Design Discussion: Civilian Hamlets And Victories (Expansion 1)

[Billick]

Okay, here's what I'm thinking (feel free to take/ignore whatever you want):

I kind of like the idea of hamlets popping up on destroyed towns, as it's kind of an award for blowing up a town.  Maybe you could have the hamlets give bonuses as they grow.  Things like extra resources from trade, extra points, maybe even extra AP.  If you tend to their needs they would tend to grow more, but if you don't they may not.  If you get enough of them grown to sufficient size, maybe that gives you a "civilian victory" which gives you a large score bonus.

It does seem weird to me that the bandits would ignore them though.  It seems thematically that the bandits should be going after these things, since they are undefended.  After all, the bandits aren't attacking red and blue because they're pissed at them, they're attacking them because they want their loot!  Maybe instead of razing the hamlets though, they loot them instead, which would cause the bonuses they give to shrink.  You'd have to make decisions on how much of your attention you want to give to defending them.  Possibly if one of the factions saves a hamlet from bandits, that faction might get extra resource bonuses or buff their troops.

[Mick]

I know the design is vague at this point for a reason, but I'm having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the concept.

There is some discussion over how much control (or not) the player would have over these hamlets, but I don't understand why I (as a player) should care about them.

I have a precious 3AP to spend on my turn, and I'm busy fending off bandits and balancing out the sides and scoring points from myth tokens and repairing broken resource chains and throwing terrain around to extend my borders and block things off ......

So there is an opportunity cost in spending 1 or more of my actions doing "whatever" in terms of these hamlets, so what is the motivating factor that is going to make me want to do that?

Please keep in mind that this question is meant to be more rhetorical than criticizing.

===

As an aside, I think you could bring back the civilian units by making them act more as immobile tokens that you place on buildings for specific benefits. Units that can die if that building gets attacked.

I got the impression from his post that he's still working out exactly what overall effect these hamlets would have on the game at large;  seems there's quite a bit to work out yet about them, so I'm guessing the ideas behind them will be a bit vague for a time.  I'm sure they'll end up having quite the interesting use, it's just not quite thought out yet.

And I totally understand that.

It's just difficult for me to give feedback at this point.

[mrhanman]

So there is an opportunity cost in spending 1 or more of my actions doing "whatever" in terms of these hamlets, so what is the motivating factor that is going to make me want to do that?

The way I read the OP, one of the main benefits of utilizing hamlets will be the ability to win non-militarily.  In Civ, you can win by launching a space ship to Alpha Centauri.  I don't know what the equivalent would look like in SC, but that would be it's ultimate function.  On the road to this non-military victory, the hamlets will provide other tangible benefits, but what those could be I don't know.

[x4000]

Buildings pop up on their own, and each building type has a positive and a negative side, which is determined by the RNG.
...
What if the Tavern and Constabulary are negative, then there is barfights and yelling in the street and that negativity starts a chain reaction with the Noble and Peasant house next door that were positive and pleasant, but are now going negative. So instead of gaining Civilian Score Points, I'm losing Civilian Score Points and getting further and further from my goal. So negative buildings infect other buildings making them negative also and so that needs to be countered by booning them.

So I boon (boons offset negatives and curses offset the positives) the Peasant and the Noble to get them back to a positive state and start producing positive points again. And then Boon the Tavern and Constabulary to get them to a positive state as well.

That's... really interesting, actually.  I don't know that I would do this as a binary "positive or negative" state on the buildings, but having them have a sliding scale of negativity and positivity that proximity-affects nearby buildings is... well, rather brilliant.  Holy smokes I like that.  If that were the model, then having all the buildings start in a neutral state, and be directly-placeable by players, would probably be the best thing.  Maybe.

But lets say, instead of getting over a number to win, we have to have THE exact number to win, or within some reasonable range, say within 25 points? Or withing 10? Whatever works out to seem workable. So our score is 10,000. And so anything less is not a win, and if i go over, well, that is also considered not a win. So i have to keep balancing things, sometimes booning to get a positive or increase in points, but not too many, so sometimes i have to curse things to get points to come off if i'm over and trying to get back down to my goal number.

Hah!  Basically like a trick-taking card game.  I actually really like that, because clearly you are not just working for the benfit of mankind.  You're trying to, once again, achieve balance.  So if you overshoot your goal, you have to start moving back in the other direction.  I'm not sure that I would want for the hamlets to be completely score-based in terms of how their secondary condition is met.  That seems a bit anticlimactic.  But if it is, then having it work like this would be the most interesting thing.

In terms of the way you use boons and curses, I'd make those a part of the regular economy rather than something you have to get specialized points for.  More integration and simplicity that way.  And also: having the hamlets contribute to the overall score gates in the game seems like another way to help integrate things without making the military battles themselves influenced at all.

Yeah, that makes good sense.  And this would fit with my thoughts above if it was "peasant housing" or "nobles housing" and then those further evolved (and sometimes devolved) into sub-categories of those kinds of housing based on things that happened.  So you place the most generic, basic version of a tile type, and then the AI manages how it changes from there.

That's a better description of pretty much what I was thinking of (like how the very first Simcity did it, you plopped down the very basic "tiles" and then the game built different things on each individual one).  I'm thinking that with such an idea you wouldnt need very many "base" tile types, but you could have lots of different building variations that come afterwards.

Yeah, that makes sense.

But I do think it's important that the player place SOMETHING down.  Otherwise, you end up with a bit of a divide between one citybuilding type, which is the current towns, and this new second type.  And this could cause a bit of "Well, wait, I can build THESE over here just fine, but why doesnt it let me build these other ones?".   It seems like it would go against the current feel of the game, in other words.

True... although to make this more integrated, I still think I would prefer that SOMETHING auto-build here.  Perhaps any ruins tiles in abandoned towns automatically start turning into Slums tiles of their own accord, and those have negative consequences.  You would then have to build over top of them if you wanted to mute their effects.  Or deal with their effects.  That's kind of the best of both worlds, to me: these hamlets can't be just completely ignored when enabled, but also you retain the indirection of control.

And if you combine this with Teal's ideas above about the proximity effects of positive and negative building statuses... well, I'm starting to really like how that is looking.

As far as resources, I agree, letting these things actually produce military resources is not a good idea.   Letting them USE some of them (as cost, or towards various effects, whatever), might be something to think about.

Definitely agreed.

One other thing that occurs to me though is locations.   The military cities are heavily affected by their locations and the surrounding tile type/structure, because there's a constant interaction between them and the military units that stand on and navigate those tiles in order to attack/defend the cities.

But if these hamlets are totally non-military, is there something that could make the location and such of them still important?   This again is one of those things that sorta permeates the entire game, wether you're placing a new TC or dropping myth units or trying to decide how to deal with bandits.... so this one might be important to have a look at.  And if hamlets sprout out of the ruins of a city, this would further increase the importance of planning your cities, which sure isnt a bad thing.   But yeah, I was wondering about that one. 

I think that the location-importance of stuff also is really important, certainly.  Right now I'm thinking along three vectors, as of Teal's post this morning:

1. Within a hamlet, the proximity of certain building types, and of the positive or negative statuses of said buildings, makes the building placement WITHIN a hamlet really important.  Far more so than in a regular town.
2. Just outside a hamlet (as I suggested yesterday), the proximity to certain land types has positive or negative influences on tiles near them, which also affects the hamlets.
3. Based on your notes here, I'm thinking that some form of influence from nearby towns and hamlets might also impact each hamlet.  Details on that?  No idea.  It might be too unclear to players to be feasible.  But it could be interesting, potentially.

The other counterargument to #3 is that the complexity of where you place towns is already enough, I think.  If you are then having to think about the hamlets that get left behind AFTER the towns are destroyed... holy heck, you know?  To that end, potentially just focusing on #1 and #2 above make for enough interesting complexity and "placement matters" type of gameplay.

And along that line, what about the placement/location of things within each hamlet?  Might that affect the actual buildings somehow?   That one doesnt seem to matter much with the current cities;  towers are the one building type that mainly seems to matter as far as WHERE it's placed, with military buildings occasionally being specific about it as well, but the others tend to simply not matter.

Ha -- I'm reading as I'm responding, so I see you've already got to where I was headed.  Yeah, I love this sort of thing.

One possible quick thought I had would be that bandits might target these towns - juicy relatively undefended places ripe for the plunder.  But perhaps the main armies wouldn't. Providing somewhat a need to defend them, but they wouldn't be constant battlegrounds between the sides.

I could see that working, yeah.  It would tie these into the military game more -- you have to defend these -- without making it so that they are constantly getting trashed by the main armies, which would be inevitable.  The more I think about this, the more I like it.

but I don't understand why I (as a player) should care about them.

Primary reason, in an abstract sense?  Because this is fun, and expands the sort of activities going on in the game.  Specific reasons, in terms of the actual moment-to-moment game flow?  Well, that's still in flux and not really defined, as you say.  The first goal is actually making a model that is fun and that fits with the game, with an eye toward making it so that it could augment the main gameplay in a way that is extrinsically rewarding beyond just playing the new sub-game itself.  Then the next task is actually coming up with those extrinsic rewards.

There's nothing to worry about here -- this is all just part of the super early design process, and is completely ordinary.  Basically the fun comes first, and then the strategy; but while designing the fun, the strategy is constantly thought of as well.

I have a precious 3AP to spend on my turn, and I'm busy fending off bandits and balancing out the sides and scoring points from myth tokens and repairing broken resource chains and throwing terrain around to extend my borders and block things off ......

So there is an opportunity cost in spending 1 or more of my actions doing "whatever" in terms of these hamlets, so what is the motivating factor that is going to make me want to do that?

Please keep in mind that this question is meant to be more rhetorical than criticizing.

Point taken, and I quite understand.  It's just part of the process, and believe me it's something I am keeping my eye on it.  But this is usually (relatively) simpler of a question than coming up with a new gameplay model that fits the tenor of the game, is fun, and is sufficiently distinct from the rest of the gameplay.  Finding those gameplay models can be bloody hard, heh.  And usually the definition of the model itself really constrains or extends what can be done in terms of the strategic goals.  So it's another part of why I put the gameplay model first.

As an aside, I think you could bring back the civilian units by making them act more as immobile tokens that you place on buildings for specific benefits. Units that can die if that building gets attacked.

Hah!  That's a really clever idea, and potentially super useful.  I don't know that I'll use it, but that's very clever.

I don't know about the previous civilian system, so I'm sorry if I say a blast.
But if it is about something that existed, then removed, and now trying to bring back,

I wouldn't characterize it as that, honestly.  The old model was basically just like civilians in Age of Empires, if that makes any sense.  Guys walked here and there to bring goods from here to there.  End of story.

What we're talking about now is more of a citybuilding sim slotted into the main game mechanics, so it's a completely different thing.

In terms of the Faith idea, that's interesting, but I think it's really going in a very divergent way from everything I've described so far.  No worries, but that's not quite what I'm looking to accomplish at the moment.

Maybe you could have the hamlets give bonuses as they grow.  Things like extra resources from trade, extra points, maybe even extra AP.  If you tend to their needs they would tend to grow more, but if you don't they may not.  If you get enough of them grown to sufficient size, maybe that gives you a "civilian victory" which gives you a large score bonus.

Yeah, along those lines is what I've been thinking.  Not the resources bit, but points and potentially extra AP.  And possibly a new category of resource, who knows -- one new resource type that allows you to do some new military things that you can't accomplish any other way, and that you can't normally get very easily.

It does seem weird to me that the bandits would ignore them though.  It seems thematically that the bandits should be going after these things, since they are undefended.  After all, the bandits aren't attacking red and blue because they're pissed at them, they're attacking them because they want their loot!  Maybe instead of razing the hamlets though, they loot them instead, which would cause the bonuses they give to shrink.  You'd have to make decisions on how much of your attention you want to give to defending them.  Possibly if one of the factions saves a hamlet from bandits, that faction might get extra resource bonuses or buff their troops.

Ohh!  Yeah, that's a really nice point.  These buildings can't be destroyed, but when bandits attack them it makes their status go further into the negative.  Awesome!

The way I read the OP, one of the main benefits of utilizing hamlets will be the ability to win non-militarily.  In Civ, you can win by launching a space ship to Alpha Centauri.  I don't know what the equivalent would look like in SC, but that would be it's ultimate function.  On the road to this non-military victory, the hamlets will provide other tangible benefits, but what those could be I don't know.

Right, pretty much exactly.  The idea would be that even if you didn't want to "build the spaceship" so to speak, you would still want to mess with hamlets for those other tangible benefits.  But if you really wanted to seriously buckle down on the hamlets, then you're building that spaceship.

[Pepisolo]

Not much time to post. It looks like discussions are already starting to bear fruit, though. Just lending my support to the overall Hamlet idea. It sounds very cool.

[x4000]

Not much time to post. It looks like discussions are already starting to bear fruit, though. Just lending my support to the overall Hamlet idea. It sounds very cool.

Thanks!

And I am putting together an actual design document to keep track of my current thinking on all this based on the discussion; that way we can keep discussing without people having to read the entire thread to understand what is going on at all, heh.

[Misery]

True... although to make this more integrated, I still think I would prefer that SOMETHING auto-build here.  Perhaps any ruins tiles in abandoned towns automatically start turning into Slums tiles of their own accord, and those have negative consequences.  You would then have to build over top of them if you wanted to mute their effects.  Or deal with their effects.  That's kind of the best of both worlds, to me: these hamlets can't be just completely ignored when enabled, but also you retain the indirection of control.

And if you combine this with Teal's ideas above about the proximity effects of positive and negative building statuses... well, I'm starting to really like how that is looking.

Aha, yes, this one sounds really good.  They build up the "bad" sorts of buildings, and then you can place your own tiles over those.  Hmm.... yes, that does sound good.   That'd also increase the value to the player, so that such an action is having a direct reduction on the negative stuffs.    What about changing such a thing once you've placed it down?  The 3AP-per-smite thing works very well for normal cities, is it going to be usable here as well?   I'm assuming it'd only work on the tiles that you slap down over the slums, not on the slums themselves, so that you cant just blast them off the map.

One other thing that occurs to me though is locations.   The military cities are heavily affected by their locations and the surrounding tile type/structure, because there's a constant interaction between them and the military units that stand on and navigate those tiles in order to attack/defend the cities.

But if these hamlets are totally non-military, is there something that could make the location and such of them still important?   This again is one of those things that sorta permeates the entire game, wether you're placing a new TC or dropping myth units or trying to decide how to deal with bandits.... so this one might be important to have a look at.  And if hamlets sprout out of the ruins of a city, this would further increase the importance of planning your cities, which sure isnt a bad thing.   But yeah, I was wondering about that one. 

I think that the location-importance of stuff also is really important, certainly.  Right now I'm thinking along three vectors, as of Teal's post this morning:

1. Within a hamlet, the proximity of certain building types, and of the positive or negative statuses of said buildings, makes the building placement WITHIN a hamlet really important.  Far more so than in a regular town.
2. Just outside a hamlet (as I suggested yesterday), the proximity to certain land types has positive or negative influences on tiles near them, which also affects the hamlets.
3. Based on your notes here, I'm thinking that some form of influence from nearby towns and hamlets might also impact each hamlet.  Details on that?  No idea.  It might be too unclear to players to be feasible.  But it could be interesting, potentially.

The other counterargument to #3 is that the complexity of where you place towns is already enough, I think.  If you are then having to think about the hamlets that get left behind AFTER the towns are destroyed... holy heck, you know?  To that end, potentially just focusing on #1 and #2 above make for enough interesting complexity and "placement matters" type of gameplay.

Aye, those ideas sound good as well.  So, what you're saying is that, aside from the hamlet buildings mattering to other hamlet buildings, there's essentially a radius around the hamlet, within which the land tiles have specific effects on hamlet buildings that they're close to, depending on which land tile it is?   Am I reading that right?   That sounds like a very good idea actually and would give another use for the land tiles in general.


It's all sounding pretty darn good to me.   I think it'd be off to a very solid start if you chose those ideas to build offa.   And then next is to figure out what exactly these hamlets DO, yes?


And a couple of smaller questions, I dont *think* I saw these in your original post,

1,  Do you intend on adding some extra woes that specifically do things related to these hamlets?  Something like, I dunno, a buncha jerks in a given hamlet join the bandits so a squad of those appears within one, is one idea I'd had.   

2,  Any new types of land tiles planned with this?  More things in there wouldnt be a bad idea at all, I think.

[x4000]

IMPORTANT: You can now read the latest thinking on our Current Design Document, which we'll keep consistently up to date with the latest designs resulting from this discussion.  A lot of things may be in that design document that are not reflected directly in this thread.

Okay, sorry for the giant font, but I didn't want people scanning through this thread to miss it.

[x4000]

Aha, yes, this one sounds really good.  They build up the "bad" sorts of buildings, and then you can place your own tiles over those.  Hmm.... yes, that does sound good.   That'd also increase the value to the player, so that such an action is having a direct reduction on the negative stuffs.    What about changing such a thing once you've placed it down?  The 3AP-per-smite thing works very well for normal cities, is it going to be usable here as well?   I'm assuming it'd only work on the tiles that you slap down over the slums, not on the slums themselves, so that you cant just blast them off the map.

My thought is that you can smite any of these buildings for 3AP, but it returns them to building ruins rather than destroying the tile.  You can also build over any existing spot in a hamlet for 1AP plus whatever resources.  So sure, it's easy to avoid slums.  But with the interactions of the various buildings, other Bad Things happen in general.  I was thinking a lot about this as I was creating the new design document linked in my last post; give it a read, I think you'll like it.

So, what you're saying is that, aside from the hamlet buildings mattering to other hamlet buildings, there's essentially a radius around the hamlet, within which the land tiles have specific effects on hamlet buildings that they're close to, depending on which land tile it is?   Am I reading that right?   That sounds like a very good idea actually and would give another use for the land tiles in general.

Yep, exactly.  I think it would be directly based on direct proximity to an individual tile, though; not larger effects on the whole hamlet.  I've gone into greater detail on that in the design document; thoughts welcome.

1,  Do you intend on adding some extra woes that specifically do things related to these hamlets?  Something like, I dunno, a buncha jerks in a given hamlet join the bandits so a squad of those appears within one, is one idea I'd had.

Probably not, no -- I think the Woes system doesn't really need to interact with hamlets at all.  That's my current thinking, anyhow.  The idea would be that there would always be one "event" inside each hamlet, though; which is kind of like a mini-Woe (although the effects might just as well be positive as negative; the important thing is that they are unpredictable and make you keep having to adjust your planning in the hamlet).  I thought of those as I was writing the above design document, so they weren't reflected in this thread before now.

2,  Any new types of land tiles planned with this?  More things in there wouldnt be a bad idea at all, I think.

We are planning a new Blight land tile for the base game as a bit of free DLC in general.  I don't think I'd want to add any new land types specific to the expansion, but I'm certainly open to putting some more beyond Blight into the base game; it's mainly a matter of thinking of good ones that are both functional and make good visual sense.  Trying to do something like desert or snow is out, for instance, because that would really require a completely new tileset for the entire map in order to make any visual sense at all.

Anyway, whatever new land types are come up with can certainly interact with the hamlets, which is the crux of your question, I think.  I think that's interesting and a good thing to pursue, new ideas permitting.

[Teal_Blue]

Wow!! I am very flattered that you liked my ideas! Thank you!

I thought up some questions, because i thought asking questions might be better for me, than proposing things that may be way off, this way, you can answer the question in the way that seems best for the expansion.

Anyway, thank you again, wow! i think i'll be stunned for awhile about this, you guys really liked my ideas! wow!
  Silly, i know, haha, i'll get over the swelled ego in a bit and come back to earth. 

-Teal


Questions about Hamlets and Buildings in Hamlets -


1.    Are buildings one state (such as taverns have drunken patrons) which are booned (drunks sleep it off in the back room) or cursed (tavern is closed by the constables)
Or are buildings multi-state, such as (taverns have drunken patrons, taverns are running low on ale, taverns produce rowdy fights that need to be attended to by the constables, etc...)
Or just positive and negative?

2.   Are boons and curses generic? Filling any and all building needs, or are they specific, meaning they will only fill certain needs. The noble is lonely is filled by the boon noble gets married, which fills only that need.

3.   Does the player have to do something to get boons and or curses, like get needs filled, or have one building change another building, or do they pop up automatically? Does getting needs fulfilled grant a boon or a curse? Is the boon or curse random? Or something the player picks? Or something decided by the situation?

4.    Are buildings and their needs singular? Each building has a need that needs filled, or a situation that needs stopped, such as (the grainery is infected by rats, needs a curse to stop the infection and to get the grainery back to a positive state. Do buildings have a state? A situation only? Or a series of situations that are possible?

5.   Are buildings paired? Like a Tavern and a Constabulary? Or in a series, like Tavern, Constabulary and Noble House? Or 4 or 5 or more buldings linked in a connection from each building to the other?

6.    Do buildings have a positive state and a negative state, that produce and or take away civilian score points? Do they start with a positive or negative number? And add or subtract each turn? Or are they situations only, like horse-farm needs horses is a need, and the buy horses at auction is the act that fills that.

7.   Are building 'states' additive or multiplicative? If two buildings are separated they produce just one point positive or negative per turn? But if they are next to one another, they double that, so we have 1 each for each building making 2, times 2 = 4 points per turn added or taken away.

8.   Do buildings interact with each other? Infect each other? Make one another positive or negative? Do they add up to something for the Hamlet?(of ten buildings, 4 are positive and 6 are negative, which turns the whole hamlet negative?  Are the buildings the same in all Hamlets? Or different buildings in each Hamlet?

9.    Are Hamlets all the same in the game, with all the same buildings, or are they different, some are small and filled with dark, complaining people and fights in the taverns, while others are filled with genteel nobles who ride horses in the country and produce something which adds up for the player toward a civilian victory condition.

10.   Do buildings and or Hamlets produce anything? Like rat-infection plagues that wipe out all the current crop of Hamlets?     Or a Beer Festival that spreads to other Hamlets and makes all the other Hamlets nice and happy and giving us positive points toward our civilian score goal?

11.   Do buildings and or hamlets give us points? Or mana that is used to fend off the rat-infections? Or to spend on tearing down a 'going bad' building and replacing it with a 'healthy and well' building? Do we do the same with hamlets? Curse the bad ones that are dragging points down, or boon the weak ones and try to turn they around?

12.   Does the player place buildings in the hamlet? Or do they appear on their own? Do boons and or curses just appear? Or does the player get to pick them? Or are boons and curses generic and fill any and all needs? (already asked that last one)

13.   Do buildings or hamlets produce loot? a bounty to the bandits to keep them away? Or some acorns, or gold coins, or beer barrels that all add up to some goal score to win? Or is the win situational? Like fill more than half of all the needs for all the buildings and hamlets that pop up?

14.   Are Hamlets the additive element? So having 5 or 10, or however many of them linked, (by road, by condition, by poitive or negative state, by situation...) what gives us a winning condition?

15.   Do buildings and or Hamlets decay? Do they need to constantly be repaired to be kept in a good, or positive state?

Just some questions, more than answers that i thought might help us to look at what buildings do and what hamlets do, or what we want them to do, or to figure out what they might do. 

-Teal


p.s.s.s.     Am just reading the new design document now.    Sorry if i asked a question you already decided on.  Take care! 

p.s.s.s. 2    WOW!!  That document really covers everything. I really, really like it and figure my questions are probably not necessary anymore, but thats cool, i did it to kind of figure out how everything was going to work, and before i knew all this stuff. The design document looks like it'll really be cool!  And thanks again, for including some of my ideas!  It really makes me feel special! 

-Teal

[Misery]

Wow.   There's alot of stuff in here.   

There's a ton that I might or might not comment on but I'm going to take some time to ponder it a bit before I really go at that (also I havent been awake very long yet, hah).   My overall feeling on this one is very positive though.  I'm not seeing anything in there that immediately strikes me as a bad idea.

One question does occur to me, does this mean that normal buildings can become slums right away when destroyed?  Or is it that it happens after a certain amount of time that they must wait, or that maybe they cant do it until the entire city has fallen?  Hmm, on that note, if it's one slum generated per turn, which I think I saw in there also, that might be a bit too slow in some circumstances to have a real impact, or to give the player enough time to work with them.   Since it would take over 20 turns to generate one "full" slums area in that case, yes?  That is quite a number of turns, particularly if the player is playing with 30 turns per age.  Wouldnt be good to force the player to have to "rush" building destruction to get these, not to mention making late-game hamlet appearances not really happen.   Hmm.

Still, I'm liking all of these overall concepts.  All of these things with the stats and the RCI-ish thing and the civilians and their wacky personality conflicts (which really sounds like one of the most interesting parts here), all sounds good.   Sounds also like preventing "optimal" builds shouldnt be overly difficult with those guys randomly doing stuff like that.   And I'm thinking that having it generate a new resource is a good idea too.


One other thing I did want to mention that this reminded me of:  The trade stuff.  You mentioned not being too happy with it in there, and I'll echo that, after messing with it a bunch in my current game, particularly since I had Njord show up (he's like a score farm, too, by the way).   The trade stuff.... I hadnt really messed with it before that point and it had SEEMED like it was going to work out really well, but once I got around to trying it.... not quite the case.   By the time the player can use it, chances are, they dont need the resources anymore.   Granted, some of it is that some costs on things are still a bit off.... if I'm using god tokens for instance, as often as I tend to, I shouldnt end up with like 50-70 moonstone/sunstone on one side before the Age of Gods even starts (and that's entirely without trading for them, and on Hard mode too)... but yeah, it's like the whole thing is just kind of.... underwhelming.   I have no idea what to suggest here, but I just wanted to say that I totally agree on that one and it's something worth looking into altering somehow.


Anyway, I'll read over this and comment in greater detail a bit later here, but this is looking superb so far.


EDIT:   A smaller question:  Considering these are all going off of what is currently just ruins tiles, are you going to change the Midgard Serpent at all?

[solosol]

Many interesting points there to be treated. I know there is not answer yet for many things, but I’d like to ask also some points related, so maybe that helps in shaping –sorry for Wall of Text-
First of all, I like the idea of having these things as an optional new layer of strategy/ complexity. But as said before, optional.
The idea that hamlets can have a range from no effects to up to something like a victory condition opens a lot of new gameplays. About that, no effects, it seems to be not totally true: letting them be alone might cause undesirable effects, so even if you don’t want to develop them (or just having other priorities), you have to invest at least some AP in them (and maybe resources for some buildings) to just avoid that “decadence” and the possible issues related to that. This is: I would prefer to terraform that close mountain into a hill or a plain to avoid some bad effect (like they spam mountain bandits, for example).
The same issue with the interaction with bandits. So they can’t destroy hamlets, but they loot them (or another nasty thing), and from a looted hamlet…you can expect nothing good. But once the hamlet is looted, can it be “re-looted”? what happens? And more on: how do you “repair” it, if that is possible? Or you need to provide something for them to recover?
Hamlets reacting to their closest environment might be a great decision, independently of the degree of implication of the player towards them. I’m totally with this.
Other questions I find interesting are about that player implication and faction management.
-   Do they belong to a certain faction or are they independent? Or they are independent until a faction builds something on them –maybe a building, or something like “putting a flag” to reclaim? Or are always independent? Anyways, how do the (other) faction units react with them? Will the troops attack them? Do they loot them, like bandits (assuming this is what bandits do), or they just ignore? I find this part (the “property”) one of the most important –theoretical- issues to be solved.
-   About the placement of the hamlets and the buildings (related to the previous), and the interaction with the player. In one hand, the hamlets could plop (from ruins as said, or from a battlefield or under certain conditions) on their own. Humans like to have free will, and that could lead to the apparition of random hamlets. So that could match with the game concept of human free will. Then, the player decides what to do, and interact via buildings, tiling etc. I think I like more in “dealing” with these structures, rather than having direct control for setting them, because they might compete with the “standar” cities. Buildings, boons, curses (whatever mechanics they get), and finally closest tiles can be the way to give some kind of player control, but not full control. But well…maybe that kind of competition is what is been looked for.
-   On the other hand, if the hamlets are settable, then the hamlet “property issue” is like to be solved. But we might lose the other aspects (that free will).
-   About building in the hamlets. There is supposed to be around 10 different buildings, but how many tiles are available to construct into them? Not too few, but not too many, or their expansion will interfere a lot with the maps. Or are the buildings placed in the SAME TILE than the hamlet? Maybe that requires a different menu, then.
-   A nice idea if building is allowed by player: Look at how cities grow in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress. If new buildings are added in tiles, they should be in contact with other buildings/hamlet center, so they will expand snaking (which can show curious forms the least), and providing a bit of difference with the modus operandi of the “standard city” (which just needs the existence of a terrain tile to place a buiding, and they always get 5x5 square-shaped –destruction  apart-).
-   And now, about the victory condition (VC)–whatever it will be-. Will it require at least a hamlet per faction or how? I mean: the game is about balancing, so if you decide to develop a hamlet with reds, in order to try the VC, you also should be doing the same with the blue faction…otherwise it is not balanced… Winning a VC because of just a faction hamlet development seems…not proper. We are already controlling two factions, so why not controlling also two hamlet factions for that…?
-   One more note about the VC: I never liked too much about that “Alfa Centauri” (I just tried to see what happens, but never was interested on it), but I understand some players do. So an idea might be a special building for each faction hamlet in order to achieve it. Let’s say: build the Parthenon for greeks (yeah, some mixing like those wonder systems, I personally do not like them very much, as they are very distracting -in turns and resources required-, but well…).  Something equivalent for norse (I can’t think now, maybe some famous ship), and Japanese (I can think in the Forbidden city or the imperial palace, but those are chinese…).

[madcow]

Regarding hamlets producing resources for players. One thought I had is the possibility of mythical/god tokens with universal effects (rather than one sided effects) that target both sides equally (either for good or ill) that take up this hamlet resource, and not any regular resources.

So lets say hamlets produce prayer (arbitrary name here!). Regardless of side, you have access to a few abilities that use "prayer", it doesn't matter which side you are using the AP of, prayer gods/mythics/whatevers affect both sides equally.

[Misery]

Ok, let's see.... couple of things here....

Firstly, the bandits VS hamlets thing.   Based on the design document here it looks like they'll just smash up stats a bit, yeah?   And of course the player can continue making changes after the bandits are gotten rid of.   What's to prevent it from being an exploit, like an endless target for bandits that can just be regenerated each time?  The scorched earth idea, I believe, was put in for that very sort of reason.  Granted, this one would only relate to the bandits, not to the opposing army, but still.

er...

Well I was going to mention more stuff, but.... really, I'm not seeing many issues with this set of ideas.  Not yet anyway.

I think the biggest questions are just how it's going to affect the normal side VS side gameplay.  Alternate win conditions are fine and all if they're tough enough, but of course this will be best if it's constantly useful and interesting when going for the normal win too.    You've mentioned a few of the benefit points, but what about negatives?  There's always bandits and all, but it seems like there's already enough of those guys, and if there's alot of other units in the area.... which there often can be in spots where towns USED to be, since older towns mighta been closer to the "center", and now there's units coming from the outlying ones instead and fighting around those old ruins (which is usually the case in my games anyway).... then you get situations where they're really just not a threat, because they're appearing surrounded by armies already.   Typically bandits are at their worst when they appear really out of the way. But yeah, having some bandits or whatever be possible from these is fine and all, but I'm thinking it's going to have to be a good bit more than just that.    But what could some of those ideas be?  Dont got any suggestions on that one.

Other than that.... seems it's shaping up pretty darn nicely here.

[Billick]

Firstly, the bandits VS hamlets thing.   Based on the design document here it looks like they'll just smash up stats a bit, yeah?   And of course the player can continue making changes after the bandits are gotten rid of.   What's to prevent it from being an exploit, like an endless target for bandits that can just be regenerated each time?  The scorched earth idea, I believe, was put in for that very sort of reason.  Granted, this one would only relate to the bandits, not to the opposing army, but still.

I was actually thinking about this too.  Maybe have a bandit only spend a turn or two looting a hamlet before moving on.  This might need some experimentation to see what's fun and balanced.