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Yui Unifex · 05-05-2002, 02:44 PM

I think a random starting location would add a great deal to the discovery and sense of exploration available to new players, although it might mitigate the effectiveness of any special newbie-friendly areas of the game. A player could be eased into the world gradually by having a hometown situated far from any border skirmishes. Or they could be swept into battle quite early, as the king's recruiters come to bolster the army's ranks for an upcoming campaign.

Personally, I believe that each of the choices a settlement faces should be "equal" in that all of them are quite desirable. Reactionary AI tends to weigh which desires are most immediatelly needed when coming to a decision. So in the absence of player (or other NPC) attacks, the system would more than likely choose to gather food and expand the settlement. I see these attacks as a means by which players (and other NPCs) can keep settlements from getting too large -- the settlements only get as large as the ability to provide food for the entire settlement as well as defend it from attack.

But the time that players spend influencing a settlement is, in my mind, only a fraction of the time that the settlement will be influenced by the needs of food-gathering, expansion, and war with other settlements. So I think that even a large camping effort, while dramatic at present, is not enough to make the settlement a "soldier factory", so to speak ;). And if the world is large enough -- for every minute a player is camping outside of a small settlement, another one is growing and gaining technology at a much faster rate due to the lack of competition. I hope that this will provide enough of an incentive for players to not stay in a place for too long.

Sounds like an interesting scenario =). What if the system were designed in such a way that food must be constantly supplied? A small food supply would diminish the amount of good warriors that a raiding team would have available to itself. While I don't see anything wrong with players helping to provide a settlement with food, it would get fairly tedious -- even impossible for anything less than a bot -- given the appetites of some of those raiders =).

But I do see your concerns in this area. Perhaps we could give more incentive for players to move around by giving technology gain (and thus equipment forging skill) a boost to those peaceful settlements that have the time and resources to research?

But what if those goblins have a nation all their own? One that can easily overwhelm any prolonged farming campaign. Then we might get into giving them the ability to forge alliances with other, more militarily capable nations in exchange for resources and research...

05-05-2002, 02:44 PM	#21
Yui Unifex Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Florida Posts: 323	I think a random starting location would add a great deal to the discovery and sense of exploration available to new players, although it might mitigate the effectiveness of any special newbie-friendly areas of the game. A player could be eased into the world gradually by having a hometown situated far from any border skirmishes. Or they could be swept into battle quite early, as the king's recruiters come to bolster the army's ranks for an upcoming campaign. Personally, I believe that each of the choices a settlement faces should be "equal" in that all of them are quite desirable. Reactionary AI tends to weigh which desires are most immediatelly needed when coming to a decision. So in the absence of player (or other NPC) attacks, the system would more than likely choose to gather food and expand the settlement. I see these attacks as a means by which players (and other NPCs) can keep settlements from getting too large -- the settlements only get as large as the ability to provide food for the entire settlement as well as defend it from attack. But the time that players spend influencing a settlement is, in my mind, only a fraction of the time that the settlement will be influenced by the needs of food-gathering, expansion, and war with other settlements. So I think that even a large camping effort, while dramatic at present, is not enough to make the settlement a "soldier factory", so to speak ;). And if the world is large enough -- for every minute a player is camping outside of a small settlement, another one is growing and gaining technology at a much faster rate due to the lack of competition. I hope that this will provide enough of an incentive for players to not stay in a place for too long. Sounds like an interesting scenario =). What if the system were designed in such a way that food must be constantly supplied? A small food supply would diminish the amount of good warriors that a raiding team would have available to itself. While I don't see anything wrong with players helping to provide a settlement with food, it would get fairly tedious -- even impossible for anything less than a bot -- given the appetites of some of those raiders =). But I do see your concerns in this area. Perhaps we could give more incentive for players to move around by giving technology gain (and thus equipment forging skill) a boost to those peaceful settlements that have the time and resources to research? But what if those goblins have a nation all their own? One that can easily overwhelm any prolonged farming campaign. Then we might get into giving them the ability to forge alliances with other, more militarily capable nations in exchange for resources and research...