Game concept ideas: Yes or no?

[SarChasm]

So here's the premise:

I'm making a map that will require extensive micro-management on the player's part. The player will manage a village, and operate basic functions such as making sure everyone is fed, building maintenance, crafting of materials for warriors, the actual gathering of food and more. Combat will require much micro-management as well, including bonus damage if attacking from behind, a very complex ambush system, possibly fatigue, and again, much more.

So I'm trying to decide whether or not I should have villagers die of old age. I can very easily have it so that all villagers will die in X amount of time, or I can not very easily have it so that all villagers will die in X +/- Y amount of time.
Or I can most easily have it so that villagers don't die of old age at all. While the whole old age thing may seem like a pain, which it probably will be. It'll prevent players from constantly massing huge armies, because soldiers will die faster, requiring the player to increase the population faster.

So very simply put: Should I incorporate the old age system?

 

[Squirel]

Why not use other caps to limit population i.e. number of homes/army size/land area instead of old age. That way you could have units gain something from fighting like an attack bonus for battle experience. I think the experience would make it more fun and would in itself encourage smaller armies of more seasoned units. With old age you encourage constant wars that would ruin the micromanagement fun because you simply have one goal: have your unit get killed instead of dieing.

 

[SarChasm]

I don't need to put a population cap. If people start over populating their villages, they will have to work harder to feed the village.

I like the battle experience idea though. I'll look into how I can implement that. +rep good sir.

 

[UnknowVector]

I recommend the X + Y based lifetimes. And make sure Y is fairly large. If vanilla WC3 had your old age concept, but the X value greatly overpowered the Y value, then 20 minutes into the game everyone's gold harvesting would screech to a halt as all the starting peasants died. That would be especially nasty for the undead who most likely only have 5-10 acolytes as it is.

I don't know what kind of starting units you are giving units, but you might want to watch out for that. The player's could also see a sudden die off if they have a big population boom (e.g. when they realize their population is too low and focus on raising it for 5 minutes solid, or when they mass for an attack).

 

[SarChasm]

Players do not start with any units as of right now. Just a Village Center that can produce children.

How long do you think the average lifespan of a villager should be? I've been debating about this with myself and a number of my friends for a while.

 

[Squirel]

Maybe instead of old age you should have units die of disease at random intervals. Statistically there would be an average lifespan, but that lifespan would differ greatly. That way players won't feel pressured into using their units quickly before they die of old age. It also eliminates the problem of huge die-offs.

 

[SarChasm]

Well it's basically the same idea as old age, just a different name. With the old age concept, you can have people dying from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, or an even wider range if you wanted.

Also, I'm having problems implementing the random life-span system. I've got another topic floating around somewhere addressing it.

BTW, this game is going to be a WC version of the PC game Black and White. This means that I'm going to be throwing a god into the equation at some time.

 

[Squirel]

Well if you have god, disease would be better. Buff a unit with parasite that way the god can save it to get more belief points with the town. But I still think the idea of killing a unit after a preset random amount of time is a bad idea. You could set the disease death rate based off population or even population density. And they are not the same thing. With disease a lifespan could be between 1 millisecond and eternity, and does not care about how long a unit has already lived.

 

[SarChasm]

Well I can't have it TOO sporadic. I'd like to give the player a good idea of how long his people are going to live.

But having disease is definitely not a bad idea.

 

[Squirel]

So make it detectable and preventable. Give the god an ability that requires little belief and make the disease take 30-40 secs to kill with a somewhat obvious animation. Also, I still say that causing units to have a predictable lifespan makes them too expendable and makes it too tempting for a player to mass old units in an attack.

 

[SarChasm]

The cost of making new ones is too much to waste them all in an assault like that. And a carelessly planned assault is bound to get all of your troops killed and none of the enemy killed with the way I'm making this game.

Another concept question: How much should players be able to tech up? I certainly DO NOT want this to become a tech war, but it's got to have some upgrades to make it interesting.

 

[chanta45]

Well if you have an actual god... Then that adds alot of possibilities right.. one thing you can do is have a medicine/public health tech that increases the life of villagers, that would be a pretty cool system. Things like Sewer System, Apothecaries (For early age) would be cool. Add more options, and overall make the gameplay easier but at the same time encourages more strategic thinking right.

If you have any units that get stronger, an immortality "miracle" of sorts would be cool, cast on one unit and that unit doesn't die of old age etc. etc.

Just throwing some ideas out there!

-NOTE- I do like the concept though, but like it has been mentioned do have some deviation so the entire "baby boom" doesn't die off all at the same time. More of a gradual replacement of population

 

[SarChasm]

Well I intend to have the average villager lifespan range from around 15-30 minutes, random enough IMO.

I'm actually finishing up with a very basic, very untested, and most likely very unbalanced alpha version of the game. Would anyone perhaps want to try this map out and make some suggestions based off what I have?

 

[UnknowVector]

You could throw some randomness into your tech too. Instead of having the player research specific technologies, have them allocate research funds to specific fields (which can be as specific or as broad as you want (e.g. "Mace head shape research" vs "Weapon design research"). The individual technologies within each field could come be given to the player in a mostly random order and with mostly random intervals in between each technology. Obviously, more funding means more advances (so you might get mace heads 1 through 3 with $400, but you need to invest $500 to break the next mace head design barrier), with smaller intervals in between each advance.

That would eliminate some of the tech war aspect, because the player's wouldn't be able to plan out a specific advancement path (e.g., "tech to level 4 maces and mass from the south-east, before they get iron level 72!").

You could also allow some bleed over between players. If player 2 has crazy awesome mace heads, chances are, player 3's researchers are going to get a peak at them and copy them. So, if one player has a specific technology, the odds of the other player's getting that technology increase. The player's wouldn't be able to get as far ahead of each other by simply teching really hard with this approach; instead, they would have to get ahead by putting more money into research so they could get the upper level mace heads which the other players can't get because they aren't putting in enough money. Obviously, this idea only applies if you like the field-based teching .

 

[SarChasm]

Oi vey. Love the concept, but it sounds very complicated. That's going to take some thinking.

Anyway, I've decided to move this to an actual Member's Projects thread which can be found here: http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=130200

Perhaps I can get someone to close this now?