Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.903

[x4000]

New one: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.903

Holy moses you guys are giving me a heart attack here at the last.

Okay, no more social decay.  I was iffy about it too, but it was by far the best thing I could think of, so I was just kind of crossing my fingers and hoping it would be a hit.  But I really worried about that shoving out the midcore players even if you guys liked it.

Anyway, that's now swept under the rug, and a much better thing with town center placement restrictions is now in place.  That neatly solves most of the issues with social decay, although not all of them because you can just pair up red and blue resource-producing towns with one another to cheese this.  But it's a big step in the right direction, and doesn't feel too unnatural to me in my brief playtime with it.

A couple of other mechanics are still needed, which I'll post threads about in just a sec.

Return of Crime?  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13116.0.html

Return of Points as Warfare points? http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13118.0.html

[Aklyon]

You forgot an S, chris.

[x4000]

You forgot an S, chris.

I don't get the joke, but ok.

Return of Crime?  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13116.0.html

[Aklyon]

No, look at the title. Its Kyward Collapse.

[x4000]

Oops, now I see it.   Fixed, thanks.

Also:

Return of Points as Warfare points? http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13118.0.html

[SRombauts]

Hum, I prefer this, but it seems to strict: know every game will look the same, with two parallel lines of towns... Not soo fun?!

What about a max distance more like 16? So that we could keep some towns in the background, not too far away.

And add a 'must have a walkable path between all Town Centers'

[x4000]

Well, in my experience thus far the town lines don't have to be nearly parallel. You have quite a bit of leeway to put enemy towns near one another. So it winds up being more condensed but still a sprawl. I'm not sure I would want to require walk ability between towns anyhow, as that makes things like flying and mountainwalk less important.

The original vision josh and I were talking about was actually all pairs of enemy towns, and then if one flipped then suddenly there would be other problems. There are even bits in the ai designed around this. But then players went and did something completely else, heh.

[SRombauts]

Okay, back to basics! What is the point of all this? To add interesting challenges, and try to remove game abuses.
=> we want to disallow/discourage too far away cities, and game abuse of the kind described by Keith (a continuous line of city running away from the enemy).

But do we really need such artificial and unrealistic mechanisms? How is this fun?

So, I think that what we need here is somehow ways to:
1) forbid building unreachable cities (they shall be attackable by foot)
2) prevent, or forbid, building cities too far away:
.a) from the enemy cities
.b) from the friendly towns
3) punish cities that become unreachable (take care with woes!) with a fast growing crime rate

[SRombauts]

Ho ho, savegames from this 0.903 does not seems to be loadable!
I can still load game from before the 0.900, but when I create a knew medium 1 game I am unable to load it back... mantis here:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11564

[Mick]

I think the only reason that the cities in the back are "unreachable" is because the city (or cities) on the frontline don't crumble very easily. If they did, those cities in the back would not be so protected, and might even be in more danger now if the frontline was holding the bulk of their military.

I think I'd prefer a game where a wide front and a narrow front were both viable options, but caused different types of headaches you have to deal with.

Ultimately, I think cities really just need to fall much much MUCH faster than they do. I mean, city flipping shouldn't happen because the game mechanics manipulate you into accidentally doing it. I think city flipping should happen because it's *really really* hard to stop it.

Maybe town centers should be attackable right away and flip the whole city when they are taken. Or even treat the whole town as something that is just taken over as a unit. Or maybe it can flip when a certain % of buildings are taken out. Having a city flip and instantly start producing units for the other guy is the type of thing that can snowball (theoretically).

If you felt your cities were constantly vulnerable, you would need to pump out military naturally in order to manage it. Yes, maybe you can build a deep resource-only city, but who knows where those bandits or woes are going to spawn, so it's a risky move.

I just  think you can have something more "organic" than a number you have to manage or arbitrary rules forcing you to play in a specific way.

[Pepisolo]

Maybe the simplest and most integrated thing to do would be just to tie in Woes to this in some way. Give towns a hidden "social decay" counter and if it reaches full then a Woe could specifically target this town (or towns). Something like "Without military conflict, the people in TownName have become soft  paving the way for banditry to sweep over the town". This gives the player however many turns then to prepare their defences or potentially face losing the town to a bandit spawn and their other towns potentially becoming pincered as a result.

-- from me

Anybody got any criticism as to why this idea wouldn't work. Seemed good to me at the time, I would be interested in its flaws, though. Maybe it would highlight a misunderstanding of the overall situation in my mind.

[SRombauts]

Well, in my experience thus far the town lines don't have to be nearly parallel. You have quite a bit of leeway to put enemy towns near one another. So it winds up being more condensed but still a sprawl.

Yes, I tested it, its like you say, but still I find it too difficult to find a right spot to build a new city (too much constraints, I have to do a lot of try, spending too much land tile in the process).

I'm not sure I would want to require walk ability between towns anyhow, as that makes things like flying and mountainwalk less important.

Sure...

I think the only reason that the cities in the back are "unreachable" is because the city (or cities) on the frontline don't crumble very easily.
[...]
Ultimately, I think cities really just need to fall much much MUCH faster than they do. I mean, city flipping shouldn't happen because the game mechanics manipulate you into accidentally doing it. I think city flipping should happen because it's *really really* hard to stop it.

Yes, this it more like it.

[orzelek]

I'm not sure if cities should fall faster.
The whole idea of cities being kind of disposable goes against all the strategic games that teach you importance of your cities.

When I'm playing I consider cities something I should not lose. And thats how I plan all my strategies. Thats why game was quite fun at start - you had this large battle going between the cities and you needed to make sure one side doesn't get overrun. If something went badly it was very difficult to save the losing side.

[x4000]

My thoughts here: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13121.0.html

In terms of the way the game was at the start of alpha, I warned everyone that that was not necessarily how things would always be.  A few notes:
1. The intent of the game was never to have cities that never flipped.  A certain amount of carnage was always the idea.
2. On a high difficulty, the idea was always to make it so that you had to kind of shoot yourself in the foot to cross the finish line at all.  At a lower difficulty, making this not really the case.