   Strategy game based on culture spread.
  Recently I wrote an engine for the purpose of making this game I had in mind that's basically a deterministic (in other words, non-random), non-stat driven RPG/puzzle hybrid largely inspired by Chip's Challenge and Crawl. Because there's something deeply and profoundly wrong with me.In order to test the robustness of this engine, and because I was inspired by Ludum Dare, I'm going to try and make a game a week this summer using it. And the first game I'm going to try to make is... going to be a strategy game, based around getting your side's culture to spread the farthest by the time the game ends.Basics:The map is 32x32 tiles in size, and inhabited by 5 different cultures. Everyone turn, each culture gets to do *something*. The goal of the game is to have your culture be the dominant culture in as many tiles possible by the end of the game, while also not becoming too terrible or unhappy.Spreading your cultureEach tile can be inhabited by zero or more cultures. The culture with the highest population in that tile owns it. Each tile has a particular carrying capacity, which is the maximum amount of people that can live on that tile. Carrying capacity only cares about the total population. So, if a tile's carrying capacity is 5000 and whether there are 5100 people from culture A living there or 2600 people from culture A and 2500 people from culture B, the tile is still over carrying capacity.When a tile goes over carrying capacity, one of two things happens:1. If the tile lacks a road connection, starvation occurs.2. If there is a road connection, migration occurs. So... the initial way to spread your culture is by building roads so that people can move about instead of dying. Also, migration happens if there's road access anyway. It's just that going over carrying capacity causes mass exoduses or something.ResourcesEach of the five terrain types in the game produces a different resource:Mountains - StonePlains - FoodForests - WoodLake - ???Swamp - Iron (bog iron. Look it up).Resources are used to build terrain improvements.At any given time, you can build ANY terrain improvement you want. However, you're only allowed to build one terrain improvement per turn. Having access to resources allows you to build more than one terrain improvement per turn. So, for instance, at the start of the game you can build one road per turn. If your culture spreads into the mountains, you can build more.ScoringScoring determines who wins. Basically, having the most points means you wins the game. There are four kinds of points.Spread points:You get one spread point per everyCulture points:You get one culture point for doing things that improve your culture. For instance, something like improving literacy, building lasting monuments, or building archives to prevent culture and history loss would give you these, although I'm not sure which which things you can actually do in game to get these.Unhappiness points:Every time something particularly bad happens to your culture, you get an Unhappiness Point. You can never get rid of these. Examples of things that cause unhappiness points:* Wars cause unhappiness points, although the exact mechanic is... not decided on yet.* Every time a tile suffers dieback from the population growing past carrying capacity, you get an unhappiness point.Stuff like that.Atrocity Points:Every time you commit an atrocity, you gain one of these. I'm not really sure what atrocities would be at this point. Maybe an unprovoked war or something, or committing genocide?Final Score:Final score is calculated by adding spread and culture points and subtracting unhappiness and atrocity points. Whoever has the highest score is the winner. Ties are allowed. Other ideas.Modus Operandi:Modus operandi are cultural "goals" you can set. Sort of like civis in Civ 4, or National Ideas in Europa Universalis 3. They have different uses. For instance, if you set your culture's Modus Operandi to "Warrior Culture," then you no longer gain unhappiness from war. I'm think that it's less something you manually choose and more something that's assigned to you after a certain number of turns based on your behavior up to that point.Suggestions/Things that need to be done.Trade and warfare need to take place, although the exact mechanics and causes for this... I'm not sure about.I also want some notion of ownership for terrain improvements. Like, if Culture C owns a given road, they can takes Cultures A and B for migrating along it.I also need to work out better rules for migration.And I want a culture's language to be relevant somehow. Like, language spreads independent of a culture and gives them bonus points. So, for instance, if culture a and culture b each control half the map, but Culture B is speaking Language A, Culture A ends up winning.And, of course, I'm VERY open to any and all suggestions.   
Quote:Original post by MeshGearFoxBecause there's something deeply and profoundly wrong with me.Hahaha. Hey, at least you're not alone. :PQuote:based around getting your side's culture to spread the farthest by the time the game ends.Am I right in thinking then there will be no wargame unit movement? I realize you mentioned war but this could be abstractly resolved.Quote:Each tile has a particular carrying capacity, which is the maximum amount of people that can live on that tile. Carrying capacity only cares about the total population. So, if a tile's carrying capacity is 5000 and whether there are 5100 people from culture A living there or 2600 people from culture A and 2500 people from culture B, the tile is still over carrying capacity.Is this automatic or are you able to drive an opposing people out of the tile? (Maybe that's an atrocity.)Quote:When a tile goes over carrying capacity, one of two things happens:1. If the tile lacks a road connection, starvation occurs.2. If there is a road connection, migration occurs. What about general food reserves? Something I always disliked about Civ was that despite the fact that you were supposed to be a nation, not a bunch of city-states, you could almost never use one tile to support another. This would be easier if everything went into a common coffer / national food supply.Quote:So... the initial way to spread your culture is by building roads so that people can move about instead of dying. Also, migration happens if there's road access anyway. It's just that going over carrying capacity causes mass exoduses or something.I read this a couple of times and keep getting the notion that you need to have borders or the ability to destroy roads. Otherwise one strategy might be to have a population boom on purpose so people would flood toward your enemy, which doesn't make sense.Quote:You get one culture point for doing things that improve your culture. For instance, something like improving literacy, building lasting monuments, or building archives to prevent culture and history loss would give you these, although I'm not sure which which things you can actually do in game to get these.It seems that you'll need another screen or another area to track things like literacy. Maybe you want to have something like production points per turn, with roads through various terrain costing varying amounts. If you want to make players actually have to settle the area, you could also have costs to found cities in different terrain types.Quote:Unhappiness points:Does this basically subtract from score or have a greater effect in game?Quote:Every time you commit an atrocity, you gain one of these. I'm not really sure what atrocities would be at this point. Maybe an unprovoked war or something, or committing genocide?If you had a tighter concept of borders maybe you could use the population migration idea in such a way that accepting refugees gets you certain points at the cost of feeding them. Turning them away might lose points, but mistreating or expelling them after accepting them would be even worse.Quote:Modus operandi are cultural "goals" you can set. Sort of like civis in Civ 4, or National Ideas in Europa Universalis 3. They have different uses. For instance, if you set your culture's Modus Operandi to "Warrior Culture," then you no longer gain unhappiness from war. One thought that could go along with this would be different points for the same action based on different goals. Starting a war for a warrior culture gains points while it loses points for a diplomatic culture and vice versa.Quote:Trade and warfare need to take place, although the exact mechanics and causes for this... I'm not sure about.If you don't have to muck about with moving individual warrior units I'm a big fan of point systems. You could have a system where your people (based on the type) generate points which represent their will. This, in turn, either grants you the ability to spend the points in different categories or (if you want a simpler system without classes of points) lowers the cost for certain actions against which you spend a common pool of points.For example: Let's say as a leader you get 20 points, which represent your political capital. If you've got a bunch of warmongers as people, the cost to for things like raids, intimidating military buildups and foreign intervention several tiles away is low, but accepting a peace treaty might be extremely high.Quote:I also want some notion of ownership for terrain improvements. Like, if Culture C owns a given road, they can takes Cultures A and B for migrating along it.You could offer different types of roads: Roads with check-points (for border crossing), open roads, toll roads.Quote:I also need to work out better rules for migration.I think it's important to determine if migration is ultimately a good or bad thing. In one sense you can't keep a stable civilization for long if you have a negative growth rate. On the other, migration brings up all sorts of factors such as loss of happiness from the folks who consider themselves native nationals in a given land.Quote:And I want a culture's language to be relevant somehow. Like, language spreads independent of a culture and gives them bonus points. One major achievement would be having the Lingua Franca of the world such that, in order to be economically successful, people in other countries learn your language as well as their own.;  Sounds kind of cool. The rules remind me a bit of a hybrid of 2 classic board games:Settlers of Catan : http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/the-settlers-of-catanTigris and Euphrates: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42/tigris-euphratesI'd be willing to try it. =)