Truth be told, when it comes to inventing the name of a game, it's good to know what the whole thing is going to be focused on, what elements will and what won't make it into the final product etc.
Still, here's some generic propositions:
-Worlds in Turmoil(if focused on an all-out war between players)
-Across the Void(if there'll be a lot of exploration/conquests)
-The Farthest Reaches(same)
-Mankind's Finest Hour(if it'll be about fighting off some very aggressive aliens)
-Decaying Loyalties(if focused on diplomacy with optional endgame war)
-Primus inter pares(if manipulating the Senate is the main focus)
Regarding the army transfer screens:
Personally I disliked the Dom3's transfer screen, but seeing how there were a gazillion of troops and commanders, it was understandably necessary.
As long as there isn't going to be a similarly huge number of troops per army in this game, I'd suggest ditching the "left" option, the one with sliders - not very easy to assess all armies' strengths at a glance, and sliders are generally less user friendly than clickable icons - as in the screen on the right.
Generally, I think it'd be best to have all armies present visible at all times, together with some brief summary of their strengths(and if it can be crammed in there, also composition). E.g., each small ArmyX box would have a few numbers at the bottom, like 7I(nfantry-troops), 2A(rmour), 1P(lanes).
The exact technological types and possibly damage state of each of those troops would be only visible after highlighting a specific army box.
So, at the top half of the screen, as in your mockup, there would be a bunch of generalised representations of all armies present, including the non-assigned to army troops(provincial troops). The player would highlight two of these(LMB and RMB would make it easy to switch between armies displayed on the left and right of the transfer bit).
Here's another idea regarding the general concept of non-battlefield part of the game:
Imagine Assimov's Foundation-like universe, where there was a time, when humanity explored and colonised countless worlds in their slower-than-light ships. The overpopulated Earth was sending huge numbers of those ships, switching most of it's global economy towards their construction, fuelled by mankind's newly awoken thirst for space exploration. This became a self-perpetuating machine, which in time, seen the Earth revert to the Middle Ages levels of population, with most of the former Earthlings living in colonies, or en route to one.
Soon it became apparent, that maintaining trade relations and even proper communications between those far away worlds was less feasible than the actual colonisation. As the time passed, more and more of the settled worlds lost interest in pretending to be tied to their old home world, and lived - sometimes thriving, sometimes crumbling - in isolation from the rest of their race.
The few worlds close to Earth still formed a more or less coherent political and cultural entity. At some point after the first exodus, scientists discovered a way of creating permanent wormholes, which allowed for FTL travel between stars. The method was hugely expensive, and once established there was no way of removing the wormhole, but the discovery enabled the Earthlings to begin reclaiming their lost colonies and creating a stable, space-faring empire.
The game begins with players occupying one of the planets in the near-Earth cluster. Earth could be treated as one of those worlds for most purposes, without having any economic advantage, or could be reserved for some variation of the Senate and otherwise off-limits for the players.
The galaxy would initially show only stars - one of the players would have to create(expensive!) wormhole to one of the stars from one of their own to be able to send ships there. Arriving fleet would encounter a randomly chosen world of various levels of development and technology.
So there could be either an uninhabitable planet, or a colony which degraded into barbarism, or an equally advanced(technologically) one. Maybe even stronger, that the players.
I'd like to see the "barbaric" colonies to still be able to put up some resistance, so it's not enough to just send one tank brigade and conquer the whole planet of savages. Some "ambush" tactics for the defenders, or the need to pacify the populace could help there.
If the discovered colony has the ability to create spaceships, it could send counter attacks via the newly established wormhole. Perhaps the colonies could be diplomatically influenced?
Perhaps the creation of a wormhole would be initially so expensive, that no player could actually afford it by themselves. Some variation of having the Republic(or Empire, or whatever that's going to be) sponsoring one from the players' contributions(as with the Republican army in that Senate idea I've written about earlier). All players would have to contribute some money each turn, and then vote within the Senate as to where should the wormhole be placed.
This would allow players to create voting blocks and agreeing to share the newly discovered worlds. It could be dangerous, on the other hand, as the new world could host technologically advanced colony, making it's exploitation problematic.
Or, the new wormhole could lead to a Symbiot-like infested world, inherently aggressive, and now with a nice and quick way to conquering other worlds(via the wormhole system).
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Topic: Echoes of Imperium (4X Strategy Game)[Not Dead] (Read 36918 times)