Some Elemental Beta 3 Videos - New Stuff

Excellent videos, I really enjoyed watching them, very imformative and helpfull. Keep the videos coming.....

I'm uploading 3 more right now, and working on recording some more.

As always with Youtube, you've got to give them time to process, and then they'll be in full 1080p HD. 

And I am glad your enjoying them. That's pretty much why I'm doing it, for the enjoyment of others.

Nice. Keep them coming

Alright, got 4 more videos for you all to enjoy. Another 32 or so minutes worth of videos!

Like watching these. Provides an excellent way to look at the game from a fresh angle.

Glad to hear it Brad. I figure it would show what a tester who's trying things out see's. While also still trying to "Play" to see what's there. And see what ideas pops into my head as I'm doing it. It's sort of how I test things. Approaching it as if it were a real version, each time. And see what stands out.

Now I just need to get a harbor and a boat and I'll explore the world abroad.

But doing these videos recently, something kinda stood out for me.

One of the common factors for fantasy genre's is that they all have these great open tracts of land and just a few cities, as the center of each nation. But one thing that it always seems odd about is that satellite villages form around these larger locations. Like a living network of humanity as it were.

And those villages were beholden to their "Liege Lord". 

Basically if you imagine, you've got bunch of villages who are a mile or two from the "Town". And then you've got several "Town's" in turn surrounding "Cities" and then some of those cities grow into the size of a Metropolis. And it creates a network of living communities.

Now I get that right now there is some abstraction to the current system. But I was thinking that if we keep the fundamental core in place right now, founding big cities costing what they do and letting them grow. Then it has occurred to me that wouldn't it be interesting if another aspect of this game for city growth was that after you've founded a city, wouldn't it be neat to have it organically grow.

With a little village popping up here and there.

Or being placed manually, with a system in place so that when your city levels up, you can then settle a number of level 1 villages within a certain distance of the town. And they in turn can grow as well. With the limit being something like.

At level 2 a city can place 3 villages around it withing say 5 squares. (This is another way to "Project" nations outwards and also gain access to special resources that may be just outside of your range, and then further gives a reason to protect these villages that are bringing in special resources.)

Okay so say you get up to 3 villages, you place them within 5 squares of your current town. And they are only level 1's themselves. With a max limit to population just like a city. But their overall benefits with the exception of say special resources, is limited, to a certain degree.. say more along the lines of normal traditional villages, for food, and resource gathering (And possibly champion/recruits for your armies), and not really let it add in "Research" villages. Just the normal fantastic reality that were seeing.

And then when your city hits level 3, you get 3 more villages that you can add as support to your city, or you can in turn upgrade one of those villages, to a town level 2, and then place another village within 3 squares of the upgraded town.

And this way you've got a more organic leveling to the cities, and natural evolution of "Society" as it were. 

At level 4, you get to upgrade a village to a town, and place a new village near it within 3 squares that in turn supports that town. Which in turn supports the city.

And then at level 5 you get to upgrade one town to a level 3 city. And you also get to upgrade another village to a town near that city, and place another village near that new town.

Thus the whole thing creates an interconnected web of living towns.

The distance factor can obviously be tweaked, as those numbers with distance are a bit arbitrary.

But with an interconnected breathing spoked wheel of life, it'll feel a bit more realistic. Yet also you can then use those villages to have troops located (bringing their overall cost in line with this idea of more troops because of a greater area to protect), there. But there is another thing to consider as well.

If you used this idea, when we get those quests from the inn's, that say this village or that village needs help. We'll have an actual village to visit that is our's that is over run by this or that monster. Or is being raided at night by Boggerwallem's and the troops are only able to keep the town safe, but it'll still require a champion to come visit, thus having an interconnected living breathing quest center.

And to avoid "Spamming" cities, I know you guys are going to tweak the values, but this also helps reduce the available land, because you can then add in a limiter for the distance from one city/village/etc to another. And then the caravans could make trips to the various villages, picking up gold and bringing it back.

And I realize this idea may be a little late in the game as it were to come up with. But I think it could really compliment the current system (in theory). And then it also provides an impetus to protect the villages and towns from the wandering monsters. Who if you don't take care of, and keep in check will over run your smaller support villages. Which in turn limit your food and other resources.

My idea is that it's all interconnected this way. While also giving those open areas on the map a bit more of a realistic feel to it. While also limiting those satellite communities to a small number of tiles 4 or something that works without breaking the current ideas of city construction with tiles as a resource for what's available per major city per level.

The ideas on these have been kicking around in my mind for a while more along the lines of past D&D games, where you always see these great open vast tracts of land and one or two major cities. And supposedly nothing in between. That's a great fantasy fallacy. Why not treat it as Major cities, and minor support cities. I use this method in my D&D game world. Making sure that it felt realistic, and also made sense, yet still maintained that sense of wonder and fantasy.

But this is all just an idea that I in truth don't know how long would take to implement or even if it's something that others would be interested in.

Anyhow, I'm working on some new videos for folks, should get some factions up and running and empire videos as well so folks can see the "Dark" Side, a bit more again.

You make some good points.   Maybe such new mechanics could be put in a mod (if mods are going to be capable of doing that =)) and maybe an expansion if the mechanics work really well. 

Best regards,
Steven.

Thanks for the kind words StevenAus.

And to let everyone know I've got a 6 new videos Empire oriented videos that run near 50 minutes of gameplay. Which includes faction creation and sovereign creation.

As always give them sometime to be fully processed by YouTube, and when they are fully complete, they'll be visible in up to 1080p HD quality level.

Now I'm going to bed, gotta keep that third shift approach even on days off. (I Hope you all enjoy the new videos.) 

I like the idea of having small villages and towns, however I think they should be AI controlled and radomly placed on the maps. These towns could be used to trade with, we could help them out if they are being attacked by other factons etc. It could be a place to get quests.

Anyway your videos are great, however i'd like to see you at war with the AI

The civ series kind of does that, and does it very well. I agree with OP, satellite towns would add a lot of ambience to the world.

I really struggle with this beta as a whole, its painful and for the most part incredibly boring... you somehow make it look like a joy.

Keep up the great work. Looking forward to the next instalment. 

Are there significant differences between races? Your character generation video showed no diference between the wraith and the other race you were contemplating, when creating the queen. Also, the stats looked the same, whatever the race (all 10s).