Explorers : Basic Game Mechanics
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Starting the game
When you start the game, you have a choice of three different characteristics for your explorer that will affect play. Some ideas I had are a bonus during combat, a bonus to movement as you explore, or a bonus to trading with natives.
You will start in Spain in front of the royal throne and will be given your boon to start your first expedition. You will then proceed to buy fighting men, food, goods, and ships for your expedition. You can also pick up colonists and missionaries if you wish in order to start a colony/mission. You then board your vessels and sail to the New World due west. I'm leaning towards following 7CoG method of getting to and from Europe in that you know that you have to sail west to get to the New World, but you don't know exactly where landfall might occur. In addition, when you want to sail back to Spain, you have to head to a certain latitude and eventually you will make it there. We will also have bad weather that can strike while you are sailing, and it also can affect the player when traveling overland, killing men and causing items the expedition is carrying to possibly be lost (like food, goods, or gold/silver/gems/info). Bad weather is something to be avoided if possible in the game.
Realtime elements during play
Constant basis - this will be checked/updated every so much time
Random basis - this will be checked regularly, but events happen more randomly
- Lose men to attrition/sickness
- Possibility of an open attack
- Possibility of an open greeting by a hidden tribe - random basis
- Bad weather over land or sea can cause loss of men and anything the expedition is carrying potentially - random basis
- Mine depleted - random basis
- Possibility of an open greeting by a hidden tribe
Monthly basis - this will be checked/updated every month
- Shift in native influence across the map - this should ebb and flow as play progresses based on factors - might consider quarterly basis, instead
- Growth/decline of a fort - monthly basis
- Growth/decline of a mission - monthly basis
- Growth/decline of a village/city - monthly basis
- Shift in native hostility - monthly basis
Terrain types and movement/attrition affected by them
- Jungle causes you to move 1/2 speed. We will check twice as often to see if you lose men due to attrition
- Swamp causes you to move 1/2 speed. We will check twice as often to see if you lose men due to attrition and the number of men you can lose per successful check is increased by 2
- Grassland causes you to move at full speed. Normal attrition checks.
- Hills causes you to move 3/4 speed.
- Mountains causes you to move 1/4 speed. We will check twice as often to see if you lose men due to attrition and the number of men you can lose per successful check is increased by 2
- Desert causes you to move at full speed. You will use twice as much food as normal. We will check twice as often to see if you lose men due to attrition
- Rivers cause you to move at 1.5 speed. Normal attrition checks.
Player behavior mechanics and effects
There are two major challenges that are ever-present in the game that the player must deal with. First is handling men and food/water. These must be taken care of or the expedition will fail. The second is how the player interacts with the natives.
There are two basic measures of alignment, so to speak, in the game. An explorers alignment determines both how natives deal with the player, and how the crown reacts.
Native alignment
For each tribe in the world, the explorer has an alignment rating. This is kept from the player, but we likely will reveal it in an abstract manner to the player. This alignment rating affects any contacts the explorer has with any village of that tribe type.
If the explorer has a good rating, this means that the natives will be more likely to work with the player. This will effect whether the player is attacked in the open or in a village, for instance. If the explorer has a bad rating, the natives are more likely to openly attack. This is just one example of the impact, and we'll flesh out other areas as we proceed with development.
Overall alignment
The second type of alignment rating is more of an overall rating. If on the whole, the player treats the natives well and responds well to requests from the crown, then the crown will reward the player, and vice versa. If a player gets too negative of a rating, then the crown will dispatch troops and another explorer to try to reign the player in.
The impact of a bad rating can have severe consequences for the explorer. Returning to Spain very well might end up with the explorer being put in jail for a few years and then released with less wealth.
One option that a player will face during play will be requests from the crown for specific actions (found a colony in a particular area, put down a native revolt by a specific tribe in a particular area, etc). If the player agrees and completes these requests, the crown will reward the player appropriately. If the player either decides to ignore these requests or fails at them, then his rating takes a hit.
Hostility, alliances, and influence
How does hostility work:
- Hostility is always at least neutral, as there is always a chance that even the friendliest natives will take offense at the explorer and attack.
- Any time the explorer attacks a village it negatively impacts that villages hostility toward the player.
- Neighboring native settlements affect surrounding tiles based on the influence of the city, normally based on the city size and type.
- The hostility of a given settlement on a tile decreases with distance from the the settlement.
- The more hostility that affects a tile raises the chances of an attack in the open on the explorer.
- If multiple settlements from the same type of native (Incan, Mayan) affect the same tile by chance, then we add both of their hostility ratings.
- If there are multiple native types whose hostility affects the same tile, then we will check each individually. In other words, we will check if an attack or other event occurs per native type.
- Absence makes the heart grow fonder, which means in this case the longer you have little to no contact with a native tribe or tribe type the less open hostility they will exhibit. We are talking extensive amounts of time though, like years.
- If the player creates a fort in an area, it will positively affect the neighboring hostility. This is explained by making it more safe for exploration by subjugation of the natives. However, in the areas outside of the fort's influence, the hostility is higher unless the player is friendly with the native type that has the highest influence in that area
How do alliances work:
- The player will have alliances of various level with the different tribe types (Incan, Mayan)
How does influence differ from hostility:
- Influence is measured over a geographical location, much like hostility. Influence is closely tied with alliances/wars with the player, and native alliances/rivalries. You can have overlapping areas of influence, as the boundaries between native nations (so to speak) is fairly nebulous. Think the Wild West here.
Mining
When the explorer finds a mine he is presented with three choices. He can choose to either:
Make a map to the mine for trading/selling later at a village/colony
"Make a map" will automatically produce a map of the mine and surrounding area and put that map in the explorers inventory. If the player chooses to set up a mining camp at a later time before trading/selling the map, then the map is discarded. If the player trades/sells the map, then the mine disappears from the map as it is now claimed by someone else.
Set up a mining camp with a portion of his men (soldiers and colonists/natives)
"Set up mining camp" will present the explorer with a screen to leave some of his men behind, along with some food/water. In addition, the player can choose what happens to the ore that is mined. He can either have the ore kept at the mine or transported automatically to a selected colony. If no colonies exist, then the player has no choice but to have the ore stay at the mine. If the ore is not automatically transported, then the player will have to travel to the mine in the future to collect the ore and transport it himself.
Mines do become depleted in time. The player will be notified when a mine is depleted. The player will also be notified if the mine has produced ore (schedule TBD) and how much. Last, there are chances that natives will destroy the mining camp or that the men will choose to leave on their own, possibly taking the ore with them (odds TBD).
Brainstorm
- Players will largely define their own exploration goals. However, we should give them much to choose from. Finding gold and other precious metals/gems are the not the only reasons to explore. Notoriety, lands, titles, and pure exploration are some additional ones. Finding something for the sake of finding something at times. A hinted-at great native city, for instance, or a route around a great continent or lake or swamp or through a vast mountainous region.
- Although I enjoy the rich history of this period, I feel a bit restricted by "what really happened". We need to make sure that we're attacking this more as a "what-if" game, as in "what if the Aztecs did not succumb to disease just prior to Cortes attacking on his return trip"? Or "what if the Inca had a friend in the Portugese who sold modern-day weaponry to them and taught them how to use it in order to cause the Spanish problems?"
- We should keep the arcade mini-game for contacting the people in villages/cities. Consider enhancing it a little. For instance, the Incans did not reside in their cities, but in neighboring villages. Perhaps the player should have to navigate past the villages themselves before entering the city to negotiate with the ruler. Maybe the player does not actually always get to the ruler in the city, but instead is relegated to the local village council (or similar).
- Europe should not be the only port where things happen in the game. Once roots have been put down, you should be able to resupply and even get new ships from ports. However, going back to Europe definitely would give you access to larger quantities of ships and goods and men.
- We might have the player start in a starting town discovered previously. At the very least this could be a campaign or mission starting position.
- To expand up 7CoG we should add colonies. This was a large focus for this era.
- Instead of providing an explorer a highly detailed map to something valuable such as a lost city or mine, we will provide the explorer with clues that will resolve eventually into a map of sorts. The explorer will pick up info such as "there is a great range of mountains to the west of this mine" and we will show a hazy map with an 'X' for the mine and a mountain range to the west of that 'X'. The next bit of info might be that the mine is near a wide north-south river, and we will add a river to the hazy map. The player will never get a true map to the mine, but they will get a rough idea of what landmarks to look for from the info they gather that will help them find the mine. We will also try to make finding this 'X' tougher by occasionally having multiple locations where such a set of conditions exist.
- When the natives give the hazy map information, we could have native speech or text appearing as he draws on the map a rough outline of the "mountains to the west", for example.
- Might be possible to run into Europeans (or just non-natives) in a village, possibly survivors of an ill-fated expedition. This could mean a reward to the explorer for returning the lost survivors. Like Nethack, we could reuse explorer names from previous games or possibly even names of explorers on the community site whose names have been previously-approved so that we know they are clean.
- Consider adding flavor text when you successfully trade with the natives. Text such as "The chief invites you to attend his daughter's wedding three days hence. You agree and celebrate with the local tribesmen."
- Natives can pass intelligence on to the explorer. In addition to simple information, such as a great forest lies to the northwest, they can provide much more specific intel such as where a rich mine might be (giving you a rough map to it) or that the natives to the east are hostile to them and likely hostile to your explorer.
- The player icon during movement will change based on the composition of the expedition. If the explorer is by himself, he shows as a lone man. If he has other explorers with him, it will show as a group. If he has native bearers/guides with him, it will show with a group that shows this.
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