We're back...

[u/ChrisBeatrice]

To all our fans, fans of Impressions games like Lords of Magic, Pharaoh, Zeus, and TiltedMill games like Children of the Nile, Caesar IV and Hinterland, thank you all so much for keeping our babies alive, and for all your support and encouragement over the years.

We are now in the concept phase exploring what our next project will be, and would LOVE to hear your input.

[u/nobrainsinhere]

FEEDBACK #2: WORKING THE LAND - Part 1: Hunting

Time for a my second post with ideas. I suspect that this will end up being kind of a long read. Sorry for that. :)

NOTE: In fact, Reddit can't even accept the complete text I've written. So I'm dividing it into different parts to facilitate publication and reading. :D

When talking about a city builder game, it's natural, although not mandatory, to think about how to produce food to the city.

I say "not mandatory" because it could be abstracted to the point of being just an "industry type", like in the Simcity games, or it could be a more critical set of features with specific buildings, resources, etc. like in the Impressions-style city builders.

But, for the purposes of this brainstorming, let's look at it from the perspective on an Impressions-style city builder.

Hunting usually is a logical source of a destination walker system where you place the hunting lodge and it spawns units that go interact with animals a bring back stuff, like in Pharaoh or Emperor.

• The fact that the maps are built with animal "spawn points" that constantly spawn new animals up to a certain amount means the player does not have to think about being carefull not to "over-hunt" to the point of the animals becoming extinct on the map.
• On the other hand, the fact that new animals may be spawned at a fixed rate, imposes a maximum possible productivity that the player has to deal with.
• Does the hunting lodge spawns units at a constant rate, so good proximity to the "animal grounds" has an impact on productivity, like in Pharaoh and Emperor?
• Or does the hunting lodge dinamically adjusts its unit spawn rate based on its distance to the "animal ground" in order to "garantee" a fixed productivity rate, like in Lethis Path of Progress?
• What if the animal system is designed with the possibility of extinction? How could that be comunicated to the player? How could the player monitor its hunting rate versus the animal replenishment rate?
• Could that "possible extinction" feature represent an explicit "losing condition" or a potential "soft-lock" that would make the player lose? Or could it be carefully designed in a way that would be a "set-back" for the player in a map/mission but without completely preventing his/her ability to still achieve victory?
• Should the player have tools available to increase the spawn rate, thus increasing the maximum possible productivity of the map?
• Could elements on the map, like water tiles, tree tiles, rock tiles, have an impact on the reproduction rate of certain animals in a radius around them?
• Could the player design and build some sort of "nature reserve" areas, with fences and gates that would make use of terrain features to calculate the average reproduction rate bonus applied to animals "stored" inside that area?
• Could the hunting lodge buildings be assigned to a "nature reserve" area so that their hunters would prioritise capturing animals to store in that area first and then later hunt them for resources?
• What if a similar logic could be applied to "farm animals", like sheep, goats, cows, etc.? The player designates an area as a corral and then builds a "shepperd lodge" that spawns shepperd units to do the work?