Feature request thread

That's more into the outlandish category. Although slowly creeping a mechanised settlement towards the enemy under cover of artillery fire would pretty much make me feel more godly than almost anything ever.

A nice suggestion alongside the upcoming statue of belief collection.
And I know this has been suggested before but I'll drop it here regardless.

Have some form of organized religion. A religious/devout follower type can go walk around in his effective area and go door to door to 'spread the word' or something of the sort. This would be visually engaging (to a degree), provide the player with a mechanic to collect belief which is tied into the nature of the game and at the same time prevent the need to manually collect stuff.

A similar 'collection' mechanic could be implemented for wheat and other potential food sources (I'm still very much in favor of having animals for food and other resources) and then have a little grocer/merchant guy go around and collect it to distribute it from a market/marketplace/store.

Taking real-world examples. Towns, villages and settlements often form on crossroads and other important locations.

A settlement might form around a particularly rich area of soil (be it farmland or mining), settlements form on trade-route crossroads and other locations where resting is needed and where trade coming and going from various directions meet up.
Similarly these hubs form around rivers and along oceans since these inevitably provide a fast and reliable means of transportation.


Later on, as society advances and the needs become less tied down (transportation is faster and more reliable so you can get stuff from further away) you'll be looking at secondary benefits. Enough space to expand and resources to advance your industry.
These are all elements that could tie into the decision to make a settlement or have one form naturally. (I'd suspect that if an area was 'ready' to advance you could either have it just happen to show the free will of your people or give the player an option to allow this/deny this)


Further more, this would tie into the need and usage of further resources rather than magically turning belief into buildings and settlements.
A settlement would often not be self-sufficient as it got bigger, needing to rely on either industry or sprawling farmlands to sustain itself aswell as needing an industry to provide it with other base resources like timber and stone aswell as firewood, hides/skins for clothing, a healthy source of water or other drinks and so on.

Many of this wouldn't even NEED to be handled by the player but could just form naturally as your followers need it.
The question there is for the developer whether they want to give the player the choice to either fine-tune this or to just have it run itself to simulate the free will of your people.

It could easily have huts get a 'profession' to provide certain needs as local attributes allow. Huts near forests could self-define as a lumber/timber oriented industry, forming foresters and woodcutters aswell as other woodworkers.
Alternately, you could give the player the tools to properly set these systems up.

The thing is, so far I've yet to see any non-RTS mechanics function in such a way to maintain the interesting elements and flow of the gameplay.
The fact is, if you're gonna build a civilization - you are going to NEED some basic resources.

While the usage of resources might make you think of games like Settlers, Anno and others.
They do not inherently mean you have to play the game as such.
Right now, we are building using belief - a resource inherent to us being a god but otherwise utterly devoid of connection to our people.


I'm open for suggestions - but I have a hard time seeing this work without the usage of some form of earthly resource. Be it with our without our direct intervention.
Keep in mind, I don't necessarily want this to be under the control of the player.
Just having our followers create their own little lumbercamps and other productions in locations that are viable would already make the game much more 'alive' and would make our decisions more meaningful.

Instead of directly controlling the units and individuals, you'd mostly be guiding them to suitable locations and they'd do the rest from there.
EXACTLY as the game as been described from the start.

Only the 'free will' of your followers would be much more visually apparent and not just a mindless spread of funghi or bacteria across the lands.

So I took a bit of time to try to make some pics to illustrate my idea.

At first houses would be built by the followers at locations that they deem suitable.



Over time there might be several places where several houses are relatively close together as illustrated on the next pic. Let's say within a certain grid there are at least 5 houses. The people in these houses would then feel as if they're a small community and a small "town-centre" forms between those houses.



Those town centres would then increase the benefits for people who live near them so this would have the effect that more people would settle around them whilst some people are also still settling down in other places that offer good benefits.



Over time conglomerates get larger and new town centres emerge.



I made a red and a blue grid because in my opinion you would need two semi-overlapping grids to pull this off well. If you look at the first and second pictures more closely you would see that the bottom town centre is in blue grid H5 while the upper town centre is in red grid D'5'. (I didn't bother making coordinates for the red grid as it seems pretty clear)

Indeed. That was also my thought, but I didn't really go into detail about that.

A feature request thread? WHY HAS NO ONE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE!?!?! /eyeroll

Anyway, moving on.

1. Followers:
1.1 who explore the land themselves
1.2 build their houses where they will
1.3 gather resources as they will
1.4 build monuments, temples, docks, boats, bridges, roads, settlements etc, as they will
1.5 quarrel with each other, party with each other, work with each other as they see fit - form relationships and hierarchies

2. God powers to:
2.1 influence the landscape to affect the followers
2.2 raise land
2.3 create rivers (springs)
2.4 move followers and constructions where I will, if I choose to.
2.5 recolour followers and constructions as I see fit
2.6 inspire worship
2.7 create aversions/taboos by punishing followers who do something I do not want them to do, such that they will, over time do that thing less
2.8 conversely, by rewarding a follower doing something I like, they will, over time do it more
2.9 neither 2.7 or 2.8 should ever become absolutes - followers should always have that element of choice/random behaviour/free will
2.10 show special favour to followers to confer special status - prophets, crusaders, high priest(s/esses)
2.11 create resources for my followers to use - grow trees, create wildlife, seed riches into the ground for miners to unearth

At no point should they be 'repairing' artefacts left behind by some mysterious, previous civilisation. Repairing beacons??? Nope. They don't need them, and if they did they'd build them. Docks repaired? Nope. They build their own docks and own boats. Create their own settlements. And nothing that's built is indestructable! If I choose to destroy the docks or monuments etc I should be able to do so. It doesn't have to be cheap in belief or otherwise easy, just an available option should I, the God, so choose.

I'm sure I had more in a previous thread, but I have to go. for a bit.

It would really be better if there weren't any immersion breaking bubbles at all.



Indeed, if we do have to have chests this would be a much better way to go about collecting them. That and gems are very evil.



I like the idea of diversity and unique paths, but I don't think you would want to exclude people from being able to reach certain goals, instead you could just make it a lot harder for them to reach.

Ah, but if you make tech trees exclusive, then there's a reason to have people joining up in hubworld (like trade only pokemons)