Creeps and Items are so Warcraft III, lets try something new instead:

On every map are several dungeons and monster lairs, just imagine them as special gold mines so to speak. Only instead of building a mine you send out your troops to capture them.

Let's say there is a tomb housing several skeleton warriors and their king. First you have to kill them all and then your mages build a shrine, altar or stone circle to summon skeleton warriors for you. However, if the altar or shrine is destroyed you can't summon any new skeletons and the old defenders will rise again.

You could do the same with *items*. Why not have a dungeon with a powerful lich who is forced to increase the power of your mages as long as you control his dungeon? Or controlling and rebuilding the monument of a long dead king might inspire your knights to fight with more passion.

In my opinion this is a better system than to just find or buy an item somewhere because you and your opponent can fight for those dungeons. But the best thing is that there is no randomness, it can be balanced on every map and it's not like Warcraft III!

I'd Support this.

Mike

That sounds kind of like the role of flags in Demigod.

Should help promote grabbing and holding territory.

Mike

Sounds okay, and i would definitely like to have this in addition to balanceable items.

Yup and yup.


I read your thread about balanceable items and it's a good idea. However, lairs and dungeons would be easier to balance and promotes map control and harassment.

You say this assuming that knc won't be about territory, aka resource, control in the first place.

This strongly reminds me of C&C's capturable buildings which provide some kind of benefit to your side: RA2, Generals/Zero Hour, RA3. The concept is good in principle, but i'm not certain it's applicable to knc which has (unofficially) 5 factions, 4 resources, multiple tiered tech trees, etc. I am just expressing my doubt here, but i'll play along and expand upon the idea a bit.

Ra2 did not have any capturables that provided special units, and only the airport provided paradrop basic infantry. Yuri's revenge did have a neutral tech building that provided one random unique unit of one of the sub-factions. It was entirely random.
Zero Hour provided supply points that paradropped the faction's main vehicle at specific intervals. the rest of the capturables were economic/defensive buildings iirc.
I don't remember RA3's capturables due to being such a mediocre "lulwut?" smear.
C&C3: tib wars does have the mutant hamlet with which you can buy mutant mercenaries to your side, but they were almost always out of the way in dangerous areas and hard to defend without investing more than was economically viable into those areas. in short i never really bothered with them after they weren't particularly interesting or useful.

That is not to say that your idea will be similar, but, this is especially true for any building/area that gives you access to unique units, balancing the units you get access to for all 5 factions is going to be another can of worms, not to mention balancing them on maps, etc.

Having said that, having neutral capturable buildings that give your team specific bonuses is something that i would most definitely like to see.

I'm sure the resources will force a player to expand sooner or later but why not add another incentive to do so? It really worked great for Demigod.


Every lair should provide the same unit type to all factions imo. If you capture a tomb your get skeletons, a dragons nest provides little baby dragons... I didn't like how the supply drop points in C&C Zero Hour just gave you more of your own units either.

As for map balance, I think the lairs are pretty easy to balance: Mirror them, put the most valuable in the middle of the map. That way you can even switch the lairs from match to match. What is a skeleton tomb in one game could be a spider's nest in the next. That might even increase replayability on the maps.

Skeletons are always welcomed.

I would be okay for this, as long as:

- Capturing shrines will not be considered the main focus of players, destroying the enemy castle will be considered the main focus

- Capturing shrines will not grand you victory.
(even if a player captures more shrines than his opponent, his oponent will still be able to win the match by making strategic decisions, and not be steamrolled by the number of special units captured)

I definatly dont want this game to look like a DOW2 + demigod hybrid.

In other words, I dont want the Secondary focus of players to be overpowered, or players to feel obligated to capture some at each game.

I agree on both points.

I here you redmoth, it shouldn't dominate the battlefield. although a king of the hill mode, with maybe multiple points or even guarded ones could be fun.

Sounds like BFME2, kill the goblin lair, then capture the inn (or whatever that thing was called)

Im not too sure about this. I suppose it could work... A nice source for RP and early combat?

this is a good idea

What if supply is partly tied to how much territory you control? Could result in some good back and forth battles for control of the middle of the map throughout the entire game.

At first I was sceptical...

But I like it!

And let's not forget how you can spin this into the campaign and new gamemodes like tower defense or king of the hill...

Of course you would need to make a bunch of models instead of just a few icons. That's the downside, it's more expensive. but I think the added variety and the more interesting gameplay will make up for it in the end.

Eh, maybe they'll hire OrangeKnight so they can bother with making more models.

Woah now, I'm good, but not when it comes to organics!

Now if GPG was doing some Steampunk stuff......

Mike

Okay, Mike, here's your first unit concept: Steampunk Wyrm!

Basically a dragon without wings and legs (ilarge steam powered wheels instead) it can breathe fire and has some nasty rotating blades in front of it. What do you think?

Kinda meh, but I'm starting to form thoughts long the lines of Steampunk Komodo Dragon....or something...

Mike

This sort of sounds like building trading posts on native settlements to gain access to their units and technologies from Age of Empires 3. The system worked well for adding a balanced randomness, while encouraging players to expand.

Wurmcoil Engine?


Or Like Steel Hellkite of which no wallpaper versions currently exist, but is badass none the less.

I like the idea of having persistent locations on the map of strategic value. I agree that they should be secondary objectives (as sieging the enemies castle and slaying his monarch is the theme here). But having secondary objectives that provide additional or alternative routes to victory by providing units or abilities outside of your normal tech tree or what you can produce at your home barracks could be interesting and give tactical advantages.

Besides lairs and dungeons, I'd like to see neutral villages that can be captured or made into protectorates that retain some of their autonomy but provide resources and other minor/secondary benefits to whoever their sovereign happens to be. Give them their own garrison of local militia so they have a chance to protect themselves but not make them anywhere near as strong as a human or AI player. Perhaps give the players an option to let them maintain their own sovereignty and allow you to trade with them.

Maybe these ideas are outside the scope of KnC; but I like to think that an "epic" RTS provides a lot of interesting gameplay opportunities within a single game mode (instead of having to change up the game mode to keep things interesting).

I want the option to build wonders now.