1. Mechanically speaking, no -- I don't want this to ever approach the number of things in AI War.
This is the area I'm a little worried about. It seems to me at the moment that SC can be picked up and played by a wide range of people, to the extent that I think that it deserves coverage on a site like Jayisgames whereas AIwar, not so much. I wouldn't want this game to lose that appeal. This is why I'm wary of any extra counters/mechanics being added unnecessarily. You already seem to have the intent that this game will not become mechanically complicated, though, so if you think that adding this new souls system will not significantly affect accessibility then you are best positioned to make that call. I won't comment any further on this idea since my opinion is not very strong on it.
In terms of overall complexity, my goal is to make it so that on the surface to play at a low level there's not a need to expand the tutorial much if at all. You can get through your first few games basically as you do now, with not much changing.
THAT said, with expansions and unlockables and so forth, all bets are off: I want to make the game increasingly complex with those. My reasoning is that if you're playing that long, or buying up expansions, then you WANT more complexity. Look at Carcassonne: that game gets huge numbers of rule additions with each new expansion, making it way more complex. And for those people who have mastered the base game, that's exactly what they want. But if you just want to buy the base game, there's nothing stopping you from doing that.
The other key thing with Carcassonne is that they aren't changing the core rules of HOW the game is played. IE, you basically have the same "pick a tile, place a tile" mechanic, and the ability to put meeples on the last tile placed. Yeah they added the large meeple, but that's about it for most of the expansions (the dragon and the tower were bigger changes, but came much later; and you can skip the dragon, as my wife and I tend to, because he pisses her off, heh).
At any rate, my point is that with most of those expansions, the added complexity comes in the game CONTENT, not in the game interface. If you have new factions with some complicated new rules, or new woes that are complicated and only show up on higher difficulties, or other victory conditions that are complex but completely optional, or complex new buildings and mechanics that only get unlocked once you have a few games under your belt, the accessibility is not affected at all. Accessibility being the ability to get into the game and understand it at a basic level, and then keep playing if you want to (or just declare you've had your money's worth and stop if that suits you).
To me, that's how to have my cake and eat it to. I like complex things. I like accessible things. So the learning curve has to remain exactly as it is now, or close, for getting into the base parts of the game -- even if you have expansions enabled. But as you increase difficulties beyond the defaults, and as your profile level increases or whatever, or as you experiment with some other new tiles that get added, the complexity ramps up. And that's totally cool, because you're basically asking for that at that point. With an accessible game, there comes a point where you either go "well that was that" or "and now I want more!" My goal is to keep delivering on the accessibility, while also delivering on the "and now I want more" bit. I think this gamespace is rich for exploring that sort of thing, it just has to be done carefully.
4. I don't know. It means you have to throw down mythologicals in order to assist those who have lost the most. I've actually thrown down mythologicals just for the sake of causing chaos. If you do add souls, don't make them a cost for everything mythological, but perhaps for the most defensive mythologicals. Score should be enough incentive to throw down the chaotic mythological units, rather than making players lose units to do so.
This is the soundest argument I've seen yet for not doing the souls idea, actually.
Ok but I still think you have options available to fix this problem without adding more mechanics to a game that already feels a bit over-burdened with them. For example what if the AI behavior of human and mythological units was different? Human units might be more inclined to hunt down bandits where mythological units would have a high chance to bee-line to the heathens. This would make building military far more important. It would also make building isolated resource only towns dangerous because if they're blocked off by mountains and a bandit fort spawns by them they're screwed. And it maintains mythological units place as balancing pieces between blue and red. That kind of solution would solve multiple problems without adding non-intuitive arbitrary rules like mythologicals not being able to damage bandit forts.
Well... certainly prioritization is something we can do. But that said, the AI for all units prefer stuff that is within sight range over wandering off somewhere else UNLESS there is a military commandment involved. Changing that for mythologicals would have heavy consequences, and I can tell you there would be open revolt to no longer being able to use mythologicals as basically paratroopers, heh.
OK, I guess I lied when I said I wouldn't comment further. This souls idea is very specific to only mythological units. What about the long-term Chaos idea which I thought you might get far more bang for your buck out of. This could also have solved those instances of mythological cheesing as well as helping fix a myriad of other potential problems and potentially even adding a fun factor. Now there is the potential to have this souls resource AND a potential chaos meter? It's all adding to the complexity. Not sure what your plans are going forward though, if a Chaos idea is implemented would the souls idea then be stripped out etc. I'm just wondering if this game over time is mechanically going to become far less accessible than it is now, so I think extra effort should be made to refrain from adding new mechanics/counters etc if at all possible. This souls one seems purely a one trick pony -- it's stopping the mytho cheese, but that's about it.
The Chaos idea is something I'm waffling on, because it does increase the basic complexity of the game... sort of. I mean, the plus of Chaos is that if you're playing "like normal," it doesn't really affect the game. Which is great, because then surface accessibility isn't impacted. But it does add a new and permanent interface element on the screen, which is something I want to always avoid when possible (but do when needed).
The other argument against the Chaos idea is that playing it "like normal" isn't something that necessarily is going to be done on everyone's first game. I mean, the guy who found the Big Cheese on the other thread found that on his first game just by trying out what seemed smartest to him. And it was super smart -- too smart, heh.
So for him, on his first game he would be bumping up against Chaos in a big way right from the start. Is that okay, or not? It's hard to say. Anyone clever enough to come up with the idea to use only mythologicals on their first game is basically disregarding what the tutorial told them, and so they are probably more than a midcore gamer. So for them, the added complexity of dealing with Chaos is probably not a big deal.
But still, having a Chaos meter up there at the top is something that would have to be explained to players at SOME point, or even new players are going to be fretting about this unknown number up there that is constantly changing.
Someone also suggested having a "mood display" for the Master, which I like in theory. It's more interesting than a number, and shows if he's pissed at your cheese or whatever. The problem is, under the hood we would have to have calculations that factor into how his mood gets created. That's fine and well, but do we show those numbers? If we show the underlying numbers, then the simplicity of the mood display is completely removed. If we don't, then the mechanic is potentially very complex to understand. "Why is he angry?" Etc.
To solve that last, and to auto-train players on the mechanic without having to teach them in advance, we could make it so that every 5 turns or so, the Master's mood changes based on what happens in the prior 5 turns. If his mood changes from what it was to something else, it has a popup that tells you "The Master is angry because you have been abusing your power and smiting a lot, so now X will happen. You can do Y to appease him." And then that's a very clear thing that players can deal with. Five turns later it might then pop up saying "The Master is contented with your activities" if he's happy. Or whatever. That's self-teaching, which I think is really nice. And it does add some complexity to the game, but I don't think the sort that would really drive players away or whatever.
So to me, "The Master's Mood" is actually the most promising idea at the moment. Feel free to start poking holes -- what have I missed?
