alright. I haven't been on bay 12 much but I've played a lot of strategy games including EotFS and done a little modding. I have some ideas left over from some remarkably similar game projects that fizzled.
I've been reading this thread and it's attached documents all night and I can't finish it all so I'll just say what I'm thinking and you guys can let me know if it's relevant.
First off, provinces and their terrain. I think it's rather simple to take a generated map and just draw territorial lines along mountain ranges, canyons, major rivers, coasts, forests and land features, etc. and it makes sense because this is often how these things are divided up. I think it's especially useful that lap is going with the feudal scifi theme because it gives us a lot of room to explain why things got divided up a certain way... 'because the emperor said so.' in fact because of that theme it's not necessary to carve out the entire map of a planet with provinces; you could just carve up a single continent and say that the rest is the emperor's private hunting grounds; and the admin can give them to an AI or use them at a later date or let people develop them later and draw out new provinces if the planet needs balancing out. The idea that all players are nobles who swear fealty to Emperor Admin or the Established Imperial Tradition or whatever in game institution the admin sets up (like the church, etc), means that a lot of rules can be put in place that wouldn't make any sense if this were a no holds barred expansionist landgrab. For instance, the emperor could only grant lands on a certain continent, and only certain provinces, leaving others forbidden or neutral (i.e. with a population but no owner?) and if a player lingers too long out of bounds or explores too far in too noticeable a way (into forbidden territory) then he may be punished for trespassing on the imperial holy wilderness or some such. you could take it further and have the emperor or the government (some admin controlled or mostly controlled ruling body?) award other houses for meeting out measured retribution against these trespassers.
in the coastal waters just outside of provincial coasts, it might be considered allowable to travel if you pay a tax, but earn you wrath and punishment if you take hostile action on other player's travels there. it would be criminal to travel into the open ocean beyond the neutral waters, and criminal to cross forbidden lands, although there might be neutral lands that are crossable but criminal to attempt dominion over the inhabitants. And these policies can change as the admin sees fit to move the game along; their may be 2 continents colonized with a 3rd 'new world' untouched, and the ocean between the 2 claimed continents could promote risky smuggling operations if closed to travel, and profitable trade with stealthy privateering if open. if a rival player across the ocean is raiding your shipping lines you could bait him into making too bold a move, exposing his criminal violence and inciting the emperor to offer you a reward for reclaiming one of his provinces and returning it to the private imperial holdings, if the emperor doesn't give it itself as the reward. there's plenty of directions this could go gameplay wise that would offer plenty of political subterfuge.
so, about movement between provinces, including coastal/oceanic. here's an illustration of something resembling eurasia a few hundred million years ago, crudely drawn by dying dinosaurs.
like I mentioned the borders are drawn along land features and around desirable resources, not in huge blocky jigsaw puzzles like you see in advanced confederacies like the US, a geopolitical structure that would not exist in teh game setting, except on perhaps completely urbanized and monopolized capital planets? but anyway. the way I see it,
every province has a central territory, and several border territories. check out Prov. 333 west of the center. it borders provinces 555, 288, 111, 222, and 444. it has no coastal access so either its lord will have to own a neighboring coastal prov to give it access, or it will have to make some kind of deal with the lord of a neighboring coastal province. but if It did have coastal access, that would be one more border territory, the 333/neutral border coast. along with that it has the 333/555, 333/288, 333/111, 333/222, and 333/444 border territories. and it has the 333 central territory. These are all areas where armies can be moved. let's say 555 is mustering an army at the 555/333 border territory (so they haven't crossed into 333 yet. these little regions can be named so they're easier for players to remember I guess.) given that 333 has an army and it's located in the Central 333 territory, it can move to any of the borderlands of 333 at any time, and even if it stays in the center, the 555 army has to cross the border into 333's side of their border before it can then make another move to attack the 333 center territory. But if 333 moves its army to the border with 555 so that it is just on the other side of the line of 555's army, the 555 army cannot cross the border without fighting it. It can flank it by moving to the 555/288 border, crossing into 288, then moving to the 288/333 border, and then crossing onto the 333 side of that border; but not only would that take a few turns, but once it moved to the 333/288 border, it would be adjacent to the 333 army because that army was stationed in the borderlands directly next to the 333/288 borderlands. So then the 333 army could directly attack from land 333/555, or it could move to central 333 land, and attack 333/288 from there, or wait in the center, from which it could attack any borderland that became occupied.
This should keep the enemy from easily outflanking into home territory, but also provides the possibility of spreading yourself thin if you move your only defending armies to borderlands that are not adjacent to avenues the enemy may pour through. of course you can always move back to the center to protect the center land before teh enemy gets there because in this concept, your army always gets 2 move points in home territory. (perhaps this should only be if it's 'garrisoned' there, meaning it's assigned to be familiar with that province's territory but it doesn't get the same bonus in your other provinces?). also I was thinking of the order of attack in battles, being calculated differently (based on things like agility, sensor capabilities, unit cohesion and other factors I will go into later), and initiative mainly granting a bonus to battle stats. the way that plays in is that if you use up all your army's moves in a turn, they lose an initiative bonus; but if you use up one move and save the other, you can adopt a defensive stance (granting you very good initiative if attacked next turn, but minusing a move point next turn), an aggressive stance (granting the option to ambush the opponent with extra initiative if he moves to an adjacent land including land in front of you, but giving you no initiative bonus if he attacks directly, retreats across the border, or stays put while already in front of you), or adopt a ready stance, meaning you still get some initiative bonus if he attacks directly next turn, but not as much as defensive stance. He can counteract this when outside a central land by adopting a siege stance, which will grant him extra initiative to attack directly into a central land the next turn. In that case your best bet is to attack him from one tile away, whether central or adjacent border land, and since this is only one move in your army's home territory, the extra move is used as a ready stance (as it always would be if an attack move does not take all an army's moves, so having an extra move when attacking grants some initiative bonus and will even the odds if the enemy army is also in ready stance). So that covers the 3 main stances; aggressive, defensive, and ready can be used almost anywhere. Siege stance is used outside enemy central land, and if all moves are used you are in Fielded stance, meaning you are on the move and are vulnerable to anyone who can attack you with an extra move left to ready themselves. of course if your army is much stronger you could still win easily, it's just a little maneuvering bonus. the room to maneuver that is afforded by a central land and border lands is hopefully fun enough while not being as extensive and uncontrollable as a field of hexes. Also, remember how I said borders were drawn along certain features? just like the central land has main terrain types (for 333 Central Land it is lots of plains, some river and a tiny bit of forest/mountains) that determine the resources and the field of battle when the center is attacked, the land features of the borders determine the bonuses and detractors of fighting their. This is just guesstimated by the programmer when they look at the border, like the 333/555 has lots of river, a little plain and forest. so so type in whatever percentages feel right, keeping in mind that River is good for trading and resources but bad for crossing to attack, so one should not attack an army on the other side of it unless they have some amphibious bonuses. things like this make it so that certain borderlands will not be preferred for fighting right on top of, and this affords more bottlenecking and less dancing as the enemy will look for wide open border lands to cross without, say, losing extra initiative due charging an enemy over swamps, or rivers, or mountains, or hills. in fact unless a border is mostly plains or you have an army designed for unusual terrains, you do not want to attack across it, better to cross it when the other side is empty and the enemy unlikely to be in aggressive mode just one move from that land. and all this is done without tiles; each province is simply a central area, plus one doorstep per neighbor, and a nuanced terrain related advantage or disadvantage at each border that will diversify which units are used to defend or attack from which direction.
I dont know how useful this will be and it may not make sense without the addition of some other ideas about combat that I'm stewing over, but its' a start.
oh and I forgot to mention, the movement along neutral coasts is handled similarly in that you move from coastal border/444 to coastal border/555 to coastal border/667. just like moving along border lands in a province. of course there is probably going to have to be an 'orbital/province airspace' border and if you want to make it so ships can take off and land, there could be a province airspace/blah blah border for all the borderlands and the central land. if landing is used to drop off troops then it could be useful for dropping off troops from one side of your prov to the other, or skipping over an enemy border and dropping troops in their border land, and the province airspace 'land' would be accessible to and from any land in the province so that air units would always have initiative when attacking within the province and even if they had just one move could still attack an army on the other side of the border. uh... assuming the province airspace land was also connected to directly to enemy province borderlands and hm maybe to enemy province airspace too. otherwise your aircraft in the airspace 'land' would have to use a move to swoop down at the border, go to the otherside's borderland and access the enemy airspace 'land' all taking 3 moves, so that doesn't make sense. I think the direct connection to enemy airspace and enemy borderlands (ok maybe even everything in adjacent provinces, in one move? idk, but landing would always take a move, as would going into orbit from airspace, and, um I'm probably getting the whole air combat thing wrong anyway if they run on missions) I hope it's not too confusing that I'm using the term 'land' to denote any zone that a unit can move to, in order to stay in keeping with the strategic movement without hex tactics.
Author
Topic: Echoes of Imperium (4X Strategy Game)[Not Dead] (Read 36463 times)