Everyone seems to like this list. I had no idea anyone paid attention
to it. I'll leave it alone then.
> I haven't yet figured out a good way to explore yet; my gate-travelling
> explorer just got trashed by some nasties. If I equip explorers with
> bodyguards, I can't give them all horses (horses are like gold dust
> as it is) and the bodyguard maintenance cost will slow them down
> with trying to make money. Suggestions on how to explore? Especially
> for new players, who will have limited resources?
Someone suggested selling riding horses in cities, and this seems like a
good idea.
John Sloan pointed out that the wilderness nasties are going to discourage
exploration big time, and suggested just having monsters in sublocations,
not at the top level, so you could at least explore provinces without
being molested.
I have mixed feelings about not having any threats at the province level --
I want the world to be a dangerous place, but not frustrating. Perhaps
the civ/wilderness code will go away again. Speak up if you have an
opinion.
An idea I had (for a new map) was to have the province level not be
"forest", "plain", etc. but to simply be generic. Each province would
contain several forests, mountains, plains, etc. As sublocations, these
would be guarded by monsters initially. Thus, one could walk around
easily, but would have to evict monsters to start claiming resources.
[Let me know if you like/dislike this idea]
BTW, I've written a whole bunch of monster/quest code. Every sublocation
will be guarded by a monster. Every monster has some sort of treasure --
gold, a rare artifact, a grateful prisoner who joins your faction. Some
monsters can only be defeated with items taken from other monsters. "Only
one who holds Sword of Atnerks [cp98] will be victorious against Smaug [491]."
I have a few ideas for some super-cool artifacts that I want to add before
activating this code, but it's ready to go. It should be on within the next
few turns.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@shadow.com>