Let’s temporarily switch away from technical side of development and take a look at planning. Over initial course of planning we had several iterations over tech-tree plans. Here is how it looked like:
First plan was rather short and based off upgrades idea. Something that would enrich the game and allow to start a village with a believable encampment instead of stone Store in the wild:
Second one is detailed version of that. We thought that maybe player can start with wagon and choose a place to settle. We also played with idea of:
What if there are all sorts of wagons, settlers, military, trade. And boats:
However that quickly gets out of hand – wagons are disconnected from main town and there are all sorts of logistics issues, like – who will bring the food and supplies? That does not works well for a game where each and every ware is actually transported between locations. So next plan focused more on traditional ideas:
Newest plan shows 3 tiers of troops, something we would like to have for combat diversity. That naturally forms 3 branches of development:
As you can see – each next plan is different from previous, some ideas are added and some are rejected (often temporarily).
And some ideas:
- Hunters cabin – very tempting, but how to process meat he brings, does it need to be cooked, does rabbit’s meat differ from wolf’s or deer’s? Hard to say.
- Stash – neutral house placed on a map, whoever connects to it first – gains access to resources in it. However that might look weird, to build a road (spend stone) just to be able to carry wares out.
- Farm – an option to choose the crop, corn, hops, fruits?
- Bow tower – an early defense structure, to protect from rushes. Can be upgrade to a better tower perhaps, otherwise useless from tier 2-3 troops.
- Trade wagons – loaded with wares, when two wagons meet they can exchange wares. Allow players to capture enemy wagons.
- Catapults – we need heavy siege equipment!
- Well – water supply, might be a clutter though, I think we’ll reject it.
- Some kind of jewelry maker – having commodities would be nice, don’t know how they can enrich the game though.
Oooh I love tech trees! What about a house where your villagers can rest from all the hard work?
And I know they originally wanted to implement day and night in KaM but it wasn’t very interesting when everyone was asleep… Maybe there are ways to make it interesting? People that work at night, maybe a hunter or something… 🙂
Just tossing with ideas.
I’m not sure how resting houses could work. Given that rest takes at least 25% of daily activity, that means we players town will be “off” 25% of the time.
Day/Night could be an interesting mechanic if we’d invent activities for each of them, but I can’t think of any from the top of my head.
Hunter could be an interesting profession, but there’s a catch – what would he catch and how that would be processed into food?
Well they don’t necessarily have to rest 25% of the time. You could make it 10% as well. A little rest is still more realistic than no rest at all. 🙂
I guess anything the hunter catches should go to the butcher who processes it. I think you want villagers to eat ‘meat’, and not ‘rabbit meat’, ‘deer meat’ and so on. That would make it unnecessarily complicated, right? Depending on the available animals to hunt, multiple animals could form one ‘meat’, for example: 1 deer = 1 meat, but he needs to catch 5 rabbits in order to get 1 meat as well. I’m sure there are ways to figure something out. 😀
Hardest aspect of this idea might be the butchers’ UI (all the different animals…).
I’m still unsure that would be fun seeing servants walking away from their job to have a nap.
Hm, so hunter could be a starting source of “common” meat that later gets replaced with cows/pigs. Still butcher is a bit far in building unlocking order.
About that hunter’s stuff, just some thoughts.
Maybe instead of “need 5 rabbits to get one meat” it should be like 1 rabbit=1 meat, while 1 deer=3 meat or something like that. Then there’s only need to balance the nutritional value of meat in comparison to other food :). Hunter would “produce” proper quantity of meat depending on what he was able to kill at the moment.
Also, maybe hunter could prepare the meat by himself, having a bonfire near his hut, making smoked meat, ready to eat. Just deliver it to Tavern or Inn, et voila! It’s easy and simple 🙂
Also, I hope you don’t mind I dig this topic out after a year 😉 Just wanted to share some ideas.
Hi TianK,
All ideas are yet just ideas. Everything is work in progress. For now we have rejected the Hunters idea altogether, but maybe we return to it later on – can’t promise anything.
Sure, please comment on any of the articles! 🙂
I think the well could be a good feature, a 1×1 tile building which you want near your food production. It can supply unlimited water and serfs collect it themselves, but water cannot be stored in a storehouse (must be supplied fresh). More than 1 well may be useful in large villages to optimize traffic flow. I guess it doesn’t add much to the game really.
Another thought: If gold is a higher tier resource, then there should be some way to hire basic units without it (unarmored soldiers, serfs, workers, woodcutters, fishermen, etc.) Perhaps lower tier units cost only food and are hired from the camp/town hall, but for high tier units like blacksmiths you need a school and gold to train them. Then for very simple villages you don’t need a supply of gold. Just an idea.
Yeah, wells sound nice, but they would add unnecessary clutter to the gameplay.
Gold idea sounds very tempting 🙂
Or we can enrich it by adding another ware like books, mandatory for higher tier professions. So e.g. 1st tier need food, 2nd tier needs gold and 3rd tier needs gold+book.
I’m also thinking about social buildings – wells, lampposts, living houses, statues, so maybe they can offer a small boost to nearby fields or other options, but mostly be a beautification elements to the town.
Oh I missed this reply – I love beautifications! 😀 And they don’t necessarily have to be buildable by players, I’m fine with them being objects. Would be great for single player and in some cases multiplayer too. Things like statues and wells would be nice to build, but maybe lampposts, tombstones etc. would be better as objects.
To this I have a idea. Maybe workers what have nothing to do can make this beautifications (Oh god I have to copy-paste this word) automatic. Or you can assign (slider or something) how many workers will be working on beautiwhateveritis. But I have no idea what will be the effect of that. Maybe less stamina drops?
I’m curious about what the plan is for New Game. Seems like most of these ideas/tech trees are from a sandbox perspective. I guess I’m asking if this game will be a sandbox/ medieval economy sim, or more a complex RTS like RMK?
Could you explain a little more please, what are the differences between sandbox and complex RTS and which one is RMK? 🙂
Take Banished, for example. There are sooooo many types of foods . You can grow different crops for minimal practical reasons: it’s mostly just for your own personal preferences. It is like a simulator of a farming game almost. KaM, on the other hand, has a limited amount of food; each one having a specific role and purpose.
My question is: will this game contain more elements of a complex simulator, or more a straightforward, tactical RTS game?
I see what you mean. I think we should aim for the tactical RTS, because only then competitive multiplayer is making sense 🙂
By the way – what will gold be used for in this game? Will it have the same function as in KaM? Did you consider introducing a global currency, rather than ‘trading’ wares?
What is a global currency and “trading” wares? 🙂
NextGame is intended to be a classic German RTS (i.e. many wares, complex production chains, etc.). I’m not sure currencies fit in into such design, but I’m eager to read your ideas!
Well I didn’t really have an idea… But I can come up with some. 😛
With currency I just mean ‘money’. You could invent your own currency.
Money could be used as an additional ware. Or not really a ware, maybe it would be better to have a global ‘money’ pool. It could be used for trading. So instead of trading timber for iron ore, you hand in some coins and you receive the ware you want. It would be way easier to balance than ware ware trades.
In KaM, the only condition for soldiers is ‘hunger’. You only have to send them food. That does make sense, but personally I’ve always thought it’s a bit strange that serfs have to walk all the way to them with food. I think even in medieval times soldiers would receive some money and they could buy their own food from it (surely they had families as well). Another possibility would be to add (or replace hunger with) another condition; something like loyalty maybe. If soldiers/workers don’t get paid their loyalty may drop and they could go on strike.
These are just some ideas and there are probably many other possibilities. I’m not sure if I like these ideas myself, but a currency should at least be considered.
Currency sounds like an artificial concept in a world of natural production and exchange, I’m not sure they make sense in a game where everything is made to be visual – wares, production, etc..
Pocket money for soldiers is a bit inconsistent, since we established everyone eats in NG world, so they need to eat too. Food is a maintenance cost of an army and also a way to force player to have diverse economy. Having that replaced with gold only would probably make player less caring about food industry.