Rise of Nations -- Time for your ideas!

[Lemmy]

one thing i would really like, but maybe impossible, is too design your own units like in SMAC, i loved it then and trying to oadd it somehow to civ3, but it would be great if it's possible in RON

[ColdFever]

play like a king or slave?

Thanks for the comments, Brian.
I still am somewhat concerned.

Most players here seem to prefer a deep strategy game with time to think without haste. Personally I would love to see a kind of "Realtime Civilization". But the speed and the amount of action RoN promises almost sounds like hard work, from the current data it almost looks like "Turbo Civilization" or "Ages of Civilizations".

I heard that it is even possible to get from ancient times to the information age in 60 mins. This has to be about 6000 years in 60 mins = 100 years per min average. Probably (as in Civ) the time factor is faster in the beginning and slower in later times. However I am a afraid that the game might tend to be too fast for patient players who want to have a game of leisure and not a game of work. I personally are longing for a RTS title to play like a "king" (with time) and not like a "slave" (with haste).

So is it possible to adjust the game for "civilized" oldies like us?
Or do we have to take our heart pills to stand the pace?

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Brian Reynolds

5. Lots of fun rules files to edit (but of course).

11. There are Speed and Pause settings. You can always give orders while paused in single player, and we support options to allow it in multiplayer.

12. We -do- support what we call "Rush Rules" which allow you to enforce a ban on military attacking early in the game; a lot of different options available here.

Brian

Brian: In particular I am very pleased to hear about point 12. I have expressed my desire for such an option for a long time. My mouse finger thanks you

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Brian Reynolds
2. "Ethnic" identity is represented by the fact that captured cities must be assimilated into your nation before they can be fully used.

Brian, are there any factors that could decrease the time needed to assimilate a captured city other than a predefined amount of time?

Like: Size X cities can only be fully used after Y Time Units have elapsed? Can I decrease Y by building/rush-building a temple, or such?

[yin26]

Thanks for the update BR. The early previews have been raving, and I am so excited that you are now not under anybody's shadow. Can you release it: "Brian Reynolds' Rise of Nations!"

I had one quick thought about villies: I like the idea of having the village 'feel' alive, it's just the micro of them I don't like. How about this:

Just as with Civ, you can call up a row of heads signifying villies and then simply use slide bars to adjust their tasks. For example, if there are 3 resources and (yes) research sliders, you simply adjust what percent you want and the correct villie number automatically goes to the most efficient gathering spot?

Sure, allow for manual tasking as well, but make the auto-selecting of gathering spot so darn good that you would rarely want to.

And by adding villies as part of the research effort, you are maintaining a bit of the Civ flavor and making the resource gathering model more strategic with little extra tedium. This would help simulate a bit of the 'guns or butter?' dilemma and could result in some really interesting games in which Player A went heavy on resources and has a lot to spend on cheap, lower-level units while Player B assigned more villies to research and has fewer but more powerful units.

The 'smart slide bar villie' assigning that ties in research would simply be awesome, IMO!!!

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by yin26
Just as with Civ, you can call up a row of heads signifying villies and then simply use slide bars to adjust their tasks. For example, if there are 3 resources and (yes) research sliders, you simply adjust what percent you want and the correct villie number automatically goes to the most efficient gathering spot?

Sure, allow for manual tasking as well, but make the auto-selecting of gathering spot so darn good that you would rarely want to.

And by adding villies as part of the research effort, you are maintaining a bit of the Civ flavor and making the resource gathering model more strategic with little extra tedium. This would help simulate a bit of the 'guns or butter?' dilemma and could result in some really interesting games in which Player A went heavy on resources and has a lot to spend on cheap, lower-level units while Player B assigned more villies to research and has fewer but more powerful units.

yin26: I like this idea. You could still have a lot of peasants running around, but their tasks could be automated (if you wish). The idea of tying peasants/villies to resource gathering AND research does add an extra strategic component. . .

As an added thought: Could there be different levels of peasants? What I mean is, could some of the first level peasants be trained to become scientists/researchers? This might require a special "Academy", time and money to undertake.

These "researchers" could be "trainable" as your civ enters each succeeding era to research new techs and weapons. . .

So, after you've assigned peasants to be trained as researchers, you would "see" these researchers on the main screen "working" at research buildings or open lab complexes. . .

Also, something I've been meaning to add is, I'm glad that RoN is NOT using 3D terrain. Often 3D terrain can be hard on the eyes, and it boosts system requirements unnecessarily.

AoE (from 1997) uses 2D terrain and looks very good and is still very acceptable looking 5 years down the road.

[yin26]

Leonidas:

Thanks! I like your addition a lot as well. Perhaps researchers can be made at a 1:1.5 ratio. To turn villies into a researcher (and to see the graphic change), 1.5 villies must be used to make one researcher, who then enters some kind of research-like building, etc. Very nice touch.

And it would be nice to attack an enemy and target his researchers. At 1:1.5, he'd have to consume a lot of villies to get back up to his research speed if you wipe out his researchers.

That sounds really fun to me...

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by yin26
Leonidas:

Thanks! I like your addition a lot as well. Perhaps researchers can be made at a 1:1.5 ratio. To turn villies into a researcher (and to see the graphic change), 1.5 villies must be used to make one researcher, who then enters some kind of research-like building, etc. Very nice touch.

And it would be nice to attack an enemy and target his researchers. At 1:1.5, he'd have to consume a lot of villies to get back up to his research speed if you wipe out his researchers.

That sounds really fun to me...

yin26: Yes, by attacking the researchers/Academies a person could really keep the opposition behind the eight-ball. . .

This would prove to be devastating as civs moved into the later tech eras. . .

[Atahualpa]

just dont make battle click-fests!!

For example I like Battle Realms idea of recruiting people BUT it simply gets tedious and draws way too much attention off.

Besides from the screenshots it looks like there will be massive amount of units involved in battles. So I think it is better to hold the amount of different units small. Close, Ranged and Bombard will do I think. Maybe a fast scouting or flanking unit, but that sure is enough unit types to control.

It is very important to have control over the battle at any time (except when you make stupid descisions so that everything turns up in chaos, but even then you could rally your men at some point).

For example I like the control I had in Gettysburg and Antietam. Very fine battle simulations that were!!! And even with the few units you had, you could think up great tactics and it wasnt very stressful since combat lasted long enough to even control a larger frontline.

Fights in AOE or Empire Earth were over way too fast. And especially in AOE it was a click fest.


And yes I think city managment is fine, THOUGH if it gets boring it gets annoying.

I once had the idea of having different quarters of a city. Each quarter was represented by a central building and around that other buildings evolved.

So you put up a central building for people (a church for example) and this finds your city. People will move towards the church. Then you build a marketplace and within a certain area a financial district evolves. A library starts a scientific district and barracks mark zones of military control. There is also the option of having an industrial district. Started with maybe a blacksmith or factory.
You can speed up evolution by investing money in certain districts. Normally this would be taken from the city treasure if this is not enough from a global fund.

Military districts dont need to be in cities though.

Maybe something along that line for city-managment.

ata

[Grumbold]

I'm probably not the sort of person you want posting because I'll not be buyig a game that zips through the renaissance in under ten minutes no matter what game mechanics it uses -but- I fully support Yin's idea. If a game is going to focus on speed then you don't want to be messing with peasants when your attention should be on your military, diplomatic or economic decisions. There is nothing more infuriating in my limited RTS experience than finding that while you have been conducting an extremely effective military campaign somewhere a lone enemy detatchment has managed to ease past your defences and murdered your workforce because they are too stupid to look after themselves or scream for help.

[GePap]

A few ideas

it nice to know that game designers care:

I guess many of my dieas are ones i have seen work well in other games;

The notion of general that you pointed out doesn't go far enough, I believe. In terms of handling troops in th field, i think the game Cossacks has done the best job of an RTS. Players will crank out lots of units. I think that these units should fight not alone, but as integrated units (so if i make 20 spearmen, i form them into one spearmen division an now i have one large unit, not 20). This cuts down micromanagement greatly- it allows for a battle to be fought by giving a few orders to my divisions (like a real leader does) instead of getting orders to every **** and tom in my army. It would also make the implementation of any sort of A.I. commander unit (to lessen micromanagement) much easier.

I think that some sort of free market fro traded goods should be implemented- The base price to pay for any good should be based on a combination of the overall demand and the supply (not being used internally). Such a system will give players the incentive to be self-reliant whie at the smae time create monopolies of goods to make insane amounts of money.

I like most of Yin's ideas for developing land- i would even go further and restrict how far military campaigns can go from your cities by the creation of some sort of army supply system- only late in human history could an empire send their forces around the world- the Egyptians could not have sent an army to China, even if they wanted. So, limit how far military units can stray from your territory before youcan no longer give them orders- with the raneg increasing with tech. I suspect this might be very difficult o implement in term of coding, but i think it would really bring a level of strategic depth not seen in many computer games period.

[chronocrator]

a realtime trading system

I’ve got an idea for a trading system that I think would fit in better in RoN than those of AoK or Civ.

The trading system used in AoK is IMO too simple and it assumes that there exist trading partners outside the map that buy the players’ resources or sell resources to the players. This isn’t very realistic, prices are not based on supply and demand and interesting tactics like trade embargoes are not possible (ok trade embargoes wouldn’t really be that interesting with 4 resources everywhere on the map but in RoN there’ll be many strategic resources that are rare).
Then there’s the system that Civ uses which is complex and works fine for a TBS game. However trade occurs only after long negotiations that don’t fit well into a RTS game since they take too much time. (While you can pause the game in SP mode, I guess that this is not possible in MP.)

So here’s the idea:
It is a trade screen that allows each player to set the price (s)he is willing to pay for certain resources and the amount of money (s)he demands for selling the resources.
I know it is going to be big but anyways, the screen could look like that: First of all each resource needs a checkbox so the player can choose if (s)he wants to sell the resource, a slider for the price the player wants to get for the resource and another slider (or a textbox) to set the minimum amount of that resource that is supposed to stay in the player’s warehouse (so if it is set to 300 and the player owns less than 300 units of that resource, nobody is able to buy it from that player.).
To allow a buying option the screen also contains a checkbox to set if the player wants to buy that resource, another slider for the maximum price (s)he is willing to pay for it and again a textbox or slider that is used to set the maximum amount the player needs (if this is set to 1000 and the player owns more than 1000 units of that resource nobody is able to sell more to her/him).
Furthermore it would be useful if the player could choose with which nations he wants to trade with and which would be his favourite trade partners (if the price is the same deals will be made with those first; this assumes that there is “button-click trade” and not “trade-cart trade” otherwise the favourite option would not be that useful.)
Trade could then happen automatically either after the click of a button or after a trading unit would reach another player’s marketplace.

The downside of this would be the huge and complex screen that the player needs to take care of during a running game. But I think that this would be manageable if the player could choose a default starting setting because then it would just require a few clicks every now and then to change certain settings.

[WarpStorm]

You could add a corruption feature in which all productivity of your empire goes close to zero after you get a certain size.

[XarXo]

RTS usual mistakes

Some common mistakes in a RTS game, and (of course) a possible solution:

1) Windows. Never use windows in a game of this type, while you're looking the window something awful is happening in your border!

For solve this, include a queue of messages/pendent assets.
What to do with these messages? Look at 2!

2) Map zoomable. When you start a diplomatic encounter the map zooms in a secondary position and the heads of the leaders and option boxes in the top. So, you can talk and see what is happening.

3) Boring at the end. When you have an amaizing wall, full of resources, defense towers in each corner... And the enemy is doing... Nothing... You can destroy'em in a few seconds but you can't destroy all this work!!

4) Strange things. Is interesting that the game include strange things that only appears each 100 games (no aliens/God, please!). The idea is make'em using the normal units, for example, a civ called Atlantis appears in a far island an have a strange science bonus. If it sinks or not, is your decision, but 6000 years is a lot of time to stay without a great disaster.

5) Correct scale. Is ridiculous see an airbase with F-15 and a tree that is taller than an entire city-tile. If you make a city, an instant road appears connecting to something near and some houses appear in the road. Think in Transport Tycoon city development.

6) Maps. Why the maps are always a single big square (or exagon like in The Settlers)? Different shapes (world shape, multilevel like in Test of Time and Call to Power 1, four-connected, etc...) Of course the better is the normal one, but always is good to have a big of variation not only in sizes.

7) Advanced Diplomacy. Possibility of make marriages between kingdoms (the MOST used diplomatic rule in ALL the history!!!),
etc...

8) Out-of-the-game. Some tribes are better with you or worse deppending of another games (game history), but always in a correct balance (so, 1 for you, 6 hate you, 6 love you and 5 are neutral). So, If you are a pig with Celts, Celts hate you till in a game you are good with them. With this the computer have the same reason that a human player to kill you.

9) Historical accurancy vs Number of tribes. Like in "other games" (hehehe ) there are problems with this. But look Age of Empires II, there are Teutons and nobody said "oh, I want Germans...". The great idea could be 18 tribes that evolve in name, face of leader, architecture, etc (but not alway all in all the era changes!)... So, if there are 5 eras (for example):

The Celts -> Celtic Empire -> The Irish -> The Irish -> Ireland

Also the player can choose from a list of possibilities or make a custom one (at the moment, or better including it in a well performed editor ). So we can maintain us as English or change to Americans when the 17th century starts. With this the game can cover large empires/countries like China or USA and some than in the past where big ones and now disappeared or they are a 3rd world nation (like Mongolia, Ghana, Incans/The Birú, Crown of Aragon/Catalans ).

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[yin26]

Brian:

I forgot to highlight earlier that deathmatch isn't quite what I meant by taking away / automating villies with a slide bar.

In deathmatch, you have basically a 'buy anything you want and build as much as you want as fast as you can click' kind of thing. I don't like that kind of game at all. I *want* to micro my economy -- but in a far more interesting way. What I was hoping to see is a situation in which the player would be able to focus on more important decisions throughout the game: diplomacy, upgrades, research, etc.

Of course, those decisions would need to be made more interesting: In diplomacy, for example, perhaps you could have royal marriage options that make attacks on each other impossible for a time. In upgrades, units could have branching paths -- each with distinct abilities and weaknesses such that the rock, scissor, paper dynamic would be far more interesting (do I upgrade my archers along the path toward snipers, which takes longer but will eventually produce units with massive range, or do I take a more immediate reward of some kind?).

In research, the added thinking time given back to the player who doesn't need to micro 100 villies would be particularly welcomed and, I think, really would set RoN apart from the pack. I think virtually ALL of us want a superior Civ3 in real-time with kick-butt graphics. You've got the graphics. What remains to be seen, though, is if the thinking part of our brains will be given enough time (and enough options) to make far deeper decisions with far more interesting results than we currently see with the run of RTS's on the market.

Best of luck!