Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

Some ideas and thoughts,

A topic by Huw2k8 created Mar 14, 2018 Views: 1,148 Replies: 35
Viewing posts 1 to 8

This game is amazing, some ideas for potential features are...

  • Hidden stuff that can be discovered through exploration like chests or stockpiles of a resource
  • Perhaps an arena where you can pit units against eachother? (kind of a weird idea tbh but could be fun)
  • A way to autoupgrade all walls in a province or at least one click upgrade, because upgrading a massive wall three takes so long when you have to click and then accept multiple times
  • Less all-seeing enemies... seriously, they are like terminators that seek you out instantly, they should be able to explore just like you and fight what they find
  • Also would be cool if there were different kinds of AI enemy factions, for example maybe some of the nomad rat riding people were reclusive, others could build lots, some could be conquerors looking to settle in each province, others could be ruthless, others could be explorers and so on.

Just some thoughts

Great game

Developer(+2)

Hi, thanks for the suggestions.

  • Long term, I like the idea of ruins from long-dead civilizations that could be reclaimed. I'm not sure a Civilization style "goody hut" would make much sense in Bronze Age. I could see some discoveries leading to story events, though.
  • Right now combat feels like a major weak part of Bronze Age. I feel like an arena mode would just make that more obvious
  • Yeah, upgrading can be a bit tedious right now.
  • The enemies used to have limited knowledge, which resulted in them often not finding player settlements and totally ignoring you. There's a balance that needs to be hit. In the diplomacy update (2.5) the AI will get a rework and hopefully be less cheating.
  • More enemies are planned, a couple varieties of humans, and at least one more non-human race. I'm not sure there's much room for different types of Masklings, they're pretty basic.
(+1)

I found that AI definitely knows where you are the minute you build, even though they've not seen your settlement. Especially with other maskling tribes. It seems they share knowledge with eachother, and from thereon it's just relentless attack.

Developer(+1)

The AI has total knowledge of the world right now.

(+3)

ah thats stupid

(5 edits) (+3)

I've been thinking along the lines of this:

In terms of the masklings finding you, once the diplomacy update comes out there could be alliances formed between tribes, and some conversation could be exchanged about where you are. Also, I like the arena idea as a potential game mode for just practicing your strategic ability. super-small (10-hex wide) maps and placing in warbands would be a neat little feature. Also:

There should be some really advanced abandoned settlements laying about. You can capture them by simply building admin centres in the region, and it all is then yours. It can present a whole new side to "resource discovery based progression" if there are super advanced resources like Iron that can only be gotten from this one set of ruins, whose buildings are non-replaceable. Also, I feel like at the next opportunity to redo the maskling AI, it would be neat if you reworked it so that if they took control of one of your settlements, they would actually use it. Instead of just sitting there being confused, they could use your barracks to deploy archers, and use your towers to shoot your units as they attempt to reclaim your settlement.

Another potential side to this is; what if after capturing a different race's settlement and owning it for a while, you start to learn how to replicate their buildings? Say you added a new category, Experimental. If you've captured a maskling village and owned it for a while, you might get an alert saying "Your wise men have had an idea regarding Rat Riders and believe they may be able to breed them!". You will then have access to a high cost building in the experimental section, that may or may not work after you build it. Regardless, you can try again and again until you have a successful prototype, and from there can rule the map with maskling rat riders.

But the same could be true for the masklings. If they invaded your city for long enough, you could drive them out, only to discover they've begun to replicate your technology, upgrading their totems for more administration, building brickworks, and after that, walls, slowly growing to become the same kind of empire that would be capable of defeating you. I feel like this would be a neat change for the masklings. They would be far more sinister this way, going from the annoying tribal people to the annoying tribal people who will learn your technology and use it against you. 

Sorry if this comment is kind of long, I just started typing and wrote a lot. Enjoying Boats and looking forward to Nobles!

P.S. (There's a small texture bug in 2.3.0 where if you place a wall at the edge of the map, it connects off to the infinite emptiness at the edge. It looks like this:

Developer(+2)

There are some really good ideas in here, it might take me a bit to process fully.

(+2)

I too agree with the abandoned empires; after having to abandon one of mine, I thought of the idea of ruined empires. It's rather cool.

Developer(+2)

The idea of learning technology from captured settlements got me thinking. When you capture a Maskling settlement, shouldn't it stay as a Maskling settlement? Just because you own the place doesn't mean that the Masklings forget how to train rat riders.

So idea: settlements are tied to race. The majority population of a settlement determines its race, which determines what structures can be built in it. So when you capture a Maskling camp, it stays a Maskling camp and you can build Maskling structures in it. Over time the population will get used to you ruling them, and will loose their slave status, then you can create settlers to found new Maskling camps.

This would be similar to the way the ancient Persian empire functioned. Conquering people, and just replacing the ruler, leaving other aspects of the society intact.


Or, if you're so inclined, you could migrate humans into the newly conqured camp, until the population flipped the race of the settlement. That'd be a more Roman approach.

(+1)

Sounds interesting. I'm still thinking about the idea of learning other races' technology and adding it to your own, but your train of thought also seems pretty neat. What if, you had to do things to keep both cultures happy? Monuments would quell the human morale needs, but maybe the Masklings would want mini-totems all over the place? Those would be the negatives of a 2-race settlement, but maybe if it allowed you to use both structures, it would have some rewards too?

Also, maybe the more masklings you have in your empire, the better diplomacy will be. It would be neat if that was represented in the world map sidebar. It would show population, then individual race's population (If there will be more races added in the future) and the percentage of your population they make up. It could effect their opinion of laws, diplomacy - even trade could be affected if the new races brought new resources and structures to the table.

Then when the AI empire comes in, your main advantage is really that you have the technology and resources of multiple races forming one large empire, a borg-style utilization of everything you can use to bring down the enemy, who would probably just be busy destroying anything it comes into contact with.

Awesome idea

I feel like perhaps the masklings ability to find you could relate to the selected difficulty, ie and easy difficulty where they are unbeknownst to you or the current juggernaut termination mode we have now

(+1)

just a thought but would it be to much to ask if bakery's and smelters would use wood as fuel making trade between cities more important when a region gets full taking out the brickworks and lumber camps is easy if trade can support the regions but i notice that smoke comes out of bakery and smelters but dont burn wood whats making the smoke lol can we upgrade roads to stone? to help speed the traders also notice traders dont always use the roads is that pathing or is that just how traders roll just a few thoughts oh and gardens can they add more then 5 happiness its a waste of an infrastructure and rich soil for only 5 happiness

(+1)

totally enjoy the game taking over one continent was fun but trying to build up an empire has proven to be more then fun why are people so upset got a region with 481 happiness but morale is 97% and the riot all the time  

Developer(+1)

In the next update I'll be refining the riot behavior. Your citizens won't have an all out riot unless morale gets really bad. There will be less severe outbursts, like theft, sabotage, and murders.

3 days into new game my only free citizen riots and destroy my farm then my brewery then the homes around the brewery thought you said you were going to change the rioting to be more controlled how do you expect us to play the game when we can not improve the happiness of our people quickly before the brewery even had a chance to do anything the people riot and destroyed the only thing making them happy monuments no longer add to happiness ya broke your own game ya need to fix it so we can make people happy quickly 

(+1)

another thought i had was being able to trade administration like you have an outpost that has a small region and a large region could you trade the extra administration to another region ?

Developer(+1)

The goal of Administration is to make managing large settlements difficult. Being able to import it would cheapen that, I think. Once you have bronze it isn't difficult to fully upgrade a town center, which results in a lot of excess administration for a small settlement.


You can keep growing settlements by externalizing some resource production and shipping it in. When religion is introduced you'll be able to increase administration for a cost, and a trade-off of other bonuses.

I too was having an issue along these lines, I had started out on an Island and had advanced all the way to full bronze everything, when I suddenly realized I had run out of administration. Without administration to build I then was confined to my lonely fate of eventually starving to death because lack of food, and lack of ways to make food or new space.

 This got me thinking, the fact that every city is doomed to slowly starve to death due to lack of administration is a weak point in the game, cities should be allowed to prosper until a raid or enough unrest that will engulf the city into turmoil in due time. However as I was reading the discussions here and there, looking to see if someone else was voicing the same difficulty as me. I found this comment, and I understand that having a source of income or a way to continue to upgrade an administrative building would negate your idea for the cities of "Quality over Quantity". So that did away with my idea of suggesting a "Library" building that slowly gave administration to the city. Thinking along your lines of quality over quantity I decided upon suggesting a alternative to just giving the player more administration until they just reach the boarders of their region.

My alternative is that you change the food stat in a city (which is currently a almost static resource, I think it should be more like grapes or tin or one of those kinds of resources that have a indicator to show if the resource is decreasing or increasing) if food is based like that, I would suggest that food be a tradeable resource. Doing this will allow for the player to import food into a city that has reached it's peak administration capabilities, saving the city, from starvation, not unrest perhaps. This I believe would follow your vision "Quality over Quantity", in my playthroughs I found that I typically settled where I could find the most resources to help my colony expand to it's fullest potential. This tactic though somewhat historical, makes it that the large open grasslands and forests remain unpopulated and unused, I believe that by allowing food to be exported and imported, places like the fertile plains or the densely wooded areas would become useful, like a grasslands colony to export food to a forest colony that cant make enough food alone, then that forest colony can export its resources to places like the grassland colony to create more stuff to feed more people etc... thus creating a full circle of supply and resupply for your game.

I believe that it is in your hands to make the best choices for your game and I cant wait till the next update. I hope that the ideas I tossed around will give you even more tools to shape this game into what best suites for vision.

Developer(+1)

Gardens aren't very efficient for Happiness. Happiness will be getting a rework next update and I think I'll move gardens to just be decorative.

Road upgrades are totally possible, but they would be incredibly tedious right now. 

For fuel sources, things like bakeries could burn all sorts of fuel, not just wood. I'm not sure that tracking fuel usage for bakeries would really add anything interesting to the game. Maybe for Bronze Smelters, to help reinforce the idea of Bronze as an advanced and expensive material.

(1 edit) (+1)

Maybe you could introduce a charcoal smelter? It could convert 5 wood into 15 fuel, or some other sort of large output item. You could have to use the fuel for upgraded bakeries and smelters, as a price for their superiority. There could also be a coal resource scattered about that would work also.

Developer(+1)

Good point about the upgraded bakeries. I'll make a note about them, charcoal, and coal.

(+1)

Thanks Shawn.

(+1)

thank you really enjoying this game when i can afford i will be donating to just cause this game is that fun will gardens be able to be built any where? once the walls and towers are up and we can build up tedious is not a problem when it comes to infrastructure any added hardship in early game like fuel for bakeries and smelters only adds to the intense realizem that was the bronze age struggle but once you find what you need for bronze its all about trade and empire building keeping folks happy and enjoying the game i have not notice the enemy making ships or coming to retake land after i took over a large island of the 38 regions on the island i own 18 with a pop of 609 building roads to connect the regions setting up trade taking down rez collectors in favor of more happiness building regions for armies its all around fun and entertaining i own 18 out of 38 so 20 regions could be retaken but the enemies dont seem to have a navy or is that coming?

The current enemies, the masklings, are a very simple enemy designed to add some challenge to the game. Eventually there will be rival humans with ships of their own, and possibly several different races.

But for now, deep water is an obstacle only you can cross.

I have an idea that each biome has a Ruin to where only the admin center can be placed.

and make the User Interface moddable.

Developer

I feel like that would be overly restrictive, without any real upside.

I'd like a more modifiable UI, but it's really tightly bound up with the engine code.

(+1)

Personally, i think the game would be so much more fun with some little tweaks.

  1.  For the love of god, rework your UI. I'm usually gentle but its aweful to control.  if i am building and then get attacked and need to control units, i have to go back to the building tab press back and then i can control my units and it is confusing and sometimes you can't, for example I had selected a unit and went to movie it but when i clicked i was building so it would just build a house for something. I think it would serve better to be able to right click and be able to go back to the main interface, no building options. 
  2. Your enemies are to vicious, you need to nerf them because i have to resort to walling up very quickly, stnting my growth and then when i make a new settle ment, they come and attack cause i have to build up some infrastructure to be able to have a militia. 
  3. Lastly, Your Happiness system would work better as positive or negative. It should be based more around food supply and Employment (say if you have half your region not employed, your happiness would take a huge hit) rather than you building twenty monuments when you could be making smelters and bakers. if your populations happiness is too low for too long, a proportion of the city revolts, not when you arent making them 100% happy. 

Thats my ideas, I love the game so far but those are problems that just make me more frustrated than challenged.

Agree with the one first, it can be really annoying.

For the last one, happiness is being changed, you can check the newest devlog for details. 

Developer(+1)
  1. You were trying to place a structure when you needed to control troops? At the bottom of the sidebar when controlling troops there's a cancel button, which is hotkeyed to escape. That'll take you out of placement mode. Right clicking to cancel would be problematic, since it's used for panning the camera.
  2. I'm seeing a lot of feedback around that. I'll see about toning them down a little.
  3. Reworking happiness is a major part of 2.4, see the most recent dev log for details.

Thanks for the feedback

have you heard of the late bronze age collapse?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse


you could implement it as a cool end-game event.  most historians don't actually know what caused the late bronze age collapse so you can make many explanations in the game as to what caused it,  like a non-human race attempting to conquer the world and genocide all other races. this could be a nice explanations for why there are no other non-human races alive today, or maybe magical daemons spawning and causing havoc.

Developer

That sounds suspiciously similar to some of the story ideas I have. Those probably won't be showing up for a couple of updates, but I really like the idea of extended story events that can chain together in a larger narrative. Similar to Stellaris.

(-1)

have you thought about making a multiplayer version of this? maybe include gold as some kind of currency for players to trade

Developer

I have thought about it, but I don't think it's feasible. The game makes a lot of assumptions about there only being one player.

(1 edit) (-1)

I had an idea that making something of a turn-based multiplayer could be feasible.

Kinda like this. Server generates the world and shares it with players. The game is paused until all players choose to end the turn, then server takes inputs from players and runs the game for like a season or some other amount of in-game time, then syncs up the game state once again.

Only reason i play this is cause its single player offline.