Distance and Time Scale Settings for Scenarios

[Martin the Dane]

Hi Simon, you misunderstand me.

I'm not saying a would always preffer the same number of squares, but I would want to be able to. This would let us create a clan-fight scenario for Scotland with a lot of clans controling little land in world-map sence, and create a superpower scenario where only the major nations are represented.

In the first example a province would be the land controled by each clan at the beginning of the scenario, while a province in the superpower-scenario would be Scotland or maby even GB.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Simon:

I wrote this before I saw Martin's latest, so the posts cover some of the same ground. . .

Originally posted by Simon Loverix
Now, to return to clash: you would not be able to control more cities, more armies or move them farther because the map was larger. You would gain a larger landscape and lose the strategic oversight and nothing else, exactly because scaling would be used.

I disagree, at least with respect to cities. The definition of a city in Clash terms is just a place with sufficiently large population density to make handling it separately from the nearby land worthwhile. But worthwhile is completely arbitrary and is governed mainly by system resources and gui constraints. System resources because each economy adds to the processing burden, and GUI since if you have too many cities on the map it will be a distraction to the player.

What this means practically for scenarios is that you can generally only afford some number (maybe 200-500) cities per game no matter what the map scale. For a map with smaller geographical extent you can focus more on the smaller cities that would be ignored on a world map.

I think we need to let scenario designers focus on whatever map area they consider important.

[yellowdaddy]

I like what Simon says...
I think Clash has to be radically different for previous games to be worth making: including every scenario being one of the/a world at a point in time.

That's a buzz for me - changing world history... discovering America with the Phoenicians or taking Alexander's armies all the way to China!
And let's face it, every scenario you can imagine is worth doing had global effects.
I think it'd add great depth, tension and quality to the game - offer something that no other does.

Ok it's maybe an arse-ache for some people, but the sort of people who are interested in games like this would do it if they had a nice user-friendly scenario designer.
I'd be happy to contribute to that (I if knew how) at some point.

[Gary Thomas]

a nice user-friendly scenario designer

As I have mentioned elsewhere, this is my next priority after save/restore (which is progressing, if slowly). At that point I am prepared to introduce a variety of scaling factors, and possibly events to enable the scenario to change things dynamically (the discovery of iron halves the cost of units, for example).

Cheers

[yellowdaddy]

i look forward to seeing a nice idiot-proof (meaning GUI, drag and drop etc...) scenario editor so that a multitude of players can design all the scenarios they want, rather than coders expend their energies in creating too many preset ones.
A nice way of drumming up a cult following IMO.

[LDiCesare]

the discovery of iron halves the cost of units, for example

I think that cost's one thing I didn't plug to tech in the military model, did I? (not that it's hard doing)