Independent Kingdoms?

A very similar idea was put forward by GW Swicord in Reply #7 in the Will there be wild space in Elemental? thread. I supported the idea there and I'll sign my name up again here. I think this would go a long way towards making the game feel really alive. It would also be a good way to keep portions of the world unsettled by human or AI players even in the later game. One of my problems with 4X games is that they almost always get to the point where the whole world is settled and borders push against borders. The only natural formations that every seem to be able to halt player borders from expanding until they bump up against another player's border are large bodies of water.

If certain forests, deserts, mountain ranges, etc can be home to independent powers, it would go a long way to keeping a portion of the map 'wild' for much longer than normal. It's also a more elegant solution than just saying "sorry, you can't settle this type of terrain."

well since this game is between what appears to be mostly human factions, so I would imagine like you suggested there to be elves, dwarves, halflings and whatever other races as neutral factions.  So I'd want events that reflected that as well.   Things like 'elves came to support your cause' and you get some mercenary elves swordsmen or something like that. 

I really like the minor factions in GalCiv 2, though I am always very annoyed when the jagged blade randomly takes some of my planets (I wish they would take only neutral planets or planets of a faction that just had its capital planet ripped out), so like in this case when a wizard is killed his remaining towns could band together in a netrual faction (if its on wizard death = end game

another fun part of it is in a friendly multiplayer game it creates a faction that is still a dumb AI, even when everything is supposed to be player controled.   So then it becomes a race to grab up the AI places as well, or a distraction or something.  I find my PvP strategy games are usually pretty tame turtling, since we really don't want to be harrassed early game, so we don't do it under a mutual understanding.   a neutral faction would help keep the games from all turning out the same since we would have to deal him them.

Yes, that's true too. But if they do implement something ala GW Swicord's idea (his examples being Ents in a particularly large and foreboding forest, or djinn occupying a desert), I'd want some of them to be extremely powerful. Invading the equivalent of Fangorn forest when your civ is still in its infancy should be suicide. But like you said there could also be weaker ones - some of which could stay fairly weak and others of which could grow in power over time, too. I've also noticed that when I play multiplayer TBS games the beginning tends to be pretty uninteresting if there are no AI players involved.

well, the orcs almost got away with it had treebeard hadn't noticed which he did by chance since he was helping the hobbits.  I'd imagine something like the local ents/djinn becoming wrestless be one of random or semi-random events.   

I agree.   Its why I support either neutral mini-factions or some sort of quest system.  Something to spice up that early-mid game before the stuff hits the fan.

an independent fay/ent only faction in a large forest somewhere might be cool

I wouldn't say that independent kingdoms would foster 'wilderness' (the land would still be worked, just not by a major faction), but in terms of making the maps (and flow of play) more interesting, they seem like a swell complement to things like a Haunted Desert or Stinking Swamp of Doom.

Perhaps the map generator could even surround some of these 'minor factions' with wilderness features like some Very Scary Mountains, essentially providing a 'cloth map quest' option for players who wanted to work to establish contact with or conquer the isolated minor faction. Or maybe the real 'quest engine' could work with map inputs like that, so you'd need to send a group of heroes through something like the Mines of Moria to establish a supply line to the minor's realm.

The OP mentioned specifically powers like Tom Bombadil being examples of 'Independent Kingdoms' so I kind of got the impression that he meant the phrase to cover a very wide array of 'kingdoms' that could include wilderness powers controlled by various types of beasts or other entities besides human/fallen.

I like the idea a lot.  It definitely helps the player suspend disbelief, as it were, and makes the world come alive (sorry for the cliche).

pigeonpigeon, it's been a very long while since I last read LotR chapters, but the wiki page on Tom Bomadil doesn't seem to evoke a kingdom so much as a sort of NPC channeler/demi-god. He's definitely a 'power' in the story, but his turf might be limited to a small household. He seems like a singular entity, as I expect Dragons will be in Elemental, and not the leader of a territory-holding population.

Mind you, my whole wilderness quibble was not disagreement with you so much as it was an effort to keep the Open Spaces idea alive. Someone in the early-poster crowd here taught me the verb "to tessellate," and learning that term crystallized my basic desire to see 4/5X games move past the wall-to-wall carpeting model for population centers and resource exploitation. I'm just wondering whether 'minor civs' combined with some story-linked wilderness areas could help make maps more interesting.

I like the idea of tying independent kingdoms into quests. Sounds like it would add a lot of depth. 

Yeah but that's just nit-picking . And, technically I'd say that the whole Old Forest was Bombadil's 'domain.' He pretty much held absolute power there, even over the ring. But whether a region 'belongs' to a single, extremely powerful being vs. a larger number of weaker ones needn't change the nature of the region.

And I agree with that. I'm tired of the 'wall-to-wall carpeting' of civilizations, as you put it, as well. I want there to be wilderness that lasts throughout the game. But I think that having regions that are controlled by 'natural' (read: beast) beings is the best way to achieve that. Some of these regions could be fairly easy to overrun by the end of the game, but some could remain a real challenge even at the end of a large map. The only other ways I can think of achieving meaningful unsettled places throughout the game is to designate certain regions as unsettleable, or to limit the number of cities that can be settled; and frankly I don't like either of those options.

of course, that most likely means that many players will 1st try to take them out, then only after these neutral factions are gone will they attack each other.

I love the idea.   I just wanted to point out that I don't think there is a way to stop the wall-ta-wall carpeting, just delay it.

I think the most important part of independent kingdoms is the diplomacy options they create.

I think that all depends on how big a cost versus potential return you give the act of settling in these regions. I think it would be totally possible to still have it being not worth your while to do so even by the end of the game.. it's just a case of whether players would accept not being able to tessellate the entire map with McCities or not (clearly some people on the forum really like the idea, as indeed I do, but I can imagine some finding it irritating not being able to totally "finish" a map if you like).

If I may I'd like to just speculate about how one of these little "natural kingdoms" that have been suggested might work in practice as I think I've got a decent set up that I'd enjoy playing. For my example I'd like to use the Tom Bombadil model of having one massively powerful creature/being holding sway over an area. Lets imagine a huge swampland, obviously it'd be relative to map size but lets say a 10 x 10 sized squarish region to give you an idea that it's at least something properly meaty in terms of size and significant in terms of settling area lost and travelling time to navigate. Now at the centre of this you'd have a special tile where our "beast lord" or whatever  you want to call him lives, on this occasion he is going to be called.. errrr Geoff the Super Slug! Now Geoff should exist as a real unit on the map that can potentially take part in tactical combat etc (although he's very very unlikely to ever leave his swampy layer.. slugs don't like to get all dried out) but he is EXTREMELY powerful, think as powerful as an end game channeler or dragon, that way the idea of actually killing him in the early/midgame is totally unthinkable.

Now I'd think of the swampland itself kinda like the fungus tiles from SMAC, that is, they're incredibly dense wild environments and capable of supporting lots of hidden swamp denizens without this necessarily being apparent to those at a distance. What this basically means is that swamp denizen units under Geoff's command would be able to spawn pretty much out of nowhere so long as they're on one of his swampland tiles to represent them rising up from the depths of the swamp! Now Geoff would have under his command a fairly nice array of beasty units, all of which would be swamp appropriate lets say Swamp Things, Frog-Men and at least one type of really badass end game relevant powerful unit, such as Great Wyrms from MoM.

Now at the beginning of the game the swamp would be fairly treacherous to traverse as there would probably be movement penalties associated with moving on the swamp (e.g. most units moving at only one tile a turn even if they can usually move 2 or 3) and you’d have a certain percentage chance that every time you move a unit onto a swamp square a random assortment of denizens will spawn and attack it. This can obviously be balanced in a number of ways to make it appropriate depending on whether the devs choose to have the wilderness really impassable or merely potentially inconvenient. For instance you could change the probability that denizens will attack, the make up of the denizen force that attacks you etc.. and potentially these could scale during the course of the game if you wanted the same level of challenge to be at a constant level. It might also be the case that swamp denizens venture out from the swamp on occasion rampaging about the countryside and attacking your nearby units/settlements until they either get bored and head back or you defeat them, I think this would give a nice sense of the wild untamed nature of the world of elemental.

In terms of settling a city on the swampland I would have this bring about some really severe repercussions, I’m thinking along the lines of having Great Wyrms spawning outside and attacking your new settlement every couple turns (possibly indefinitely or perhaps it could have a cut off time where the swamp habituates to the new settlement and stops its assault after a set period). Either way we’re talking some seriously powerful units here and a lot of them such that the cost of settling and garrisoning the city is much higher than in a more hospitable location (not to mention swamp tiles will no doubt yield very little in the way of resources).

As it stands so far we have the swampland being both tricky to traverse and very tricky/conceivably impossible to settle on, which hopefully establishes a nice wilderness section of the map. However what I think will make the feature really fun to play (and as with most of my ideas this is something that other people  have suggested, I’m just trying to flesh it out) is that the “beast lord” in this case our beloved Geoff will act as a diplomatic entity in the game. I would suggest that initially this should entail having to send a unit to the centre of the swamp to the layer of Geoff to open a line of communication. Obviously from a game design standpoint this would necessitate an option to come up on the UI when you got there so that you didn’t just automatically engage in tactical combat and get destroyed by the mighty Geoff! Subsequent to sending your first emissary you would then be able to talk to Geoff, and he with you, whenever you want without the fiddly micromanagement of actually having to send an envoy every time.

We have little detail as to how quests will work in game but I would suggest that this act of initiating diplomatic contact with Geoff could be a quest given to you should the borders of your empire expand enough so as to run adjacent to or actually over some of Geoff’s swampland. Indeed, it should be no mean feat making it to the centre of Geoff’s layer given that, as stated before you’ll have to fight more than a few of his denizens on their home turf just to get there. There could be some reward for going to see Geoff, perhaps some minor sludge incrusted magical trinket or whatnot J. I also think it might then be possible for Geoff to act as a quest hub from then on in the game giving you a bunch of potential minor sub quests during the game. For instance some annoying do-gooder NPC adventurer might have stolen an artifact from Geoff or killed one of his favourite Swamp Things and Geoff would like you to hunt him down and bring him to justice! The completion of any such quests could lead to rewards by way of resources, magical artifacts or merely, and possibly more importantly the good will of Geoff and a betterment of the relations between you.

Ok, so now we’ve opened up our line of communication, what kind of interactions might you have with Geoff and his Geoffly hordes!? Well I would envisage the situation as having a spectrum of 5 different relationship states you could have as follows, which I shall put in order from most hostile to most amenable.

• War – You have constantly traipsed across his swampland killing his denizens, you have repeatedly attempted to settle on his land, and have even had the effrontery to use your terrain changing spells to change some of his outlying swampland into grassland.. GRASSLAND!!! Geoff can stand no more and there will be a constant stream of high quality units pouring forth from the swamp to harass your settlements and raze your cities (assuming they’re not well protected), this state will continue until such a time as you apologise to Geoff and make amends by paying homage, or you manage to destroy Geoff himself (which as stated previously will be nigh on impossible until very late in the game, and at least always as taxing as trying to take out another chaneler).

• Distrust – This is where you start out having just made contact with Geoff, everything will continue as the starting state, occasionally his denizens will rampage out of the swamp, your units will be attacked fairly often if they try to navigate the swamp etc. At this stage you can better your relationship with Geoff by paying homage (in terms of gifting him resources, gold, possibly mana) and over time by just staying away from his land.

• Non-Aggression Pact – Geoff agrees that he will no longer allow his denizens to go on their customary rampages out into your empire and you agree to avoid his lands entirely, meaning no foot traffic, no attempted settling, and definitely no changing his swamp into GRASSLAND!!! At this level Geoff will begin occasionally offering you quests which may allow you to increase your influence with him further.

• Friendship Pact – Geoff now trusts you enough to allow you send units across his land and will no longer attack you when you do so. In and of itself this could prove very tactically useful if you are at war with a faction on the other side of Geoff’s land as they will still get attacked if they attempt to walk across it.

• Alliance – Having paid constant homage, stuck diligently and upstandingly to all agreements made and completed many a taxing quest on his behalf Geoff now really likes you. He feels you genuinely have the best interests of the swamp at heart and wants your empires to exist together as one into the distant future. As such he will now allow you to build roads across his swampland to speed your movement and will allow the building of a small structure to aid in garrisoning of the swamp (if there is such a thing as a fortress for garrisoning troops outside of an actual city then this would be perfect, if not we might be able to agree on a settlement capped at a tiny population with no external infrastructure, basically the idea being that you can now garrison troops on the swamp enjoying the protection of both your own fortifications and the fact that any attacking enemy will be travelling over swampland where Geoff’s denizens will attack them). As an added bonus Geoff’s denizens will now actively leave the swamp attacking any faction that you are at war with that stray within the local area (lets say another 10 tiles from the border of the swamp, although again obviously this is relative to map size etc).

So in summation here we have a model where you have a nice area of land that will remain as undeveloped wilderness into the late game, an interesting diplomatic entity to build quest interaction etc around and a really striking strategic feature that will make the map feel varied and interesting. Also I really like the mechanism whereby in the early game the swampland is a hindrance to those who start their empires nearby, due to occasional monster rampages, inconvenience to travel, curtailment of local settlement options etc, but by the end it can potentially make up for this and become a strategic boon while still remaining as a largely unsettled part of the map

Ok this post has just gotten so long and involved that I think I’ll also post it in the wilderness thread where it may also be salient, for anyone who hasn’t checked that thread out it can be located here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/330339

Jonny, it looks like you've managed to marry the wilderness idea with ckessel's OP. All the interesting details aside, your post makes me think that one way Elemental could take a giant step forward from GC2 is to replace minor civs with independent kingdoms that can function at least somewhat like you describe. The 'minorness' of the minors has often seemed a weakness to me when I think about sci-fi stories like the Organians in Star Trek. For a fantasy game, it seems even more worthwhile to separate expansionist territorialism from whether or not a given entity is a Power To Be Reckoned With.

Plus, I'm actually hoping that the game will work well for a player channeler who wants to know as much of the map as possible but doesn't want to be directly responsible for more than a small population and territory. If Independent Kingdoms could function somewhat like Geoff's Swamp, then perhaps I'll be able to have a good game based on a channeler who spends more time on walkabout than she does at home encouraging folks to build stuff and breed like rabbits. After all, left unchecked, all that warmongering will just bring around a fresh Cataclysm.

Despite my dislike of LOTR and my loathing of catastrophic random events, I find myself wishing there to be a forest of living trees that surprise rapes any army that passes through it...

Lol everyone is entitled to an opinion

I totally agree; neutral kingdoms that aren't sufficiently powerful just end up feeling tokenistic, like they're just an added resource for the regular player and computer controlled factions to fight over, for me that doesn't add that much as we're basically (in one way or another) going to be fighting over everything anyway.

That sounds like it'd be a lot of fun, and potentially it could offer a really different and interesting way of playing the game. I think the diplomacy system would probably have to be more advanced that what I described above for this to be truly rewarding however, also I can envisage some problems with the game engine determining what constitues playing that style well or not, given that you wouldn't be creating as much of the conventional resources, units, population etc that you usually would. That aside if it could be made feasible (perhaps by allowing a lot of quests for your channeler to complete which would then increase his or her personal power level over and above those who are sitting at home minding their cities) then it would be a really neat way of playing a game with very little micromanagement, which so many find fun-sappingly onerous

On a side topic I thought of another fun way in which people could interact with the mighty Geoff! Basically I thought it might be cool if it were possible to frame another player for negative actions towards the beast lord, and thus have them potentially face the repurcussions that would follow. I was thinking specifically that if you had Geoff's swamp right next to or even inside the boundaries of your empire, then an enemy channeler could use a territory changing spell to turn one of the tiles of Geoff's swamp (perhaps near one of your cities) into a more economically viable one (perhaps even GRASSLAND! ha ha ha, I don't know why I find that funny ). As a result Geoff would then assume that you, as the beneficiary of this action, were the one who carried it out and immediately show his displeasure by marching some denizens out of the swamp to show you what for! Now this becomes even more interesting when you include the option for you to have a discussion (via the diplomacy mechanism) with Geoff where you can attempt to convince him that your are in fact innocent of this grassland atrocity. The probability of him believing you or not could then be based on his previously existing relationship with you, or, in the case of the person trying to frame you also having had contact with Geoff, his relative relationships with each faction.

Oh yeah, it also might be nice if you could gain favour with the beast lord by using territory changing spells to increase the size of their kingdom if you so wished, the new tile then acting in the same manner as all the others (hence potentially spawning denizens etc).

I like your ideas John.

And to me it would be the logical thing to have as not even in a post-Cataclysm world everything will be open and unpopulated untill you come along to fill things up (after all how would your own people have survived to produce you as a channeler). There should be scattered areas of population around some of which might have grown into considerable forces - only not lucky enough to have brought forth a channeler (or one that has no expansive urges: as for instance Geoff for obvious reasons)

It also creates some interesting points and bottlenecks on which strategy players could rejoice. Stuck between a rock (mountain range) and a soft place (Geoff's Swamp) is the only acces that doesn't require many tiles travel to your opponents area (or just some really nice uninhabited lands you have let you eye fall upon).

It also makes a hell of defendable place in later game when empires start carpetting most of the known world.

Diplomacy could/would be nice, but I have had ten years of games promising good diplomacy - and I have yet to see it. The quest structure might solve part of that problem sicne that can be scripted instead of requiring "True AI".

To make things even more interesting you might get some "independent powers of significance" that would have natural inclination to one kind of empire/channeler and not so versus another. (you'd have to figure out whats what though - which is where your quest system comes into play again)

you know, you said "as strong as a dragon"... why not A dragon?

Dragons could also exert their influence around an area. Or other equivalent (or slightly weaker) great creatures, like geoff.

I do think though that this is probably only a good idea in really large maps, or maybe in the single player mode. (especially if the single player is more of a persistant world RPGish sort of thing... where you tame a region and move on, that means either ally or slay geoff in one region, fight a chaneller or two in another mission, etc...), with reduced leveling rate, and keeping benefits from previous missions.

One thing I don't like about the galciv campaign, and that was handled neatly in games like hegemony. In single player you should have a limited amont of the tech tree available in every mission. And when you finish a mission, you take the researched technologies to the next mission (where your tech tree expands).

Similarly, having a power, or a level cap of sorts per mission in the single player, along with missions where you deal with creatures like dragons and geoff, can make it much more epic. Actually this kind of makes me think of warcraft3...

I think part of the idea is to not be limited to existing elements like dragons.   Also, stardock has talked about this idea of having special fantastic creatures, and I'm pretty sure they mean dragons.   In other words, stardock already knows what they are doing with dragons and we are looking an what other powerful units might be available to us.

Yeah basically what Landi said. I mean there's no reason a dragon couldn't operate in the way I went through, it's just that we already know that there will be dragons in the game as theyv'e been mentioned by devs previously so I wanted it to be explicit that there should (in my opinion) be a more varied mix of great beasts than just dragons.

I primarily was envisioning this sort of system in the general sandbox way of playing as for some reason I can never get into the mission based bits of 4x games. They just seem to feel a lot more limiting to me, like you're given a set amount of stuff and you have to find the best way of putting it all together for a given result, which strikes me as playing more like a puzzle game than an empire expansion sim. Having said that it's conceivable it could still operate well in this context but I wouldn't feel qualified to profer an opinion.

With regards to this only being a good idea on big maps; I think the size of the neutral natural kingdom (in this case Geoff's swamp) could pretty easily scale with the different size maps without it being a problem? Unless I'm missing something glaringly obvious which is always possible