What do you all think about a ZONE system??

waronline.net/images/zones3.gif

Basically, each map is set into small zones (5 radius from center hex). Its these zones that growth and income are based.

this gives us a few options for resource/population growth, and also rewards players based on land ownership, not just Castle ownership.

it also means we can actually show land ownership on the map via a player-colored shadow areas.


we could make it so each ZONE has a town center. capture a town (via some method), and you can then build in it.

or each zone actually contains a resource building already, and the first person to build an outpost in it, owns it.
of course, once the resource buildings run out, thats it. no regen (because there are so many).

thats just 2 options for a Zone system.

any thoughts?

oh, as you can see in the image, i colored the "surrounding" zones in grey.

this is to show that each castle gets 6 local zones. then there is the mid-zones (grey ones) between another players local zones. this way there is always enough zones to go around, and distance between castles.

I think is great!.

This forces people to play outside their area.

Yes it's great
but please go with the town idea.

TR

if you are saying towns rather than outposts I agree. All those outposts look kinda silly. Sorry req.

Is there a graph that depicts a little town to use instead of the outpost if townships is the way to go?

Yes it is just a simple thing. It is just an appearance thing to satisfy the imagination. A very simple town icon in place of the outpost would suffice.

TR

Are demons gonna be in this one req? please!!!!!

I like the idea of land ownership...

...but do agree that all the outposts look silly... definately need a new 'town' icon.

This would allow 'real' outposts to be used as invasionary technologies... if you want to 'see' where you are going you need scouts (of course) and outposts... (until you take over a town)

I would keep resources separate from town ownership... this will allow (and encourage) a kind of 'pirate' strategy along with the usual. -Town center defended too heavily..? Take that mine on the edge you wanted, get a couple turns of metal, wait and see if you can draw the person out...

Each town should definately be named though! -maybe straight from a database or simply part of the map itself..?

Interesting...always up for somethign different....sounds fresh and exciting.

yesssss, looks amazing. I absolutely love it. I really can not wait.

Full steam ahead Req

Well we have a pretty good "cross-section of approval"
So I just thought I would comment/question one little aspect.
Can we talk a little about this idea of "resource exhaustion"?

Will there be enough resources left if a couple of pairs of players are locked in early combat while the rest of the players go around "tapping all the resource zones"
and possibly deliberately targeting areas close to combatants first?

I have been in a similar circumstance in a game now where I don't want to go into detail but I have suffered from near depletion of resources for 2/3's of almost 80 turns because of an early attacker followed by an "opportunist ganger" very early after.

The only reason I still survive is because my first attacker helped me against the "opportunist ganger";
but then my first attacker was eliminated by the "omni-potent ally" of the "opportunist ganger",
So now I'm only able to just try to avoid being eliminated going into turn 78.

PS:
Being resource starved is no fun at all IMO
and anyone who thinks differently IMO just hasn't had it happen to them enough times.

TR

yes, the outposts are just there as a demo, to show the areas.
whatever is in the middle, it wont be outposts. they will be used by the player.

the 2 ideas i had was...

1. each Zone has a town-center, and nothing else.
When you take a town, you can build 1 resource or 1 military building. This defines whether the town is a military or worker town. You cant build both military & resource buildigns in the one town.

How to limit resource buildings, etc is still unknown.
Maybe you can only have 1 or 2 per town, and you need Farms to provide food for the workers, which limits how many you can have, given you'd need more towns to balance the food/workers ratio.

2. each Zone has a pre-built resource building, and nothing else.
This simulates each Zone being a rural township dedicated to that type of resource. By building an outpost, or maybe just via take-over, you get ownership of the resource building, and thus that Zone/township.
However, each resource building is limited. Once it runs out of resources it stop producing (altho it regenerates a small amount each turn).
Since there are so many zones, there are still lots of resources about. You can also choose to increase the speed of resource extraction at a cost.

Hey Req, all this sounds very creative and should be great fun. I am looking forward to trying this.

But... (and you knew the 'but' was coming) don't take away what we have. I simply love this game we have now and never have been so involved in an online community. Can you just do the testing alongside what we have now? Pretty Please...

Methinks he's talking 'new version'...the 'new version' I'm a little tired of waiting for

How definable are these zones going to be? I'd like to see techs that alow you to increase the overall defence of every unit in a zone (actually the way to do that would be identicle to however you aply the extra defence to a castle tech now). of course, that would be ideal for zones on the border.

Also I'd like to suggest again that with a zone system like this you could make lots of things manipulatable like that; food production and over all resource production and techs for faster resource production have been discussed. I would like to suggest once more the idea of thieves in light of the new zone system.
They could sabotage the production of troops, resources, defence "auras" as it were ( the tech I suggested at the start) and/or could be used to infiltrate other buildings. development of theives could be put under the spy section of our current tech tree if we are still going to be using that.

I will not go into further detail on my longing for the implimentation of theives; it was merely a way to show what I think is possible with the zone system, and thus I ask my original question re-worded to Req:
How definable are these zones going to be? can you do things like tech "auras" for each zone similar to the way the current techs castle protection and castle defence? if so, then please impliment this system as soon as posible because it sounds awsome!

I guess I like the way the resources are now rather than the "zones" idea. It is simpler to play and less complex now, yet fair.

yes, with Zones, we can have techs and other options based on the specific Zone.

the zones also allow more dynamics to the resources, as each game could have different resource placement (if using that option).

it could even go so far as having the terrain dynamic. so each zone has a random terrain. plus, making it so you can ONLY see the zones you are in, and the neighbouring zones. everything else is black (sort of a real FOW).

lots of options, of course it limits play into zone areas.
of course even now is kind-of like zones, when looking at Castles & resources as 1 zone.

im personally all in favor of it if we can do 2 things this resource regeration gets annoying with the gold mines and stuff if you own the town after the regeneration is complete it goes into production again right? if so thats good and another thing maybe have trap towns ? towns that look like resource generators but are really a military stageing ground