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| Thread: Kingdoms of Might and Magic | |
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BradRepko
Hired Hero
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posted December 07, 2007 03:44 AM |
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Kingdoms of Might and Magic
"Listen to my story, young adventurers, to the tales and legends of a world called Lore. For generations, the inhabitants of Lore were in a constant state of war. Chaos reigned as the many different races and clans, intolerant of one another, waged war and caused bloodshed. Each creature took up arms against each other for pointless battles over hatreds passed on by their fathers and forefathers. The very earth wept as the oceans turned red with blood and the bones of the fallen littered the soil. Then, just as it seemed inevitable that these wars would continue on forever, a young hero picked up a sword and stood against these wars of hatred and malice. Casting aside the prejudices of old, the hero built a powerful kingdom forged under the belief that all creatures are created equal, and that each and every one could live together in harmony for the good of society. Building dwellings designed for each creature's specific taste, this great kingdom, led by the hero, worked together to prosper, from the menial and mundane tasks, to the important and most crucial of jobs. Remember, it is not just the chosen few who are destined to be heroes that are important, but each and every hand, working together as one."
This is an idea spawned from the original story in the first Heroes of Might and Magic game. I remember reading how the king built dwellings and the creatures associated with the structure came. I remember thinking it would be neat if you could actually choose freely which dwellings you built for your castle, and have an army of creatures unique to your preferences and personality. I guess you could say this game idea I have is a combination of The Sims, Command and Conquer, and Heroes of Might and Magic.
You start out as a lesser lord with a meager army of peasants, pikemen, and swordsmen, with the dreams and aspirations of building your own kingdom. In real time, you command your troops to begin building structures and facilities, and as time goes on, an entire town and a castle, along with dwellings to attract more creatures. Along with the normal battle abilities of each creature, different creatures can do different tasks. A peasant, for example, farm the fields for food, but such a task is beyond a mighty black dragon. However, a black dragon is perfect to send out to swoop down and set fire to enemy farms, and devour their stockpiles of food.
As different creatures diligently go about their assigned tasks, they begin to become more efficient in their tasks, and may develop into a more specialized unit, like say, a farmer. Once you have discovered such progressions, you can easily build facilities to train and recruit more of such units. Different creatures have a different number of upgrades they can discover, and these upgrades may come from battling, certain activities or assignments, or other events. Some upgrades may stem from other upgrades, for example, a peasant may become a militiaman, who in turns becomes a swordsman, and you may then build a structure to train swordsmen directly, or train peasants into swordsmen without the need to make them militiamen first. Sometimes certain upgrades must already be discovered before new pathways can be unlocked. A champion, for example, can be discovered by using cavaliers in combat, but to get a cavalier, you must have trained both horsemen and swordsman. There may be several ways to discover new creatures or buildings, but generally once you've obtained one of these you will be able to easily make more without having to go through the tasks needed to obtain them again.
The creatures with the most numerous upgrades are often the ones that represent one of the more plentiful races. Peasant is your most standard human creature, and therefore can discover all sorts of new upgrades, as can elves, goblins, dwarves, and several other races. More exotic or unique creatures may have more limited upgrades, a harpy may have only a few upgrade paths, and a black dragon even fewer, but a centaur will still have a modest amount of upgrades they can become, as they can do more menial tasks like farming, as well as specialize in ranged combat. Assigning creatures who don't necessarily specialize in certain tasks can produce new upgrades too. For example, sending a crusader out to farm fields with the peasants may seem like a waste, but seeing a battle hardened warrior willing to put down his weapon and help with the everyday tasks can increase morale, resulting in more efficient results completed much faster than normal. There is always a chance that a new upgrade unit can be discovered, like having a pit lord working with the peasants can lead to the discovery of slaver. These new upgrades, once discovered, allow for the building of facilities and dwellings of these units, and in many occasions different creatures can be trained and upgraded into these units, sometimes discovering an entirely new unit in the process. An archery range can be used to train peasants into archers, but if you send an elf to it, it will be upgraded into a sylvan archer, who specialize in ranged combat in the forest, as opposed to human archers who prefer wide open areas for ranged combat. You would usually send a peasant to the archery range to become an archer, or a peasant to a thieves guild to become a bandit, but if you send a bandit to an archery range, you may just discover an entirely new class, or it may just become an archer. Sometimes a new upgrade won't be discovered right away, and sometimes the upgrade may be more of a downgrade, but the costs are often much less than recruiting new units.
All kinds of factors can determine what new discoveries might pop up, but oftentimes you will find new dwellings while exploring. You might be able to convince the creatures their to join your army, and later bring them back to town to garrison them and let them become members of your kingdom. In many cases, you will be able to build dwellings of creatures once you find them, but the recruitment rates might be mediocre until certain tasks or quests are completed to make the creatures really ally themselves with you. Furthermore, all these dwellings are expensive, and to build them not only requires resources, which you might need to obtain from neighboring lands, but space to build them too. If you have no room to build new dwellings, you may decide to just build the dwelling on the clear land three spaces away from your other buildings, but if you build something on your neighbors land, this will no doubt anger them and could start a war. It might be a wiser idea to wait and recruit and caravan the units from the discovered dwelling than to build a new one on your neighbors land and create an enemy that could potentially be an ally in the future. Naturally, an ally is a good thing to have, for they can trade their resources with you as well as provide support in times of need, and you may very well be able to recruit new units and discover new things from them that would otherwise be left undiscovered if you just wipe them out and take their land. However, each player's choice is their own, some way despise the ruthless evils of the undead and shun necromancers from their kingdom, while others may embrace them and let them spread their beliefs and religions through the land, recruiting skeletons and zombies from the bodies of the peasants who have died. Doing so may cause them to learn new upgrade paths and structures and assignments, but the choice to allow the undead to inhabit your kingdom can be good, or lead to your undoing.
Morale and luck plays an even greater role than just in battles, as the activities of each creature is affected by them, and the presence of certain creatures may help or hinder morale and luck. Certain lucky or unlucky events may occur with luck and is every bit as important as morale, but it's more beneficial to maintain higher morale, while luck can remain at neutral. Higher levels of morale will make tasks done more efficiently and at a speedier pace, and can help you collect more taxes as well as a surge in recruitment and population within your kingdom. Low morale, on the other hand, will result in slower and less efficient working habits, as well as lower recruitment rates, and possibly even riots and mutiny. If people are unhappy with things, they may very well decide to just say forget it and abandon your cause and leave the kingdom, or even rise up and try to overthrow you. Of course, other factors and situations can cause these things too, but keeping the different inhabitants of your kingdom in high spirits is generally the best idea. There are exceptions however, if your kingdom is predominantly demon, the enslaved races will generally be low in morale, although how low can be difference between staying in line out of fear or striking back against their captors. Morale obviously isn't an issue for undead units, but the necromancers who raise and control these units will need to be kept happy less they decide they would be better of in your position. Darker deeds can result in a higher likelihood of being overthrown, and different alliances, nationwide religious systems, lifestyles, and taxation all have influence on how your creatures will act, but morale can be a turning point in making that new ally, or causing the people to join together and overthrow their fascist dictator.
Whether units are just citizens of your kingdom or recruited also has significance. Citizens will pay taxes and do things for both themselves and the kingdom, but you have a much greater control over recruited units. You may have thousands of peasants living in your kingdom, but that doesn't mean you are going to recruit them all. Not only would that be expensive, but recruited units must be given assignments directly or else they will just stand there. Most of the discoveries and prosperity of your kingdom, especially once it has become larger, will come from the citizens of your kingdom, not the recruits in your army. You can give general directions of what to do your population, or have a recruited crusader or other unit dictate them and keep them focused (at cost of their morale), but only the citizens will be paying taxes, recruited units are payed for and thus must be dismissed from your service before they pay taxes again. This allows them to freely do what they will, possibly downgrade themselves, but having regular, non recruited citizens are important; you can't recruit units if their are no citizens to recruit these units from. So, all those dwellings you built and structures and homes for all those creatures, you may not be using them at the moment, but the citizens are, and next time you look you may find more building and recruitment options. You don't have to force find new upgrades and buildings, many will be discovered while you are focusing on your heroes and their armies.
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Hopefully this brainstorming session gives you all a general idea of what I am envisioning. It's Heroes, but at a grander scale. Most customization, more personality, more individuality. It's not the Heroes you know, but the Kingdoms that prosper because of them.
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roy-algriffin
Supreme Hero
Chocolate ice cream zealot
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posted December 07, 2007 06:15 AM |
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By the sounds of it if i want this game im going to need to find one of those terabyte hard drives.
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"Am i a demon? No im a priest of the light! THE BLOODY RED LIGHT"
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BradRepko
Hired Hero
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posted December 07, 2007 08:37 AM |
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Quote:
By the sounds of it if i want this game im going to need to find one of those terabyte hard drives.
Perhaps the idea is a few years ahead of it's time?
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted December 07, 2007 08:44 AM |
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The idea of discovering new abilities is nice however I doubt it would work well in practice.
For example the slavery with the Pit Lords and the Peasants.
People would just find out on the internet that this is what you can do and then set out trying to get a Pit Lord knowing what will happen 
So the surprise/exploration element would be lost on all except the first player...
sounds cool though.  
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John says to live above hell.
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted December 07, 2007 01:36 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
By the sounds of it if i want this game im going to need to find one of those terabyte hard drives.
Perhaps the idea is a few years ahead of it's time?
and there is nothing wrong with that!
this looks like a very interesting concept for a game
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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roy-algriffin
Supreme Hero
Chocolate ice cream zealot
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posted December 07, 2007 10:49 PM |
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Quote:
The idea of discovering new abilities is nice however I doubt it would work well in practice.
For example the slavery with the Pit Lords and the Peasants.
People would just find out on the internet that this is what you can do and then set out trying to get a Pit Lord knowing what will happen
So the surprise/exploration element would be lost on all except the first player...
sounds cool though.
Theyd have no one to blame but themselves.
Anyway if a game like this comes out id hope they made it difficult to get creatures at times but every creature put together would create another.
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"Am i a demon? No im a priest of the light! THE BLOODY RED LIGHT"
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted December 08, 2007 02:38 AM |
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This proposal is wicked awesome!
Also, in regards to people posting stuff online: What it it works with procedural generation? Never the same result twice.
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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BradRepko
Hired Hero
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posted December 08, 2007 04:12 AM |
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There would also be additional resources in the form of food. It would be a general label though, so even if you only have farmers harvesting crops for food, dragons would still be able to eat the same food stuff, because the food wouldn't be divided into types. Mechanical and undead units wouldn't require food, but they would pay taxes either. Of course, golems can help with building some of the more advanced structures, as they can haul more materials and can use their fists as hammers to pound the stuff into the magical bonding agents. Gremlins would be good for mechanical things too, however, they can be mischievous and having them around can cause things to go haywire. Start building mechanical stuff, you are sure to attract them, but building them a dwelling, a clock tower, will not only give you a place to recruit them, but keep them preoccupied. Just don't expect the time to be right.
Certain things might attract different creatures to your kingdom without dwellings. Once you have a nice big castle, for example, a black dragon may swoop down to try to kidnap the princess, causing considerable damage in the meantime. Having lots of wild creatures may attract hunters and beast tamers to your area, so you might not have to discover them by yourself. The population of your city might have other buildings popping up too, some you may or may not want. For example, if you have mostly humans in your population, but you have succubus too, you might find them opening up a brothel. You can send in a crusader to shut them down, or you can leave it open and gain a boost in morale in the area, but the monks won't like it, and they are likely to have a conflict. Some units are naturally distrusting of each other, like elves and goblins, but there are things you can do to quell the tension, perhaps even foster friendships between them, but if you aren't careful, you'll have in fighting, which can lead to casualties and structure damage. If you want to keep your succubus happy, and want to keep the morale boost to local units, move the monastery further away. They might not like it existing period, but at least it should keep them separate. There is always a chance that a new unit might be discovered, like your monks turning into demoniacs or heretics. Although initial changes are good, as they let you discover new units, units might keep on changing when you don't want them too. You might suddenly find all your monks turning heretic and building demonic worshiping temples and sacrificing the peasantry.
You never really know how different things will effect your kingdom, so it might be best to have an idea of what kind of kingdom you want when starting out. If you want an accepting, open minded society, that doesn't reject anyone, you'll have to keep a close eye on the populace. This means keeping the neighboring kingdoms friendly and allied with you, as you will want to keep units garrisoned to break up any squabbling, and that means less time exploring and defending your boarders. If you are building a more haven-esque society, squabbling in your kingdom will be kept at a minimum, and when it does happen, the citizens will be able to break it up themselves, as the crusaders and monks will keep the peace. With mixed societies, they might be quick to blame the different races, the rangers blame it on the crusaders, the crusaders blame it on the rangers, and you've suddenly got a racial feud between the elves and the humans. Then morale will be down, and it will take a lot of time to make them feel at ease with each other. How you encourage your citizens to respond to other units in your kingdom can help build ties between them. If you have a black dragon cave, your dragons might occasionally swoop down on the farms, devouring food and peasants and setting crops and buildings ablaze. However, to keep the chances of this at a minimum, try to ease your units into being friendly with them. Have the peasantry cart the food outside the dragon cave, and then gradually transition them into bringing it into the cave. The big bad dragons might become friendly to your units, and they might build up a level of trust. You know your dragons and peasants get along when the dragons keep an eye at the kids at the schoolhouse and let the kids play on them. For those of you that think that having dragons be so tight and friendly with humans is a travesty, you are free to keep them apart. Heck, some people might encourage skirmishes in their kingdoms, enjoying watching the civilians kill each other. You will likely begin developing units that reflect such a society, like the Asylum from Heroes IV. Chaos reigns and different divisions in your kingdom are fighting all the time.
How you run your kingdom will effect how your neighbors treat you and develop to. Building a more war like kingdom will result as the neighboring kingdoms doing the same to avoid being taken over by you. Having a kingdom of ruffians will likely have the neighboring kingdom trying to quash you and end the riff-raff, or else their kingdoms will descend into chaos themselves. If you are running a kingdom of such kind, you might want to encourage your population to spread chaos into theirs, if they lose control of their own people, you can march right in with your personal, disciplined army and take over their land. If you have a kingdom of demons, your neighbors might not like you, even if you are making an unexpectedly peaceful society of demons. They will see demons, and consider them evil, and want them gone. Whenever your population is generalized like that, whether it be by others in your kingdom or neighboring kingdoms, they will want something done about it, and if you ignore there pleas, they will deal with it themselves. Naturally, if a neighboring kingdom is causing you concern, like your peasants being frequently harvested as corpses by the neighboring necromancers, you might want to get rid of them yourself. Whether you choose to do that alone and take their lands for your own, or work with other neighbors and divvy up the land, it's all up to you. Just remember that your actions affect other kingdoms as well as your own. If you slaughter the wolves in your territory, your people might be fine with it, but the neighboring elf kingdom might be disgusted by it and start a war. If you don't want wolves in your kingdom boarders, you could chase them back into the neighboring territory, as the wolves likely migrated from their if it is an elven territory. Just be sure they came from their, because if you chase the wolves into necromancer territory, they might not appreciate having the wolves digging up their corpses and gnawing on their skeleton's bones.
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roy-algriffin
Supreme Hero
Chocolate ice cream zealot
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posted December 08, 2007 07:59 AM |
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Hmm.
TWO terabytes
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"Am i a demon? No im a priest of the light! THE BLOODY RED LIGHT"
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BradRepko
Hired Hero
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posted December 08, 2007 12:26 PM |
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Of course, just your regular creature upgrades aren't the only upgrade you will find. There are so many abilities and powers the various creatures can learn, which results in some sort of upgrade. A Champion, for example, might learn how to ride armored Griffins. The Griffin Champion would be the results. The Griffins lose stamina and altitude for the troubles, but the unit becomes more versatile, if not more expensive to boot. Your smiths crafting the holy armor for your paladins might learn how to craft holy battle axes, thus you could create Battle-Axe Paladins. Building your Fairy Lanterns near the water might generate Water Pixie, or in a volcano to get Lava Pixies.
Of course, you'll need charismatic heroes to lead your armies to battle, but these heroes aren't going to appear out of thin air. Once you've got a bustling town going, build a tavern and pay the keeper for a few drinks, besides getting a few tips, you might also learn of some heroes who have wandered in, either from outside your boarders, or even produced within your own boarders. Maybe one of your veteran swordsman has taken up the life of a hero. Of course, you could just promote a recruit to hero and hope things work out. Who knows, maybe that sheep herder herds sheep like a general leads his army. Of course, some of your elite troops, like Crusaders and Champions, won't like being led by a mild mannered peasant, but who knows, maybe they will come to respect him?
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Daystar
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Back from the Dead
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posted December 08, 2007 09:02 PM |
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Is it possible to play as multiple civilizations? Eg, can you play as Haven, Elf, Necro and Orcish? With Academy, Inferno and Dungeon in an expansion and then Nagas, Dwarves, and Swamp in another?
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How exactly is luck a skill?
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