Alright, nice feedback already! Based on all the places I posted this, Procedural is in the lead so far but plenty of time for my favorite (Religion) to catch up!
Ok, let me answer some questions:
Map Replacement - drag and drop. Fire up the editor, load your file, drag off the background image, drag on your new one. You'd doubtless need to move around the POIs so they make sense again, unless you just made an exact to scale copy of the given map that you are replacing. It really is that simple.
Yeah the map... I don't know... we spent literally 6 monthes of time going back and forth on map styles. This is what we could do with our time, money, and talent. I am a terrible, terrible artist and our maps either tended to be too abstract or too cartoonish. This was a good compromise, and I'm generally pleased with how it looks. Would we ever replace it? Procedural generation will REQUIRE a tileset to be functional, so that will necessarily produce an alternative map. Finding portrait artists is easy, but finding 2D tile artists who can capture the type of look and feel we want is surprisingly hard.
On a side note, as much as I initially was wary of everyone wanting Procedural Generation, we did a POC this morning as I described it and I kind of am sold on the idea. The major hurdle is graphics - thankfully the POI system once again makes the kind of algorithms you need to do genealogical generation shockingly simple. Endless mode still doesn't really hold much of an appeal, but seems very popular - I'd love someone to try and sell me on the idea so I can better implement it.
Additional information on the Old Ones... I'm mixed? I do want, as you were saying, a bit of the mystery to their play - but in actuality their is a standard ability tree once you get in game so it may just be unnecessary obfuscation. I'll make a note on the Tester's feedback form to review, but it will be low priority because we obviously are cramped for time now. Maybe I'll just drop in the ability tree view as an overlay?
The modding is simple, simple, simple - think of the Civ 4 In-Game editor, it's that easy. We dump to XML via helper classes for every object, and any serialized variable can be affected and called in the editor. We do NOT have Lua scripts currently supported, it was always our intention to go back and add that in but it has fallen by the wayside - but the level of functionality you could GENERALLY achieve with lua scripting is accessible in the editor. I think people will generally be happy with what they can achieve, and if not we have everything exposed so it's relatively trivial for us to extend modding support even further.
Funny that you mention "Be Sauron and Stop the Ringbearer", I would say the true genesis for this idea, even outside of its pandemic-style branch, was the board game War of the Ring - which did such a good job of marrying theme and mechanics that I just sing its praise to anyone who will listen.
More questions!
1) Naval Combat actually doesn't exist right now, we still have to develop it (all things military were the last elements to be added). What exists today is Naval Zones, which (if a nation has a boat in) you can convoy over - great for rapid movement. Naval battles will be core in most maps, given how rapidly it allows you to move troops. It's much, much, much simpler than land battles, pretty much "navies contest eachother" and whoever wins controls the zone. Auto-blockade for hostile ports, etc.
2) The Chosen One cannot die without your interference, fate has a plan for him - even if that plan ends with you slaughtering him. Any quest he is involved in that you do not contest he at the very least "Succeeds" at it, even if not overwhelmingly. However, if he does die by a passive effect of yours, let's say you left an Orc Assassin at a POI and he quests there and the Assassin gets him (VERY UNLIKELY unless he was already hurt severely) you get a message popup informing you of his death and giving glory to the minion who did it. You will absolutely be informed.
3) You can capture the Chosen One - capture assigns that Hero to the agent who captured him who can then torture him, perform rituals, sacrifice, drag him back to the Seal for a little dip in a pool of evil, etc.... however, and this is really, really fun - it generates a Threat Quest for all heroes, especially friends, and if its the Chosen One the threat is HIGH. So that agent is going to have a ton of people hunting him down to rescue the Chosen One. Some minions grant traits that drive captives insane, but mostly they just stay with you until freed or "dealt with", though they can also trigger escape events under certain circumstances.
On another note, you can "imprison" heroes if you infiltrate the Guardhouse of a city, or if you are Welcome at Court. They generally sit around until released, sometimes with a negative attribute gained, although you can also "have them executed" as another action. These actions, as usual will raise suspicion and create threat quests in that area. Pulling strings is always dangerous. It's useful because it appears on the Challenge screen, so if a hero is getting "too close" you can have your corrupt guards toss him in the dungeon.
Honestly I didn't want people to rename heroes and agents, but my business partner convinced me it made sense. So yes, you can just click on their name and rename it. Can't rename Kings though, just Heroes and Agents. I could add the same thing for kings as well.
Oh man, you really want me to spoil the Chosen One? Well he gets early a "hidden" trait that is called "Fate Wills It" where he always passes quests. We wanted him to be at an advantage, but not be a definitive Chosen One. So he'll have a string of successes but so could another Hero. He gains additional skill-ups and has a higher rate of learning traits and skills, but this is all again non definitive elements. When he gets to level 4 (each class has 3 levels, so 4 is his first Tier 2 Class) he gets a unique ability based on the class, and this is when Prophecy quests begin to pop up. The most important one is where he "accepts his destiny" then he starts gaining his obviously chosen one abilities, and where special events start triggering around him and with the Old Ones. Late Game he's a beast, having gained double stat gains for 9 levels, many traits, tons of friends, powerful spells (all depending on his archetype) - and his special events are game changing. For example, he can declare a "Haven" for people which makes a single POI immune to all of your abilities and drastically increases its order. Very, very annoying depending on wisely the AI uses it (right now I'd say it's not ALWAYS the best hoice by the AI but we're working on that). He can also follow high level campaigns that may bring him to be the King of one of the nations, to discover an ancient weapon that was sonce used against you, to ascend to another plane where he returns changed - there's 6 right now and each one is pretty brutal.
If you want more I can give a list of some of the abilities, for example as a Dragoon he gains Ardent Defender which means he defends ALL heroes who wish to be defended in a battle. It's a little hard to imagine why that's good right now (until you see Dev Video 3), but in combat mages go down in one hit - but they are guarded, having one extremely beefy hero blocking all damage to their mages can be enough to lose a battle.
The last thing I'll say about the Chosen One is he has a fantastic event chain with Sisyphus, very fun to play out.
Yep, I get what you're saying about feedback. ALL major events pop up on the right side of the screen - even bigger ones actually appear in massive text on the screen itself (like "war"). But there is some room there where events may go on without your knowledge, such as a hero dying or going insane - this may occur as part of their random questing and you won't know until you bump into a crazy hero. I think that's going to remain, otherwise the amount of information coming in would be overwhelming. "heroes" are really pretty mundane until they hit a level of fame where you always see them on the map, think of them mostly as threadbare adventurers when they're at low levels.
The other element of feedback, to be specific to what you said, is that they list why. So if Cylaria declares war on Aventura, they will post a list of provocations so you know "oh hey, I made that happen." You will see that regardless of infiltration.
Infiltration is mostly to see internal political maneuverings and to see what heroes are doing. So in the example above, you saw "War was declareD", if you had infiltration in the capital you would FIRST see a "Political Summit" where they decide what to do - with sufficient influence you can push them to war, though they may also declare war of their own accord.
Aside from politics, it will show you Quests and Campaigns. Ignoring quests can be "ok" as a strategy, but Campaigns (large multi-step quests) are where you want to know ALL of them if possible, and plan to stop which one most affects your strategy.
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Topic: That which sleeps- Kickstarted! (Read 372617 times)