I know what you mean. RA2 was different. I didn't bother to try RA3, I was still curious, my cousin (he taught me everything I know about RA2 when I was a kid) got to play it and he said "pretty much every unit can go from both sea and land"
I suppose RA3 wasn't a big success.
Anybody have played Romance of Three Kingdoms? You could confuse your enemies in different ways. You could send a fake order which would force the enemy army to retreat to the closest town, trick the enemy army into attacking their allies, confuse the commander and freeze them for 1 round, save an allied army from confusion, and probably some more I don't rembember now. It was difficult to confuse the commanders if they have a high INT and your commander has a low INT. Even if they fall for it they give responses like "A retreat order? That doesn't make sense" but they had to follow the fake order.
There were also personalities. If I rembember correctly personalities were Timid, Cool, Bold and Reckless. They didn't have much effect though. Biggest effect I noticed was a reckless officer once who would attack the enemy randomly without my order. You should definitely include personalities in this game. A simple loyalty system won't be enough.
Fire was a very important tool. Most traps involved fire. Setting fire very close to enemy was difficult. Fire has been used as a weapon in the history and I hope to see fire as a weapon in this game too. Think of all the traps and possibilities!
Interesting! I guess orders, fake orders, etc, all depend on whether or not you can have spies in your force. One day there will be spies in the armies, but that isn't going to be for some time. But obviously, by the same token, you'll be able to get spies into enemy forces, or simply bribe people in other forces over to your side.
As for fire - oh yes. That's in already, actually! It spreads rather nicely. However, some of the mechanics (setting fire to things, fire dying out over a wide area, etc) need a bit of work.
RA3 might not have been much of a success, but it has a expansion that is pretty fun to mess around in just for the ridiculous units it aadded, even though said expansion doesn't work in MP obviously.
RA3 also has this thing, which may or may not be better than the above in your opinion.
Ah, cnclabs! I seem to remember that site from the old days when I was modding TS and RA2. *nostalgia*
All of 'em were based off of the literary Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for those that didn't know. It's pretty much one of the biggest (both in terms of historical/cultural impact and sheer size) pieces of Chinese literature in existence, from what I understand. One of the true classic books in existence, really. There's a few translations running around the 'net, yeah.
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Anyway, URR. Questions I've randomly pulled out to actually add to discussion: Will any race choices have radical gameplay impact? Will a hivemind or full-on aquatic race exist, for example? Boats, tunneling?
Can anything more be said on the magic system? I've been playing Vapors of Insanity a bit, lately, and I have to say a sort of, I guess, noun/verb driven (A firebolt, ferex, is mixing the spell of missile with the spell of fire), almost totally freeform system would be absolutely delicious (especially with a more accessible UI ). Basically, how complex is the complex systems you mention in the blog
RotTK is actually in my amazon wishlist! I mean, three hundred other novels are, but there you go.
Race choices will primarily affect where you start off, and therefore the kind of person you'll start around (mercenaries, farmers, miners, scholars, etc). Each race will also raise certain skills faster or slower than others, but those will still be relatively minimal differences. The big differences will be in terms of who you can ally with, or deal with, or live with, and what kinds of armies you can raise, and things like that. So, in short: for the alpha, purely 'personal' differences (stats, etc). Later on, much bigger differences! Those are two really interesting suggestions, though... especially the aquatic race option.
Sadly, nothing else can really be said of the magic system so far
. It's one of goals the furthest in the future. I'm probably going to have two major kinds of magic. One will involve spells of the sort you described, that you can combine and change for size, distance, effectiveness, radius, etc. The other will be unique schools of magic that have nothing to do with others, like Necromancy, Demonology, and a couple of others I'm considering too
. They'll exist, but it's going to be a while. The freeform magic will come first, the special schools later!
This looks excellent!
I had two questions but I forgot the other...
you said it will be difficult to move once grappled unless the grappler/grappelee is big, would a large flying creature be able to pick you up and drop you from a height?
Yep! It'll show how high you've ascended; the sooner you break free, the smaller the distance you drop, and so the less damage you take. Same goes, obviously, for any AI creature grabbed by another creature. Shout if you remember the other question
I wonder, if this were possible, if you could be dropped onto/drop someone else onto another creature and kill them...
the last act in your life- killing a cow by landing on it from 500 meters.
Ha! Yes, I guess this could happen. Normally it's one creature per square, but creatures rising up through the z-axis will be able to share a square. I'll have to work on that one once flying creatures appear