New idea to encourage people to try to hold their cities

[Mickey]

Now that we can track how long someone has owned a city, the next move is to give some credit to people that can hold cities for a long time.

I've heard suggestions that we give extra armies or jewels every xx hours that a city is owned. I'm thinking maybe the city becomes stronger and more likely to win battles the longer you own it.

For example, right now it's an even chance (1-1) whether an attacker or defender dies in a battle.

Maybe after you've owned a city for a day, your soldiers are all 1.5 as strong, meaning 2 of your defenders would be about as powerful as 3 attackers.

After you've held for two days, your defenders are 2.0 strong, meaning 2 of your defenders would be about as powerful as 4 attackers.

Thoughts?

[Appletom]

Good idea. But what about army strength after the battle? Should the losing army really stop existing? And shouldn't the winning army have taken some casualties?

What if the losing army is returned to its owner, but at half strength? That army would need to rest for five days in order to get back to full power. Or an army owner could combine two losing armies into one army, but at 90% strength.

And what if the winning army was to be at 90% - then one day of rest would be needed before returning to full strength.

Or maybe the winning army should be at 110% after battle - maybe they took weapons from the losers.

Just some thoughts. I am really looking forward to see what this game looks like in about a year.

[Mickey]

I need to completely re-work the way armies are stored in the database, and I'll likely incorporate some of your ideas into there.

I'm thinking that I'll make each army much more valuable, but also more customizable. People will tend to have far fewer armies (since they'll cost a good bit more), but the armies will be more customizable - names, upgrades, damage, etc. Also, once I get it coded, you'll be able to move armies to more random locations on the map - not just cities.

I'm gonna start by just reworking the armies database within our current context, then try to start adding the other features. It will likely be a mess getting things converted, but it should be well worth it in the long run...

[rasqual]

:::sigh:::

Please, please be careful about hardwiring anything like "armies get stronger the longer the occupy," if your ambition touches at all one making the game more realistic -- which would entail sometimes the precise opposite happening.

The more you hardwire individual suggestions into your architecture without considering that entire architecture itself, the more the thus-ad hoc architecture will constrain future improvements to the game. "Hmm, yes, that would be more realistic -- but we already have the jewels tied in with the magazine and video sales code."

You can build this thing two ways -- (a) design an open, rich architecture and hang features on it, or (b) add features ad hoc until you have a de facto architecture whose design is a consequence of all the ad hoc additions, and which you can't really modify.

Careful!

[Mickey]

Originally Posted by Appletom

Good idea. But what about army strength after the battle? Should the losing army really stop existing? And shouldn't the winning army have taken some casualties?

This is in effect now. When you have a battle, it will show the "troops" getting killed from each army. By default, an army has 100 troops in it. Soon, you'll be able to purchase additional troops and other such add-ons to do more with your armies.

You can build this thing two ways -- (a) design an open, rich architecture and hang features on it, or (b) add features ad hoc until you have a de facto architecture whose design is a consequence of all the ad hoc additions, and which you can't really modify.

Agreed. I've never built anything like this before, so the more specific in these regards, the better.

The changes I made today to army storage in the database would seem to go toward those goals.