RTS Time.
Posted by nefchast on February 6, 2008
Well, I’ve been playing through some of the strategy games on gametap recently–most are older and turn-based. Since I haven’t thrown out any game ideas in awhile, let’s try one.
Since I’ve been playing a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic and Warlords Battlecry I think I’ll design a game somewhat similar to them. I enjoy multiple races and armies of all varieties so that’ll be in (around 6-10 races should do it). Conquering a map is nice, so let’s add in that (a world map, think Risk). Storyline and objective? The forces of heaven and hell are battling for control of the world, take a side (or not) and conquer all that you can. Alliances? Sure, a political system would be great–not required to win, but an alternative method. Conquering. Each battle takes place in a region of the world, each region has it’s own layout and cities that need to be conquered–enemies to be fought are based on armies adjacent or on the region. The region maps should look similar to the maps fought on the Heroes and Warlords, combat should be different–I dislike the combat systems they had and would like to instead use one like Total War, You’re massive armies fight it out in a real-time battlefield that is loosely based on where the combat starts, it can be automated or you can take control of your personal legion, with the other legions under control of their commanders who are under you (you give them general orders, but it is up to them to keep their legions fighting). So, AI will have to be good–if I could I’d try and make this the overall focus of development since most of the game has been done before it kinda just needs replicating and meshing with the rest of the game (not that that would be easy, I’m sure). Why focus on AI? That seems to be the area that lacks the most in games, and in a strategy game I feel that should be one of the strongest aspects. Moving on, I would like the use of advisers, a limited number of them that you could assign to the tasks that you really do not want to do–give them general orders and keep an eye on them, they should have their own personalities that play a part in their choices and actions. You might ask, what about the story? Isn’t there a story besides some lame heaven versus hell? Not really, or not yet. I’d think the story would play out throughout the region maps, quests and such to go on, either helping or hurting one or both of the sides (help them both? possibly, would need to think through how that’d work). But yeah, there’s a general idea for a game–maybe I’ll try developing it further.
