Enabling disloyalty

With regard to Alliance powerblocs...they'd be less ugly if the world map graphics took them into consideration.  If each city was a mere district and the entire bloc could be named as a metropolis, one could theoretically make that sprawling mass of city a very beautiful composite graphic.

Simply design a separate set of tiles designed to overlay with each other.  If really ambitious, add some variations for softening outer corners and filling in outer corners.  Activation of the appropriate adjoining tile graphic would be based on choosing the same "city state" name, while "city" name remains the unique identifier.  Implementation could easily accommodate as great a variety of interlocking pieces and specifics as your artists care to create.  For example, surrounded cities could use graphics heavy with great spires and courtyards, while edge tiles could look more like villas and estates, corner tiles featuring great watchtowers.  You could keep it simple such as one watchtower tile for any corner, or complex such as assembly of walls and towers for each unique permutation of surrounding conditions (i.e. which adjacent tiles are part of the city).  Additional variations could identify trade hubs or tiles with road through them, etc.

Or, if you really want to make some eye-candy, let players select their own graphic and watch them run canals and causeways through the metropolis.  Many of these powerblocs are single-player, making the liklihood of sensible, attractive design on many of them high.

I snuck in an added benefit there as well--give people incentive to start naming their cities as part of something larger, and that whole "location more meaningful than coordinates" concept already starts to take shape naturally.  Suddenly my trade partners won't be looking for my city Istan amongst (currently) 21,643 cities.  Instead they'll be looking for Ghealdan of Sherbrook Forest, Istan district, out of 500 city-states in 65 forests.


Edited by HonoredMule - 15 Sep 2010 at 00:20

HonoredMule wrote: If using a spell, I'd make it very expensive indeed, but also give it base cost plus distance-scaled cost so people can't just start jumping all over the place.  There would also need to be a rather cheap, available-early spell that makes a large surrounding area off-limits to such transport.  It's effects should also be added to the new player protection.

I'm gravitating towards the idea of a teleportation spell as well - it makes the coding end *much* easier.

I'm interested in the 'cheap spell to make a large surrounding area off-limits' idea, though I do think this would mean that the "naturally populated" center of the map would effectively be barred from this kind of transport even if we used a fairly small radius like 5 squares.

What we're considering implementing for the "free relocation for every city" offer ("Sigurd's Spell of Ultimate Teleportation") granted with the completion of the biomes and factions is a one-off spell that has certain restrictions on casting:

• All your units must be at home
• You must have cancelled all your trade offers
• You cannot have any reinforcements in your city
• You cannot be under siege or blockade
  
• You target a square to teleport to
• The target square you choose *cannot* be within 10 squares of another player who is either neutral or is in any alliance other than yours
• The spell will take time to cast, and the time taken to cast will have a minimum time, and then depend on distance to destination and size of city. We're anticipating somewhere between 3 and 48 hours for smallest to largest cities from nearby to very far away
  
• Whilst the spell is casting, you cannot dispatch units or accept trade offers
• When the spell completes, you take your city's underlying terrain with you, and instantly arrive at the destination
• You must cast the spell within 4 weeks of being granted it; it's not something you can save up for a rainy day :)
  

This isn't yet cast in stone, but it's where we're heading, and thoughts are welcome.

One thing I'm not yet clear on is what we do about incoming units from other players.  For the purposes of this one-off relocation, I'm tempted to insta-return them home to the sending player; but we do need to think about how to deal with this if we actually turn this (or a version of this) into something players can do more regularly.

I'm also interested in people's thoughts as to whether we should prohibit proximity to another city (or another already cast teleportation spell that hasn't yet activated); it'd be sad if large numbers of people in the game used this as an opportunity to create (frankly, excessively ugly - even if highly practical) alliance powerblocs all over the map.

Best,

SC


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 14 Sep 2010 at 22:58

simply add a new school of magic wit a spell that can provide to move your city away from where it is......
sure is good if the spell cost encrease expnencial way for cast the spell the second time so it will be more difficoult to move the city several time....it'only my suggestion.
Bye

well every idea i had has been said here except maybe some dangers tied to being nomadic like wild animals or something i dont know just saying

One thing I wanted to see with a nomadic concept was an ability to chose between having a more settled down lifestyle or having a truly nomadic lifestyle.  Both choices would need to be perfectly balanced so that each would be attractive for their pros and cons.  Nomads would be smaller populations with great mobility, but in combat they would need to fight a guerilla style conflict, striking and fleeing.  Non-nomads would have big populations that could support large armies, but would lack in stealth and find it hard to chase down fleeing nomad armies.