Please indulge me, I am just beginning, so some of the things I say
here may already be in the game but haven't been seen by me.
If we allow players to construct houses, towers and castles, and even turn
the structures into towns or cities with walls, wouldn't we also need
something to undo the construction?
I mean, in the simple case that I want to leave my castle forever, but I
don't want somebody else to use it, I want to be able to destroy my
own castle. This should probably be a subskill of Contruction : Demolish.
Side effect : I get a nice pile of stones I can sell. And no, it
shouldn't be profitable to demolish castles just to sell the stones.
In case of war there should be a way to break through walls by using
sappers or siege engines. This would mean a subskill of Combat. Or
maybe sapping would be a subskill of Mining...
Of course, you first have to make siege engines, which would mean a
cooperative effort of contruction workers and weaponsmiths.
Well, I think others have probably even more ideas on this subject.
One problem I see with this is that if we just implement this the game
would go more and more to a combat oriented game. One way to counter this
is to make the above skills expensive to use. Another way is to add
interesting things to the other skills. For example with a subskill of
Forestry I could create the Atnerk Memorial Park where Faeries and Trolls
can roam freely. So: get the discussion and ideas rolling.
By the way : how do I destroy my ship or another's ship? Something for
shipbuilding, combat and seamonsters? And what about coastal defences?
Or do I just sail into a storm?
And now on to population control.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I have the idea that every region in Olympia
has a fixed population. Since the amount of people influences the number of
men I can hire it would be nice if I could influence the population.
One way would be indirect : if there are a lot of units in the area and
business is booming people come to see what's happening. In the same way,
if there is a lot of fighting people should go away. Increasing the
population should go slowly : creating a booming town isn't done in a day.
However, if Dr.Pain visits a region I wouldn't be surprised if there is not
much population left the next turn.
A result of this could be lots of refugees. If a lot of them come the
local population wouldn't be that happy, and maybe would move away itself.
To implement this we could maybe create some sort of 'satisfaction
factor' for the local population. The better it is, the more people
will come. The lower it is etc etc...
Maybe a direct way to influence population would be spending on
public housing. For example : if I construct the new Dezarne Villa Resort
with plumbing, sewers and kindergarten and do some advertising I would
think that people would come to me.
Well, that's it for now.
Frits
-- Frits Kuijlman frits @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl Delft University of Technology The Netherlands