Creative Runoff

Yeah. I haven’t posted in a few days, mostly because I’ve been busy slacking off. I’m good at slacking off. It’s a talent of mine.

In this post, I will address how the various factions will work in actual gameplay.

So. First, let’s talk about the Sancterian Empire. I envision the Sancterian Empire being the boring faction. There’s always a boring faction, and most of the time, it’s the one with the humans. It’s the start place from which every other faction is defined. Some factions will be stronger than the Sancterian Empire in certain areas, some weaker. The Sancterian Empire is pretty much the middle-ground of everything; everything they have is roughly average, not too amazing and not too shitty.

The Dwarven Empire is next. If you’re fighting dwarves, you definately don’t want to let them attack you before you attack them. This is because they’re masterful at siege weapons. If they attack your base, and they’re smart, your base will die. If you attack them first… siege weapons aren’t much use against non-buildings. The perfect strategy for a dwarven player would be to build up a strong infantry in the early game, then, when you get access to siege weapons, get a few really powerful siege weapons, and attack. Your infantry will deal with the enemy units, and while they’re busy being slaughtered, your siege weapons wreak havoc upon the enemy base. Perfect strategy, although it hinges upon your opponent not rushing you.

The Minotaur Tribes. A perfect strategy for a minotaur player would be to get cavalry as soon as possible, and rush the opponent with it, prefferably while they’re still predominantely using infantry. While minotaur infantry units are very strong, they’re also rather costly, as minotaurs eat a shitload, and minotaur weapons have to be big. Their cavalry units are faster, stronger, and all around better, so more cavalry means more pwnage. Minotaurs should also have, later in the game, a sort of spiritualist type unit, with the ability to heal the other units. This is because the whole spiritualist thing just kinda fits with the minotaurs. It works.

I’m not entirely sure what the Kingdom of Avinar will play like – I just don’t have any really good ideas. They’d be more technologically advanced than the other factions, so one of their later units may have access to gunpowder. Or maybe two – one that rides a camel (cause camels are awesome) and has a gun, and the other that has a keg of gunpowder strapped to its back and runs into buildings and explodes. Since they’re based on the egyptians as well as the chinese, we need to stick some egyptian-ness in there too. Maybe they build monuments to their gods, and those monuments give them various blessings. Like, while a monument to their god of war is standing, all the units get strength bonuses, and while the monument to their god of plenty is standing, their villagers gather food faster. This would lead to some interesting strategies, such as hiding a monument in an obscure place on the map to prevent the opposing factions from destroying it, thus providing your units with a constant buff. Perhaps some of the more powerful units later in the game could require a monument to a certain god standing before they could be created.

I left the Serpentborn for last on purpose: they’re complicated. You remember how I talked earlier about a sacrifice system? Yeah, I’m gonna talk about that. It might take a while.

Sacrifices would require three things: a sacrificial altar, a priest to do the dirty work, and a captive. A sacrificial altar could be built just like any other building. A priest could be trained at a temple; most likely the temple would be required to be built before the building of the altar as well. The captives is where things get complicated. We need a system for capturing enemy units, and we need it to not be to overcomplicated. Simplicity is good.

I think that there should be a specific unit for capturing enemies, I’m not sure what the name would be, but it’d basically be a lizardman with a spear and a net. This unit would have some combat capabilities, but its main purpose would be capturing enemy units. After the enemy unit reaches a certain percentage of health (around 30%, maybe) the capture unit can succesfully capture it. Afterwards, they would drag them back to their base, to store them in some sort of cage, awaiting sacrifice. The opposing player would lose the line of sight of any captured unit, because logically, if you’ve just been captured by the enemy, you probably aren’t reporting back to your general.

Capture units would have a capacity of one prisoner each, so as to prevent two things: 1) griefing and 2) realist bitches. Realist bitches are the kind of people that whine on forums about how something shouldn’t be able to do something it does because of some minor physics error (fuck you, newton) while playing a game full of magic, dragons, minotaurs, lizardmen, and did I mention magic?

Sometime in the later game, you would likely be able to get a slave cart of some sort, that would act as a portable depository for prisoners. It would most likely be able to carry somewhere from six to ten prisoners, but it would move slowly. If the enemy destroyed the cart or killed the capture unit, they would get their units back.

Using a unit like this would lead to some interesting strategies. If it was available early in the game, many Serpentborn players would utilize small raiding parties, a few infantry units and one or two capture units to go seize enemy villagers.

Once they were back in the lizardbase, in the cage, the prisoners would simply be used as another resource, albeit one that could be stolen by the enemy if they destroyed the cages. The priest would go up to the altar, you’d click a button, and a few seconds of random chanting later, you’ve got a weird otherworldly unit summoned by a bizarre ritual. Congratulations. Alternatively, you could sacrifice prisoners to buff your current, this-world units. This would require all the units you want to buff to gather around the altar, and roughly the same procedure would take place.

Obviously, different units would be worth different sacrificial “amounts.” A heavy infantry unit would be worth more than a capture peon, for example.

I think at least one of the campaigns available in the game would hinge heavily on the Serpentborn’s habit of sacrificing people; most likely there would be missions to free prisoners from groups of slave carts traveling along an easily-ambushable path, or to disrupt a Serpentborn ritual. The end mission of the campaign would probably involve ransacking Vassanar to prevent a massive amount of prisoners from being sacrificed in order to bring the Serpentborn’s evil and only vaguely pronounceable god into the world.

That would be enough for today. I’ll see you again whenever I feel like posting.