B: Conquest of Grandnecity

Introducing Conquest of Grandnecity.
This is my first attempt ever at a competition and considering I am more of a technical programmer than a game designer it is most certainly an interesting choice on my behalf.

Conquest of Grandnecity is currently the barest possible representation of a Grand Strategy game or some RTS's in fact. Currently the entire game consists of two sliders that determine where you are using your men, either as farmers or as miners and 2 buttons, one to go to war and one to upgrade your city.

Farmers collect food that gets converted into men.
Miners collect metal that gets converted into army men and makes you lose men.

Currently there is an AI opponent that might attack you at some point. However, I've been testing it now and he doesn't like going to war very much. Booo Mr. AI, boo.

Currently it costs 3 food for 1 man, 8 metal for 1 soldier and 4 men for 1 soldier. You can also upgrade you city for 150 men. It just makes the city change at the moment.

It is extremely easy, especially once you past the beginning stages and are getting men and soldiers in the thousands.

WebPlayer
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Comments

  • Okay, that's weird. I tested it last night and the web player didn't work from the dropbox url. Testing it now and it works.
  • edited
    So I tried this out.

    I'm a pretty big fan of stripped down strategy games, especially when they make the controls simple but the strategy high (which seems to be your goal).

    But your posts don't seem to make it clear where you are going with this. Is this the final version? If not what are you hoping to include in a final version? Do you want feedback so you can improve it? Do you have any questions about how players experience it? What (if anything) do you feel is incomplete here or unsatisfactory? (you have mentioned that it is too easy).

    I feel like I could respond, but you aren't inviting me to, or giving me enough insight to respond, and because I do have a couple criticisms/suggestions this puts me in a awkward situation.
  • I guess I'm looking for any sort of feedback on it, is the controls sufficient? Is the core concept enough to be built upon (core mechanism being able to simply allocate what you want to be focused your men)?

    It's not a final version by no means, simply a proof of concept. It's by no means a difficult game or perhaps even an engaging game, just exploring the concept, so any feedback would be lovely.
  • edited
    Cool!

    Well, I like slippery slope RTS's where I get to conquer rival civilizations, so I like your idea, but in the current version it hasn't quite hit the engagement factor (which you've already said).

    I think my biggest problem with it is that it is very unclear what function (if any) the map has. Since you cannot interact with it I would assume that the map would give you feedback on your progress (and I'm sure this is something you are planning).

    As it stands going to war doesn't seem to affect the map. That disappointed me quite a bit (I assumed I would gain new territory).

    What I feel I'd like from the game is to start with one measly city surrounded by NPC tribes or whatever, and to consume them via conquest to gain more farmlands or mines or something, and perhaps your enemies do the same. The main thing I'm saying is that in a game where conquest is a theme, and there is a map of your lands and enemy lands, I feel like the desire of the player would be to gain more of the map through success.

    Also having fewer lands at the start might make decisions feel more meaningful/engaging. The ramp up is so fast now that it gets out of control quickly and it is hard to evaluate how much enjoyment your system produces.

    I guess I'm suggesting testing a conquest a little like how the Galcon strategy works, but keeping your abstracted controls and your concepts of resources:



    In terms of your abstract controls... you might even be able to do away with the buttons... eventually... Or just have the buttons... It seems like balancing economic growth vs military growth is the challenge here, and it might be possible allow for that with even simpler input... just a thought... though you'd have to test.

    I do think this fits in very well with the Competition B challenge. This does feel like it could produce an excellent reduction of a Civilization style RTS.
  • As it is currently the map was placed to visualise progress which hasn't really been implemented yet (you may notice if you upgrade your city certain objects change, that's planned to be upgrading the city with effects being implemented at a later stage), I'm actually busy thinking of ways in which progress and city/realm expansion can be visualised.

    The ramp up is quite insane actually, slight income of men for like 1 minute then bam couple million every few seconds. Which is mostly, I believe, a balance issue of how I am rewarding units and so forth. Which will be revised.

    Currently the only reason to increase economy is to increase the military growth. So I will need to look into ways in which "victory", I assume that's mass expansion, can be achieved through either military conquest or economic conquest.

    Thank you very much for your feedback, it certainly encouraged me to think deeper into the systems of the game.
  • No problem! Looking forward to your next version!
  • There's no indication if the army size I've got is sufficient to take on the enemy every time I attacked his army was almost double my size.

    Quick question about the war, I see I can't retreat if I see I'm going to lose; does the enemy keep the soldiers his has left after the war or do we both reset to zero? If not, could there be a retreat option so I can salvage some men? Even if I have to take a 50% penalty or something, it's better than having nothing.

    I'm a little bit confused about the sliders, I tried keeping it on generating metal but the sliders move around by themselves. And when I held it on Metal I was generating a men and soldiers; which if I understand your explanation right shouldn't happen? Maybe before showing the combat part, spend some time building some dynamic bar graphs and conversation information so I can see how I'm constructing my forces.

    I can't wait to see more. I like the idea I'm trying to create the "optimal" build. Will there be other units to create later on?
  • I redid a lot of the core features essentially removing the ability for directly attacking the enemy. I also fixed how the sliders work and made them work with the new system.

    The map has been changed into a grid system, where each grid is either a city (enemy or player) or a unconquered piece of land with natives inhabiting it.

    I'm currently trying to devise a way for the empire to expand from its starting position outwards which I'm struggling with. What is planned is that once you expand to the point where you are expanding into the enemy territory then there will be a battle between the player troops and the enemy troops once you start conquering their "cities".

    Each grid position will be able to support a certain number of men via the food and metal producing ability of the land and the number of people assigned to the slots. If you unable to support the amount of men then they will start leaving your empire.

    I was hoping to have more done by now but had exams for the past couple weeks so didn't have the time to. However, I hope to have everything working and a better output of information to the player.

    Regards
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