Hi. I'm a fairly new player who's just learning the game. Hence the title; these aren't intense, well developed ideas, but the result of a recent brainstorming session. I'd love to hear what the more experienced players think about these additions.
*The goal with most of these additions is to add interactivity with player towns as towns become more developed. When players cannot build or upgrade buildings (in the middle of long queues, when resources dry up, if a city is almost fully developed), these options will offer them more to do.
Approval Rating
The main idea is to add an approval rating. The rating, which would go from 0-100%, is meant to represent the common citizens of your kingdom [who I believe get way too little attention in Illy, despite producing every piece of res we use! They deserve better :) ]
Things that could impact the approval rating:
- Winning battles with armies in that city is a great but risky way to increase approval rating. (The amount would be based on numerous factors: size of battle, whether it was an NPC or player enemy, etc.) Losing battles, or high casualty percents in winning battles, can severly drop approval.
- Lower tax rates and making tax cuts are surefire approval-gaining strategies. The sharper a tax cut is, the more approval climbs. Low taxes are essential to maintaining very high approval ratings .High tax rates or tax hikes, however, will make maintaining high approval a greater challenge. If you're going to raise taxes to form an army, there is pressure to use it and use it well to bring approval back up.
- Any city activity will increase approval. This includes exporting/importing of goods, claiming sovereignty, and leveling up buildings. On the flip side, any stagnation in the city, from military or diplomatic inactivity to a drop in the amount of time a queue is full, will slowly drop approval.
- Successfully completing quests will boost approval, while failing will drop it. This, I figure, is a good way to make quests more useful. I have more on quests later in this post
- Building and upgrading certain buildings can have an impact on approval. The brewery, in addition to making beer for quests to gain approval, has a significant positive impact on approval. This makes sense after all; what peasant or soldier doesn't enjoy a fine mug of ale after a long day?
- In general, as the population in a city increases, high approval becomes harder to maintain, giving veterans a later-game goal to strive for while taking pressure of new players.
Features Relating to Approval Rating
Travelers: An immediate benefit of high approval is the appearance of travelers. Travelers are NPC units who will randomly appear at the entrance of your city. In order to manage travelers, you must build a tavern and perform the appropriate research.
When you click on the tavern, the "Manage Travelers" tab will appear. Here you can select which travelers to allow into your city. Each traveler has a benefit; some function like sovereign structures, increasing production of a certain resource (an "Evicted Farmer" would increase food production, for example), while others have different effects (a "Mercenary" adds a flat Defense increase to all unit types if the city is attacked, while a "Storyteller" will add an additional available quest). Each traveler also has a stay duration, indicating how long at maximum they will remain in your city before leaving.
There could be multiple levels of travellers. T1 travellers will always appear, while T2 travellers, which provide better bonuses and stay longer, require higher approval ratings. The maximum number of travellers allowed in the city is based on the level of the tavern. This function would give the tavern a more important role in player's cities, and could work even without an approval rating system.
Volunteers: Volunteers are military units who offer their services for free. Although they require the same initial resource cost to build, they do not demand hourly pay like their hired comrades do. They are indicated by the (v) next to their name, which separates them from the standard unit. [i.e. Militiaman(v) vs. just a Militiaman].
There are limits to the number of volunteers a player can have in one city. The maximum number of volunteers is limited by the player's population (the devs can decide the ratio). Also, quality of volunteers which appear is determined by the approval rating; T1 troops show up at reasonably high approval ratings, but T2 units require nearly perfect ratings. Volunteers CANNOT become commanders. Sorry!
Celebrations: Celebrations would be fun events that are used to improve approval rating and boost productivity. Celebrations are unlocked by completing certain events or during certain times during the game. Celebrations might become available:
- During a full moon.
- During the first 7 days of a new season.
- For 7 days after a successful siege of a city.
- For 7 days after a Server-Wide Tournament ends.
- Other special occasions
To host a celebration, a number of resources are required, with the demands being proportional to the population. Food and Beer are almost always required, while other resources, if needed at all, are required in lesser quantities. When the celebration commences, all res production, building and research queues are paused for the time being, and no new military, diplomatic actions, or caravan actions may be started (existing actions will proceed as usual). The celebration queue will start.
At any time, a celebration can be cut short, but approval ratings will drop severely. Celebrations can last anywhere from 12 hours to 3 days. If your city is attacked during a celebration, the celebration will end automatically, but approval will not drop, and a portion of the resources spent on the celebration will be returned to you depending on how far into the celebration you were.
Why make such an enormous sacrifice? Because, when a celebration ends, the following benefits will occur:
- 7 days of 100% approval rating.
- 7 days of boosted basic resource production
- all res production, building, and research queues that existed before the celebration will be completed more rapidly.
- Increased troop morale, leading to bonuses in attack, defense, and movement speed of armies for 7 days.
The specific boosts depend on the celebration; longer and more expensive celebrations give greater boosts. In addition to making beer worth more, celebrations require major planning and coordination to complete, making them a challenging but worthwhile endeavor for veteran players.
New Quest Group - Civil Conflicts
The current quest system is a simple system, but it does little other than provides small res rewards. What if quests explored the conflicts that can arise within a city? Diplomatic intrigues, threats of rebellion and civil wars, etc.
The idea is that, depending on approval levels, "Civil Conflicts" appear. These matters have multiple solutions, and are dangerous if simply ignored. The first is a Passive action; the default action that occurs if "Ignore matter" is selected or the quest is allowed to expire. Other actions vary by quest. Aggressive actions involve deploying military units, while Diplomatic actions require sending scouts, spies, and the like, while actions involve bartering, bribery, blackmail, and the like are Political actions.
Here's an example of a quest chain I designed:
Civil Conflict: A messenger reports that a group of bandits have broken into your warehouse and stolen valuable resources.
Passive Action: Shrug off the issue. (Act: Ignore. Gain: none. Loss: -1000 Gold)
Aggresive Action: Send a group of soldiers to track and arrest the bandits. (Act: Deploy military units of your choice. Gain: Continue quest. Loss: Casualty risk.)
Diplomatic Action: Send a group of scouts to track and follow the bandits. (Act: Deploy scout units of your choice. Gain: Continue quest. Loss: Casualty Risk)
You choose the Agressive Action and succeed. The Bandits are captures and brought to you. The following options appear:
Passive Action: Pardon the bandits. (Act: Ignore. Gain: none. Loss: Loss of approval rating.)
Aggressive Action: Hang the bandits publicly. (Act: Set an example. Gain: Increased approval rating. Loss: none)
Diplomatic Action: Hire the bandits. (Act: Hire as many of the captured Theif units as desired. Gain: new Theif units, at no initial. Loss: No initial cost or wait time to produce Theif units, but g/h must still be paid)
You choose the Diplomatic Action and succeed. Your scouts have discovered an entire Bandit Camp just outside the city! The following options appear:
Passive Action: Leave the camp alone. (Act: Ignore. Gain: none. Loss: -1000 Gold)
Aggressive Action: Send troops to attack the camp and return the stolen items. (Act: Deploy military units of your choice. Gain: Increased approval rating. Loss: Casualty Risk)
Diplomatic Action: Send your own thieves to obtain as many stolen items as possible. (Act: Deploy Thief units of your choice. Gain: Resources obtained based on number and type of Theives that return. Loss: Casualty Risk)
As you can see, ignoring these Conflicts can be harmful (especially if the risks and rewards scaled based on city population!). However, by taking the time to deal with them, a city can benefit in many ways. The best part is that it gives players another facet of their city to experiment with, by trying out new solutions to problems and seeing the actual results of those decisions on their city and its inhabitants. I'm sure the smart Illy devs could come up with tons of creative conflicts and solutions, as well as ways for one conflict resolution to influence, initiate, or prevent another. Endless possibilities!
I want to make clear this is pure brainstorming, it isn't even a request to the devs. Just something to get wheels turning and what not. It's also a complement to the developers, because I only brainstorm like this when I really enjoy a game. Needless to say, I'm loving Illyriad.
Thanks for taking the time to read my giant post, and please reply with any comments and criticisms, no matter how harsh.
Edited by Hadus - 04 Jul 2012 at 02:24
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Brainstorm Session: Approval Rating
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Rill wrote:
