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[sjm9876]

Yay hello dev I have a few questions.

1) To what degree will the different nations interact? For example, will they be able to go so far as to destroy each other without player intervention, of is there a limit to how far they'll go?
2) Relatedly, as you've already mentioned modding, will it be possible to go so far as to make new civilisation types?

[KingDinosaurGames]

I absolutely love http://www.cartographersguild.com - such a great resource and a great group of talented people - if you check out our devlog you'll notice we used an algorithmic, procedural style that I learned about through The Cartographer's Guild though in the end we rejected it in favor of the more hand-crafted and fantasy themed (and easy to make) Campaign Cartographer maps.

These are all fantastic questions, most of them were answered only after significant internal dialogue in our team.  Let's hit them point by point.

1) Initial release has 15 custom agents, with the number you can recruit at any time dependent on which Old One you've chosen and how awakened your Old One currently is.   To answer the second part I need to explain slightly how Agents work, Agents are "available" once they've been corrupted, so if you can satisfy the requirements for an agent they are considered available to you even though they haven't yet been recruited onto the map.  When they are like this they offer passive bonuses, for instance if you satisfy the requirements for Baron Greywind he passively lowers Order throughout his hated cultures region, and any battles there will be assisted by some of his legions.  If you recruit him as an Active Agent onto the map, you lose that bonus.  You can corrupt Heroes and they operate similarly, giving you a spy in an adventuring group, army, or state depending on the location of the hero - when you "activate" them they join your side with their current stats intact and any "corruptible" abilities become their corrupted counterpart.  If they were in a precarious situation when they were activated, such as during combat, they will often do something deterimental to the other heroes before vanishing.  Heroes stop leveling after they join your side, and operate like all other agents.

2) All of the guilds have special actions that can be taken, turning the thieves guild into an assassin's guild is unique to the "Underworld" guilds, but some of the others have corollaries.  For instance, the Mage's Guild can be told to focus on a particular type of magic and the Merchant's Guild can begin selling mercenaries. 

3) Currently that's not possible, the Chosen One would eventually declare himself and sages would SLOWLY figure out you were awakening and they'd raid your lair.  It would be pretty easy to mod the game and allow it however.  We WERE thinking of doing a scenario that you stay in deep slumber UNTIL an adventurer stumbles over you and awakens you, but it may not work out to be fun.

4) I like how you phrased this question, there is a "cultural limit" that most nations will go to when it comes to warring with eachother.  In general they will fight limited wars for strategic objectives (which may be not so logically strategic depending on their personality) - in order to get them to commit their forces and fight a total war or a war of annihilation they'd have to really hate eachother, which CAN happen randomly but is unlikely without your intervention, either preventative (stop leader and bard type heroes from swaying public opinion and leader decisions) or purely malicious (staging border raids and massacres, inciting the peasants against a culture).

5) Yep, new civilizations are pretty easy to make.  You need a culture to assign them, and a leader to rule them then you just specify their government type and you could drop them right in.  Culture determines the "personality" of the POIs, mostly villagers, the Leader determines the political stance of the nation and its potential, and the Government Type effects its available actions when determining what course to take.

If you guys have any feedback on this stuff please let me know, I love hearing about our design choices and what you think sounds fun or what maybe we should explore doing a different way.

[Mephansteras]

This sounds promising. I'm interested to see where this goes.

[Scoops Novel]

Do you have any plans for the shadow of your former self vibe I'm getting? I mean, I'll take growing in strength as a given, but you could have things like steadily regaining your memories (especially of what caused your downfall) and erratic control of your power (what happens when Sauron has a nightmare?). Or, if your weakness comes from ancient, rusting bounds, perhaps you can only use certain aspects of your power for fear of a tightening of the chains? Then there's the labyrinth for the minotaur... the point being, the circumstances of your fall from infamy should impact your rise, and maybe give a little venom to player efforts. On that note, i recommend plenty of villain bait, such as vague prophecies disturbing your rest, as well as the less metaphysical kind of trap. Hoist the player by his own petard.

[pisskop]

I will ptw.  Right up my alley.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Do you have any plans for the shadow of your former self vibe I'm getting? I mean, I'll take growing in strength as a given, but you could have things like steadily regaining your memories (especially of what caused your downfall), erratic control of your power (what happens when Sauron has a nightmare?), even standard villain bait like vague prophecies disturbing your rest. Or, if your weakness comes from ancient, weakening bounds, perhaps you can only use certain aspects of your power for fear of a tightening of the chains? Then there's the labyrinth for the minotaur... the point being, the circumstances of your fall from infamy should impact your rise, and maybe give a little venom to player efforts. On the note of standard villain bait, i recommend plenty of it, and hoisting the player by his own petard.

Hoisting by his own petard, now that is a great expression.  Let me address that concept first before talking about the Old One theme and powers specifically.

Every action you take leaves "clues" that Heroes and Champions will be deciphering.  When a mundane agent performs a minor infiltration, the clue is only about the agent "Someone did something mundane" - nothing special.  When agents work together it leaves conspiracy clues, "The Rake is working with The Shadowmere", and when an Agent uses a power Imbued on him by the Old One it leaves "Ancient" clues that tie back to the fact that you are rising and who, exactly, you are.  A player who indiscriminately spams his abilities will end up being uncovered quickly, which can spell game over if you haven't brought the world to its knees already. 

As for the Old Ones themselves, Sample Image - this image shows how Scenarios are begun, by a series of questions asking what exactly happened that led to your fall.  Some of these will lead to situations like you mentioned, where your powers are bound by certain items or other limitations (many of these are still TBD).  In addition each of the Old Ones is unique, and there are two that are more "human" than the others and have elements of the failings you've mentioned.

The other element is the Chosen One who rises to stop you, his actions and continuing presence may change your status to "Your dreams are pierced by blinding light" which impacts your ability to support your Agents with your power.  The antagonism between the Chosen One and the Old One are very moderate in our current build, but it is on "expected to implement" list to really create some powerful interactions between the two outside of the simple mechanics that currently exist.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

P.T.W.

[Scoops Novel]

Does that include traps for the player? Also, do you plan for a persistent world option? The AI would be wise to your old tricks (if you are even playing the same Old One), and it would give the NPC's that much more personality. Presumably you could play as a favored protege of your last character.

[KingDinosaurGames]

I'm not sure what you mean by traps for the player - I feel that the game embraces sacrifice as a consistent, essential component to the game and part of the psychological trap for the player is in letting an Agent die as opposed to imbuing him with more power and reinforcing him with some obviously infernal allies. 

As for persistent world... that's a really "historical" question for us.  We actually tried to make a strategy game based around a persistent world... almost ten years ago at this point.  The pitfalls of the design were such that we ended up rejecting the game entirely after a lot of effort, so we've leaned more towards treating your repeated attempts at victory as "a repeating cycle".  We DID plan on an Old One who does reuse a single corrupted hero from a prior game, but that Old One is not confirmed to be added and I'd say it's 50/50 if we end up using him. 

I agree with your points on NPC personality, I do want the player to have a strong attachment to them - but it's one of the issues where we had to simply draw a line and reject any additional complexity to the formula.  Hopefully the personalization we've added to them combined with their niche strategic possibilities will give people that attachment and complicate the already difficult decisions that emerge.

AI does adapt within the scope of the game, and the Alliance AI knows how to beat a particular Old One with sufficient lore research.  It's up to the player to deny the Alliance AI access to resources as well as deluding it, and the remainder of the Leader AIs, from your path, either partially as in having them think you are the wrong Old One (use a ton of zombies and they will believe you are the Lord of Undeath), or fully by keeping them at eachother's throats.

Loving these questions, keep them coming.

[ScriptWolf]

Thanks for the reply ! will you continue to develop and create the game after release ? This sounds like my dream game the only thing I'm worried about is the game being a little shallow, im hoping for huge amounts of actions and events to really make different tactics and stuff different each time.

Also do you have a ETA on the kickstarter ? I promised my self no more kickstarters but I made an exception to this one and really want to throw money at you

[Lithare]

Writing For Observation

[KingDinosaurGames]

Thanks for the reply ! will you continue to develop and create the game after release ? This sounds like my dream game the only thing I'm worried about is the game being a little shallow, im hoping for huge amounts of actions and events to really make different tactics and stuff different each time.

Also do you have a ETA on the kickstarter ? I promised my self no more kickstarters but I made an exception to this one and really want to throw money at you

I want to make sure we have at least a wide variety of meaty videos for people to see before we do the Kickstarter, and ideally I'd want the demo to be out but if we want to do the KS next month the demo may not be released until well into it.  Because this is such a "unique" Strategy game I want people to have a really good idea of what it is they'd be purchasing.  All the money from the KS will go into art, which the game desperately needs.  Sign up for our Mailing List if you'd like to get an announcement when it goes live.

As for continued development - what a big question, if the game is popular ABSOLUTELY.  So many elements were cut from the game early on that I REALLY want to get back in, if the game makes enough for me to continue to work on it and begin to reintroduce those elements that is a path that I want to take.  Still, the priority will be a fully polished final product with its full suite of mod tools before any expansion work would begin.

Some of the things that got cut but that I want to reintroduce:

• You are not alone - Rival Old Ones who you need to deal with all while continuing your own advance
• Evil turning in on itself - your Agents work against eachother and pursue their own personal agendas
• Gods and Religions - the Gods stand with man if man keeps the faith, spread cults to undermine the religions of the world and create your own false Idols
• And of course more agents, more races, and more of everything

I definitely want to reiterate though, that even if the kickstarter was a shockingly large success I would want to polish and release the base game before anything else.  The game stands well on its own and I want modders to be able to start working as soon as possible on crafting their own worlds - at that point I can work with the community to see what features would be best to introduce into the game.  Of course, I seriously hope it's adding Gods and Religion back in, the fun potential and the additional strategic layer is just so compelling, not to mention it naturally melds in with the theme.

[Scoops Novel]

What can you create? Creatures, items, etc?

If you had to say your game did anything useful, what would it be?

[Farce]

Is it possible, probable, or planned to be able to play as, say, just an adventurer or something, without the impending awakening evil or anything?  A game so interactive and mutable seems like a really cool thing to just adventure through.

[KingDinosaurGames]

As far as what can be modified, take a look at the Editor Screenshot that was part of our devlogs.  Everything you see on the menu can be modified in-game, and things like items are embedded under "Enhancements."   The Editor also has a Build mode, where you can drag in images to use as a base and then populate the world with POIs(Points of Interest) and connect them together with roads and other connectors.  We've gone to great lengths to make the game extremely easy to modify.

There are no plans for the adventurer perspective in That Which Sleeps, the decision on what aspect to focus on came early and we couldn't do justice to more than a single perspective.  Still, the idea of having almost a Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII (I think VII had the free officer mode) set in this style of game definitely has appeal and I could foresee it being a later release, but that's very, very far down the road.  You could "fake it" by modding a scenario to have a very long slumbering old one, eliminate the chosen one and lore from the world, and then play as a single agent - but it wouldn't have quite the adventurer feel.