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[KingDinosaurGames]

I got it work well by turning off your waking timers, so you always stay at One Orb (your starting strength).  This means that the "time-bomb" element of Sage research never triggers (Sage's get a research imperative the more wake you are, signifying 'disturbances in the force' or similar reasoning, mostly its for balance), so you really have a world that just plays out as normal.  The only thing that triggers endgame processes are heroes that get curious and poke around the Seal, which makes sense for an endless challenge game.  Pump up the number of heroes, and you have a fairly good challenge scenario - I'll keep testing it out when I get tired of coding but it might actually be fun.    I may give the player MORE agents though, since with all those heroes you'll need some method of more direct conflict.

RE: the Chosen One, it's VERY resource intensive to hunt down the Chosen One early (you get prophecy pieces throughout the game that makes it easier to pin down who it is, not to mention he'll start to do 'chosen one'esque actions) so the rewards should correspond to that.  Honestly at this point it almost never viable to go early Chosen One hunting, unless you are one of the Old Ones that can easily corrupt people, gaining a corrupted Chosen One is devastating to hero morale - or you rush gaining one of the two 'hunter' agents.

[Cthulhu]

Oh, that kind of endless mode sounds pretty interesting.  I wasn't sure what endless mode entailed before.  Could be fun to just play conventional villain for a while, screwing around with different plots to take over and fighting heroes with more normal stuff.

[Shadowgandor]

This all sounds really good! I hope the world will feel "alive" enough

[Zangi]

@Endless Mode: Would you consider an option to... feign defeat?  When all seems lost... the Chosen One's armies are now knocking on the doors to your seal... can you fake your defeat? 
And lie low for the next 1000 years, semi-simming the redevelopment of the world.  When the Chosen One and the likes are long gone, you awaken once again, to continue your work, for revenge against the descendants of those who bested you, specifically hunting down the bloodline of the Chosen One and the Heroes who wronged you.  (Or choose another Old One to play as.)

Well, maybe as DLC... >.>

[Xantalos]

If we do get an option to feign defeat or something, I'd probably try to pull a Sauron, to be honest.

[Cthulhu]

@Endless Mode: Would you consider an option to... feign defeat?  When all seems lost... the Chosen One's armies are now knocking on the doors to your seal... can you fake your defeat? 
And lie low for the next 1000 years, semi-simming the redevelopment of the world.  When the Chosen One and the likes are long gone, you awaken once again, to continue your work, for revenge against the descendants of those who bested you, specifically hunting down the bloodline of the Chosen One and the Heroes who wronged you.  (Or choose another Old One to play as.)

Well, maybe as DLC... >.>

That gives me another idea.

Maybe you can leave some treasure.  A magic ring, perhaps.  One of the would-be heroes loots it and takes it far away after your apparent defeat, whereupon it activates and creates some kind of living structure that feeds on humans.  When it gets big enough its inhabitants can do a ritual to summon you.

You could call it...  A...  "Dark Citadel."

Jokes aside, it is a cool idea.  Or maybe even just adding that functionality into endless mode as a normal result of losing.  Big Bads don't die, they just get put back into the ground.  Let the game simulate for a few generations, maybe with some genealogy systems in place if they dont' already exist, then come back.

It's definitely probably more suited for a long-term post release kind of thing.

[KingDinosaurGames]

The theme of the game is meant to be cyclical in its narrative, as in this all simply occurs again and again - that being said the only functionality that exists between games is one Old One who can summon forth a corrupted Hero from a past game. 

HOWEVER, the idea of "feigning defeat" is a major strategy in the game, just not in the way you are suggesting.  The system of clues that exists will lead Heroes to try and figure out "what is going on", and if two or more agents are seen working together they get "conspiracy clues" which make them think something larger is afoot.  Now if you have the Rake and the Hermit working together, that will simply be confusing, but if the Rake and the Hermit seem to be working with The Shadowmere (a powerful agent), they may conclude that the Shadowmere is the great threat.  The Alliance may form if the threat is sufficient, and they will battle him - if he falls and you do NOT raise sufficient suspicion about your own involvement, then when he dies Global Awareness falls greatly, and the Alliance will disband.  "Nothing to see here, go about your business"

It is a supremely fun mechanic, though it is honestly the buggiest part of the AI right now - I've had times where I was using the Orc God and literally burning down the capital of Cylaria and one of the members of the Dark Pact (a building you can make at the Seal that lets you nominate 5 agents to form a Dark Pact) died and suddenly the Alliance disbanded and Awareness dropped to 0.  Other times it fails to trigger when it should - these bugs probably won't be fixed until the demo is out and I can get a larger sample size of errors.

[Puzzlemaker]

This looks really awesome, PTW!

[KingDinosaurGames]

Jokes aside, it is a cool idea.  Or maybe even just adding that functionality into endless mode as a normal result of losing.  Big Bads don't die, they just get put back into the ground.  Let the game simulate for a few generations, maybe with some genealogy systems in place if they dont' already exist, then come back.

It's definitely probably more suited for a long-term post release kind of thing.

We will be staying far away from genealogy systems and that type of simulation - we avoided it because it adds a huge amount of testing, bug fixing, and the like with the potential for never truly doing it as well as other games which dedicate their development to it have done.  By making the game scenarios hand-crafted we've avoided all of that logic, which makes it feasible to do on an indie budget/time constraint.

That being said, if someone else was making the game I'd be asking for that too.

[Xantalos]

Don't worry, knowing the internet someone'll find a way to mod it in.

[Puzzlemaker]

By the way, signing up for news isn't sending me a verification e-mail.  Is it currently working?

[KingDinosaurGames]

Seems to be working, maybe MailChimp had a brief outage earlier (they show 99.6% uptime)

[nenjin]

Jokes aside, it is a cool idea.  Or maybe even just adding that functionality into endless mode as a normal result of losing.  Big Bads don't die, they just get put back into the ground.  Let the game simulate for a few generations, maybe with some genealogy systems in place if they dont' already exist, then come back.

It's definitely probably more suited for a long-term post release kind of thing.

We will be staying far away from genealogy systems and that type of simulation - we avoided it because it adds a huge amount of testing, bug fixing, and the like with the potential for never truly doing it as well as other games which dedicate their development to it have done.  By making the game scenarios hand-crafted we've avoided all of that logic, which makes it feasible to do on an indie budget/time constraint.

That being said, if someone else was making the game I'd be asking for that too.

So are you saying there's no randomly or procedurally generated scenarios? What elements of the game are randomly/procedurally generated? It's not a deal breaker, but this is the kind of game I would want some capacity for that to happen. I'm not the "play every single god/nation/race/scenario" kind of gamer. I tend to play, of what I see, what sounds cool or fun. So when it comes to scenario based games I tend to pick them apart once intensely then kind of move on. A lot of the Elder Ones in TWS sound fun to play but....are we talking a fixed map that has different scenarios laid over it? Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere. If that is the case, I can understand that choice too, especially if you're trying to build up the lore as identifiable instead of randomly generated names and what not. But I can say it does dent my interest a little (having not actually seen what all you can do on that map.)

Either way, I think that's a pretty honest response you gave.

[KingDinosaurGames]

You'll get a better idea about how this works over the next week, we just sent out our first two video devlogs to a couple of sites to hope they got posted and we're going to be setting them up publicly over the next few days - they cover Scenario Selection Generation (the randomization for a given scenario) and then Scenario Layout along with Map Functionality.   

I'll try and break it down - each of the scenarios is handmade, meaning the background is a static sprite(s) (the map itself) overlaid with some details.  The nations, leaders, and champions are all crafted in advance as well.  Heroes are randomly generated at game start based on a selection of variables, as are ruins (with some exceptions) and a few other elements.   

Inside of that structure Scenarios contain map variations, not just in the how the map looks (an island missing, mountains where their were plains) but also variants on the available nations, their individual settings, cultural values, and overall statistics (Such as frequency of lore, which champions exist and their agendas, what type of ruins are common, etc).  These are set by the Scenario Generation process, where you go through a series of King of Dragon Pass esque questions "Who served you most loyally, how were you sealed away, what kept you alive during your slumber, how did you interfere with teh world" type questions.  The world that results is a variant of the Scenario, but still maintains the general idea and character. 

The other point is that Scenarios are VERY easy to make, though of course it takes time to make a nicely balanced one.  We accomplished this by having the POI system.  All someone needs to do is have a "map" image, then click on any point and say 'City, Village, Ruin, etc'.  At start the game spawns all the necessary details around that point, the shields depicting value, banners for the army, dynamic naming, etc.  Create a POI, assign it to a nation, which has a leader and a culture, and that's enough for it run at a high level - you can also get down into the details of each POI and customize them further.

Using this approach, each Scenario has a unique look, feel, and overall strategy. 

We went with this approach not just because procedural generation presents its own set of challenges, but because our gaming history is greatly informed by modern Board Games (EU follows a similar path of inspiration).  Seeing the re playability that can be accomplished in a strategically designed world (see the War of the Rings board game, Twilight Struggle, Here I Stand) is inspiring, and we think we've reached a respectable level of the same with That Which Sleeps..

[Cthulhu]

I love that false death thing you described.  Really the clues and alliance-forming was the only place where it felt like the AI was going to directly oppose you on a metagame sort of level (As opposed to doing its own thing.  Having a system designed specifically to interact with you rather than the interactions being organic from the underlying AI systems.  I hope that makes sense) but it sounds like even there the player-vs-AI dynamic isn't hardcoded but organic.

Hopefully some of those videos will have popped up by the time I get home.  I'm reaching hype levels I swore I'd never let myself reach again.  I'll have to chill before I get into that "fruition will never match anticipation) kind of zone.