a point, my 3rd city has been put on hold till the new changes come in.

I totally agree with extending the cut off period. What Birds17 said about "why should I suffer because you decide to place a hostile faction next to my city" would certainly apply for new settlement. I may have decided that I'm happy where I am, however when factions are released I discover that the nearest faction is specifically hostile to my race then the new settlment I have just built should be able to be moved.

How many cities on one account can be moved for free to any location?  Is it only one free move for one city or every city on one account...

Thanks,

Divine