One thing that I'd add to this is that it might be nice to have a couple of variants of each homeworld if you're starting with the traditional EFS FoW on homeworlds. The area around your capital/agro-industrial base is known and fixed, but the murky reaches held by rebels are one of 4-5 variants. Now, if you're starting with mapped homeworlds, or unrebelious ones, this is less desirable. And in any case, like random maps more generally, this wouldn't be something I'd recommend worrying about implementing early on.
Well one thing I was considering was making it so that all 5 players have the same homeworld, earth. I've got it so that worlds can have different sizes so I was thinking that earth would be bigger then even the largest non-earth world. Each player thus should have 5 or so cities on earth, in the ancient homeland of their dynasties (i.e. Mesoamerica, Eastern Mediterranean, Persia, India and southern/middle China.) These cities couldn't be attacked until the endgame, making it so that a player can't lose everything until that point. I figure there's two different ways this could play out. One way is players start with just their earth territories so the rest of the worlds can be randomly assigned and that's fine. Alternatively each player could get a medium-sized homeworld beyond earth, these could be randomly assigned every game meaning that you don't ever know which homeworld the other players got until you go looking.
Well. I would say that with this, I'd be inclined to assume the guild would treat this as "proscribed tech" insofar as they'd try to protect their monopoly, and could embargo you and/or seek to raze your independent spaceyards (possibly just from orbit if they lack ground forces, possibly with raiders if they're not allowed to have capital ships). I'd expect they could reasonably auto-detect (or have a chance to detect) constructions moving towards independent spacecraft, or catch them in-flight, so there's less of the question of how they'd know (aside from other players ratting you out via map sharing) than with a hypothetical Inquisition. I suppose they could also handle "innovators" by demanding you purchase a space flight charter (and/or employ their pilots) before starting with embargos and bombardments.
That's an interesting idea. I figure they'd be pretty uninterested in fighting for fightings sake but if they see a chance for profit through blackmail or the need to kill the competition they should go for it. Of course it could also be possible to go heretic and ally with the guild (I figure they're not too happy about the prospect of the Sky Spirit returning) against the church if you so chose.
I'd also assume you'd face some increased risk of Demon interception without guild/Fleet protection. Or possibly guild/Fleet interception, depending on your relationship with those parties. Or Inquisitorial "cargo inspections", hehehe...
Oh, that offers and interesting possibility! Space combat could take the form of boarding actions in transit. The guild and deamons would send out pirate and the fleet would send marines. They'd attack your ships and your units would fight it out. That would provide for space combat without neutralizing the importance of armies.
How do you anticipate the Fleet will relate to the guild vis-a-vis space travel? I assume they have their own transports and/or capital ships. Would the guild have any capital ships, or would that be a strictly-enforced Fleet prerogative?
I don't think the guild has warships that can match the fleet simply because the guild doesn't see fighting as profitable. They chill out in space and try to run away from a fight. I suppose they'd fight as mercenaries, but they dont keep warships around for that.
I've been pondering the guild lately and have started to think that maybe they're allied with a third alien race, this one exclusively spacefaring. Like the Demons, the Spacefarers used to work for the Betrayers before contact with the humans, transporting stuff between worlds. Back during the Second Awakening of the Prophet the Demons fought on the side of the Betrayers but the Spacefarers didn't care about their masters and happily deserted them as soon as they saw how strong the humans were. The Spacefarers just fled into space, living on their homeships and trading with both sides. Some enterprising humans made a pact with the Spacefarers trading ships for resources, manpower and diplomatic inroads. These humans and aliens lived together in space, serving as the middlemen of the empire and surviving demons alike.
You can't beat the guild so after the war humanity quickly let it's expensive space technology decay, relying on the guild. This created a huge problem when the demons launched their retaliation because the guild was uninterested in helping the humans. They planned to continue selling to both sides and then work for the victors. They certainly weren't interested in the fighting that troop transit to earth would entail so the prophet ordered the creation of the fleet to fill the gap. Unlike after the first war, humanity learned its lesson and kept the fleet around for military reasons (although economically you can't beat the guild). The guild tolerates the existence of the fleet since it's not exactly in the same market as them and they dont want to piss of their customers. While the guild tries to offer economic transport and avoid fights, the Fleet is specifically tailored towards transporting troops into a warzone.
What do you anticipate as the role of the ministries? I'm asking particularly the in regards to the Fleet, as no space combat suggests they're going to be rather different than in EFS. Free transport? Bombardment? Withdrawal of protection from systems IOT "encourage" Demonic visitation (or to create de facto guild embargos if the Fleet provides security for them)?
I was thinking cheap transport into warzones and bombardment but withdrawl of protection from systems is a clever idea too. Alternatively that could be reversed and say that they can only protect a few systems (depending on how much people tithe), giving them protection from demons and economic boosts due to security. Maybe there would be imperial marines too.
The army of course gives you a sweet army of high tier units, paid for out of everybody's tithes. You can go a conquering with these and the conquered territories are owned by you, not the army.
The eyes naturally give you invisible inquisitor units which can't attack or be attacked. These spies can either be put on planets or in space. If they are put in space, they'll tell you when units take guild transport between worlds they orbit but wont tell you about non-guild transport. I'm not sure if players will be able to make spies, but if so inquisitors can probably flush out spies and kill them.
The players choose how much to tithe to the church, then the high bannerlord pays the tithes out to the three ministries. If they get more tithes then their units require for upkeep they will produce more units on earth. If tithes dont cover their upkeep the player controlling them has to pay the extra cost but can also choose to disband units (otherwise not an option).
Author
Topic: Five Banners, EoFS remake in progress (take to the seas) (Read 15936 times)