One focus I have in my game is allowing for a ton of different magical options and systems. Ideally by harnessing different granular aspects of magic and combining them in weird ways, nearly every society in a single game or potentially across many games will have quite differently functioning magic systems. In this post I am going to lay out all the potential aspects of magic.
One of the major systems of magic is trait channeling. You can have a character or populace give away part of their power, or you can steal someone's power, and gift those powers to others. For instant you may gift a unit in your army with the stolen essence of an imprisoned dragon. You can also perform actions essentially similar to communions in Dominions4. You could also steal the knowledge or strength of slaves to give to your people. Stealing the traits of your citizens can incur a political cost, assuming you don't utilize propaganda to make it culturally acceptable. You can also drain the life of an entity to increase the life of another. The way that systems interact in my game the possibilities are limitless. Trading the weight of a spy but gifting them strength or something. Giving your pikemen or shield using troops strength and weight to defeat charges. All sorts of fun stuff.
You also have the more conventional magic systems. Elemental magic, killing spells, etc. Not much to explain.
Another powerful tool is environmental magic. You can alter the traits of a province like the temperature or the rain and so forth. You can also combine this with physical terraforming. There are options like creating a storm or snowfall in a pass, freezing rivers, and various spells like locust swarms and crap.
One of the rather unique systems of magic besides trait exchange is the mental arts. You have the ability of farsight and more interestingly, a sort of foresight. Foresight is more about discovering secrets than actual future vision since the game has no actual future state. Perhaps you get a vision of betrayal in war or of your death, which signifies various plots against you.
Magic in this game can affect economics as well. Magical vs technical automation for instance. Magic powered machines. Doing things like creating roads with magic. Transmutation, conjuring power from magic. Creating fridges using magic to transport or store food. Some sort of time proof field could provide similar effects.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Advancing The Idea Of Research In 4X Games
Research is a wildly undervalued area of 4x games. My belief has always been that all aspects of 4x should have the depth of the combat part and I have set out to make that so. Below I will lay out my vision for an incredible 4x research system.
First I'll start with the most boring part. For basic things like crop growing I don't think interactive research is super valuable. My plan is that provinces will slowly advance in this area mostly automatically. You will gain general crop knowledge that will slowly disseminate across your empire and you will gain regional and biome crop knowledge as well. I am considering knowledge for every specific crop as well, may be too much. You will also slowly gain knowledge in areas like construction, livestock management, etc. You can invest in infrastructure later in the game to increase the growth and spread of this knowledge.
Now we can get to the more interesting areas of research. This aspect involves magical and technical skills. In a previous post I described broad worldly issues regarding magic. Magic has a total level of power and it becomes increasingly difficult to generate new magical knowledge as you approach the total. However the specifics of how research is conducted must be addressed. Every character in the game is capable of research. Using their resources they can put money, time, minions, etc into their research budget. Any character involved in research gains the fruits of their own labor and their controller if they have one does as well.
This system has many implications. There is a substantial incentive to do most serious research yourself or to not allow subordinates access to more powerful knowledge. These people could easily sell you out or attempt to supplant you. However you can also engage in sneaky plots to steal supporters and knowledge from your enemies or even allies.
You have some interesting political and economic choices as well. You could create a highly educated magical society but that may reduce your relative power. Hoarding knowledge will make it harder to get more research done but will allow you to have extremely serious leverage over the less magically gifted. It is probably easier for dictatorial rulers to hoard knowledge and populist ones to spread it around. But both groups still have their troubles.
What knowledge you actually get is somewhat random. You can sort of research magical fields or focus on improving existing knowledge, and your learning is somewhat granular. There is no option to research say, a "levitating airship/weapons platform."
Magical knowledge can come from discovery or boons from supernatural forces as well. Its not purely a research game. I may put up some other articles about the connection of research to society and culture later. But I think the character focused system, which is unlike even the character based system in Stellaris by Paradox, is unique and has a lot of potential for emergence.
First I'll start with the most boring part. For basic things like crop growing I don't think interactive research is super valuable. My plan is that provinces will slowly advance in this area mostly automatically. You will gain general crop knowledge that will slowly disseminate across your empire and you will gain regional and biome crop knowledge as well. I am considering knowledge for every specific crop as well, may be too much. You will also slowly gain knowledge in areas like construction, livestock management, etc. You can invest in infrastructure later in the game to increase the growth and spread of this knowledge.
Now we can get to the more interesting areas of research. This aspect involves magical and technical skills. In a previous post I described broad worldly issues regarding magic. Magic has a total level of power and it becomes increasingly difficult to generate new magical knowledge as you approach the total. However the specifics of how research is conducted must be addressed. Every character in the game is capable of research. Using their resources they can put money, time, minions, etc into their research budget. Any character involved in research gains the fruits of their own labor and their controller if they have one does as well.
This system has many implications. There is a substantial incentive to do most serious research yourself or to not allow subordinates access to more powerful knowledge. These people could easily sell you out or attempt to supplant you. However you can also engage in sneaky plots to steal supporters and knowledge from your enemies or even allies.
You have some interesting political and economic choices as well. You could create a highly educated magical society but that may reduce your relative power. Hoarding knowledge will make it harder to get more research done but will allow you to have extremely serious leverage over the less magically gifted. It is probably easier for dictatorial rulers to hoard knowledge and populist ones to spread it around. But both groups still have their troubles.
What knowledge you actually get is somewhat random. You can sort of research magical fields or focus on improving existing knowledge, and your learning is somewhat granular. There is no option to research say, a "levitating airship/weapons platform."
Magical knowledge can come from discovery or boons from supernatural forces as well. Its not purely a research game. I may put up some other articles about the connection of research to society and culture later. But I think the character focused system, which is unlike even the character based system in Stellaris by Paradox, is unique and has a lot of potential for emergence.
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