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Forum Turn-Based Strategy Game - Part 6: Policies

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by
von_lipwig
, 09-07-2011 at 01:27 PM (4603 Views)
Hi there! This time, I would like to give some thought to Policies.

What are Policies?
Policies are acts of government that can affect everything, from your faction's economy to its army. It can vastly improve your chances on the battlefield, but choosing the wrong ones may cripple your economy or just plain not do anything useful for you.

How do Policies work?
Each faction has five Policy Slots. Eventually, I hope there will be a few dozen policies to choose from. Some more powerful policies may take up more than one slot. For instance, a policy that makes your economy very strong indeed may take up as many as three slots, which means you won't be able to include that other very powerful army-enhancing policy that also takes up three slots. You will now have a very strong economy (if you use it well) but your soldiers may be sub-par when compared to those of another faction. You can field more troops, however, so it'll balance out (hopefully!). However, the added economy might also enable you to buy that one building that will increase your units' stats or that will further increase your faction's economy.

Maybe after building that economic building, you will want to change your policy to a more military focused one now that your economy is being sufficiently boosted? Some Policies, however, may affect entirely different things. Not stats, but movement or ability to hide or maybe your city management?

Miscellaneous info
-Many Policies will offer a balance in and of themselves, boosting one thing but decreasing another.
-Some policies may be unique for a single faction

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These are some ideas I had. I haven't made up any real values yet, or how many Policy Slots they may take up; this is just mainly to show what you can think of when you think of Policies in this game.

(some of these policies may also turn out to be unique for a single faction, but I haven't decided yet)



Building outside the city walls - gives an extra building slot to a main city, but decreases its health.

Tax Collectors - gives a player more money per town owned, but decreases morale of lowest tier units.

Concealed movement - military units can remain hidden while moving, but their movement speed is cut in half.

Guerilla tactics - ambushes have twice the intercept range.

Spies - enemy hidden units become visible. Costs money per turn.

Innovative defences - Main City gains more health.

Experienced traders - trade routes yield more money per turn.

High interest loans - you initially lose a certain (high) amount of money, but after that your income increases a bit per turn.

Highwaymen - you steal a certain amount of income from all enemy factions (not very high, but it adds up)

Saboteurs - enemy main cities' health is decreased by a certain amount. More effective if you have one enemy faction than if you were to be enemies with all three (as damage is divided across all your current enemies).

Mobile city - (unique for Veterans) Veterans' main city (or rather, camp) can be moved, but its health is decreased. The city will remain hidden unless an enemy unit comes within a certain distance.



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There will be more Policies than this, but these are just to give you a taste of what kind of Policies you can expect. If you have any suggestions, please let me know! The usefulness, balance and cost of all these policies will have to be discussed and tested thoroughly. Be sure to give us your views, suggestions and ideas!






Another request:

If you are a programmer and know your way around programming stuff that would make managing this whole thing a whole lot easier, please send me a PM! While I don't mind working hard as a GM to make the game run smoothly, eventually I want to make it accessible to everyone, including other GMs (so I can play too! ). Basically this means that we need a programmer who can create a tool that does most of the work. I know what I'm asking is hard and I likely won't get much response, but please let me know through PM if you are interested in helping me with this, OR if you know someone else who would be!


In the next blog, I would like to talk about tech trees and whether I should implement them into the game.

Updated 09-18-2011 at 06:40 PM by von_lipwig

Categories
Forum Turn-Based Strategy Game

Comments

  1. Concurssi's Avatar
    About the mobile city thing.
    It might be good to make it so that the city get's back up to maximum health the longer it stays still, to represent the vets rebuilding their defenses.
  2. von_lipwig's Avatar
    That's an interesting suggestion, and one to test out in the beta game, to see how easy it is to implement and whether it's actually necessary. After all, this kind of thing needs to be very well-balanced, and the mobility SHOULD offset the decrease in health.

    You can change policies every turn by the way, so if you keep your city in one spot there is no use in keeping the Mobile City policy active, you might just as well switch over to one that is better suited to your current needs.
  3. Concurssi's Avatar
    That seems a bit like cheating, changing it out like that anytime you want. If I'm understanding this correctly. Should be some kind of price involved.

    And about the health thing, if they move their city around, at first they're just gonna set up some shitty tents and stuff. Then they might build a log wall or something, then some houses, then expand the wall or make it out of stone. Hence, the health would increase over time.
  4. von_lipwig's Avatar
    Well, I have been thinking about including some sort of cost to the change. One idea I had was to make it last a turn to 'unslot' a policy and then another turn to 'slot in' a new one. So you would be without a policy for two turns. A shorter version of this would be to just cut that down to one turn, but two turns seems fair enough I think?

    Another way would be to make it cost money to implement, so you would have to pay gold for employing a new policy. A combination of the two could also work.

    I was also thinking of paying different levels of upkeep for some or all policies. Obviously it would be silly to pay upkeep over a policy that directly gives you more money (such as High Interest Loans) because you could assume that the upkeep has already been subtracted from the money you get.

    However, you could include upkeep over a policy that gives you extra money per town or per trade route (such as Tax Collectors) and in that case it would be profitable to employ the policy when you have many towns, but it could actually be detrimental to your economy to employ it while you have no or only few towns because the upkeep would be higher than your profit. Other policies, such as military ones, would also cost money and upkeep and there you would have to think if the tradeoff is worth it.

    ---

    And I know WHY you suggested it. I'm just thinking that we don't want to much maths on the side of the GM and having to add an amount of health to a city every turn will only complicate things. Also, if you have the Mobile City policy on, then your city must be ready to move at a moment's notice at all times. Building log walls and houses will only mean extra delay when trying to move again.

    But if the beta shows that the city is too easy to find and/or too easy to kill, then of course such measures will be taken into consideration. After all, it needs to be balanced, and maybe being able to move your city at a moment's notice while still having good health, may make it a bit too easy. (though the veterans will have a hard time since their city is already one of the weakest, hence its option for mobility)
  5. Concurssi's Avatar
    Okay, I see where you're coming from now.




















    Heh I said coming.


    But anyways, I think I like a combo of the gold+time cost to the policies the most.
  6. von_lipwig's Avatar
    That will also need to be balanced obviously. Switching policies must not be made to be a pure whimsical thing, as in there must be a price to pay... but it must be profitable in the (semi) long run.

    Thanks for that suggestion though because even though a cost to changing policies had occurred to me, I hadn't given it much thought yet.
  7. Concurssi's Avatar
    Anything to help a brother our bro.
  8. Concurssi's Avatar
    I meant out. Anything to help a brother out bro.
    Why don't I ever spellcheck these things?
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