Making Tech Upgrades Substantiative

April 21, 2009 3:10 PM from

Though many might consider this a minor point, I think that this is really one of the "wow" factors in strategy games, both real time and turn based.

In Empire: Total War, when you finally get the rank fire upgrade, the performance of your line infantry on the field takes a drastic turn for the better. You can actually see and feel the difference on the field of battle.

In Civ4, when you built a wonder you could see the wonder in your city. When you researched a new commodity, it would have its own little icon and appear in your trade screen.

The scale of these examples are rather drastically different, but the key point is that the difference is noticable in some way. What are the worse type of upgrades? "Archers deal 10% more damage." I always hated those. Sometimes they were important, maybe even necessary, but I never felt a sense of enjoyment or accomplishment in getting that tech.

I'm not saying don't do those types of upgrades, but I'm saying make it noticable in someway. For example, with the archers, give them a new type of quiver on their backs, or make their arrows glow, or give them a faster animation so an upgraded archer army actually looks like it outlcasses a regular one. When you can create a new type of unit, add a building to the city that represents that fact. Archers get a archery field, foot soldiers get a barracks, etc.

Now, I know that this is a lot of busy work for minor details, but it's the difference between "good game" and "wow, this game is awesome." Displaying this all in the engine might be too much work, especially with all the city stuff, but perhaps you can do a "cloth map" city?

Anyway, just my two cents.

7,681 views 12 replies

Reply #1 April 21, 2009 3:42 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

I think I know what you mean. It's always more fun when your units, heroes etc gain new spells, abilities and options rather than damage modifiers. Examples:

Archers: flaming arrows. Allows to set enemy ships or cities on fire from afar.

Cavalry: 1:During a siege, throw heads of killed enemies over walls to lower enemy morale. 2: Breakneck ride - increases mobility but kills horses with exhaustion. 3: dismount (!!) to gain tactical advantages of infantry. In Poland, dragoon formation fought like that. So it wasn't truly cavalry - they only used horses for deployment. It was in the times of early rifles, so these tactics actually made more sense. I have yet to see a medieval/fantasy game which has dragoon unit !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragoons

Skirmishers: taunt enemies to temporarily lower their discipline

Catapults: launch decaying bodies into sieged city to spread disease.

Infantry; Forced march. Temporarily lowers fighting ability and vision range (haste), but increases mobility.

Reply #2 April 21, 2009 7:55 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

I agree. I remember talking somewhere about the wonder building and how good it makes people feel. I get the same sort of satisfaction of researching a powerful spell in Master of Magic. I really hope this game is able to deliver.

(where did launching dead bodies into castles come from this thread? is that supposed to be an upgrade?)

Reply #3 April 21, 2009 8:27 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Quoting landisaurus, reply 2

(where did launching dead bodies into castles come from this thread? is that supposed to be an upgrade?)

In the late Middle Ages and early Reniassance, people realised that you could fling the bodies of plague victems into a castle during a siege, and the people buttoned up inside would get the plague and die. My dad's a big military history buff, so I have tons of wierd weapons stories.

Reply #4 April 21, 2009 10:21 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Scoutdog, reply 3

yeah, I know. It just seemed kinda random. Like I don't really know how that could be upgraded the way the archers or other descriptions could. Perhaps magically enhanced with disease magic or something... maybe there is an upgrade where the users wait for just the right amount of time for the bodies to bloat (I believe about 3 days after death) enough for it to explode on impact (true tactic)

Reply #5 April 22, 2009 2:21 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

As for the OP, I think we've devised a method of dealing with technologies, milestones, and incremental ability improvements that will be pleasant (no more 'you've researed X, now your diplomatic ability is 3points better').

Reply #6 April 22, 2009 2:53 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

As long as we have the ability to modify existing technologies as well as add new technologies into the research tree I think the vast majority of gamers will eventually be very satisfied.

Reply #7 April 22, 2009 3:35 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 5

For the sake of keeping things simple, I would just have 'Plauge Catapults' be a type of unit (catapult that can inflict posion or something) that get's unlocked at a certain point in the 'War Engines' tech.

As for the OP, I think we've devised a method of dealing with technologies, milestones, and incremental ability improvements that will be pleasant (no more 'you've researed X, now your diplomatic ability is 3points better').

Cool. I read about how soldiers would start using different weapons and armor as you researched those things, and that's exactly the kind of stuff I like to see. I look forward to seeing how everything else is implemented!

Reply #8 April 22, 2009 3:38 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Quoting landisaurus, reply 2

I spent entire games with the sole purpose of getting every wonder I could into one city, haha. There is something to be said about seeing every landmark in the world side by side.

Reply #9 April 22, 2009 4:01 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

It is funny this has been mentioned. I am play Company of Heroe's and they have the Veterancy systems that adds small graphics to each unit as they advance in Rank, each has specific and accumlative associated bonuses.

The most recent Patch changed these little graphics, and the uproar has been quite strong.

It is very interesting how such minor representative additions/items can enamor one to ones units just because they have survived long enough to earn them and thus deserve to be better cared in the future as a result.

The FNG's are just cannon fodder after all.

Reply #10 April 23, 2009 3:07 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Point taken on the tactics I posted being not very research-like. I got a bit carried away .

I'd like to point out that in many games you get those boring "+5% damage" upgrades in disguise. Spell X deals 20 damage per point of spell power. Spell Y looks and sounds totally different and deals 25 per point, and is otherwise identical. Having this kind of linear progression is often boring. MOM kept things more interesting, but in general offensive spells still made variety suffer. On higher difficulty levels enemy wizards had a lot of mana and mostly used offensive spells, which was 1) boring 2) made many more sophisticated tactics not viable. Why use halberdiers when you can choose something foolproof, with more HP, like cavalry ?

Ideally, each spell would have a niche. In Nox (a game superficially similar to Diablo) magic missiles were very easy to aim and did decent damage, but not very efficient in mana cost. Lightning was very efficient cost-wise and could chain-zap multiple targets, but required you to stand still (a real danger, Nox was faster-paced). Energy Bolt was like lightning, but stronger and could only hit 1 target. Fireball did high splash damage, but required good aim and care (self-damage). Death Ray was very damaging and hitscan (instant hit shot), but very expensive and short ranged.

Reply #11 May 3, 2009 1:08 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

Oh hey! Nox! That game was awesome ... and those are some good examples of how to diferentiate direct damage spells while keeping them all viable in certain situations! Obviously they're not directly applicable to a TBS (where aim for instance will never be a problem).. but I'm sure there must be some similar mechanics the devs could come up with

Reply #12 May 3, 2009 2:50 PM from

Elemental Forums Top

What is the process of designing the Plague Catapults then?

Produce a 3Dmax model, assign the statistic of it, give it special ability (e.g. shoot poison ability: damage 10 & poison damage) and describe that kind of requirement it takes to produce it (in this case, the war engine tech, and probably x amount of wood, y amount of gold)

Put this design to the SD web site & have this evaluated for public release?

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