Post by kamikze on Sept 4, 2013 15:06:16 GMT
I was thinking yesterday about how to make the game a bit more competitive and I had an idea for clan wars. It's going to be a rough draft, a concept more than a fully thought out idea. This is because I am not sure about any of the numbers involved and how it can be balanced, which is also why I am looking to all of you for additions/comments on the idea =)
For the rest of this post these few principles apply:
For the rest of this post these few principles apply:
- All names are subject to change and mostly just here to give more depth to the concept
- All numbers are made up and are NOT balanced out, they are only here (if they are there at all) to give an idea of what could be expected
- All feedback is welcome, don't hold back
The Kingdom
Imagine your clan as a kingdom surrounded by other kingdoms. Every clan strives to be the best and to add a new competitive edge to the game war should be an option. To start off we need to visualize the kingdom and the needs of the kingdom. What I call the kingdom is basically what the clan is now. All buildings built within the clan (residences and other buildings) are rooms/buildings in the main building/ground of the kingdom.
When you level the clan, not only will you get the building slots as you do now. It will also increase your storage space in the main building of your kingdom. Also, you will get the chance to explore more space around your main building and prepare this for building.
Three different styles of kingdom
When a clan is founded the leader will have three options to pick from when it comes to picking a style of kingdom. These are based upon the three different skill trees: The castle (Warrior), the underground cave system (Rogue) and the dark tower (Mage). Every one of these will have its own (dis)advantages. These main buildings are a storage place and can be directly attacked (more about this later).
- The castle: The brave warriors have built this place to last a long time and any attacking force will need siege weaponry to stand a chance here. It has the most space for storage of materials. Will have a bonus to hand to hand combat in both offense and defense.
- The underground cave system: Attackers can get lost in the tunnels and are extra susceptible to timely planned ambushes and booby traps. There is one main cave where the buildings are and where there is room for storage of materials, due to size restrictions in the cave there is less room here. Will have a bonus to spy effects and raiding.
- The dark tower: A magic energy shield that needs to be taken down first, before you can attack the main building. It may seem a relatively small tower, but after opening the door you see its actual space. There is a medium amount of space available for storage. Get to pick a buff for their attacking or defending forces (extra health, extra attack, extra defense, etc.)
When you level the clan, not only will you get the building slots as you do now. It will also increase your storage space in the main building of your kingdom. Also, you will get the chance to explore more space around your main building and prepare this for building.
Surrounding area of your main building
As you level up the clan more area becomes available for exploration. I imagine this as a TS skill you can level up to do this faster, either a clan TS level or a personal one. However, you do not get any exp for this, just the space for new buildings (not the buildings fit for inside the main building which are already in game). Something you could add to this would be random drops of resources or the items that will be used for professions, as you do not just explore new land, you also prepare it for building new buildings.
(Initial) Thoughts of new buildings
Every kingdom will need peasants for simple jobs as moving the resources from the main building to the newly to be build building and for assisting in the build. More peasants will make you build new structures faster, but they can only build one building at a time and only if the necessary space is available. They also require food to work for you, or they will go on strike or even leave your kingdom for a better place. For a building to actually be build you also need an overseer, which is a member from the clan that adds resources to the building as they arrive from the main building. To not make this process too easy you need to gather resources first, add them to your storage room (which is something different from just placing it in guild to upgrade regular buildings). Then you need to assign peasants to carry it to the new building location, this can be a portion of the materials so you can break it up some more and make it last longer so that buildings aren't easy to build. This will take, lets say, an hour to bring the portion of materials to the new site. Then a member of the clan adds it to the building, speed will depend on amount of peasants available for the job. All materials used in building are susceptible to being taken in a raid (more later on raids) and the peasants are vulnerable being away from the main building.
For this reason you will want to convert some peasants into soldiers for protection of the grounds and for protection of the main building. Don't worry, there will be an active role for the members of the clan in fighting as well. Soldiers also require food (and perhaps some gold) to stay with you and fight for you. To convert peasants into soldiers you first need to build a training hall, so up till then only your clan members are available to protect and to attack.
To get this system to be fair and balanced it will need cooldown periods and the right numbers and equations, which will be a bitch to balance...
First off I think that the big clans shouldn't be able to destroy every other clan, so they will be a bit limited in what they can do. I'd suggest that they will only have the option to spy/thief/raid if they are the original attackers. However, if they get raided by another, lower, clan they can retaliate with a border attack (and if the lower clan does more attacks and loses ground, then a siege can happen as well).
Secondly the amount of time in between attacks should be regulated, there should be a cooldown period on every kind of attack, the bigger the attack, the longer the cooldown. If you lose a fight as attacker, the cooldown will be bigger than when you win. Every side will lose soldiers, horses, other troops or materials, so you will need to rebuild this as well. Which makes me think that the army size and the materials your army uses will also be limited to the amount of actual clan members doing the attack, which has to be related to the size of the kingdom as well.
Thirdly I have been pondering ways to also make the skill tree you have the most points in count for you in battle. For instance: During a raid or border attack a defending rogue can gather some archers on top of a wall or tower nearby to deal extra damage to an attacking force. Or: A mage who is on the scene of a battle first can hold off the attackers (lets say a few minutes) to call for reinforcements, he will cast a mighty spell to raise an energy shield or to slow down the attackers. This renders the mage useless for the rest of the fight though.
You can just keep on adding to something like this to keep it interesting and fresh.
- Spy training centre (more on spies later)
- Siege weaponry factory
- Peasant housing
- Training hall
- Stables
- Defensive buildings such as walls or towers
- Specific buildings for each style: Hall of magics for the dark tower, where magical troops can be forged (think of golems, etc.). A war kennel for the warriors, where they train war dogs to help aid them in battle. For the rogues there will be a building similar to the spy building, but for thieves, which you can send over to other kingdoms to rob them of gold/resources.
Every kingdom will need peasants for simple jobs as moving the resources from the main building to the newly to be build building and for assisting in the build. More peasants will make you build new structures faster, but they can only build one building at a time and only if the necessary space is available. They also require food to work for you, or they will go on strike or even leave your kingdom for a better place. For a building to actually be build you also need an overseer, which is a member from the clan that adds resources to the building as they arrive from the main building. To not make this process too easy you need to gather resources first, add them to your storage room (which is something different from just placing it in guild to upgrade regular buildings). Then you need to assign peasants to carry it to the new building location, this can be a portion of the materials so you can break it up some more and make it last longer so that buildings aren't easy to build. This will take, lets say, an hour to bring the portion of materials to the new site. Then a member of the clan adds it to the building, speed will depend on amount of peasants available for the job. All materials used in building are susceptible to being taken in a raid (more later on raids) and the peasants are vulnerable being away from the main building.
For this reason you will want to convert some peasants into soldiers for protection of the grounds and for protection of the main building. Don't worry, there will be an active role for the members of the clan in fighting as well. Soldiers also require food (and perhaps some gold) to stay with you and fight for you. To convert peasants into soldiers you first need to build a training hall, so up till then only your clan members are available to protect and to attack.
Different ways of attacking
- Using spies: The spies you train in the spy training centre (which will cost a good deal of gold) will have a few options.
The first one is obvious: Spying the enemy to see what they are doing on certain plots of land and to see troops at the location. You will have the option to pick a level of detail, the more detail you want the higher the chance of them getting caught and the enemy knowing of your spies presence.
The second option: Sabotage. This will have several ways which you can use. Think of things such as setting fire to resources on new plots of land or scaring away the peasants working on the site (this will become less effective if used too often against the same enemy). These are risky missions and your spies will not likely return and their plans could be foiled by adequate reaction from the enemy (an actual clan member building the new structure that 'sees' the sabotage and stops it in its tracks) or by peasants/soldiers rising to the occasion (this will be a random factor.
The third option: Send in your spies as new town criers, which then spread lies about your enemy to make the peasants work less hard. The clan will have to search each plot of land as they notice this till they find the crier and dispose of him and after this is done successfully the peasants will work with a renewed vigor cause they feel cheated by the enemy. The clan that sent the crier can also withdraw him after a while before he is discovered, which will cause the morale of the peasants to only come back slowly. - Raiding: Using your trained soldiers and cavalry you can send them out to form a raiding party which will attack one of the plots you choose (not the main building). This will have to be supervised by members of the clan, the more that can join the attack the better the odds of winning and taking resources and peasants from the enemy. What makes your raid stronger is not just amount of raiders, it also depends on the level of the ones attacking (mostly because of higher tier equip used in the attack) and on the attributes they have. When a clan member gets killed by the enemy, they lose the gear they are wearing to the enemy.
- Border attack: Using this option will be similar to raiding, but the objective will be to destroy and not to steal. So you will be working on destroying buildings and killing peasants, which will automatically make all the troops come towards your attack. If led by actual clan members the defense becomes stronger. With this option you can only attack the property on the outskirts of the enemy kingdom, not the inner circle of buildings and not the main building. If successful this makes the land uninhabitable for a while and the losing kingdom will have to wait to re-explore it.
- Siege: This is the only way to attack the main building and will be the most effective if the surrounding area is already attacked. After successfully attacking the main building you get all the resources/gold inside and the clan you attacked has to start over in another place so they can plot revenge. But this won't be easy to achieve, since these main buildings are very well defended and you need to attack the right way and with the right force to win this battle.Skirmishes
Besides these ways of directly attacking a kingdom, there could also be a way of playing around between clans in a direct battle option, lets call this a skirmish. Instead of fighting in a kingdom you pick a field somewhere to go head to head on. BlueWhale suggested something interesting based on an old idea of a now long gone game. It would be something loose from the kingdom idea and would be a way to test your strength against other guilds. It would be based on attributes and gear you wear and would pit one clan against another. Most fun would be if this was real-time, so only with online clan members. There could be a leaderboard for this special clan battle on which the points gained in battle would be counted. Points would be gained by doing damage, by killing enemies and by random events that happen (luckbased to add something unpredictable to the fight and the outcome). The winner would be the one that gathers the most point, which isn't necessarily the last standing person or clan.
Random events could be stuff like:
A band of thieves is attacking Clan A in the rear! Clan B gains some momentum and will gain extra points for the duration of the battle!
A mage has wandered onto the battlefield and has taken out Member A of Clan A and Member C of Clan B! They are dead and can not earn anymore points!
Clan B has found an ancient relic and has gained 100 points!
Etc.
Perhaps BlueWhale has more suggestions for this (or can correct me, since I forgot the details from the old game, lol)
Ground rules
To get this system to be fair and balanced it will need cooldown periods and the right numbers and equations, which will be a bitch to balance...
First off I think that the big clans shouldn't be able to destroy every other clan, so they will be a bit limited in what they can do. I'd suggest that they will only have the option to spy/thief/raid if they are the original attackers. However, if they get raided by another, lower, clan they can retaliate with a border attack (and if the lower clan does more attacks and loses ground, then a siege can happen as well).
Secondly the amount of time in between attacks should be regulated, there should be a cooldown period on every kind of attack, the bigger the attack, the longer the cooldown. If you lose a fight as attacker, the cooldown will be bigger than when you win. Every side will lose soldiers, horses, other troops or materials, so you will need to rebuild this as well. Which makes me think that the army size and the materials your army uses will also be limited to the amount of actual clan members doing the attack, which has to be related to the size of the kingdom as well.
Thirdly I have been pondering ways to also make the skill tree you have the most points in count for you in battle. For instance: During a raid or border attack a defending rogue can gather some archers on top of a wall or tower nearby to deal extra damage to an attacking force. Or: A mage who is on the scene of a battle first can hold off the attackers (lets say a few minutes) to call for reinforcements, he will cast a mighty spell to raise an energy shield or to slow down the attackers. This renders the mage useless for the rest of the fight though.
You can just keep on adding to something like this to keep it interesting and fresh.
Conclusion for now
I am well aware this is a lot of text and that this is a wildly crazy idea. Very complex to balance and personally I would be more than happy with a simpler version of clan wars as well. Something that is like the skirmishes mentioned above for instance. I just think this is a nice way to get rid of more resources as well as make the game more competitive than just comparing clan level size and available buildings (which is, to be frank, rather boring to compare). I depend heavily on your comments and ideas if we ever want to have a shot at getting something like this into the game. (Sorry Stabzs, you will hate the amount of coding required, I bet, lol).
- Kami
- Kami
