Fallen Empire
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@cernel I am with you in that hope that someone will take it over and fix it. I agree the eastern continent as a whole is buggy all except the one issue of Qohor is playable around but it detracts from the gameplay starting out in that continent and does make it less desirable to play. Even though I did enjoy beating Westeros with the free people!
A "broken, in-progress, incomplete, glitched" category would be nice, maybe with the notes of the problem in the notes category that way if someone wants to fix it they know the quick one. -
Progress report #2
I was rather busy in the last week, and so I made less progress than I originally intended. Also I ran Into a dead end trying to design weeping willow trees. After multiple tries, I still feel that they can't compete with the pine forest from last week. But I'm curious what you think of it. Here is the best I could do (so far):
On the other hand, I managed to complete the design of mediterranean forests. So the lands around the Polis League start looking less and less empty:
Of their unit choice hoplites, peltasts, triremes and prodromoi can be found on this map snapshot. (Note that map snapshots I upload here don't represent the initial setup.)
Let's talk about territory effects
You seem to be interested in the way territory effects will be implemented, especially Cernel seems to be concerned. Rightfully so, considering the matrix over the two-dimensional vector space which you have to handle as if it was a bilinear form which maps the boolean scalar vectors of the territory effects and the boolean scalar vectors of the units' types to the space of bonuses / maluses - the way of implementation in Large Middle Earth. Not in Fallen Empire.
It must be easy for the player to understand / calculate exactly what bonuses / penalties he gets from territory effects. Therefore, each territory has exactly one territory effect. And it must be possible to keep all the rules relevant to your current war in mind. Therefore most units don't get any bonus / penalty on most terrain types.
The planned territory effects, ordered by their frequency on the map:
- plains
- hills
- woods
- settlement
- swamp
- fortified
- cave
- pass
- crossing
The combination of two different rules will apply.
- The territory effect rule: some territory effects will give a flat bonus / penalty to a specific unit type. Crossings and passes give -1 attack to foot / mounted types. Caves give -1 to flying units. Fortified gives +1 defense to foot units and fortifications. And probably that's about it.
- The unit rule: some units will have preferred terrain, where they get a +1 bonus, or a terrain they hate, where they get a -1 penalty. Unit rule always affects both attack and defense.
Examples:
- Your hoplite has 2 attack and 3 defense. They like plains, so they have 3 attack and 4 defense.
- The same 2/3 hoplite will fight with 1/3 in a pass or a crossing, because they are foot soldiers.
- Tengu hunters are 2/1 on almost all terrain. They are flying units, so in caves they are 1/0.
- Faun archers are 1/2 support units, but they like woods, so they are 2/3 in woods.
I really hope this is not too much to discourage anyone, while being significant enough to add depth to tactical battles, and also being intuitive ("cavalry likes plains" is quite intuitive).
Evreything is subject to change. Any reference you might discover is definitely either purely accidental or just an imagination of your mind.
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@alkexr The only suggestion I would make to you about the visual look of the map would be to consider having a different shade or colour for the outline of the terrain types since you are already using white as the outline of the units. this should make the units pop more and give more definition to the terrain images.
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I like the terrain modifiers so far. My question is will all units be able to travel in all terrain types? I.E. cavalry cross mountains?
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@justbleh Mountains are entirely impassable. Aside from that (and the sea/land movement rules, of course) every unit can go anywhere.
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Impassible for air units as well, to fly over? That would add a nice realistic new dimension.
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@alkexr
These terrain effects seem easy enough. Willows are funky, cedar trees are nice. I agree the units need to have some contrast with map colors. -
Progress report #3
I planned to write a progress report at least once every two weeks, but life happens sometimes. I'm starting to catch up with myself. I managed to do a lot of useful and hard work this week, although the result isn't anything that can really be shown off.
The relief map has all these hills, mountains and trees, which change color as the territory changes owner. It looks nice, but there was a huge price to pay for it. Namely, these decorative elements have to selectively reduce the alpha value of pixels behind them. There was no easy way to do that with paint.net (why does the forum think it is a link?) that I could find, so turning the material into relief tiles was a cumbersome long process each time I modified something.
So I decided to pay all that price upfront, and wrote a nice little application that will descend into algorithm-hell for me in exchange for two clicks.
This has the added advantage that I can tweak the visual look by simply editing a config file. Two of you mentioned that units and the map need more contrast, so you probably are right. Which style do you like the most? Feel free to request me to upload any combination of these, it really is easier to render them now than to upload the rendered image to the forum
The original (well, not exactly. Enjoy the multiplicative inverse of the hyperbolic cosine.)
Lowered saturation
Using grey in the background
Different border style
Using grey AND making player color darker
In the meantime, I want to start having ideas flowing in from you about the game mechanics, so I will keep introducing more and more of it.
Let's talk about combat!
That's going to be a jump in the deep water, because I haven't even talked about the different ways you can gain units and heroes and stuff. Also this is probably the most complex part, even though I'm trying to focus on making it easier to understand than Large Middle Earth.
Every unit belongs to exactly one of the following categories (except those that don't, more on that in a later post):
- foot units are light and heavy infantry
- mounted units are folks riding on things
- beast units can be wild animals, monsters, but also include giants
- support units are primarily mages and siege weapons
- flying units are basically all air units
- fortification units are immobile defensive buildings
- ship units are... ships?
- special units are everything that really doesn't fit into either category (there will probably be like two or so of these)
Aside from the regular attack / defense stats, units can have special attacks. All special attacks
- fire once before the first round of combat
- target exactly one of the unit categories above
- are either attack only; defense only; or if they are both attack/defense, they don't have separate attack/defense strengths
- are mutually exclusive per unit (i.e. no unit can have more than one)
- unaffected by support and terrain effects
Special attacks include:
- charge: targets foot
- shoot: targets flying
- hunt: targets beast, kills the target outright even if it has multiple hitpoints
- ram: targets ship
- assassinate/dispatch: targets support, really need a good name for this. It is supposed to represent attempts to assassinate mages as well as to sabotage siege equipment. Native speakers, please help me out.
- siege: targets fortifications
Units can also give support to friendly units, or negative support to enemy units:
- spearwall: negative support to enemy mounted
- flank: negative support to enemy foot
- fortification: unclear about this. Should probably give negative support to enemy foot and mounted.
- ward: represents defensive or counter-magic, negative support to enemy support units
- wind: represents air magic, negative support to enemy flying
- fire support/ranged: haven't decided the name yet, positive support to friendly foot
- leadership: gives +1 to one friendly unit of each category. That's up to +8 if you somehow manage to get a ship and a fortification on the same territory. (Should flying ships belong to ships or to flying? If it's a ship, you can ram a galley into it, that's just stupid. If flying, archers can shoot it down, that's stupid too. Just to give you a glimpse of all the details you have to pay attention to when designing combat mechanics.)
There is also a 1-round an air battle before combat begins.
There is still more stuff to go, but the most important things have been covered, so I will call it a post. I will explain the rest of the abilities when I start introducing units that have them, it will probably make more sense then.
Evreything is subject to change. Any reference you might discover is definitely either purely accidental or just an imagination of your mind.
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@alkexr One thing you might want to be aware of is that the battle calc doesn't handle negative support for default casualties.
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@redrum Then I'll add that to the list of features I'll have to request
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From the choices you gave. I think this one best fits the bill in the unit contrast department.
The others have prettier looking cedars and terrain. However I think this one will also have the added benefit of not being hard on the eyes by appearing too busy.
But if you wanna render another version that maintains the unit contrast and has a slightly brighter terrain, might be worth while.
@alkexr said in Fallen Empire:
Progress report #3
Using grey AND making player color darker
I do like this one too.
@alkexr said in Fallen Empire:
Progress report #3
Using grey in the background -
How does the casualty get handled for negative support units, casualty selection?
Just so I'm clear on it, is the BC aware of positive support units in casualty selection?
I assume manual OOL would remedy.
@redrum said in Fallen Empire:
@alkexr One thing you might want to be aware of is that the battle calc doesn't handle negative support for default casualties.
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@general_zod Its actually more of a allied vs enemy support issue. The battle calc should handle all allied support (positive or negative) but doesn't take into account enemy support at all.
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Progress report #4
I continued tweaking the relief map. It turns out that changing player colors alone has a big impact on the overall effect. I see no reason not to stick with this version:
Xml development had been something I kept putting off, because once such a complex combat system is done, modifying anything becomes a horrifying task that almost certainly is going to cause inconsistencies. Think of deciding that a specific unit should no longer belong to mounted class, but to another one instead. Now you have to remove this unit from the target list of the charge special attack and the spearwall support attachment, as well as from all triggers associated with these (yes, there will be plenty), and probably other things one wouldn't think of. More on this here.
So I had to write another script. This seems to be my fate, having to write scipts each time I try to implement something unconventional. In any case, xml development got a green light, so finally it's not only a relief map that I can show off, but actual functional stuff as well.
The Saurian Alliance
The Saurian Alliance is a loose alliance of different reptilian and amphibian species of various degrees of sentience. The alliance is led by the intelligent humanoid reptilians who call themselves Lizards, capable of speech and using advanced weaponry. They prefer the swampy environment of the land they call home between many rivers.
Relief map of their land is incomplete, especially towns and the crossing - no idea yet what sort of art should represent them.
They have 8 types of units to choose from at the start of the game. Note that resource costs are rather arbitrary. Balancing it won't happen in the near future, there is little point at this stage.
- Lizard impaler: foot class, 3 attack, 2 defense. They have 2 movement, like most land units. Bonus in plains and settlement terrain. 1 spearwall (decrease strength of enemy mounted units by 1).
- Lizard javeliner: foot class, 2 attack, 2 defense, 2 movement. Bonus in woods and swamps. 1 hunt when attacking (special attack against beasts that kills them outright regardless of hitpoints).
- Toadrider: lizards riding enormous toads. 5 attack, 3 defense, bonus in swamps. They also have 2 charge when defending (special attack agains foot units). They have 2 hitpoints, but they are mounted, which means that unlike most 2 hitpoint units (mostly beasts), they are not vulnerable to the hunt special attack, which combined with their 3 movement, makes them really strong.
- River lurker: crocodiles hiding underwater in rivers or swamps, ambushing the enemy, causing chaos among them. 1 attack, 3 defense, 2 movement beasts, with 2 flank when defending (decrease strength of enemy foot). They also get 1 of the yet unnamed (assassinate?) special attack against support units when defending. Also they have very special terrain bonuses: +1 in swamps, and +2 in river crossings, as well as +1 bonus when attacking from water.
- Skylizard: 4 movement, 3/1 flying units (they use air movement, like all flying units). In air combat they have 1 attack and 3 defense. They give 1 attack bonus for a foot unit. Bonus in hills terrain. They can also bombard fortifications by dropping huge rocks from above: 1 siege (special attack against buildings that kills outright regardless of hitpoints).
- Giant turtle: 2 movement sea beasts with 1 attack and 4 defense. Bonus in open waters. 2 hitpoints. A whole army can travel on their backs: 6 transport capacity and 2 carrier capacity. 2 protection (decrease strength of any enemy unit).
- Sea serpent: 2 movement sea beasts that can submerge and have a first strike in combat. (Submarines, basically.) 4 attack, 6 defense, 2 hitpoints. -1 in river terrain.
- Palisade: immobile defensive buildings. 2 defense, 2 defensive rolls, bonus in fortified terrain. 2 hitpoints. 2 protection (decrease strength of any enemy unit) and 1 support (increase strength of friendly foot), each can apply to up to 2 units.
Some changes to the combat system:
- siege was rather underwhelming, so from now it kills stuff outright regardless of hitpoints
- fortification negative support is no longer a thing, instead there is protection
- support is now a generic positive support for foot units
Worthy of noting that combat uses a d8.
Let's talk about heroes!
Heroes are powerful unique units. They all have their own levelling tree consisting of 3 levels, with 2-3 branches. You can level them up by buying a high level hero that consumes the low level one. This costs XP, a resource you can collect primarily by destroying TUV (killing, basically). This, alongside with the supply cap on the number of units you can have hopefully disincentivizes passive play.
Heroes have a rather rich variety of abilities. These are completely unconstrained by any limitations that apply to normal units - they can, for example, give any amount of support to any set of unit types, while standard units are limited to abilities like spearwall, flank or ward. They are also unaffected by everything - no special attack or support or trigger affects them, unless explicitly specified in their description. They don't belong to any of the unit classes.
Let's consider Sha Lih as an example, a hero of the Saurian Alliance:
- Sha Lih: Level 1. 3/3/2, gives 2 attack to 1 lizard javeliner. Levels up to Sha Lih the ranger or Sha Lih the sailor
- Sha Lih the ranger: Level 2. 4/4/3, gives 2 attack to 1 lizard javeliner. +2 in swamp and woods. Levels up to Sha Lih the Quick or Sha Lih the Warden of Mires
- Sha Lih the Quick: Level 3. 4/4/3, gives 2 attack to 2 lizard javeliners. +1 movement to lizard impalers and lizard javeliners
- Sha Lih the Warden of Mires: Level 3. 3/3/3, 2 rolls. Gives 2 attack/defense to 2 lizard javeliners. +3 in swamps.
- Sha Lih the sailor: Level 2. 3/3/2, gives 2 attack to 2 river lurkers. +3 when attacking from water. Levels up to Sha Lih the River Warrior
- Sha Lih the River Warrior: Level 3. 3/3/2, 2 rolls. Gives 3 attack/defense to 2 river lurkers. +3 when attacking from water, +1 in swamp and crossing.
As you can see the progression is not linear: your hero does sometimes lose some abilities when levelling up, in exchange for more powerful ones. Also, level 3 heroes can get insanely strong sometimes. Sha Lih is not at all that insane at level 3.
We will need 2-3 heroes for every player, that's around 30 heroes. That's a lot, so if you have any good ideas, it has a fairly good chance of being implemented.
Evreything is subject to change. Any reference you might discover is definitely either purely accidental or just an imagination of your mind.
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@alkexr Seems pretty cool. My only feedback is that I think the colors don't contrast enough. While they look nice, its hard to tell them apart at a glance.
Is each hero going to have a unique image? As well as unique images for their upgrades?
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@redrum You mean the green of the Saurian Alliance and the neutral color? Yeah, I guess that could be changed.
Current plan is that heroes will have an image similar to a standard unit (Sha Lih will be a lizard javeliner, for example), except with a different outline. Levels will be marked with, I don't know, maybe little dots in a corner, or different outline color, something like that.
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I really like the hero levelling or respecing idea. I would guess that they are not super heroes, but still so good that they are very nice to have and can be used tactically with great advantage.
Have you mentioned if they have only 1 HP?
And what happens when/if they die?
And can the AI handle your heroes? -
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How many players? If they are more than 12, I believe it is just not possible having highly distinctive colours @redrum; still, one can take care having similar ones apart in the map.
In case of too many players, to manage distinctivness with the colours, the solution I advice is having a capturable infrastructure in all territories, that act as flag, just like the roundel you would put in a boardgame (look at "Global War 2"). -
As colors and contrast go. I suggest be careful. Once the map is populated it might get too busy if the background is also flashy.
I'm not sure where the right balance lies. But, if it were me designing, and considering my preferences on playing from a zommed out perspective. I would try to leave background as neutral as possible so units are easily identified without too much eye strain.
But obviously this is much less of an issue for the people who play zoomed in. Also max range of say air units influences, at which zoom level a player my be comfortable with.
