Rise of Nations -- Time for your ideas!

[yin26]

BR:

First, it's GREAT to finally know what you guys have been working on! I had planned to drop by the COEX (cool place, eh?) here in Korea to hear your keynote speech and to try to trick you into revealing some of these details earlier, but life just got in the way. =) I wish you the absolute best of luck with RoN. I enjoyed watching your DaRq games way back when. To this day, you were one of very few gamers I EVER saw actually use tactics like gathering relics and running your troops back to get healed, etc. Anyway...

My most pressing idea at the moment is, I think, one that could profoundly change the pace of the game for the better and help make RoN actually open to more strategic possibility for the cross-over TBS players:

Eliminate peasants.

Yes. I know. Sounds crazy. But hold on.

As with Disciples 2 (outstanding game!), you should instead employ the use of 'planting rods' that claim territory. These rods (or outposts or whatever) can be destroyed, of course, so must be defended constantly. Now, any resources in your claimed area that ALSO have the requisite building near the resource will automatically generate the resource. End of story. Faster gathering will depend on improved tech (thus more strategy) instead of pumping out more villies. Multiple resource buildings sharing the same radius should NOT generate more resources. This will encourage expansion and more map awareness instead of simply hording a section of the map with mass vills.

Other benefits would be clear: THE single most demanding aspect of the recent slew of RTS games is the villies that gather paradigm. Not only does this aspect reward the click-festers, it also makes for some absolutely tedious middle and end-games that result in people running villies all over the map, etc.

In this system, you could set the 'land claimed victory percentage' to anything you want so that a person who claims, say, 70% of the land with the rods simply wins. He need not kill all enemy villies or towns or anything else. It would be up to the enemy to attack the rods. In other words, turtles can't win here. They'd HAVE to get out and, at minimum, keep the enemy from gaining his land percentage.

Also, any land that you are gathering resources from that loses its rod-radius would no longer produce resources for you. This, IMO, would open a LOT more strategic opportunities at a fraction of the micro-management investment than producing and roping villies all over the place.

Finally, not having to worry about 50-100+ villies will free the gamer from tons of tedium and thereby allow him to focus on tech progression decisions and better battle plans.

Please, please, please consider this change. I honestly think it is one thing that would move RoN into a very nice position between RTS click-fests and honest-to-goodness strategy gaming.

[yin26]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the way EE used morale bonuses on home turf was quite excellent. The claimed-land concept here would work perfectly with such an idea, and perhaps the original claimed land area could give such a high bonus that rushing would be all but impossible, though lands claimed further away from that point and closer to enemy-claimed land would yield less and less of a bonus.

Again, curtails rushing yet encourages expansion. Cool!

[m_m_x]

hi Brian
my bizarre ideas are:

units:
I would like to have a little hero unit that will represent me (with my name on it),like in "AOK" when u have the king there,and like stronghold but I want this unit to have bigger part in the game like:
-at first it will be nice if I could built my unit from scratch like how it looks,what special abilities he has,its voice.
I would like to go on with that unit and have an RPG element of experience points and levels i go up with it.
it would be nice to have mini battles with that hero units with the enemy hero unit to solve issues without big scale wars, or just to make my name well known threw out the globe that i defeated "Brian leader" in a sward fighting and make my citizens happy (like sward fighting or shooting fighting)..

-another thing i would like to see are-celebrity units
let me explain:units that do special things like surviving a long hard combat or are the first to discover new civilization get a celebrity status. this status makes other people happy,like moving this kind of unit into a city will raise its happiness.
-take over at enemy units take over on cannons tanks and other vehicles could be nice.
-be able to do spy/terror acts like assassination,kidnapping celebrity(special) units(will make the enemy citizens unhappy).

combat:
-creating and saving combat doctrines(it would be nice to name that moves as i wish)-like make a special combat move of 3 tanks going from the south to attack x facility while the main force will wait x time and attack from the north y facility and smaller infantry force wait till main force destroy the facility and attack form the west in order to destroy/kidnap their leader-i could save that move and name it like "mmx kidnap doctrine" and commit it by a simple click button.-it would be nice to trade war doctrine with other players in multiplying.
-create and finance a little army which will be unidentified and could attack which enemy i choose and make terror acts.
those groups will be neutral and have their own base and will be controlled by the player. it will lunch attacks on other civilizations without you getting involved into a full scale war.

economy:
-be able to sell army units to other civs
-pirating ships,trade convoys would be nice.
-giving lawns and taking lawns from other civs.

interface and graphics:
-its would be nice to see rods between cities to get the feel that there is an empire im controlling.
-cities have to be much bigger and massive visually then other special building that should be a lot smaller.
-i really like to see some animals,fish,and birds on the map.
-it would be nice to have an option to take notes in game of things i want to take care of.

multiplying:
-an humiliating option:
let me explain-i would like to have an option to choose from (a menu) how to humiliate my rivals after wining (at the end of the game,in interactive way for x period of time:
-throwing eggs on the rivals hero unit,see the unit cry's and scream after every egg i hit.
-kicking/slapping him x times while his screaming.
-make him a slave-do things that i told him like
jump on one leg screaming i am a donkeys a..
-make him wear woman clothes.
-make him eat gross stuff
-hang him
-burn him
-shoot him with a shooting squad.
-plying the next game wearing a ti shirt with the word looser on it and when he enters a city of his own there is a sound of people laughing...
oh man that would be so satisfy to humiliate the losers after a good multiplying game. the looser must stay on line to see himself humiliate!!!-he can choose not to get humiliate and pay x a mount of money in the next game or start the next game with a penalty that he choose (less units,less something..)

[The Rusty Gamer]

Originally posted by yin26
Eliminate peasants.

One really great thing about this idea is that it would make the game far less process speed and RAM hungry because it doesn't have all those peasants to keep track of and process meaning we could have bigger maps or more civs or more other neat features like 360 degree rotation.

[Dauphin]

What is the projected system requirements, given its real time you would want to eliminate the superfluous calculations and sprawling armies that you can't control. Having generalised orders with many small units acting as a single large unit, may help.

Simple idea you probably had, but supply limits in StarCraft were annoying.

[Sandman]

Multiple pathes to victory. Trader, Warrior, Scientist, Builder, every player should be allowed to win in their own way.

A more down to earth suggestion. Verbal commands that you can shout at your units. Pressing 'R' will shout 'Retreat!' and all the units on the screen will immediately flee the battlefield regardless if you've selected tham or not.

Other variants could be:

'Attack!':Self explanatory.
'Defend!':Units defend buildings and larger units
'Burn it to the ground!':Target buildings
'Spread out':Self explanatory
'Form up': Units cluster together

The key to this idea is good unit AI.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Brian Reynolds
Thanks, guys--keep 'em coming! A number of you will already be happy.

Brian

Come on Mr. Reynolds, you are playing with us, aren't you? With a game quite developed you don't need "general" suggestion, only focused idea on the line of the already developed main game design.

As your last comment seems to reveal to me, you already have most game part in place, and are mostly looking for raising players interest.

You are a professional, and already know lot of CTPII/CIV III fans suggestion (included "The List" made from many Apolytoner). You surely know some suggestion will nicely match your game, and will be an easy prize to let people believe they make a great part in game development.

Now, if you really want help, I suppose you should ask for more specific area: tell us some general design background and many of us will be proud and happy to fill any gap with so many game features that the "next Yin" will need a dedicated, large Hard disk just to store the whole summary

Best regards from the "old" Admiral.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by yin26

My most pressing idea at the moment is, I think, one that could profoundly change the pace of the game for the better and help make RoN actually open to more strategic possibility for the cross-over TBS players:

Eliminate peasants.

Yes. I know. Sounds crazy.



Faster gathering will depend on improved tech (thus more strategy) instead of pumping out more villies. Multiple resource buildings sharing the same radius should NOT generate more resources. This will encourage expansion and more map awareness instead of simply hording a section of the map with mass vills.

Yin (BTW, hi Yin!), your idea is quite a radical change and I like it, but game designers and/or graphic artists must find something to avoid a couple of risks:
1) to have a world empty of civilian activity (only military troops on the map? not my cup of tea, thanks)
2) to find an alternate way to show the resource gathering efficience, as for replace common workers (usually a visible marker on the map to show used area) as for display at a glance the effect of tech advance/buildings on resources gathering.

That said, keep the idea on the spotlight and improve it, I bet it's worth the effort.

[pg]

eliminating peasants/settlers(and the like) would go along with what i'd like to see. i think a game with a simulation element where you can directly and indirect influence but not control like a god is interesting. two other small ideas, maybe combat/war in a different interface(think games like conquest of the new world or ogre battle for snes/n64). obviously, it'd have to be a lot different, but i don't like the clickfest of rts, and would prefer a innovative, and unique system which is more tactical/stragetic. second idea, which is already used in many games - the ability to record demos of players matches in single/multi games(like aoe2/starcraft/quake).

[Jack_www]

Someone in here already mention a commander type unit should be put into the game and I was going to add some ideas on top of that. I would like to see a unit that you could make that you can group units with. For land units the unit could be a general, for sea units flagship of an adimaral, for air units not sure but sometype of units along the same lines as the other two. When you group the units together you can use the general to issue orders to all of the units that are grouped with the general. Also as was already stated the general could give attack bonus to the units grouped with it. I would also be good if a large number of units be grouped with the general type unit. This way we could controll large number of units easly and give the general unit smart AI were it will select targets for its units to attack.

I would like to see that units would need supplies as well, and have a unit that can filled up with supplies and supplies units within a given range. A feature on this unit were you can have it go back to base fill back up with supplies and return to the area were it was before would be nice. And having units already be able to carry supplies would be a good idea as well. I have seen this in other rts games and that is what I am basing it on, and it works quit well in the games I play.

I would also like the ablilty to give allies units. I wish so much that Civ3 had it in the game. And a deploymicy system similar to civ2 and civ3 would be great. And be able to trade or sell your cities or terrority with other players. Anther thing that would be nice is a feature were you could claim a certain peice of land as part of our own empire, similar to what the early explores often did in the New World for the countries they came form. That way if you see a nice spot of land that is good to settle or has a resouce that you need you could claim the land and settle sortly there after. Although I would say that there should be a time limit on how long the claimed land would be ours and limt on how much land you can claim, so players dont abuse it and claim large tracks of land for the whole game and limit the other players to a small area.

I would say you could take the claimed land with millitary units, but would start a war with the person who has claimed it.

[lord of the mark]

the elimanate peasants idea is interesting and i take it note of it as it relates to some ideas i am thinking about -what is the nature of cities in a game like this- how abstract or granular should the city model be.

Let me give 3 examples - civ2, AOE, Caesar3.

A civ2 city is an abstraction, but is also an integrated whole. The efficiency of resource collection in a civ2 city depends on happiness, city improvements and land improvements. Happiness is dependent on city improvements, and extent of trade. Value of city improvements depends on population size, resources, trade, etc. All interconnected, giving cities unique "personalities" as any expereinced civ2 player can tell you. Yet highly abstract - a market stands for the one market in size one city, or the entire local commercial network in sixe 15 city, etc. Peasants are just the one 25 or so workers who stay and do what you want. All the internal transactions - the steps in production, in internal distribution, etc are completely abstracted out.

An AOE city is granular - you actually see peasants collecting wood, building buildings, etc. On the other hand it is not an integral city. there is no "happiness" All collected resources go into a central pool, and can be drawn on throughout the empire, with no need for transport, so there is no particuar reason to locate buildings in any particular relationship to one another. You have a lot of buildings, and resource collection activities (as in other RTS games) but no cities.

In a city builder like C3, you have both granularity and an integral city. Yes you see the citizens movin around in their activities, but you also have all the production and distribution links modeled, and happiness as well. Of course you also have to micromanage to no end, even the exact street layout for effiency, but then thats the point of a city builder, isnt it. For reasons of both micromanagment and computer resources this doesnt work with multiple cities. An empire builder must be more abstract, at least past a certain point.

which leads to the issues of different ages and stages of development- for a neolithic settlement it would be nice to see the actual movement of villagers, since the actual detailed deployment of such should effect the success of the settlement. A bronxe age civ with several cities, should perhaps be more abstract, with city and regional layouts still mattering, but without following individual villagers - would a bronze age king of a multi city state really micromanage things to that level? An iron age empire should be made up of something more or less like civ2 cities, or imperialism (or EU?) provinces. Perhaps at some point with even less micromanagement.

LOTM

[yin26]

Those of you who would still like to see villie activity, you could just have automated villies that come from the resource buildings themselves. They cannot be attacked. Instead, if the resource building is destroyed, they disappear. Or if the land is claimed, so will the resource building. You'll still see a (set according to your tech level) number of villies doing their automated tasks but that will be for effect only. The precise number of resources will be harvested regardless based on your placement of the buildings and your tech level.

And you can turn this option off to save on CPU cycles...

[Jeje2]

Yin: Your idea sounds good. Would certainly reduce the number of people running around.

Then to some small desires I can think of right now

1. In the endgame I would like to see the whole map - come on spying satellits exist. (Maen the map structure & buildings - not where every unit is)
2. In defence hold has to be hold. (In Settlers III I used to buils two lines for defense with swords, spears in first row and arrowmen in backline. Idea was to keep this structure constant, but the sword&spearmen were all the time leaving formation to chase somne ghost. NOT GOOD)
3. One or two random events per nation per game. (Like this consept from Europa Universalis, they just have them way too frequently.) The random event can also be something good. Ex. A general has died/ a new one has born, scientific breakthrough...
4. Utilize ála SMAC & EU faction settings that affect different aspects of game.
5. Have military strategies evolve over time (History has time after time proven that the winner isn't always that side with most men etc.)
6. Allow formation of groups (like in EU or Settlers III), but also make it possible to give all types of commands to a group even if only a small number of the group can do it. Ex. A group of ten units, 5 footmen, 4 archers and a catapult. When selecting the group I want to be able to give command to the catapult of bombing somethig. Rest of the units just have to understand that this comand isn't for me.
7. If multiple cities make them differ - don't allow all cities do everything. (Utilize the Colonization system, but make wagontrain smarter )
8. If you have a campaign (like War&Starcraft or Settlers) mode, please allow the outcome of one affect the next one somehow.

Finally I'm right now a little concerned about the short lenght of a game. (I like somewhat longer ones)

P.S. Brian: I refound your Colonization game - know what, it's really a damm good game. Like the gamesystem a lot, with specialists and every city cann't be producing everything aspects.

[Jeje2]

Q: Will RoN be a pure RTS like settlers and War&Starcraft or a semi-RTS like Europa Universalis I&II and UFO: Apocalypse?

[yin26]

Jeje: Thanks for the PM, friend. =) I tried to write you back, but I'm away from my normal computer and, well, the dog ate my reply. LOL! But you are the reason I am here haunting Brian with an idea to remove villies from the game!

Still, I understand people would like to 'see' some kind of economic activity, but I think a few token, automated villies with animated resource buildings would be more than enough. Wow. Just the thought of not micro-ing those villies makes me very excited. And if it reduces system drag, how much better!

In other words, something close the Disciples 2 in terms of 'fewer but more important' units ... only real time and different subject material.

Speaking of, Brian: How about units that upgrade according to two factors -- paid upgrades AND experience upgrades?! Now THAT would also go very far in adding some honest to God strategy to the game if, through careful leadership, you could raise up a handleful of truly battle-hardened death machines instead of just cluster fighting willy-nilly.

Some of the experience modifiers could be:
* Increase morale of nearby units +x%
* Nearby units heal at +x%
* Nearby units attack at +x%
* More hitpoints +x%, etc.

You could click on the individual unit and spend its experience points that have been earned in battle by a simple click on the field you want increased!

This would bring a WHOLE LOT more meaning to keeping your units alive in battle and make the guy who wastes his units even with a superior economy lose to the guy who uses his units more wisely.