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4X Aggressors: Ancient Rome - 4X with "incredibly deep combat" and detailed management

Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Dev Diary #7 – Customization said:
I have always loved to tweak games, looking for ways to change the look or even the rules and create something new. That is why modding and flexibility were a priority for Aggressors. We already covered modding in one of the previous diaries together with the experience of one of our testers, so we shall focus on flexibility.

Hand in hand with flexibility goes the degree of customization.

I wanted to have the freedom to change the game to my liking from the inside. It is not easy to make options of all kind (graphic, audio, visual and other) so flexible that every player can change the look of the game to suit his personal taste and have the feeling of “being at home” in the game.

We have come to a dead end several times during development. One tester likes one feature or game view, yet another wants exactly the opposite.

A typical example might be the preference of many old school strategy gamers to play in 2D game view rather than a full 3D. We wanted to have the game in 3D but we also wanted to make the "old-school" gamers happy. What to do? We introduced a so called "top-view" which is easily accessible with one click (or keyboard shortcut) which basically turns the closer 3D world look to a plain 2D but fully featured view. Player can simply stay in the top view the whole game without any necessity to get back to 3D. All information, hints, etc. are available in both views.



The list of preferences you can tweak is long. For example, when it comes to unexplored terrain, what’s your preference? Having invisible tiles covered by clouds or them just being dark, pitch black? We decided to implement both and let the player decide what he likes.

This is something I appreciate a lot in other games and so whenever it seemed that there are two (or even more!) groups with a distinct personal preferences, we tried to make settings customizable.

There is a great number of settings that can be customized from UI customization (like hiding various information panels, buttons and hints) through adjusting some eye candy effects (such as clouds, fog, trees, unit size, ambient animals or daylight).

For instance, you can change the saturation and brightness of terrain or the level of trees blending with terrain. We also introduced so called terrain "overlays" which allow you to look at the map with different filters to highlight certain information. There is a supply area highlight, player colour overlay highlighting the territories in the colour of the owner, or the terrain colour overlay that highlights types of terrains.

But even this level of customization was not enough. Even all these overlays can be further customized by setting the saturation of the coloured overlays from almost transparent to full opacity. You decide how much you want the terrain to blend in with the overlay. The default settings were chosen based on the feedback we received but still I am sure anyone will find the right configuration for them.



I realized that once you adjust the look of the game to your liking, many people start changing the world by adding their own bits and pieces to the game or even creating their own worlds. But you don’t do all this just for yourself; you want to share it with the community.

The community is what makes a game truly flourish. After all, we developed the game for you to play and we want to give our fellow players the chance to create and share their own content.

Steam Workshop was choice number one here. Where else would modders and scenario creators meet in such numbers? That's why we implemented a full in-game integration of the Steam workshop where you can not only download Aggressors items like saves, scenarios, generated worlds or even mods but also publish and republish your own items without the need to edit it further on the Steam website. Just one click in game and you can publish whatever you prefer on the Workshop. It should be easy for anyone who wants to share his work with others.


Dev Diary #8 – Trade Routes said:
One of the things which was pretty difficult to implement in Aggressors was the way the game handles resources.

Initially, the number and types of resources were hardcoded in the game's core and the only thing which could be changed (or modded) was the amount required for certain actions.

I didn’t like this approach. I knew that if there are mods focusing on different eras or genres, something like money or gold would not make sense anymore. And so I decided to define all resources externally in a modifiable file and connect them directly with unit actions that consume them, then the type of resource consumed and also the amount is entirely up to the externally-loaded rules.

Basically, every action in game, whatever you do, can cost you some resources. Building roads, bridges, settlements, irrigating lands, draining swamps, building improvements, healing... I could go on and on. It is entirely up to the rule creator (or modder) to set the resource costs for specific actions.
Aggressors: Ancient Rome itself comes with 10 different resources starting from gold, stone and coal through influence, knowledge and food to very special ones such as citizens and happiness.
Other mods might have a very different set of resources. For example: the Holland mod, the mod of one of our beta testers that we talked about few weeks ago, has two additional resources - cowhide and fish. Both are harvested in a different and very unique way.

But let’s focus on Aggressors: Ancient Rome only.

I already covered some of the special resources, their production and usage in previous dev diaries. I explained the use of Influence which is accumulated by cities and used on foreign towns to incite unrest. I also covered the citizens resource which is the main source of army recruits and the workforce and is therefore the backbone of the economy. Knowledge is another resource accumulated in cities, and is essential for research. But let’s not go into an exhaustive list of the resource types and instead talk about another aspect of the game – trade.



All the resources in-game are tradable. The only resource that cannot be exchanged is happiness. You can trade all mined or harvested resources as well as influence or citizens. And you can trade knowledge.
It sounds a bit artificial, but it is actually much closer to reality than it might seem on first sight.

I never liked the way technologies and inventions were traded in the Civilization series. The whole system of “I give you a Chariot technology and you give me Navigation" simply doesn’t make sense. Not only that such "technology-for-technology" deals are extremely rare even in modern history but I couldn’t find a single example in the ancient history. And I am not even talking about the fact that if you are good friends with a very civilized and technologically advanced nation, you could turn a barbarian tribe into a modern state in a few turns.

So, why do I think that the approach in Aggressors is better? Firstly, you don’t trade inventions but knowledge. You trade know-how of the scholars which can help you to understand the work of nature and progress faster to a new level of technological development.

Secondly, research of every technology requires a certain number of knowledge points. If you have excessive amounts of knowledge resource, you can even accelerate the time needed for research. The shorter the time, the higher the resource cost, of course.

Thirdly, even if there is a very generous player who is willing to give you a vast amount of "knowledge", you can accelerate the research process but you will not uncover technologies that are simply beyond your current stage of development. Minimum research time is set for every technology so you cannot just jump over several technologies in a turn. All this means that every player has to research every technology by his own means. The only exception is when you unite with another nation in a federation or you merge together. Then you naturally also get access to all the technologies of the partner player.

So, how does the actual trading work? It was really important for me to come up with such a system that would reflect the importance of trading for the life of all ancient nations.
As I said, you can trade all the resources except happiness. Trade exchanges are not one-off events but they lay foundations to long-lasting business relationships that can last for decades. No wonder that some negotiations can go on for several turns (years) as both parties need to set the right conditions.



How to start? You begin by establishing a trade route which is a path connecting your city with a city of the partner. Both partners need to have full visibility of one of partner’s cities meaning that they know where they are sending their merchants to.

The routes are calculated automatically so that the shortest and safest route is chosen. Depending on the length of the trade route, a so called "trade loss" is calculated which are basically overhead costs that will be deducted from the amount of traded goods.

Calculation of new trade routes is determined by many factors. It is not just the distance, but also the terrain types through which the traders will have to travel. If you build a dirt road between the trading cities (or at least connect some of the tiles of the trade route) you make the route safer and decrease the trade loss. Paved roads are even better, of course. If there are no roads, trading caravans usually use sea or river routes. It is indeed better to trade with a partner nearby with a good road connection (or secure sea paths) than with partner on the other side of the map. Sometimes the trade loss can go as high as 50% which you really need to consider before the trade is agreed upon.

With a trade route established, you decide what you want to sell and buy. You can either ask for a very specific deal or make a relatively open offer and give the partner room for negotiations. Another important point is that there is no "good" or "bad" deal. It is all about supply and demand.
The exchange starts when the deal is confirmed by both sides. And then the resources start flowing both ways every turn.

The trade routes might change over time, for example if an enemy blocks them. In such cases a new route is chosen (calculated) and when doing so the overhead costs might change as well, which could render the exchange unprofitable. As one of the trade conditions you can set a "trade stop loss" which defines what overhead costs you are willing to accept. If the trade loss exceeds this limit, the deal is automatically cancelled.

Of course, where there are resources (and money) involved, there are bandits and pirates who live off the loot they manage to get. There are two concepts of raiding in the game: independent raiders, who randomly attack the trading caravans and steal part of the traded goods; and state-controlled raiders, who take orders from their masters (other players) and their loot then goes to the resource deposits of their masters.

Bandits and pirates operate both on sea and land. All military units can turn into raiders when they are close to at least one active trade route. The more units you use as pirates and bandits, the higher the chance of success and larger loot. Of course, there is certain danger involved. Firstly if you use a unit for raiding, it is not fortified and has a reduced defense ability which makes it very vulnerable if attacked. Besides, raiding is perceived as a dirty practice and your diplomatic relations can deteriorate fast, not only with the victim, but with all other nations as well.

But you are free to choose your own path. After all, ancient history knows many examples of nations that survived solely by attacking traders and living off the loot.



Well, I hope I teased you enough to try all these aspects of the game yourself. Perhaps, pirates and thieves will rule the world under your command. Or maybe you will stand on the other side of the divide and be the one who frees the civilized world of all bandits on land and sea.
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
I'll do it. I won a 25 dorraru discount coupon in the digital league, and need to spend in it in their store, so ...
 
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Citizen

Guest
overlays.jpg

Lower right looks very good and clean. D1P if it comes on gog.
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
Dev Diary #9 – Infrastructure said:
We have already covered most of the main game mechanics and features yet there is still one big question we want to discuss today. How to build up your empire and what to do in time of peace in Aggressors?
It might seem that antiquity was all about wars and conflicts, but people of those times mostly wanted to live in peace and prosperity like anyone else. Emperors might have had great ambitions and pushed the boundaries of their empires still further but at the same time they had to maintain and improve the state infrastructure to keep ahead of other nations.

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I would like to say that I don’t really like micromanagement in most strategy games. I find it either too "micro" or too boring – it just requires me to stay focused on many minor details while I’d rather look at he bigger picture. Another thing worth mentioning is that I feel micromanagement in ancient times needs to be different compared to how it would feel in modern times or in a sci-fi setup for example.
In ancient times most of the time urban centers managed their own things; the natural life of cities was regulated by local situations and needed not to be managed through frequent orders from the capital. Cities, their population and resources were mobilized only during perilous times when necessary war preparations had to be made.
We followed this line of logic as well. The main function of cities is to generate wealth and to build and maintain units which deplete city capacities and resources. Leaving cities “idle” allows them to follow their natural growth and use their resources where needed. When you task the city with work, being either the constructions of improvements or the recruitment of new units, the resource production of the city is decreased. This principle reduced micromanagement from "this is what I have to do" to "this is what I can do" and it seems that beta testers appreciate it.

So you might ask: what to do in time of peace?

Let me first explain the concept of a city. Cities are the backbone of the state infrastructure concentrating large bodies of population and power in one place. Their size and position greatly affect its defense capabilities and its ability to harvest on the neighboring tiles.
Every city has a so called "range" which is basically a set of nearby tiles adjacent to it. This range expands with the size and the number of citizens living there (we covered population growth in one of our previous diaries). Food and wood are harvested on tiles lying within the city range which means that larger cities work larger areas and so produce more food and wood.

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A city itself consumes resources while producing some others but production and usage of resources by the city depends on its size - the bigger the city, the higher the production and also consumption. For instance, a very small city produces very little knowledge because all its people are busy farming, mining, etc. As the city grows and with it its population, more and more people can have other occupations (philosophers and scholars) and so the output of knowledge in the city increases.
City size is nonlinear, meaning that having many small cities is not the same as having a few very large ones. E.g. two cities with a size 2 have together a smaller population (and therefore also production and consumption rates) than one city with a size 4.
However, city size also has a very important side effect. The larger the city, the stronger its defense, and it’ll be more difficult to conquer it for anyone. On the other hand, bigger cities give bigger loot once conquered.
As mentioned above, tiles within a city range are important for harvesting food and wood. Arable lands around cities can be cultivated by building fields and farms to multiply food yields from each tile depending on the technological development of the country. Sea tiles also provide food in abundance. Terrain which is not suitable for agriculture such as forest, swamp and jungle can be “transformed” by cutting down the woods or draining them. However, one has to be careful not to deplete precious sources. Clearing a forest means that you immediately gain relatively large quantities of timber and make more space for fields but you will not be able to harvest wood on that tile ever again. Romans cut down many of their forests and then had to import wood from far away provinces.

As with any centre, maintenance and upkeep are necessary. The concept of city improvements is similar to units improvements as discussed in a previous diary.
Cities can improve their infrastructure by building military (stockade, palisade, city walls), economic (trading centre, economical city), political (amphitheater, obedience, civil service), cultural (academy or schools) or urban improvements (hospital, sewers system) that can have a major effect on the defensive function, resource production, cultural and social life of the city. For example, improving cities with Sewage system protects them from the spreading of infections and diseases, while building Civil service reduces the risk of local revolts.
There are currently 16 city improvements and I am sure you don’t want me to spoil all the fun by revealing them all here.
Many 4X games treat cities as the "absolute centers" where all power and activity is concentrated. However, facilities outside of city walls often were of great strategic importance so we introduced the concept of "buildings" into the game. These are standalone facilities such as blacksmith, temple, shipyard, fort, defensive walls, patrol tower etc. that greatly affect the economic life as well as the military capacities of the state.

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Another very important aspect of state management are good communication lines connecting all parts of the empire. There are two types of roads – dirt and paved roads and they have a great impact on the economic and military development of the country. Just like with anything else in the game, you will have to research them through technology.
Mines connected to cities and blacksmiths by roads significantly increase their resource production. Roads allow units to move faster over all types of terrains and their use also reduces the overhead costs of trade exchanges (you can find more about trade in the previous diary). Roads also allow you to provide constant flow of supplies to your armies. Units left in foreign lands without food, armaments and other necessities rebel and can cause trouble so you should plan your road network in advance to support future territorial expansion. Behind your advancing units should always come road builders to ensure sufficient flow of supplies.
When it comes to roads I should not forget to mention bridges. Rivers aren’t just a map feature but they have an important military dimension. They create a barrier which is not easy to traverse. Some unit types cannot cross rivers at all if the other bank is not already in their hands. Others can cross them but with a significant movement and defense penalty. That's why rivers have a great defensive potential.
You can mitigate all river penalties simply by building a bridge. Should you be forced to retreat, you can always destroy the structure and leave the hard choice to the opponent – either accepting the river as a new border between your states or crossing the wild stream without a bridge and risking a slaughter in an attempt to reach the opposite bank.

These are the most important parts of a micromanagement in Aggressors. I believe that gamers who like the “building” part of 4X games will enjoy the given options to improve their empire without being overwhelmed by repetitive tedious clicking and enjoying the game itself.

Initially this dev diary was planned to be the last one but we decided to give you a bonus one. I already look forward to it because next time I will show you our map generator and its possibilities.
Last but not least, tune in this evening at 8 pm CEST on our Twitch channel for a preview stream of Aggressors: the strategy master DasTactic himself is going to play!
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
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Dev Diary #10 – Map Generator said:
Today we are publishing the last dev diary of Aggressors before its release next Thursday, but before we get to it, we would like to remind you that today DasTactic will be streaming Aggressors live on Twitch at 9 pm CEST, don’t miss it!

Now, on to the dev diary, and as usual I’ll leave word to Pavel Kubat, lead developer and designer for the game.

From recent videos and questions on forums it is quite clear that players are very interested in the Random Map Generator included in Aggressors.



To be quite honest, the Map Generator was not actually intended to be part of the vanilla release. Despite the fact that we use dynamic terrain even in the scenario setup (it is not a fixed map) as it gives much more flexibility, we didn’t consider this feature to be that interesting for players.
Moreover, map Generator would require a great deal of additional work and we had plenty of other things on top of our to-do list.

When alpha testing started and feedback and suggestions started flowing in, I was really taken aback by the staggering number of requests to add a custom Map Generator. I was expecting that players would prefer playing the historical scenario rather than a random map.

And so, as we had done so many times before, we re-thought our priorities and added this feature into our schedule. There was already a raw Map Generator partially implemented but it was a separate tool not incorporated into the game. It was also not that user-friendly and not modular enough to meet the standards we had in mind.

The first phase of the project was mapping out the games already out there. I was looking for the right way to do this, to find the key settings for the map generator and to identify pitfalls of other map generators and how to avoid them. After a couple of months of development the first version of the map generator was ready.

We used a number of standard settings such as map size (ranging from tiny to huge world), map type (ratio between water and land mass), climate type (hospitable to barren) or density of population (how crowded the world is and the distance between players). But that was just the beginning.

From my perspective the biggest issue in the majority of map generators for other games is the fact that they tend to force you to really long and boring early phases once you have begun playing. You have to hit "end turn" around fifty times to eventually get to develop some infrastructure and build a couple of units to be able to actually play and enjoy the game. This was a no-go for me. I decided early on that we needed to add a Development setting allowing players to choose if they want to start with a lonely nomad unit roaming the unknown world or if they would rather start as a crowned king of a state that stands on solid foundations like cities, roads, fields for farming and few trained military units to build upon.

There are five different options to satisfy everyone’s taste.

But soon enough we realized that the basic settings are not quite enough. The worlds we generated were great, some of the maps even surpassing our expectations but we needed more options to modify the gameplay itself.

Some were easy to implement, for example Resource abundance that allows the player to configure how many mines will be available on the map which affects the player’s ability to develop as well as how fast and tough the conflicts over resources will be. Hand in hand with this setting goes the Player’s resource abundance which sets the resources stockpiles the player has at the beginning of the game.

Similarly, the Diplomatic Relations setting defines how (un)friendly neighboring nations will be, and the Independent Cities setting determines the number of standalone independent neutral cities on the map.

Players can also specify which victory conditions they want in their game - overall victory, military superiority, technological dominance and country development.

All the above settings were added to the Map Generator in a natural process following the logic of any world creator. However, what makes every single game fun is the way it unfolds in a different direction every time and forces players to adjust their strategy to current conditions. Sometimes you get the upper hand, yet another time you struggle to keep up with other forces around you.

There are two settings that determine how fair the game will be, determining whether or not one between the player and AI opponents will start in a more powerful position.

The Game Balance setting adjusts starting conditions. Set to max, all players (human and AI) will have similar starting point in terms of number of military units, settlers and cities. Set to minimum, the development span will be quite big – some nations will be already large developed empires whereas others will have to make do with just a city-state.

However, this setting does not really say on which end you going to end up. For this, there is the Player Advantage setting which allows you to choose what kind advantage over all other players you will have. You can decide to create a new world with you leading a mighty and established empire surrounded by younger tribes, or you can take up the challenge and start as the very last runner in the conquest for supremacy. The choice is yours, you can be either Goliath or David.



That said, designing the Map Generator and all these settings was not the most difficult part. The challenge was in finding the right balance. We invested a huge amount of time into balancing so that even if you draw the shortest straw, you will be able to survive at least few dozens of turns to prove your worth.

Now back to the map: there is still one thing left to mention. The historical setup has a contour map that we created tile by tile to make the world feel real. But for the randomly generated map we had to come up with a different solution to have nice high mountain ranges, deep river valleys and open bays surrounded by beaches created automatically form the map.

We designed an algorithm that detects the different terrain types and then creates a sort of contour map based on these.
To tickle your fancy, I will show you couple of screenshots that we took during testing but to see what the map generator can do, you will need to try it on your own.







The release date is around the corner. I really enjoyed writing these diaries because I had an opportunity to look back and recollect our long journey. It was full of headaches, doubts and sleepless nights but on the other hand it has been an extremely enjoyable and intriguing ride.

I want to thank you for joining me in this nostalgia and I can only invite you to explore the depth of Aggressors on your own. What else can I say? I hope you’ll have as much fun playing Aggressors as I still have, even after 10 years of development!

 

Citizen

Guest
First Review said:
What is this? New alternative crap against Total War Series? Althought is new it seem its before 2000s. I didnt purchase it yet, but from trailer review..I dont know if I would?

TW fanboiz are the best.

Anyone tried it?
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Anyone taken the bait on this one? Some of the reviews have peaked my curiosity of it being somewhere between Civilisation and an AGEOD title what sounds interesting. Sentiment seem to indicate something fairly solid though a few suggest that it's a bit dull (though I still find completely vanilla Civ IV a reliably fun experience to boot up once in a while and far superior to any of its sequels)..

https://store.steampowered.com/app/783210/Aggressors_Ancient_Rome/

Might give it a go in a few days
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
I'm waiting till after the weekend to try it, haven't had much time as of late.
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,071
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
Bought it, just to support the devs, tried it for maybe two hours? Reminds me of Civ 5, in that it's a solid basis for something that can be truly great in a year or two. Right now it's still way too undercooked.
 

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