Design Discussion: Civilian Hamlets And Victories (Expansion 1)

[x4000]

UPDATE: The post below is unchanged, but you probably want to read the Current Design Document for the always-latest thinking.  Otherwise you kind of have to read the entire discussion below and even then it's not super clear.  Thinking on this is evolving daily!

Hey all!  Firstly, apologies for not being present in the recent threads that I set up about requesting feedback last week.  Things have been crazy and I've been pulled in lots of directions.  If you're interested in what:

Complete Side Notes You Can Skip
1. The new AI War expansion is coming out before long (next week!), so there's been some stuff with that.

2. Getting the generalities for a first Skyward expansion set up, and finding artists that could work on the units and such for a new civilization (as well as some new units for free in the base game).  Along with design discussion here to make sure that we have a plan for what we're doing well enough to at least get some of the artists off to a start.

3. Lots of design discussion about our other upcoming game, Bionic Dues.  This is a game that Keith will be devoting the bulk of his time to after the AI War expansion comes out, and which I'll be working on as a main designer but not on coding (I'm still going to be working on Skyward as my primary thing).

4. Other various business stuff that inevitably crops up right after a release of a new game; it's always crazy for a week or two right after that, although having Erik and Josh is an immense help in making it so that I don't just disappear from regular work for two weeks while I'm sorting out all the new-release stuff.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get back into those other discussions this week as well, but there are still a lot of things going on across the board.  All happy things, and Josh, Blue, and I are still super excited about building out Skyward more than ever.

Broad Notes On the First Expansion For Skyward
This will be something to arrive either in July or August, for $2.99.  Alongside yet more free content for the base game. 

This will add one new civilization to the game: the Japanese.  I know folks have been lobbying for a variety of civilizations, and goodness knows we hope to do many more of them over time.  In looking at things both visually and thematically and mechanically, we decided upon Japan because we felt like it would be most distinct from the existing two civilizations that we now have.

The other big thing in this expansion will be very focused: civilian towns and victories.  The design for this is still embryonic, but I think it's really interesting and from the sound of things it's something that players are most interested in, too.

What WON'T be in the expansion, most likely, are things like new maps or Woes or what have you.  I want to do tons more Woes in particular, but those will all be free updates to the base game.  And in terms of new maps, ideally those also go in the base game.  The exception would be if they happen to use some sort of content that is only available in the expansion.  In other words, we want to make the expansion a great value in terms of awesome new content, but not something you HAVE to buy just to enjoy the base game.  Just as with AI War.

Our New Strategy For Pricing And Development That Started With Skyward Collapse
I also wanted to take a brief moment to address this, lest there be any misunderstandings about having an expansion coming so soon after the base game's release (and potentially a second expansion later this year).  With Skyward Collapse, we've decided to embark on a new way of making games to see if it makes sense for us and customers (and so far this is obviously a smashing success).

Part of our strategy of doing games these days is to start with the base idea and a dozen or two hours worth of playtime (instead of striving for 100+), and putting out the game at the $5 price point rather than something more expensive to players -- AI War and Valley started out as 4x and 3x as expensive for customers, for instance.  Anyway, our new process makes the new games cheaper for us to make, cheaper for the customers to buy, and overall lower risk all around -- if we take a chance on an idea that doesn't pan out commercially, that's okay; and if the customer takes a chance on a game that they don't get dozens of hours out of, but still enjoy for a little while, they still get a good deal compared to most forms of entertainment. 

And then with the ideas that DO take off -- as here -- the plan is to follow those up with the AI War style of free content updates plus paid expansions, which gives much longer life to the game as a whole, and in particular lets players choose how much they want to get involved with the game.  Just trying it out: get the base game.  Super into it: get the expansions too.  A lot better than being all-or-nothing committed as a player, in my view.

Looking at another way, it will take five expansions to this game before the cost of the expansions PLUS the base game equal the cost of the original price of AI War.  That's, uh, a lot.  So long as we're providing awesome value with each expansion, this should be a huge win for everyone, as well as providing something that is actually larger than the original base game of AI War was, for the same price.  So that's the plan, anyhow; I've mentioned this before various places, but I wanted to go ahead and put that in this thread.

Actually The Point Of This Thread (Finally)

Immutable Design Goals
Here are my immutable design goals for the civilian buildings:

1. Civilian hamlets would be constructable in completely-destroyed towns that are all-rubble with no buildings left.
2. Civilian hamlets would have no town center, and none of the existing buildings would be valid to build in the hamlet.
3. The hamlets would have civilian-only buildings that do not contribute to the military parts of the game at all, and which can ONLY be built in the hamlets.
4. Ideally, there would be around 10ish hamlet buildings in this game.
5. Ideally, hamlets would contribute to making the game more interesting, but in a way that does not impact the military part of the game directly.  IE they do not generate resources for the military or whatever.  Instead, these represent a broadening of the scope beyond the existing military concerns.  Something that is attractive to do, and fun, but not required.
6. The hamlets should not make the military part of the game any easier, but they ideally also should not make the game blindingly more complex.  To some extent it would be great if the hamlets could in some respect supplant some of the military activity particularly in the late game, if you choose to focus on them.  So in other words, hamlets would have their own self-contained complexities and risk and balances (just as the military does), and plenty of "guys not listening" and so forth.
7. Ultimately, one goal of the civilian hamlets is to provide a path to one or more alternate victory conditions.  HOWEVER, this should not be the sole point or focus of the hamlets; they should also be able to be used to augment the main military game to a greater or lesser degree depending on your tastes and current goals.  But the option to go all-out civilian for the alternate victory condition would be one flavor of how you could use them.
8. The civilians would not be represented by actual units (which are boring to watch move around), but rather just by the buildings they live in.

The Feel Of The Hamlets
I just love Boatmurdered.  It comes up again and again with me, I know.  I never want to try to replicate Dwarf Fortress or to step onto that game's territory.  However, in terms of the LPs that it has produced with their hilarity and tragedy... yeah, I'm all over that sort of thing.  I think that Skyward already has a bit of flavor of that sort to be honest, but with the civilian hamlets I'd want to play that up even further.  Actually, that sort of thing plays into Nick's comic even further, which would be great.

In other words: the civilians should be picky, whiny, hard to get along with, demanding, sometimes dishonest, sometimes insane, and so on.  "The civilians" here referring to the people invisibly living in the buildings that are in the hamlets, recall.

How Autonomous?
One rather core question that I'm actually waffling back and forth on is whether or not you can actually control what buildings get constructed in a hamlet.  Do these things just spring up of their own according the ashes of old towns, and you have to deal with them as best you can?  Or are these things that you are specifically designing out and choosing to put in place?

If they are completely autonomous, the risk is of course that it won't be interesting enough or that you won't be able to do enough with them to really make a satisfying game out of the hamlets side of things.

If they are completely "you place the building, you see the results," then that's something that might get marginalized for players who just ignore them and play the military game.

Ultimately I think that having them be something that crops up automatically could be interesting in that it causes you yet one more source of complexity to manage, like the bandits.  And it's naturally only something that's coming up in the later game, as that's when more towns are completely razed.  But then figuring out how to handle the interaction within these towns is another matter. 

Boons And Curses
I've been assiduously avoiding sub-menus for the game, so if there is to be interesting interaction with the autonomous hamlets, that seems like that would be needed.  But I really don't want to go there!

How about a different approach: one where you can either grant boons or inflict curses onto the civilian hamlet tiles.  And heck, this idea could actually be extended out into the military realm and regular towns some, but for now let's just focus on the hamlets.

The idea here is that basically you can't control when the hamlet buildings pop up, and you can't smite them just like you can't smite building ruins (otherwise this gets broken fast), so all you can do is indirectly influence them by applying boons and curses to them in order to sway the tide of what is happening in a hamlet.  More on this later.

Do Hamlets Have A Color?  Are They Affected By Combat?
Are red and blue military, and yellow military, causing grief in these towns?  Or are these towns completely "neutral hamlets" that none of the other sides care to mess with.  These might as well be terrain so far as the other guys are concerned.  These hamlets don't have health, and aren't affected by things that affect "towns" in the normal sense.  They don't contribute to population for the bandits or either side.

My thought is... yeah.  This is more interesting.  The military guys are at war, and aren't interested in these little places.  There are bigger things at stake.  And when it comes to the bandits, they are pissed at red and blue, so ignore these guys.  This keeps the military and the hamlet sides of the game a bit more separate, so the answer to the hamlets that are causing you trouble isn't just "drop minotaurs on them."  I like that.

This also substantially alters the late game in general, and makes the hamlets non-optional.  Which... hey, yeah, if you're buying an expansion I could see this.

What Do Hamlets Do If You Ignore Them?
This is tricky, and I don't have a definitive answer for this yet.  Part of me says "descend into chaos and largely not affect the rest of the game."  That would make dealing with them optional, even if their presence in general was not optional.  That's a plus.

On the other hand, if they are just something you can ignore, that's only so fun.  So perhaps "descend into chaos and affect you mildly to moderately depending on your chosen general difficulty level" would be more interesting.  Ignoring the hamlets should not lose you the military game automatically, but it should throw some extra kinks into the system.

So What's In A Hamlet?
This is something I'm also still only just getting into designing.  Figuring out the overall subsystems and the "30,000 foot view" of this has been challenging enough, and I wanted to bring this here for discussion and ideas before I got too far into the details.  You folks are clever.

The main thing I am sure I want in there is housing.  Probably Peasant and Noble housing, or something along those lines.  There's plenty of room for interesting conflict if there is a class divide here.

Beyond that, I've thought of a variety of approaches, but am not entirely happy with any of them:

- Resource chains local to that hamlet, ala Pharaoh.  This is too much like the rest of the game, and requires too many buildings to be interesting in a specific hamlet.

- Different flavors of buildings (commercial, residental, industrial) ala Sim City, so that there are a variety of things going on in a hamlet.  This is more interesting, but in the theme of the game I'm not sure what these would be that would be different from our main towns.

- Some sort of specialized non-building tiles that are more rural-themed.  Maybe things like Beet Farms or Forest Glades or whatever.  What are the people in this hamlet doing all the time?  That's kind of the crux of this.

- Some sort of improving specialized structures that lead up to the victory condition that is hamlet-specific.  This seems important, kind of like building a Wonder (but only in an indirect fashion) in other strategy games.

Maybe it's mostly just houses, and these folks scavenge in the countryside for the rest of what they need.  Maybe the nearby presence of lakes, fields, forests, and so on matter.  So you can provide them hunting grounds by putting forests nearby, etc.  And if they are on an obsidian plain, they are likely to descend into madness a lot faster.  And then of course the specialized structures that lead up to the victory condition still on top of this, of course.

I'm still really waffling on this whole thing, but I am attracted to the idea that you can influence the hamlet by putting different kinds of basic lands around them.

What Do Houses Do?
My thought is that this is where the personalities of the civilians come from.  People who live in the houses probably need names, so you can scream at them by name.  Possibly a few people live in some of the houses, and everybody has their own personality and shifting relationships to everyone else in the hamlet.  They get jealous, get pissed, and get married, etc.

That sounds super complicated, but I'd make it simple enough that it wouldn't be too terrible to manage on the back end.  You'd mostly see the current state of things, and intervene with the boons and curses.  Someone being too pissy?  Give them some specific kind of curse (rat infestation?  Etc.)  Someone incurably jealous of their neighbor?  Well, we don't want to reward that sort of behavior, but sometimes you have little choice: grant them a boon to make them happy.  Someone really despondent because there's nobody for them to marry and they want to have kids?  Poof!  Here's a husband, nice boon.  Etc.

I'm not sure if going so detailed with this is the right choice.  It may be better to have things more like broad demands and needs and so forth that you can either choose to fulfill/meet or not.  Anytime somebody goes "oh and there will be families and kids and you can have pets and trees will grow out of seeds and blah blah" I always start thinking how that is hugely unlikely to actually live up to what people want.  Since that is nonvisual in this case, I think I have a better shot at it.  But still, it's something to be approached with some degree of trepidation.

This is one of the big things I'm still mulling, because I know what sort of general effect I want out of this, but I don't have some obvious solution of just "oh look, that game did exactly what we should do here."  There's not been another game that's really modeled this to my satisfaction in terms of clarity and functionality.  Either clarity or functionality have always taken a major hit.

And How Does That Alternate Victory Condition(s) Work?
No idea yet.  I can't really even start working on this until the base hamlets model is more nailed down.

Fin.
Right now that's about it.  Obviously I haven't fully explained my thinking on each item, since that would take forever and I'm still all over the place in terms of potential models I'm considering.  But I wanted to go ahead and start discussion here, because I think that some of you might come up with some super clever ideas that I've not thought of, as well as helping me weed out my own potential ideas to just honing the most promising ones.  Actually, just writing this all out I've come to a lot of conclusions that previously I'd been waffling out.  Always nice when that happens.

[Aklyon]

Haven't read the entire huge post yet, but I wanted to say this:

In other words: the civilians should be picky, whiny, hard to get along with, demanding, sometimes dishonest, sometimes insane, and so on.  "The civilians" here referring to the people invisibly living in the buildings that are in the hamlets, recall.

Sounds like a hamlet full of DF nobles

[Mick]

In other words: the civilians should be picky, whiny, hard to get along with, demanding, sometimes dishonest, sometimes insane, and so on.

I'm waiting for Chris to Freudian slip "civilians" over "customers".

[Teal_Blue]

@X4000,
                      Some ideas come to mind when you describe your 'Hamlets',    What if as you say, there were peasants and nobles, and farmers and townies, and taverners and constables, all represented by their buildings, with little dialog balloons that blossom onto the screen, as they jib and jive with one another. Say i get a peasant that pops up first and they begin to complain, and lets say it goes in stages, lightly complaining about low salaries, about the price of porridge, about the stiff hay filled mattresses and the thin-ness of the beer, but if i wait too many turns without addressing it, say 5 turns, then my peasants get to stage 2 complaining, which starts to spread to a newly popped up noble, who now starts complaining about the peasants, and their lack of good taste, about the smell of the horse-men and the whiney-ness of the brick-men, which all leads to pop-ups that have to be addressed. So, we have a new series of buildings to build, civilian buildings to off-set the ones that pop up automatically and start to complain, because in these Hamlets, only certain buildings counter the others, and if we are doing our player best, then we will be 'countering' these as quickly as we can.

Peasants countered with Taverns (& beer)
Nobles are countered with horse-farms (in the country with nice fresh air) 
Taverns (with their assortment of working class drinkers) countered with Horse-thing on your foot tiles, or Hayride tiles (with a pretty girl) 
Bars (as opposed to Taverns, with fights breaking out left and right) are countered with Constabularies (with their whistle blowing constables that keep the peace!)
Farms with their bleeting sheep, that the farmer is about to scream about are countered with Sheering shops, where the barbers all sing as they shear the sheep and the sheep all sing as they are sheared! 
Homes have squabbling husbands who rattle on and on about how hard they work! are countered by wives that have been to the beauty parlor and smile and kiss them until they no longer complain!
Beauty shops have women, all pining over the cost of cosmetics and having their hair burned with an iron, are countered with Men's clubs, where handsome young bachelors all stroll down the small Hamlet streets and give the girls the eye, until the girls all giggle and no longer complain. 

So, the buildings pop up automatically, and we have to try to counter them, or the complaining gets to stage 3 where we start losing points, so it starts effecting the game, but in a civilian way, not a military way. But we have to 'unlock' the buildings we use to counter from our menu. And the way we get new buildings is by countering other buildings. Such as:  We have a pop up for the peasant, but we don't have a Tavern yet. So the complaining starts, two more turns and a noble pops up, and we are getting closer to stage 2 complaining on the peasant, two more turns and we get a random horse-farm pop up, which counters the noble. That pairing counters each of them and gives me a building to choose, so i choose the tavern, which now counters the peasant and stops the complaining before stage 3 where i would begin to lose points. This continues on and on, with me attempting to counter each complaining building. If i keep up the countered pairs to say 25, in say 2 or 3 Hamlets, then I win the game due to Civilian Win. If i fail to counter all the buildings after say 25 pairs, then I still have the option of the military win. Or lose.

Hope it doesn't sound too complicated, and in fact it may be too simplistic, but that is what popped into my head when you were talking about the Hamlets and i thought i would let you know.

Thank you for listening,
-Teal


 

[x4000]

Very cool ideas.  I don't think that's the way I'll wind up going about it, but you did bring up two excellent ideas that I think should be included: Taverns and Constabularies.  I'm not sure quite how those should work, but those seem like an integral part of a hamlet suddenly.

[Teal_Blue]

  Edited -
                  Thank you for including me, it makes me feel good to have contributed a little something.

Ask Mick and Cinth and Misery too, they are pretty good at thinking up stuff. And LaughingThesaurus and Chemical_Art too.   

I'm sure it will look wonderful by the time July or August rolls around. 

-Teal

[madcow]

I personally feel that making these civilian hamlets ignorable is a mistake. I think if they're in a given game, they should have a not insignificant impact on he game. To counter this they can be enabled/disabled like the minor factions of AI war.  Not saying they should be all-important, but don't make having them marginal a design criteria if you can go the enable/disable route to them instead.

[Misery]

Ok, I dont have a huge pile of time to go into every bit I'd like to say, but I'll point out a few things real quick before I forget what they are.

First of all.... this all sounds pretty great.   You had me at the "immutable design goals" and the bit about Boatmurdered and the ideas that come from that.  I love the idea of more characters doing more often-absurd things and the "argh why arent you listening to me" moments that can impact the strategy, and that's one thing that this game has been bloody good at so far.

As for the ideas about how these buildings are placed or how they show up:

I dont think going for full autonomy here is the best idea.  Having the buildings just appear randomly in destroyed zones and the player having no control over them is the sort of idea that isnt all that interesting to me, from a strategic standpoint.  It kinda feels like another "here's some random bandits" idea to me, and I think it's more interesting if these new mechanics are something that the player can really work with most of the time.

The idea I'd had was something along the lines of the old Simcity games and their RCI thing.  Where you didn't directly place buildings.... but you selected certain areas and zoned them, and there was a range of things in each zone type that could then appear in the zoned section, which was often based on the position and size of the zone.  For example if you wanted skyscrapers, well, they take up more ground space, so you'd have to make sure that the zoned section has a certain size to it.  But if you wanted just small houses, you could shape it so that only those appear.   So, you couldnt just outright plop down skyscrapers... but you could set up the zoning and the conditions to ENCOURAGE their appearance.   That sort of thing.

Obviously that exact idea could be changed around for this, but it gets the general point across, I think.  The player could very much influence the placement and style, but the "exacts" would be left up to the AI, and the player would then have to manage things from there, however exactly you go about doing that.  I think this fits with the overall theme of the game.  And, it makes sense from the standpoint of the Creator in a thematic way;  this guy, the player, has got tons of stuff he's gotta do, so it makes sense that he's like "Ok, I'm gonna set up the basics here and you guys need to at least stay within these guidelines for your towns, but I dont have time to point out every single building, I've gotta go stop Steve the Minotaur from picking up his own troops and using them as hammers".


As for what exact function these guys would have, hmm.... my one thought on this is:  Dont seperate it TOO much from the main parts of the game.  Let them have some effect that the player can work with.... somehow (and obviously some risk!), that can do things strategically to affect the main battle.   Though I also like the idea of an alternate victory condition with these guys.   It also does make sense to NOT have military units be always smashing these guys up (they've got other targets of the "trying to kill them with axes" sorts, after all), but yeah, dont seperate it too much to the point of it feeling like a second game tacked on.  That's pretty much the one major thing that comes to mind in terms of more "general" suggestions.


So there's some initial thoughts.  I'll likely come up with more, but I think that one is the best suggestion I have for now!

All in all, it seriously sounds pretty excellent.   And congrats again on the game and how it's all come out.   For your whole "start with a dozen hours of playtime" idea, I think you went and actually made a game already that goes waaayyyyyyyy beyond that.  I for one just dont seem to get tired of playing this, and that's the impression I've gotten from alot of reviewers as well. 

Cant wait to see where the expansion ends up going!


EDIT:  Also, on the hamlets, I do really like the idea of having them appear in "rubble" areas.   That part sounds pretty great to me and gives more reason for city destruction!

[x4000]

I personally feel that making these civilian hamlets ignorable is a mistake. I think if they're in a given game, they should have a not insignificant impact on he game. To counter this they can be enabled/disabled like the minor factions of AI war.  Not saying they should be all-important, but don't make having them marginal a design criteria if you can go the enable/disable route to them instead.

That's a fair point, and I wondered if someone would say that.  Given that this is expansion content, not base-game content, not base-game content, my feeling is that we don't have to worry about new players not using this immediately.  This is for people who already played the base game and want more.

So... yeah.  Making these nontrivial to ignore makes a lot of sense in that regard.

First of all.... this all sounds pretty great.   You had me at the "immutable design goals" and the bit about Boatmurdered and the ideas that come from that.  I love the idea of more characters doing more often-absurd things and the "argh why arent you listening to me" moments that can impact the strategy, and that's one thing that this game has been bloody good at so far.

Sweet.

I dont think going for full autonomy here is the best idea.  Having the buildings just appear randomly in destroyed zones and the player having no control over them is the sort of idea that isnt all that interesting to me, from a strategic standpoint.  It kinda feels like another "here's some random bandits" idea to me, and I think it's more interesting if these new mechanics are something that the player can really work with most of the time.

Point taken.  But I suppose my hope was that the boons and curses would be how you were directly interacting, but yeah.

The idea I'd had was something along the lines of the old Simcity games and their RCI thing.  Where you didn't directly place buildings.... but you selected certain areas and zoned them, and there was a range of things in each zone type that could then appear in the zoned section, which was often based on the position and size of the zone.  For example if you wanted skyscrapers, well, they take up more ground space, so you'd have to make sure that the zoned section has a certain size to it.  But if you wanted just small houses, you could shape it so that only those appear.   So, you couldnt just outright plop down skyscrapers... but you could set up the zoning and the conditions to ENCOURAGE their appearance.   That sort of thing.

To some extent that was part of my original vision as well, but the challenges come in with how small these hamlets are.  They could expand out into the countryside over time or something, but then they stop being hamlets and the countryside starts to look super industrialized.  I like the idea of there being competing demands for stuff in each hamlet (or globally for all hamlets?  That might be even more interesting since it gives you more space to work in), but I don't know that a two-layer "zoning and then buildings appear" approach is a good one.

THAT said, having building states visually change to represent status changes is something I'd like.

Obviously that exact idea could be changed around for this, but it gets the general point across, I think.  The player could very much influence the placement and style, but the "exacts" would be left up to the AI, and the player would then have to manage things from there, however exactly you go about doing that.  I think this fits with the overall theme of the game.  And, it makes sense from the standpoint of the Creator in a thematic way;  this guy, the player, has got tons of stuff he's gotta do, so it makes sense that he's like "Ok, I'm gonna set up the basics here and you guys need to at least stay within these guidelines for your towns, but I dont have time to point out every single building, I've gotta go stop Steve the Minotaur from picking up his own troops and using them as hammers".

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.

As for what exact function these guys would have, hmm.... my one thought on this is:  Dont seperate it TOO much from the main parts of the game.  Let them have some effect that the player can work with.... somehow (and obviously some risk!), that can do things strategically to affect the main battle.   Though I also like the idea of an alternate victory condition with these guys.   It also does make sense to NOT have military units be always smashing these guys up (they've got other targets of the "trying to kill them with axes" sorts, after all), but yeah, dont seperate it too much to the point of it feeling like a second game tacked on.  That's pretty much the one major thing that comes to mind in terms of more "general" suggestions.

It's a fine line, for sure.  And it's something that is very much in the forefront of my mind. 

On the one hand we have:
1. If the hamlets are valid military targets, they'll constantly be paste and the background towns will not be, because these are by definition more in the center.  So that just doesn't work on any level.
2. If the hamlets are producing resources or other military abilities, they are hugely unbalanced since they are invincible unless #1 is violated.

On the other hand we have:
1. If these are so separate that they feel tacked on, that is superbad as well.
2. And that's part of why I was thinking of making them very autonomous as sort of "not these again!" and something you have to manage (like bandits), not something you choose to do (unlike building a new town).
3. However, unlike bandits, which are always negative, these could be positive or negative.  If you ignore them, then negative.  If you manage them well, then positive.  But that diverts resources from the military side.

So that's what led me to the autonomously-popping-up thing, which was not my first instinct.  But that was the thought process.  There may be a better way to keep the hamlets integrated but separate, and actually I'd love that, but I haven't thought of it yet or seen it proposed.  Actually that's a big part of the reason for this thread, is things like that.

So there's some initial thoughts.  I'll likely come up with more, but I think that one is the best suggestion I have for now!

All in all, it seriously sounds pretty excellent.   And congrats again on the game and how it's all come out.   For your whole "start with a dozen hours of playtime" idea, I think you went and actually made a game already that goes waaayyyyyyyy beyond that.  I for one just dont seem to get tired of playing this, and that's the impression I've gotten from alot of reviewers as well. 

Cant wait to see where the expansion ends up going!

Awesome, thank you very much!  And yeah, it's very exciting and I'm always glad to over-deliver rather than have something too barebones.

[Teal_Blue]

Ok, integrated and separate, and boons and curses... Just a quick thought, not sure if it will work, but wanted to see if it might work. Not quite sure i've got all the bases covered, like how it affects the rest of the game without messing things up.

Buildings pop up on their own, and each building type has a positive and a negative side, which is determined by the RNG.

Say I have a Tavern and a Constabulary, in the positive, (one positive = positive) (but two negatives are needed to produce a negative. Or reverse it if you think that makes more sense, so one negative = negative, but it would take two positives to make a positive. Actually that sounds better that way.) everything is peaceful and i'm getting 1 points? every turn toward the Civilian Score Goal for those 2 buildings that are in a positive state with each other.

But 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.

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.

The thing is, my boon meter, how much boon i have available to use for influencing buildings is based on how many boon pairs i already have, each peaceful pair gives me 1 boon point per turn. And the curses give me 1 curse point per pair per turn. So its a limited resource that i have to use, and in some circumstances seems based at least partly on chance, but also partly on skill as the more pairs i have the more i generate. But it is also not unlimited and has to be used sparingly and wisely by the player. What if I over spend boon points and wind up short when a critical point is reached? Well, i might have just messed myself up.

Or, if i spend carefully, I might have points left over when i reach the Civilian Score Goal, which gives me 'wiggle' room, to adjust the score as the end of the game (90 turns) comes closer.

Also, just like a 'hand' in a deck of cards, sometimes, no matter how hard or well i try, its just not enough and i lose. But that is based on chance, not on the game denying me, or me cheating, or me not playing up to a skill level, because some of this is strategy skill, sure, but some of it is chance, so its something noobies can do just as well as pros. 

Just an idea, don't know if its worth it, but i thought i'd throw it out there.

-Teal
 
p.s. hope this makes sense, i just threw it out there and don't know if it makes a lot of sense to anyone other than me right now. Hope it sounds good and workable.


 p.s.s Ok, last thought, the more positive hamlets, the more the number of pop ups, or frequency. But also the more that are negative, the less the frequency of pop ups. So my chances of winning actually go down if i'm doing poorly, and my chances of winning increase if i'm doing well.   

Anyway, there is probably other stuff i'm not thinking of, but thought this might be a good rough sketch that might be workable. 

[Misery]

Ok, once again I'm posting on little time (bah, I'm usually not this busy on any given night), but I wanted to say a couple of things before I forget.


First:

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.

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.


And somehow I had actually not noticed the boon/curse thing up in your original post there, that sounds like a good idea for management once something is there.


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. 


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. 

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.



There's more to say on all that's in this thread here, but that's the bits I wanted to mention before I forgot.

[madcow]

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.

[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.

[solosol]

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, that uses a tile (that can be dependant or not from a town), that cannot be attacked by bandits -or can be-, that can lead to victory, but not necessarily, and that can add chaos in the form that requires player management -but not too much, or maybe too much-...well...I know only a word for that: Faith.
So I'll try to explain a bit more: people from towns work in different buildings, and are trained in the militaries. But where do they live? In the hamlets? Well, that could be the answer. But they need resoures to live, and provide faith. Faith has two levels, low (from low people) and high (from high people). Resource requeriments are different for each class, so that is where economy management approaches (or collides xD). There is interaction between both classes, apart from having -or not-enough resources -they demand or they react to them -also they may react to the closest environment, like placing a lake or a deer park.
And what do you do with the Faith? Well... I guess that's too much for me. But Faith is like a bonus, that helps in many things, like getting a Civilian Victory, that's for sure...it can also be many more things...and not all of them are funny stuff...
...if anyone understood anything, please explain to me

[Misery]

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.