DevDiary 17 - Settlements and Province Features

[Sultan Mubashar]

Castles... WoW, Hurrah!!!

[Ivory Knight]

16 hours ago, Lighthope said:

By the time you've got your marshals up and running to sack provinces, I'm already making enough gold through other means.

Seriously, they need to change up how sacking works.

Nope you are incorrect here. You can come watch our gameplay of no Merchants and no building of economic buildings and see how things played out. It is rough, but you do get very quick bonuses from sacking early on and its easy to pull off with peasants early in the game. and the additional marshal skilling you get from the plundering helps give your marshals early stats. 

[BC Knight]

So there are some questions that came up after the dev stream in my head:

What happens with the castles(keeps on the map) if a town is sieged and conquered. Are they still enemy territory or they surrender after the fall of the town?

There was a discussion about the randomness of recourses and province assets that will trigger the creation of zones (villages, farms, etc..) And the example of the stream was - if you have cows as asset you will have a cattle farm on the map - pretty cool mechanic. 

But raises the question

If assets are randomly generated does this mean that the number of zones/settlements per province may vary between games, or they are already placed on the map?

 

From the screenshots and the video I see that the settlements are placed very well on the map and that makes me think that they are done manually, unless there is a very powerful map generator that would create and place the zones so well, including the road connections, ha!

[William Blake]

1 hour ago, BC Knight said:

If assets are randomly generated does this mean that the number of zones/settlements per province may vary between games, or they are already placed on the map?

Most likely it is an option at a start of a new game "historic province resources/random province resource", if they have some set scenarios for specific nations as a different play mode I would guess starting resources would be adjusted to the scenario.

[Timerlane]

Finally the topic I was most interested in 😉

Everything seems very promising, but I still don’t see a major point here - the Capital.
 

The capital is the center of your empire, the cradle of culture and civilization. As such, it has be allowed to have an additional slot for building or special slot of building. Something special, something unique (like i.e. the Coliseum in Rome, Hague Sophia in Constantinople, etc)... A building that will give you advantage when the empire is getting larger and larger.

Speaking about getting a larger empire - how is this going to be reflected in the center of your empire? We all know that Rome was influenced from the resources coming from all points of the empire. Is the capital (if such) will benefit from the expansion of the empire? Consequently “damaged” from losing territory?
 

The topic of the Capital can be expanded further - i.e. when the king dies, a new capital can be chosen as seat of the empire. By that way the game will provide something which no other game has provided so far. Imagine that you conquer a capital from another empire bigger than yours or central on the map, then you can set it as a new Capital of your empire. 
 

How about the smaller settlements? Any possibility for the player to make upgrades? Not something major, but small adjustments - i.e. crop farms to have upgrade for watering system, religious places for building a protective tower or expand the settlement to cloister, monastery?

 

Last point, already mentioned in the other comments: some cities must have fixed buildings. This was one of the aspects which were bothering me in KoH1 - you conquer Rome, the seat of the Pope and there is not even a church. Certain buildings for certain cities need to be fixed in order to present incentive to conquer them (just brainstorming here, but perhaps ask if this building should be destroyed once the city is taken?)

 

Please treat the settlements and cities topic carefully - it’s the core that can create variation for late-game. It should not remain static once you are on quest of conquering the world with your army.

[William Blake]

17 minutes ago, Timerlane said:

Everything seems very promising, but I still don’t see a major point here - the Capital

It appears that Capital mechanics is done through a buildings probably unique, one pre kingdom.

 

 

Currently we are not aware what these buildings do.

[BC Knight]

On 4/19/2021 at 2:39 PM, THQN Brad said:

 

 

Is it possible instead of saying castle near Leon these castles to have real names and to represent real castles? 

 

There are a few castles east of Lyon that may be good for these two on the map. 

[BlueXeesk]

On 4/22/2021 at 7:36 PM, Ivory Knight said:

Nope you are incorrect here. You can come watch our gameplay of no Merchants and no building of economic buildings and see how things played out. It is rough, but you do get very quick bonuses from sacking early on and its easy to pull off with peasants early in the game. and the additional marshal skilling you get from the plundering helps give your marshals early stats. 

Still, I think that pillaging and sacking would be an interesting mechanic to consider in every stage of the game, not only on early moments just to get a quick advantage over a neighboring rival. I feel that it would add a profound layer of tactical decision-making: should I send my strong army directly to the province's capital for a siege, or should I start a slower but less men-costly attrition war? Or deprive my rival of a precious resource, such as horses or iron?

I always felt this like a huge drawback in the first game, especially when taking into account how well-rounded the economy system is (deep but accessible at the same time).

[USArmyMan1982]

As much as I talk about war and destroying things, my favorite aspects of these sorts of games are building and developing for self sufficiency. I can't wait to see how close to self sufficiency I can get.

[CroatianKnight]

What I belive should be a feature is that there should be more builds already built on later start dates. Especially stone walls. It is weird to play like the latest starting date and all of Europe looks like it is in 8th century AD at the beggining of the game. 

[Litecide]

How can I turn off all the symbols that are above the villages and castles etc. After heaps of upgrades they tend to block up the screen with trash....can I toggle that info to be off?