14 replies to this topic

[Beren IV]

No, this is not about the unit limit.


Tolkien's races vary in the relative birth rates and generation times. This is going to result in population differences, and does in the text. Also, some cultures (e.g. Gondor) tend to have drop off in birth rate due to national morale problems, e.g. the tendency of Gondor noblemen to spend more time thinking about the dead than the living.

Is the actual breeding rate of the various races considered directly, or is it all kept behind the scenes (e.g. the slower-breeding races have more expensive units and buildings, longer production times, etc.)?

[Enarwaen]

we will of course take into the account the population growth/stagnation of the individual civs in the different Ages of the Sun.

population growth will depend on many factors (amount of settlements, the civilisation itself -> e.g. Elven population in the Third Age will be much harder to increase than say in the First Age)

as it has been hinted at - we are now looking at Arda at a much more global perspective - not necessarily limited to let's say a single map like in AoK *hint*hint*

[Mithrandil]

[Beren IV]

Well, in that case we should give some more serious thought to the Quest idea that I proposed earlier, if random maps can span an entire Age.

[Caedus]

I feel we're going to have a large update very soon !

And I believe that the idea was first to do it like you said, Beren, at the end of your post: 'the slower-breeding races have more expensive units and buildings, longer production times, etc.)?'

But I don't know for sure if that will still be the way it's gonna be, because Enarwaen hints at a serious perspective change.

[Beren IV]

New population demographics issue:

In theory, the amount by which a population can grow is dependent on three things: (1) the existing population, (2) the availability of resources for raising children, and (3) the desire to engage in reproductive behavior. Many of Tolkien's "good guys" in most of the Third Age seem to be lacking in (3), especially the people of Gondor.

In most RTS games, and from reading the concept design for the showcase civilizations on the TLA website I am of the impression that TLA is not unusual in this regard, units do not build other units, but rather some units (we are calling them villagers) are able to build buildings, which in turn build other units. A nation can be entirely wiped out in terms of its units, but still have buildings, especially the town center (or equivalent) building, and rebuild. Likewise, a nation can generally have all of its buildings destroyed, but if it has any villagers left, it can rebuild. If you will, there is a life cycle with alternating generations of villagers and buildings.

What fraction of the population is contained within the buildings and does the necessary "breeding" of more units? Does the effectiveness of unit production (esp. production time) depend on the number of existing units?

[Caedus]

This reminds me of an old game, 'Sage, Rage of the Vikings'. It's an RTS game, couple of years old with an interesting system:

If you wanted to have more warriors/villagers, you had to have four things: a house, food, a male and a female. You would send both the male and female in the house if you had enough food and then they did their thing (I sometimes kinda hoped there was a cheat, that would allow me to lift the roof off the house ) and after a while you had a new villager.

Now I don't say that TLA should use the same system, but it would at least be very original to have the above gameplay added with this: you don't get a fully grown villager, but a child that you can then send to a training facility (like a barracks). Problem is, that it would require more micro-management and I believed the team wants to go to macro-management.

But like I said: don't want to defend this as the best thing to do. I'm just throwing around some ideas.

[Beren IV]

If we are going to have children in the game, we might use a "wanderer" idea similar to the soldiers' wives concept I brought up a while back. A lot of games of the "city builder" genre work this way. The child unit/young adult unit might wander around the settlement, and the number of them indicate how many new units could be trained rapidly. Of course, such child units could also get in the way, in an even worse way than soldiers' wives might get in the way (since the children are going to be in the town where new buildings are being constructed, unlike following their husbands on military campaigns), so this might not work out all that well.

Another possibility would be to have the graphics of the buildings themselves have people wandering around among them. These graphics would be just that, and not actual units, so couldn't get in the way of anything, but they could be assumed to be the people associated with the buildings. After all, there need to be more than just people breeding - there has to be the stablemaster who takes care of the horses for your caravans and your cavalry, for instance, not to mention that there has to be a beaurocracy that runs the civilization!

Yet another possibility would be to have modified wanderer units - wanderers that move around but can be turned on and off as part of the options screen. They wouldn't do anything, and other units could pass through them/shove them aside, so they wouldn't even get in the way, and somebody who doesn't want to see the innards of the society (most of which honestly aren't what Tolkien liked to write about), or simply doesn't have that powerful a computer, can simply save processer speed by turning them off.

Lastly, we could have extra artwork showing us the inside of our buildings and the people therein, that would be visible when a building is selected or appears on screen when they are completed. This would be a better idea if TLA were a TBS instead of an RTS, since in an RTS a player can't really devote time to looking at the artwork without pausing the game. Of course, I'm likely to do that anyway. Also, this would require additional work from our artists. I do not know whether they would welcome or recoil at the idea of another assignment!

[Enarwaen]

oh my ... well thanks for your creative output ... but i fear you are all off the mark. i fear you'll have to wait a little while longer until we release our 'new and improved' population concept

all i can say now - the level of detail you propose in here goes contrary to our more *cough* global view *ahem*

[Caedus]

Beren IV, on Jul 25 2005, 12:58 AM, said:

Another possibility would be to have the graphics of the buildings themselves have people wandering around among them. These graphics would be just that, and not actual units, so couldn't get in the way of anything, but they could be assumed to be the people associated with the buildings. After all, there need to be more than just people breeding - there has to be the stablemaster who takes care of the horses for your caravans and your cavalry, for instance, not to mention that there has to be a beaurocracy that runs the civilization!

You know, I really like this idea and it can be implanted as standing on its own as well. It would really make the game more 'alive' and vibrant if their was actual activity in communities, like women doing chores around the house, soldiers practising in barracks, etcetera. Like in 'The Battle for Middle Earth'-game for example. That system could even be improved by adding a layer of interactivity among buildings. For example: if you have two houses standing in each other's vincinity, you might see villagers moving between them. They would be non-controlable villagers that appear at the door of one house, walk to the second, and disappear again there. Soldiers could move between militairy buildings.

It would mean that a player doesn't have to do anything extra, but it would make the game so much more alive.

Of course this is entirely off-topic, and I fear it might not fit in the new perspective the team has in the game. I wonder: has it shifted from an AoX influenced game to a 'Total War' influenced game? With all that hinting at globality I mean.

[dathui]

it's incredibly anoying to have all these ideas and not being able to use them

Anco: that's the direction, but please don't draw any conclusions based on this. We will reveal everything(decided so far) once we have reached some decisions that really need to be done. My personal hope is within a month or so. We want to have some things ready so you won't just be confused when the day of revelations come.

[Radagast]

Beren IV's idea about interior visibility in buildings sounds alot like Stronghold 2.

That brings up another question for me- Can units man walls as in Stronghold, or are walls simply barriers as in the AO_ Series? This may have already been discussed, but I don't get to frequent the internet very much, so I don't know.

[Enarwaen]

engine wise we are closely knitted to 0 A.D. ... in their part 1 the notorious 'units on walls' concept was ditched - but i've heard it's a fixed ingredient of 0 A.D. part deux

so by the time TLA is in the works (programming wise) i'm sure we'll have the opportunity to have units standing on the fortifications (atleast it's a stated design feature - as of now)

[Caedus]

@Mikael: I'm confident you guys (and gals!) will make the correct decisions. I'm just not confident that I can wait any longer to have that update !

@Bernd: and it should be an included feature as it's makes walls much more realistic and enriches sieging!

[Enarwaen]

@Anco - yep ... that's the plan