Another previously unknown feature of the game, Spy Games.
What is this you might ask? Well, once you develop spy tech you can begin to get a number of spy points per game year. This begins the automated game of getting extra information sent to your news wire each turn. Each nation can hold a number of enemy spies total, depending on the size, however this number is unknown to the player. When you tap on another nation, you are given the option to set a spy priority, and with this it will randomly send out a spy to that nation for a certain amount of time (as long as that nation has an open spot). If there is no open spot, and you have not set a priority (low - med - high) it will not send out any spies. Spies give significantly faster updates on what is happening in the regions controlled by the nation, and can be given special missions to sow discourse (which uses up the spy removing them from play) however, this has a dice roll to succeed/fail and if it back fires you lose the spy, and the other nation is informed and you take a significant hit to nation relations. Each turn your spy is in another nation it also has a chance of still be discovered even when it is in its "sleeper" state.
Finishing a framework, the end of war!
It's monday, so lets completely wrap up the military complex framework! With this final push, I hope to show a completely full functional system (if not but barebones) that can be implemented and easily augmented for tweaking/balancing. Let us talk about it all then else shall we?
First, the defense tokens. These are fortifications that you can play into territories, but they cannot be moved. They auto advance in Tech Ages (unlike military units) and for the sake of rolls, have land unit rolling powers. However, they protect land units in that territory, so it modifies enemy rolls to reduce the number of casualties while also depleting its own "health" or upkeep. Keeping them in a city costs credit upkeep that is added to the military spending bill, and if you lower spending they cease to function. They also act as a way to counter attack, and where as normally a land unit might not be able to attack a sea or air unit, with a territory that has a defense token they gain firepower % to fight back.
When you play a military token, you are given the option if you want it to be Land, Sea, or Air. This is a rock-paper-scissors decision as they each have their own little unique role they play in war.
Land Units! they are bread and butter units of the game, you get them first and ultimately, they are the most important. Why are they so important you might ask? They cannot attack sea units and barely survive against air, BUT they are the only units capable of sieging a territory, and take it over. They are effected by terrain modifications caused by the ground, and have the lowest upkeep costs.
Sea Units! Wow something new eh? Sea units are fun because they can travel the wonderful blue ocean with ease. They are also upgradeable with fun new abilities that allow for land bombardment, and anti-air guns to deal with land and air units. They can only travel two hexagons from land until ocean travel is researched limiting their ultimate range early on, also earlier tech age ships can be lost at sea before you gain better navigation technology.
Air Units! These come last and are unlocked by tech research, They are devastatingly powerful to defense tokens and land units, but it comes at a price. They have a very limited reach, and you must first play an airfield card on a territory. They can move from allied airfield to airfield however, but the upkeep is rather high, even more so in foreign land.
The basic way damage is calculated is:
Now for the awesome chart that shows you just how much damage each thing does to each other:
First, the defense tokens. These are fortifications that you can play into territories, but they cannot be moved. They auto advance in Tech Ages (unlike military units) and for the sake of rolls, have land unit rolling powers. However, they protect land units in that territory, so it modifies enemy rolls to reduce the number of casualties while also depleting its own "health" or upkeep. Keeping them in a city costs credit upkeep that is added to the military spending bill, and if you lower spending they cease to function. They also act as a way to counter attack, and where as normally a land unit might not be able to attack a sea or air unit, with a territory that has a defense token they gain firepower % to fight back.
When you play a military token, you are given the option if you want it to be Land, Sea, or Air. This is a rock-paper-scissors decision as they each have their own little unique role they play in war.
Land Units! they are bread and butter units of the game, you get them first and ultimately, they are the most important. Why are they so important you might ask? They cannot attack sea units and barely survive against air, BUT they are the only units capable of sieging a territory, and take it over. They are effected by terrain modifications caused by the ground, and have the lowest upkeep costs.
Sea Units! Wow something new eh? Sea units are fun because they can travel the wonderful blue ocean with ease. They are also upgradeable with fun new abilities that allow for land bombardment, and anti-air guns to deal with land and air units. They can only travel two hexagons from land until ocean travel is researched limiting their ultimate range early on, also earlier tech age ships can be lost at sea before you gain better navigation technology.
Air Units! These come last and are unlocked by tech research, They are devastatingly powerful to defense tokens and land units, but it comes at a price. They have a very limited reach, and you must first play an airfield card on a territory. They can move from allied airfield to airfield however, but the upkeep is rather high, even more so in foreign land.
The basic way damage is calculated is:
{(%of damage) x [(dice rolls) + (offensive modifiers) / (morale below threshold %)]} - (defensive modifiers) = DAMAGE!Which then gets thrown into a secret converter that then kills of the specific number of units to remove from the military unit in battle. You can also daisy chain military units on a turn, so you can have army 1, army 2, air 1, army 3 all attack in order against an enemy force. And if you have multiple units in the same territory for morale purposes it counts the entire group as one big unit for size comparison.
Now for the awesome chart that shows you just how much damage each thing does to each other:
Everybody works together
Update 2? I have been kicking it into high gear since I feel like I am so far behind!
It is all about diplomacy today. While attacking your neighbor may be fun if you don't be diplomatic about things you are doomed to fail! This is where your nation relations as well as government relations come into play, as they modify the likelihood of A) the AI accepting a trade/deal/alliance and B) your nation being ok with entering into an agreement with a nation. If you do something with a deeply hated nation your country will suffer as a result of public backlash.
By tapping on a neighboring nation's territory you bring up their diplomacy menu. From here you can instigate all interactions between your countries.
Trade
Fairly standard ordeal here, you can trade or sell (or a combination of both) cards, territories, and access to tech tree technologies.
Alliances
You can request nation alliances here. This is useful because by entering into an alliance, you are expected to come to each others aid. You can have the option to renege on your alliance duties but this will significantly harm your relations with other nations in that alliance, making it harder to deal with them in the future. You are rewarded by honoring your duties with morale bonuses as well.
Vassalization
You can either become or offer the option to be a vassal. As a Vassal you give a part of your population gain and credit intake to your ruling nation in exchange for a tight bond between nations. You cannot do this between nations that do not share at least neutral governments.
Treaties/Truces/Peace
You can request truces that will discourage attacks for a certain number of turns. These can be broken but if they do they seriously hurt a nations morale. With this you can offer territories, credits, or cards to help push a deal through.
Demands/Threats/Proclamations
You can issue statements to other countries either threatening them, or promising them something (such as protection of independence). This straightens nation relations and can be used to sway/strong arm a country into doing something you want them too. An example is you can demand they pay you X credits for Y turns or you will invade them.
It is all about diplomacy today. While attacking your neighbor may be fun if you don't be diplomatic about things you are doomed to fail! This is where your nation relations as well as government relations come into play, as they modify the likelihood of A) the AI accepting a trade/deal/alliance and B) your nation being ok with entering into an agreement with a nation. If you do something with a deeply hated nation your country will suffer as a result of public backlash.
By tapping on a neighboring nation's territory you bring up their diplomacy menu. From here you can instigate all interactions between your countries.
Trade
Fairly standard ordeal here, you can trade or sell (or a combination of both) cards, territories, and access to tech tree technologies.
Alliances
You can request nation alliances here. This is useful because by entering into an alliance, you are expected to come to each others aid. You can have the option to renege on your alliance duties but this will significantly harm your relations with other nations in that alliance, making it harder to deal with them in the future. You are rewarded by honoring your duties with morale bonuses as well.
Vassalization
You can either become or offer the option to be a vassal. As a Vassal you give a part of your population gain and credit intake to your ruling nation in exchange for a tight bond between nations. You cannot do this between nations that do not share at least neutral governments.
Treaties/Truces/Peace
You can request truces that will discourage attacks for a certain number of turns. These can be broken but if they do they seriously hurt a nations morale. With this you can offer territories, credits, or cards to help push a deal through.
Demands/Threats/Proclamations
You can issue statements to other countries either threatening them, or promising them something (such as protection of independence). This straightens nation relations and can be used to sway/strong arm a country into doing something you want them too. An example is you can demand they pay you X credits for Y turns or you will invade them.
War 2.0 - The war'ining.
What a crazy week, I had a large speaking assignment on thursday and it ate up all of my day tuesday-thursday morning really putting me a bit behind. But being a few days late isn't the end of the world, and I think I have some cool stuff related to battle to show off.
As this game is all about conquest, military is an important part, just as important as the diplomatic side (which I will deal with next week).
I already went over a large amount of military stuff last week, but I feel that I can just wrap this up with a bit more information. Movement goes along a hexagonal based grid system (thanks for stealing my idea civV) which allows for a great deal of freedom, and each hexagon ties into the tile modifiers. You can go to war with a enemy unit if it is in a adjacent hexagon. Battles take place at the end of the turn, and most battles will take a number of turns to finish as you only get one base attack per unit per turn (this can be modified with cards). I would really like to have the battles animate similar to this where you see the units and the terrain attack each other, but that may be a bit of effort. If you wish to skip all the battle scenes you can just tap the button and It will give you your complete summary.
Also since information and distance plays into the game heavily, you wont always be able to see your battles take place right away. If you are close to home base of course you can see things go down, but the further you get from your nation the harder it is to see battles take place, and you get stuck with simple (you won/you lost) screens to keep you updated. This becomes less problematic as you upgrade your tech later on, and you can completely remove this with a card that makes your ruler supreme military commander.
Conquering Nations
So you are at war to take over your rival nation huh? Well as you fight your way through territories you have to take down the main city to capture the territory. Each city takes two base turns per one population size to bring until control. So if you have no modifiers and you wish to capture a territory with a population size 2 it will take your army 4 turns to take over. However while this happens the opponent does not have any access to that territory for income or anything.
As you take nations your map color creates horizontal lines showing your current conquest. You can then demand a nation cede them to you for peace, become a vassal, or just continue them and annex the entire nation.
News Wire
Time for some innovation! I wont go completely into this all the way yet (as I am still trying to figure it out gameplay wise) but this is the first phase of every turn. The game basically plays as follows:
As this game is all about conquest, military is an important part, just as important as the diplomatic side (which I will deal with next week).
Also since information and distance plays into the game heavily, you wont always be able to see your battles take place right away. If you are close to home base of course you can see things go down, but the further you get from your nation the harder it is to see battles take place, and you get stuck with simple (you won/you lost) screens to keep you updated. This becomes less problematic as you upgrade your tech later on, and you can completely remove this with a card that makes your ruler supreme military commander.
Conquering Nations
So you are at war to take over your rival nation huh? Well as you fight your way through territories you have to take down the main city to capture the territory. Each city takes two base turns per one population size to bring until control. So if you have no modifiers and you wish to capture a territory with a population size 2 it will take your army 4 turns to take over. However while this happens the opponent does not have any access to that territory for income or anything.
News Wire
Time for some innovation! I wont go completely into this all the way yet (as I am still trying to figure it out gameplay wise) but this is the first phase of every turn. The game basically plays as follows:
News Wire -> Buying/Playing Cards -> Diplomacy and Military -> End turn (everything goes through)The news wire is basically the overview of your nation, it shows everything that has happened to it over your previous turn in an headlined format, and you can tap the headlines to get a more detailed account of events. The crux comes in that reading in depth things that happen cost you points (haven't come up with a proper name for them yet). These points limit you to having to pick and choose keeping up to date with your nation as you try and make decisions. Of course you can get cards to augment your point total allowing for more information to disseminate but you have to be really selective in being able to cut through everything happening and determining what is most important for you to know at the given turn. Remember, due to logistics information also takes a certain amount of time to reach your nation, so you might be reading things that happened a number of turns ago (although it will always say the date a certain event occurred).
We're going to war! (and a myriad of other things)
Friday time, update time!
This week has been quite scatterbrained in terms of sticking to any one part. As more and more begins to take shape, more and more happens to a crazy snowball like effect. As I continue to tick things off, more seemingly take pop up, and despite the time commitment I sink into this weekly (though i cannot complain much due to my enjoyment in the subject matter) I fear I simply do not have ENOUGH time in the day to reach the point I hope for come March 17th.
I recently (last weekend) purchased this book and it, while incredibly basic, has been a wealth of knowledge as I begin to dip my feet into the realm of code. All of that has been very preliminary, and I am debating the value of the 99 dollar developer license. Mainly, if I want to test anything or compile anything I ever make, I need to bite the bullet and just jump two feet in and get it over with. At least it isn't mission critical at the moment so "out of sight, out of mind."
UI
I expanded some more on my UI decisions this week. No beautiful pictures to go along with it, but I plan on making some more next week to have to show based on theory crafting this week. In the nation bar up top, I refined my ideas from a vague "all important nation based information at a glance up here" to a more concrete level.
In the upper left hand corner will be your nations flag/logo, taping this will bring up a pop up with more detailed information for your nation that you can view, and adjust. These things include your nation ranking and standings with other known nations, a list of national policies (that you have played via cards), taxations/upkeep costs (where you can adjust simple sliders and see just how much cash you will bring in along with ramifications of change), military options (spending, war time fundings, additional regiments), international relations (such as espionage [unlocked via tech], trade, etc), and other useful information.
This information will be broken down into 4 main tabs, a general overview, national policy, economy, and military. It serves as the central hub for all things national, and it is called up only when you want/need, leaving the screen empty and de-cluttered otherwise. To help the player, popup ions can appear in the upper center of the screen informing of any important, urgent, or otherwise particularly helpful information that they can tap on to auto take them to the proper part of the nation window.
Along with the flag icon that takes care of all your nation business, you have some at a glance information on the left hand side. There is Populace (which shows you the available number of people in your nation able to reinforce your military), Stability (which shows you how stable your nation is as a whole), and then Treasury (naturally your banked credits). On the right hand side, you have the number of armies (which you can tap to bring up your list of how big they are and where they presently are), and then the turn number and in game date.
Military/Combat
You create military units by playing cards military or defense token cards, or by buying them for a huge cost (if you wish to have a giant army, or simply have war time needs). You can use your available populace to reinforce your military, though this takes a number of turns and money to retrofit a unit if a card is not used (added recruitment and training time). Also the more of the population percent you add towards your military will affect your nations morale, and your troops morale, which can lead to riots (unless augmented by a specific card removing effect).
When taping on a military token, you have the following information presented to you: unit size, dice roll, modifiers, and morale/logistic bar. These things give you an at a glance overview of the most important aspects of a unit to survive. If you tap and drag, you will see a path arrow emerge in which you can tell a unit to mobilize and move to a new territory. once you do this you have no idea how long it will take your units to travel, and as such you have to plan carefully ahead.
The Unit modifiers for Terrain are as follows:
Some things that effect the logistics bar are things like funding, distance from allied cities, distance from home nation, and terrain (traveling through harsh terrain such as mountains lowers your logistics chain and causes them to be more isolated).
This week has been quite scatterbrained in terms of sticking to any one part. As more and more begins to take shape, more and more happens to a crazy snowball like effect. As I continue to tick things off, more seemingly take pop up, and despite the time commitment I sink into this weekly (though i cannot complain much due to my enjoyment in the subject matter) I fear I simply do not have ENOUGH time in the day to reach the point I hope for come March 17th.
I recently (last weekend) purchased this book and it, while incredibly basic, has been a wealth of knowledge as I begin to dip my feet into the realm of code. All of that has been very preliminary, and I am debating the value of the 99 dollar developer license. Mainly, if I want to test anything or compile anything I ever make, I need to bite the bullet and just jump two feet in and get it over with. At least it isn't mission critical at the moment so "out of sight, out of mind."
UI
I expanded some more on my UI decisions this week. No beautiful pictures to go along with it, but I plan on making some more next week to have to show based on theory crafting this week. In the nation bar up top, I refined my ideas from a vague "all important nation based information at a glance up here" to a more concrete level.
In the upper left hand corner will be your nations flag/logo, taping this will bring up a pop up with more detailed information for your nation that you can view, and adjust. These things include your nation ranking and standings with other known nations, a list of national policies (that you have played via cards), taxations/upkeep costs (where you can adjust simple sliders and see just how much cash you will bring in along with ramifications of change), military options (spending, war time fundings, additional regiments), international relations (such as espionage [unlocked via tech], trade, etc), and other useful information.
This information will be broken down into 4 main tabs, a general overview, national policy, economy, and military. It serves as the central hub for all things national, and it is called up only when you want/need, leaving the screen empty and de-cluttered otherwise. To help the player, popup ions can appear in the upper center of the screen informing of any important, urgent, or otherwise particularly helpful information that they can tap on to auto take them to the proper part of the nation window.
Along with the flag icon that takes care of all your nation business, you have some at a glance information on the left hand side. There is Populace (which shows you the available number of people in your nation able to reinforce your military), Stability (which shows you how stable your nation is as a whole), and then Treasury (naturally your banked credits). On the right hand side, you have the number of armies (which you can tap to bring up your list of how big they are and where they presently are), and then the turn number and in game date.
Military/Combat
You create military units by playing cards military or defense token cards, or by buying them for a huge cost (if you wish to have a giant army, or simply have war time needs). You can use your available populace to reinforce your military, though this takes a number of turns and money to retrofit a unit if a card is not used (added recruitment and training time). Also the more of the population percent you add towards your military will affect your nations morale, and your troops morale, which can lead to riots (unless augmented by a specific card removing effect).
Units work on dice rolls, with additional modifiers based on terrain, tech cards, and then morale/logistics.
Their movement is based on length distances (same as logistics/information delay), and is modified by natural territory terrain, and then nation modifiers such as trails, roads, etc.
Units can send back information, much like a recon group, but the information still suffers delay, this can be modified later with tech like radios. Units have base 1 vision (sans any tech modification), and can be expanded or shrunk depending on the terrain type.
Military requires upkeep through taxes, however if you want you can cut this out, but the downside is that while you have a military, they can be under funded or not funded at all which makes them useless quickly. Also should your morale or logistics drop too low, your units will begin to lose men, either to desertion (morale) or to famine/broken equipment (logistics), so it becomes important to carefully mange just how they are doing funding wise.
When taping on a military token, you have the following information presented to you: unit size, dice roll, modifiers, and morale/logistic bar. These things give you an at a glance overview of the most important aspects of a unit to survive. If you tap and drag, you will see a path arrow emerge in which you can tell a unit to mobilize and move to a new territory. once you do this you have no idea how long it will take your units to travel, and as such you have to plan carefully ahead.
The Unit modifiers for Terrain are as follows:
Some things that effect the morale bar are things like outcome of previous battle, size in relation to opposing army, length away from home nation, and funding. You can regain your units lost morale by "resting" them in any allied city.Grass plains/open ground: 1 movement, 0 defense, +2 vision
Brush: 2 movement, +1.5 defense, -.5 vision
Coastal: 1.5 movement, 0 defense, +2 vision
Ravine/gully: 2 movement, +1 defense (SPECIAL: all land units in cannot be seen expect by units in touching regions.), -1 vision
Hills: 3 movement, +2 defense for infantry, +1 vision
Mountains: 4 movement, +3 defense for infantry, +3 vision
Trees: 1 movement, +1 defense, -1 vision
Jungle: 3 movement, +2 defense, -2 vision
Streams: 3 movement, -1 defense, 0 vision
Tech Card modifiers:
Trails: terrain movement divided by 1.25, 0 defense
Roads: terrain movement divided by 2, 0 defense
Highways: terrain movement divided by 2.5, 0 defense
Autobahn (special tech): terrain movement divided by 3.5, 0 defense
Some things that effect the logistics bar are things like funding, distance from allied cities, distance from home nation, and terrain (traveling through harsh terrain such as mountains lowers your logistics chain and causes them to be more isolated).
All about Interface
This weeks update is all about visuals. I began mockups of what the game might look like at a frame work level (think pre-pre-alpha graphics) late last week, and had so much fun I decided to continue working on it this week.
The purpose of this whole exercise is to being to get an idea of how things will look and feel as you walk through your program. I have already caught myself finding gaps in my previous logic, coming up with entirely new concepts, and refining old ideas.
Its great work, a lot of fun, and gives me a nice break and ability to flex a bit of creative muscle.
The purpose of this whole exercise is to being to get an idea of how things will look and feel as you walk through your program. I have already caught myself finding gaps in my previous logic, coming up with entirely new concepts, and refining old ideas.
Its great work, a lot of fun, and gives me a nice break and ability to flex a bit of creative muscle.
(Press the arrow keys to move through the images)
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