Feature request thread

This post is x-posted from another thread, but think it seems worthwhile to put in here too. This is to do with how plots currently work & how that functions with fields.

The way the system works is, as pointed out, there are 3 types of building. The buildings that can be built on 'mountain' (or the higher levels) are stone-type buildings. If you check your time-line, there is an upgrade imaginatively called "next age abodes", which gives you your first stone house.

Now the important thing to note here is that the first stone/mountain house is a size 3 house, and the ones you get in future past that point are size 4,5 & 6 respectively. This means that you can't build small houses at high levels, but this also applies to fields, as fields use exactly the same templates as your available houses but have different builders, thus high up you can only have really big fields. It's also why you can't build huge fields when you only have small houses unlocked. It's pretty silly really, and leaves two options, either it's intentional that fields can only be the same size as your unlocked houses, which seems kinda silly, or that they didn't think plots through properly and were forced into having fields use exactly the same plots as houses.

I have a couple of solutions to the problem that might work:

• Instead of permanently showing plots, have the option to flick through overlays of different follower types. So you can have a builder overlay that shows house plots, and a farmer overlay that shows farming plots (possible along with an indicator of fertility, such as mid-level grass next to trees/water providing more wheat than a barren mountain-top or sandy beach). The house plots & farming plots can thus be different, and for example, if you want to work on a farming area, you leave the farming on while sculpting.
• Get rid of plots for farms, you want to try and avoid big flatlands, stop making everything in the game square. Let the fields grow organically in the same way that settlements kinda do now. Assign a point/multiple points you want farmers to start working, and as the settlement expands they automatically add more farmers to that plot who start expanding the fields outwards in a pseudo-random pleasant organic-looking manner. Hell, even have that a field that has been around longer provides more wheat than a newer one (orchards anyone?), to encourage people to gradually expand rather than do the "make huge settlement, make 50 fields" type flat-land we have at current.
  

Part 1 of my feature request stuff. It's getting late & i'm tired so i've only covered a couple of areas so far. 

Settlements

Current initial settlement formation is quite nice. You use a godly power to force together existing houses to make a little town. I think graphically/non-gameplay there could be a couple of nice things to do:

• Make the houses gather around a courtyard, current settlements look impressive, but they do just look like a lot of houses stuck together. It doesn't have a different visual feel to just a bigger house.
• The settlements feel quite dead, even with the friendship card unlocked people don't leave unless you have an activated gift nearby. Definitely need some kind of life around the place.
• Pyramid structure for every settlement gets a tiring. Perhaps the ability to change the type of settlement (say pyramidal, cubic, oblate spheroidal, whatever) would help with that.

Definitely want followers to 'live and age and die' It's not a deal breaker if they have enough agency to be interesting anyway, but it'll be odd to see the same little people from stone age to space flight. Different clothes not withstanding.

Yeah it would make it much more involving for the player if the followers could be seen as individuals each with their own hobbies and social circles. That's it! We need some in-game social networks! (just kidding of course) But it would be cool if you could see followers evolve over their lifetime and eventually when they grow old and die see them get burried and all their friends would attend the ceremony. And weddings of course.

I'm not sure this is entirely the way to go - you're effectively saying that your people have to be miserable if you want to have offensive powers.
This makes no sense, your people could be completely happy and satisfied and you could be the biggest badass flinging fireballs, death and destruction at your enemies...

Happiness should not be directly tied to offensive/defensive or good/evil.

While I agree with your concept (having unhappy and happy unlock specifics in terms of upgrades and cosmetics), I think that they shouldn't be the specific upgrades you suggest here.

Yeah, I'm not super keen on having significant unlocks dependent on your good/evil rating. It sounds like a nice idea, in terms of giving rewards for a chosen playstyle, but really it's actually a limitation on what you can do. Instead i'd suggest that your alignment has generic effects on your population, and that certain buildings change function/bonuses slightly as your alignment changes.

For example: If you are a good god & you own a courthouse, it encourages people to feel safe and they generate 5% more belief for you. If you are an evil god & you own a courthouse, it makes people afraid of punishment and they work harder, giving 5% more stamina.

Running good/evil based on standard western style morality is a pretty long-running gaming idea that does work. I mean just look at black & white. That was only a cosmetic good/evil thing but it was great, and I know that personally I did a couple of playthroughs, one being good & one being evil, just because they both had such a cool art-style and it was interesting to alter my play style around it.

Looking specifically at B&W (and fable to some extend) - I notice two playstyles.
Either the people play a certain way because they want their people/creature/hand to look a certain way. And they do not value the playstyle particularly.
Or its the opposite, and they don't much care for the looks but just want to play that specific method.

There are some occurances where the two coincide (your prefered look and playstyle happen to be the same), but on the whole I've seen most people deciding on a playstyle because of either effect. They don't make their creature evil because they want it to be evil. Instead they want it to look badass.
They don't make their creature good because they like the 'holy' look, but instead because they want their creature to help out with their people.


A big thing to note here that morality isn't two-dimensional. But often in games like these it is portrayed as such because a more complex system would be hard to manage and create.
The thing to keep in mind there is not just the aesthetic results, but the gameplay results. Does locking you out of one path make players prefer one over the other? If it does, you've made a mistake because you effectively made one playstyle less desireable.
If it doesn't. If there are equal advantages for both sides? You've done your job well. Alternately, if there are NO real differences to both sides so its really just a cointoss either or question? Well, clearly there is no reason for there to be a 'choice' because there is no real choice.
The both paths result in effectively the same game. (Which again would be an example of weak design.)


I'd like to see such choices to have a meaningful result to gameplay. The courthouse example is a very good one. As I can see advantages to either path.
The power one would be a bad one as I could see people discounting one path because they REALLY wanted that other power.
I'd imagine that (sticking to the beautify example), an evil god would get different aesthetic enhancements when using beautify.
Because the god (and thus its followers) have a different perspective on what is beauty.

Both moral routes would be able to beautify their terrain, but both would look completely different.
Similarly both routes would be able to make swamps, but the swamps could look completely different. (A swamp can be quite beautiful or alterately look utterly miserable)

Even when looking into giving exclusive powers it doesn't have to be a big issue. Just make sure that for every exclusive one side gets, there is an equally valid alternative for the other side.

A rock/paper/scissors split would not be the route I'd take - but its one that could actually work. (I'm not a fan of one path being unavoidably weaker than another)
Instead I'd play to more specific strengths, providing the player with the tools and the puzzlepieces. But allowing the player to decide how to put them to use.
Choice is the key element here. You do not want to predetermine what the player SHOULD do and how the player SHOULD play.

If there is anything I've learned from observing game design over the years, it is that players will ALWAYS do the unexpected and will find ways to use tools the developer provides them in ways the developers themselves had NEVER imagined.
So do not lock yourself down into specifics. Keep things relatively flexible even while working towards a specific destination.
And by god do NOT punish your players for not playing the way you visualized.

"6 minutes ago via mobile"

You traitor! Get away from that insidious device, it is sapping your energy! ;p