Design your dream game

[Verto]

Barf. The graphics of Morrowind would be ruined with BG gameplay.

[Barinthus]

I have always wanted to have a game based on Joe Dever's Lone Wolf/Grey Star series.

[quantum_mechani]

A game set in David Brin's Uplift War universe could be very good.

[Bosh]

What a lot of strategy games really really lack is internal intrigue. If you're the boss of a country, that's that. Every once in a while your people get annoyed at you so you have to smack 'em around a bit or bribe em. The only real exception I can think of is Paradox's Crusader Kings game but in that the internal intrigue bit isn't really fleshed out and isn' the emphasis of the game.

So I'd like something Machiavelli-ish in which you would be a family (Visconti, Borgia, Medici etc. etc. etc. etc.) and there'd be a couple of different families vying for the control of each city. The main emphasis of the game would be conflict between the different families instead of the different city-states and plenty of chances for unconventional warfare. There'd be lots of fun things to do like:

-Deciding wether to whipe out your rivals inside your city or deal with rivals outside your city.
-Manage you family (I would think it would be like Crusader Kings but more developed and interesting).
-Take part on decision making on the city level.
-Meddle in Church politics and try to get your nephew to be Pope.
-Manage your popularity among factions of the populations (nobles, clergy, merchants, artisans and peasants perhaps) as well as building up powerbases in cities outside of the main city of your city-state.
-Keep an eye out for new families popping up after you've eliminated the opposition (managing an Italian city state is never easy and new rival familys could pop up in the form of the new bishop, a merchenary captian that just showed up etc. etc.).
-Make sure none of your sons go all Romeo on you and start hooking up with your enemey's daughter.
-Lead your army against other citiy states and choose wether its better to have your dopey but loyal sonlieutenant or the smart but sneaky mercenary captain be your lietutenant.
-Deal with France and Spain intervening in Italy and rampaging around like 500-pound gorillas.

Other scenarios?
Warring States China? Early Republican Rome? early medieval England?

[:) Smiley]

Strategy game that is open-ended like Civ but realistic for the industrial and modern ages.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Smiley
Strategy game that is open-ended like Civ but realistic for the industrial and modern ages.

Or realistic in the ancient ages. The way the spread of technology and the interaction between barbarians and settled peoples are modeled is crap. I'd like to see nodams that kick farmer ass on a regular basis and then get assimilated into the agricultural culture (as happened in history on a regular basis) and more upheaval in general (and an EU II-like number of civs would be cool too).

[duke o' york]

A dream game?

One that Dr Spike didn't feel the need to post about!

A detective game would be nice, but it would have to be enormous to give it any kind of replayability.

[child of Thor]

A long time ago.......in a gaming magazine far away, called "Computer+Video Games"(i know its been naff for years now, but it was once a great mag) in the early 80's they ran a cartoon strip called the "Bug Hunters".

So whats this got to do with the price of eggs(sorry that could be a 'britishism'?)?

well you had a bunch of characters a little the 'Sam Slade' from 2000AD comics, that ran around having short adventures from issue to issue.

The best story line, that ran for a few issues of C+VG, had the bug hunters running across the G.O.D game.
It was a virtual universe simulator where the player asumed the role of a God and created everything in the virtual universe from scratch, and could shape the way it went.

You had a large arcade style console to sit down in and seal yourself inside, cut off from the outside world.

In the story the actual machine had been made illegal worldwide, as there had been cases of people dying inside their G.O.D machines for lack of food and water etc. Still the game had assumed an underground status, and they were sent in to sort it all out.

So that would be my dream game - a real G.O.D game....................but then who's to say we aren't already in one?

[Asmodean]

Makes me wonder...did the makers of that cartoon have any idea how close to home they were. I mean, look at the addictiveness of the civ genre. I myself have more than once skipped supper only to play civ (or a related game).

Asmodean

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Boshko
What a lot of strategy games really really lack is internal intrigue. If you're the boss of a country, that's that. Every once in a while your people get annoyed at you so you have to smack 'em around a bit or bribe em. The only real exception I can think of is Paradox's Crusader Kings game but in that the internal intrigue bit isn't really fleshed out and isn' the emphasis of the game.

So I'd like something Machiavelli-ish in which you would be a family (Visconti, Borgia, Medici etc. etc. etc. etc.) and there'd be a couple of different families vying for the control of each city. The main emphasis of the game would be conflict between the different families instead of the different city-states and plenty of chances for unconventional warfare. There'd be lots of fun things to do like:

-Deciding wether to whipe out your rivals inside your city or deal with rivals outside your city.
-Manage you family (I would think it would be like Crusader Kings but more developed and interesting).
-Take part on decision making on the city level.
-Meddle in Church politics and try to get your nephew to be Pope.
-Manage your popularity among factions of the populations (nobles, clergy, merchants, artisans and peasants perhaps) as well as building up powerbases in cities outside of the main city of your city-state.
-Keep an eye out for new families popping up after you've eliminated the opposition (managing an Italian city state is never easy and new rival familys could pop up in the form of the new bishop, a merchenary captian that just showed up etc. etc.).
-Make sure none of your sons go all Romeo on you and start hooking up with your enemey's daughter.
-Lead your army against other citiy states and choose wether its better to have your dopey but loyal sonlieutenant or the smart but sneaky mercenary captain be your lietutenant.
-Deal with France and Spain intervening in Italy and rampaging around like 500-pound gorillas.

Other scenarios?
Warring States China? Early Republican Rome? early medieval England?

Have you played Crusader Kings and Europa 1400: The Guild? Neither are exactly what you're suggesting, but they both are based on the idea of playing as a dynasty and involve a fair bit of politics and intrigue.



I would like a game of civ that wasn't just an overblown chessgame. A game where the emphasis is, as the name would make one suspect on civilization, rather than war. Where you lead your tribe from the dawn of time and internal politics, conflits, and events play an important role in shaping both your nation and the world. A sort of a cross between Civilization and King of Dragon Pass.

It wouldn't have a tile or hex map, and you wouldn't directly be moving anything around on it either, such things would instead be "abstracted" (I think that moving things around on a tile map is more abstract, but whatever...) by issuing commands and organizing things within your tribe, city state, or nation. Think about organizing an expedition to explore the mountains near your tribe - they set out, but get lost and are never seen again. Generations pass, and another expedition is organized - perhaps they find a fledgling tribe that are the remnants of the previous expidition, or perhaps they find a pass through the mountains to a fertile valley beyond, or perhaps they see a bad omen and turn back, ect...

How these sorts things play out, and how you respond to them, is how your civilization would be shaped, and the effects of them would add to the character of your tribe. Say, for isntance, that through a series of events, luck, or simply curious invention, a member of your tribe discovered the idea of metal working early on in tribe's history. If that idea is embraced by the tribe, it could then become an integral part of the tribe's character - metal smithing could become a cherished tradition, and the people could end up being renown throughout history for being master metal workers. In this way a "discovery" would actually be a discovery with effects and repercussions that ripple throughout the history of the civilization, and not just a means of building a unit with more attack value.

[Jamski]

How about Fantasy: Total War with a Civ-style city interface, workers to build roads/irrigation/forests/mines actually on the map, that would then show up in the 3D battles, more detailed character development. I mean Fantasy: Total War should have heros like in MoM that are more powerful than entire armies. I want to research spells in my tower too, and send my heros on quests to find magic items. And make magic items for them as well!

Of course a random map generator too.

Basically I want a MoM 2 with more of everything, and a civ-like city building interface, a Total War battle set-up and I would be happy.

-Jam

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Jamski
How about Fantasy: Total War with a Civ-style city interface, workers to build roads/irrigation/forests/mines actually on the map, that would then show up in the 3D battles, more detailed character development. I mean Fantasy: Total War should have heros like in MoM that are more powerful than entire armies. I want to research spells in my tower too, and send my heros on quests to find magic items. And make magic items for them as well!

Of course a random map generator too.

Basically I want a MoM 2 with more of everything, and a civ-like city building interface, a Total War battle set-up and I would be happy.

-Jam

This is another dream game of mine. But some thing's that I would add to what you said are, 1) Item creation. I love making magical items, it's to fantasy games as shape design is to sci-fi games - there should be enourmous amounts of options and abilities and neat things you can make, and you should be able to to equip even the grunts with magical items. And 2) Regular soldiers should be able to become heroes - if a soldier has faught in the ranks for an entire campaign, has slain 50 foes and come out of it all alive, why shouldn't he be able to stand beside those "heroes" you've recruited who've so far done nothing trot around on their horse and look menacing? Actually, Dominions comes close to doing this... but doesn't, for some reason. Each individual soldier in the army can gain experience and become a better fighters, or be inflicted with debilitating wounds, or even pick up magial items from slain heroes... but they can't be given magicla items, and they can't become a hero.

[Adagio]

It wouldn't have a tile or hex map, and you wouldn't directly be moving anything around on it either, such things would instead be "abstracted" (I think that moving things around on a tile map is more abstract, but whatever...) by issuing commands and organizing things within your tribe, city state, or nation. Think about organizing an expedition to explore the mountains near your tribe - they set out, but get lost and are never seen again. Generations pass, and another expedition is organized - perhaps they find a fledgling tribe that are the remnants of the previous expidition, or perhaps they find a pass through the mountains to a fertile valley beyond, or perhaps they see a bad omen and turn back, ect...

How these sorts things play out, and how you respond to them, is how your civilization would be shaped, and the effects of them would add to the character of your tribe. Say, for isntance, that through a series of events, luck, or simply curious invention, a member of your tribe discovered the idea of metal working early on in tribe's history. If that idea is embraced by the tribe, it could then become an integral part of the tribe's character - metal smithing could become a cherished tradition, and the people could end up being renown throughout history for being master metal workers. In this way a "discovery" would actually be a discovery with effects and repercussions that ripple throughout the history of the civilization, and not just a means of building a unit with more attack value.

I have had such game in my mind for a very long time

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by duke o' york
A dream game?

One that Dr Spike didn't feel the need to post about!

Can't help being knowledgeable.

[Sandman]

Actually, Dominions comes close to doing this... but doesn't, for some reason. Each individual soldier in the army can gain experience and become a better fighters, or be inflicted with debilitating wounds, or even pick up magial items from slain heroes... but they can't be given magicla items, and they can't become a hero.

Oh yes they can! The Gift of Reason spell allows you to turn any unit into a commander. It's a rather expensive spell, though.

My games:

The space strategy game that has all players starting on the same homeworld, with all the politics that brings.

A fantasy game that involves horseback exploration and combat, with steppes being the dominant terrain. Preferably 'light' fantasy; no omnipresent magic, no dozens of non-human races. You'd have set-piece battles and chase scenes as part of the story.

Another fantasy game where you don't play a person, but a sentient magical sword. Instead of the warrior changing his sword, you change the warrior! And of course, you're stuck in stone or at the bottom of a lake as hundreds of years pass, and the world changes around you. This could work as either light or heavy fantasy; my personal preference is for light, I just find such worlds more interesting. Eternal Darkness achieved something like this.

Yet another fantasy game. This time, the setting is a city under siege. This setup allows for lots of violence in a convincing context, rather than 'encounters' or dungeon crawling. As the game progresses, you have lots of subplots within the besieged city (finding traitors, investigating intrigues, etc), as well as regular combat on the walls. Parts of the city get closed off as the besiegers press onward, and other parts get opened up. Once, you'd be forbidden from entering the palace grounds... now, it's the only part of the city left in your hands, crammed with refugees, as the enemy prepares for the final assault.

Note that I say 'fantasy game' rather than RPG. I wouldn't mind getting rid of a lot of RPG conventions.