Brainstorming Auto-Incrementing Strategic Turn Options.

[FallingStar]

Reading through, a thought hit me - perhaps some sort of a two phase turn might help some of the issues?

Thought being that the turn never ends until the player gives the go (like current).

Flipside, the longer you do things exploration wise without advancing turns (by timer or by going into chunk /whatever mechanic) the LT's and Overlords "prepare" actions that will take place the next turn activates.  A prepared action would be obvious, and set on the map once it occurs (ie a summoner agent /boss that would spawn the rampaging monsters, or construction site that would make xyz bad thing).  So the player(s) could head off the prepared action by killing the summoner, killing the LT/ Overlord that set it up . . or they could end the turn and let the prepared actions occur.  Perhaps summoners for rampaging monsters could move closer to villages over time if the player is really ignoring changing turns for awhile, etc.

That way nothing really bad ever occurs unless the player(s) choose to end the turn, and you're not forced to play with those aspects if you don't want to.  But you do get some emergent threats like a real time for explorers to have pop up, and if you want/need the goodies from strategic play, you have to strike a balance.

I'd hope it would bypass the issues in multiplayer, and keep both sides optional.  The one issue I can think of as I type it is the need for time units for scouting, so if the prepared actions got too thick, might make for a lot of exploration cleanup so that you could advance enough turns to scout out the LT/Overlord.

Seems like there are other games that do similar things (setup play, then advance turn), though I can't think of names.  Thinking more board games than video, but can't think of it offhand.

[x4000]

FallingStar, those are several interesting thoughts.

Back when AI War was a TBS game (for about a week, at the start of its alpha), I had devised a system of "realtime turn-based" that was more forgiving than the typical turn-based turn timers like you see in Civilization.  Basically you would have Action Points that would get refreshed by some amount (say, 50) every turn.  Turns would automatically end every 30 seconds, automatically adding 50 to everyone's stockpile, whether they were finished with their prior turn or not.  So if I was done and had 0 AP left, I now had 50.  If you'd done nothing and still had 50, you now had 100.  Etc.  If everyone got down to 0 AP before the 30 seconds was up, or hit End Turn, then the turn timer jumped to 0 and you'd go straight into the next turn without having to wait.   And there was a cap on the amount of AP you could accumulate, something like 500, so that you couldn't stockpile it ridiculously though you could take time to think.  The idea was based around a way to make a TBS game work with a better flow in multiplayer when some players are actively fighting, others are considering their options, others are doing upgrades or what have you, etc.  I was real frustrated by multiplayer in Civ IV.

Anyway, something along those lines, combined with some of your ideas, could also work.

Another way to do it would be to take a page out of the D&D book, and have Minor Actions and Major Actions.  The minor actions might be on a turn timer that auto-progressed in realtime every couple of minutes, while major actions work as now in the game.  Kind of along the lines of your idea there.  Minor actions for the player's NPCs might be things like exploring or producing goods.  Minor actions for the overlords might be things like producing troops, moving the troops around, and so on.  Major actions  would be things like constructing buildings, attacking enemies on either side, and so on.

So if you leave the strategic side of things for a really long time, this would mean you might find yourself under an awful siege that you then have to break.  But you'd never find your town preemptively burned to the ground.  There would still be a lot of complexities to then address, but it's interesting at least.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'd like to speak up for the status quo a bit --- I think it's actually quite good, to the extent I have my head around the strategic game.  I think AVWW is basically an action-adventure platformer, and I like it a lot as that.  Using the strategic map, I can get some extra things, some of which I really need --- e.g. scouting --- but it comes as a cost.  At the minute, it's pretty anemic --- there's only one thing I need from the strategic map, and the cost is pretty minimal.  But I think as the game grows and the costs and rewards get more larger and more meaningful, it has the potential to make a good balance.  If we have a good adventuring reason to advance the timer --- maybe an NPC is working on some kind of way-advanced spell gem that will get coded in a few months hence --- then the strategic game's challenges will become relevant to the adventure game.

Looking at the all the talk here about timers, I keep thinking that I'm going to wind up in a situation where I'm out doing something fun --- deep in a cave, fighting my way through a stronghold, whatever --- and I keep worrying that if I don't stop and go back to town something bad will happen to me while I'm gone.  Especially since I tend to be a bit confused by that side of the game (and because I find I often don't notice rampaging mobs until they're almost on my town), I think that would really cramp my enjoyment of the game as I break off from the goals I'm interested in to go look for entirely unrelated problems in another genre of game.  I'd much rather be dealing with strategic issues when I have a reason to leave the adventure part of the game --- either I'm stuck and I want to get something, or I'm at a loose end and want something else to challenge me.

[Dizzard]

You could always have time freeze when you go into a cavern or overlords lair. Areas where you're likely to be really "into it".

[Bluddy]

Plus, given a mechanic that only increments turns when e.g. returning to town, you'd never be disturbed while doing any other activity. And I think it makes sense to have this element be optional.

I think part of the reason you're uncomfortable with the strategy elements is for the same reason I was -- they're tucked away in a familiar looking but alien screen that's accessed indirectly via your settlement. I made a suggestion in another thread to integrate the strategy and map screen and allow strategy management no matter where you are.

Here's another thing that could allow: suppose you're stuck in a cave with no warp ability. You could summon your friends in the nearest settlement to rescue you! This could allow for caves with more dangerous, unreachable areas.

[Dizzard]

So if you leave the strategic side of things for a really long time, this would mean you might find yourself under an awful siege that you then have to break.  But you'd never find your town preemptively burned to the ground.  There would still be a lot of complexities to then address, but it's interesting at least.

I like this idea....so things would still happen but it's not in a "doom and devastation" sort of way.