Taka-Haradin puolipeikko said:
↑
Can you tell more about that strategic layer that you're planning @Galdred?
The player would control his Stronghold, and losing it would be the defeat condition.
The game would have 3 phases:
1st phase (skippable tutorial, 5%): the player starts with very few henchmen, recruit a few more along the way, and get control of his stronghold.
2nd phase (10%): The player retake control over the neighbouring provinces (that are mostly neutral).
3rd phase (remaining 85%): The player race against the AI to get control over new provinces, either through diplomacy or conquest, and directly confront the main opposing faction (probably the Chinese Zodiac guys).
So strategic layer is:
The map is split into region. Each region belongs to either major faction, or is independent.
Each region can have a "castle", but only the player stronghold can hold the main "XCOM" infrastructures(magic forge, laboratory, champion's hall). The minor castles are only there for defense and teleportation services.
Regions can also host dungeons (that can provide one time raiding adventures), and a point of interest (that give ongoing bonus once controlled).
The player controls a few champions(1-13, depending on the area controled), and henchmen. Only champions have access to customization (henchmen will just have basic stats, and one background trait, and are supposed to die en mass. Veteran henchmen can be empowered as champions when one champion slot is fred or acquired). The total roster should be around 30 characters at a given time(ie between X-COM and Jagged Alliance), but that will probably change.
Characters (champions and henchmen) can perform one campaign action each turn (like in Jagged Alliance, or Dead State):
- at stronghold:
- Training armies or other characters
- Studying old books/Casting a ritual spell
- Blacksmithing/Enchantment
- Recovering from wounds
- on the field(all field activities may trigger a mission, except for province management):
- Spying
- Diplomacy
- Leading armies
- Managing a province (doesn't require the character to be physically in the province, like in King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame).
Each turn is split in the following sequences:
- Refresh phase (income, crafting results, army recruitment and training, random events)
- Character planning phase (most should keep the same task as the turn before, as many actions will take several turns)
- Mission Phase (dungeon raiding, and large battles take place)
- End Phase (campaign results: armies take damage, provinces and castles change hand)
I want to give management roles to the character because I like having some missions featuring non combat characters (like protecting a diplomat from assassination, or escorting the blacksmith to the forge of the stars), and it gives an economic downside to character wounds (if a character is wounded he has to choose between recovery and doing something useful for the turn), but I want to keep the character allocation phase relatively short, so I will iterate until you don't have incentive to reallocate too many characters each turn.
