Knights Province devblog

Here’s another idea mentioned by TheDarkLord in the previous ideas topic: Camp-Wagons (CW for short). CWs could enrich the game by allowing the player to choose where his town will start. It could be an interesting addition to the game.

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The goal of it:

• Visual – to make it look consistent with a small village and a big town later on.
• Gameplay – strategic decision to choose the right moment to do an upgrade. Too early in the game will waste time and stall the development. Too late in the game will stall the advanced wares/warfare production.
• Gameplay – simplified start for newbies, so that they are not overwhelmed by amount of options and wares at the start (campaign missions 1-2).

Key points for a camp:

• Limited capacity – maximum 50 of each ware.
• Limited set of wares (only basic stuff, up to Gold perhaps).

Usually it is the Camp that the player starts the mission with (unless there’s a more developed town). Player can build any number of Camps. Both Camp and Store take the same space (4×4 tiles). Camp is transformed into a Store via upgrade. While upgrade in the progress, Camp keep functioning as usual. Once the upgrade is complete – additional storage space is unlocked. Upgrade button is located within Camp user-interface and available only if the required amount of building materials are inside.

From what I recall, AoE had a similar Store upgrade that would trigger advancement into a next age (Bronze, Metal, etc). There the upgrade was quite epic in cost and time.

As usual, feedback is welcome!

Do you know examples of similar functionality in other games, how do they work and what pros/cons do they have?

Let’s start a new category of posts, called “Ideas”. Here I will post ideas about the game. Here’s the first one – a new house called “Stash”.

Goal. This is a non-player structure placed on the map which can hold an amount of wares in it. Much like storehouses with coal and iron placed on the map in the older days. The difference is that the “Stash” house will serve only this role and presumably will fit in with the mission story better.

Looks are not defined, but it has to be something man-made, like an outpost or a parked wagon, maybe a tent.

Problems: How to let the player to access the wares? Building a road just to evacuate the wares is silly. Maybe have a special “raider” unit that can “steal” things from such stashes and enemy stores, a wagon/cart?

Feedback is very welcome!