A Plea: Rich P vs E

That sounds like fun to me

And I think they've already mentioned an 'abundance' of dungeons... and the ability of adventerurs to waken / tick off their inhabitents, sending them on a rampage across the countryside.

I'm with both of you. 

The PvE was a big part of MoM and was missing in AoW.

Brad has talked out the dungeons so we know there is some PvE, I just hope the PvE is rewarding enough that it can act as a buffer between players.

Sammual

- Must renew the monsters & the others threats during the course of the game.

- Dungeons you visited once can be occuped by other monsters or even another players warbands.

- Have something like an Wilderness rating for each areas of the map, lower the rating and less likely you will have an outburst of monsters.

As the game progress, the willderness rating would drop to the point the monsters would unite and launch a war for their very own survivals.

The way I see it what we really want is things to keep the player unbalance. We don't want to be sitting on our bottoms thinking our domain is secure.

It's interesting to think that at anytime a dragon might decide that our mountain protecting the back of our fortress is a nice place for a lair... why don't I create a lair here says the black dragon. There is a nice fat town downthere which is a nice food source hmmm...

I like that kind of idea and potential activity that keeps the world alive.

And why not some kind of mechanincs like in res publica romana (the boardgame)? Or pandemie (the boardgame)?

You play against opponenets, but also against the game (maybe the magic itself would disolve into matter beacause of too many uses)  which can kill you if you're anaware.

This is one of those elements that can really make a game feel like belonging in a world; if there's a strong basic framework, it would also make it easier for modders to make distinct variants, wouldn't it?

In any event, I would really like to see a heavy world/neutral faction presence in the game, especially combined with dynamic events.

It looks like everyone wants the Demon at the bottom of the dungeon to come out every so often and kick some tail and go back home with even more loot.

Sammual

Works for me as well.

Hopefully the range of moddability will allow for scenarios where the PvE can be cranked up even more, such that the main threat to each player's existence is the "npc" forces and whatnot.  A game where all the players ally with each other just to survive and get powerful enough to think about fighting each other for the victory... that could be a fun diverson from the standard approach.

I actually like the idea of having a "wildness slider" which allows you to set just how rowdy your Neutrals are.  I also like the idea of having certain types of things (structures, characters, etc.) that might decrease (or even increase?) the wildness of a countryside.

Spawning monsters is the most obvious and easy way to do it, but even having some terrain features that can be a bit of a mixed bag makes for some very interesting possibilities.  One game that does an interesting job of this is the Civ IV mod, Fall From Heaven 2, with some of their unique world sites.

I think it's also important to have some risk-vs-reward calculations in there too.  In a sense, many of the sites in MoM were resources, they were just resources that you could only harvest one time.  I'll be curious to see how dungeons interact with the rest of the game world, and whether other, similar features might have an impact as well.

I love the idea of a "wilderness slider" as well. For those of us that like grueling hard fought empire building before the real game begins and during such, a thing like it would be a God send to say the least. Remember folks one can never have to many options in a game.

It'd be like the barbarian levels in Civilizations.  And even though they can be a pain at times (for everyone), it also makes for much stronger early militaries and more distributed defenses than one gigantic mob.

In my view the PvE should be either optional or free to set to different levels. Sometimes it's nice to play a real duel game where you plan against the other opponent only, more like in chess. Then it can be very annoying that the local bandit team by chance decided to burn your countryside. Like someone would steal your pieces during a challenging game of chess ...

But as long as you can choose the level, PvE  would be great. Especially of a "resistance" type, i.e. places and areas are defended by "neutral"  creatures you have to defeat even to pass through (but who won't actively attack what you have constructed as long as you leave them alone).  This would work well in a fantasy setting where you can have dark forests, dungeons, mountain passes etc guarded by monsters (sometimes with treasure of course)...

And why not something like the pirates in Sins of a Solar Empire? But not as strong as in it. Instead of a "I'll attack <insert name of an empire>" why not disperse attacks? If I use more mana/gold/diplomacy to be in good relation with neutrals then I will have less problems with them, but I would still get some nuisances from them.

I would love to play a game now and then where it felt like I and the other wizards were the underdogs, attempting to create civilization out of the wilderness.

Sammual

I definately think that this is something that should be put in.  I especially liked the idea put forth where the wilderness rating determined how wild a specific area is, and as humanity pours into that area and tames the wild (reducing the wiilderness level) there is an eventual backlash from the creatures and smallish tribes of creatures (like whole barbarian tribes pouring into the Roman Empire because of pressure on their land, except to include mythical creatures) and powerful individual creatures whose existance is threatened.  I also agree that being able to select just how powerful the environment is an absolute must.

Awakeneing the Balrog from the depths of Moria, anybody? 

Hey, as long as you do that near your enemy's cities everything is ok.

"Um yeah... sorry about that whole releaing a plague upon your lands thing.  Our bad... our bad."

Kind of like Survivorman, with magic.

I think we can all agree that having a scale of how aggressive the environment is would be awesomely fun.

I would love more E. I think GC missed a chance to make the E of space interesting and worth playing in. It should be easier in a fantasy game, so defo.