Game Development Road Map

[Keegoz]

The Road Map Ahead

 

As we near the end of the year, I thought it best as my first announcement as design team lead that I update you on the state of the game. 

Context

A bit of context, the design team has had some significant changes since the last update. The obvious one being me taking over from Village, but we’ve also had quite a few design team members move on. Furthermore, Village was our main coder and his irl situation has become more busy. Our former slate of ideas that were proposed to the game has had to be adjusted.

Basically there is less coding happening at the moment than we had at the beginning of the year. We are therefore focusing on trying to be a little more concise and make things easier for the coding Alex will do and Village when he gets more time. 

Focusing on one large project at a time and trying to build on pre-existing game mechanics where possible (if you could keep that in mind when suggesting ideas it would be appreciated).

 

What does this all mean? 

In simple terms, game projects like perks have been parked for the time being. Ultimately that project was never going to be simple and likely would have required quite a few updates even after release to rebalance or add to.

I get that may upset some of you but please do believe me that I think ultimately this may be a good move. Ideally we will make up for it by having more interactive and fulfilling updates going forward.

 

The Future: The large project

The design team is currently focusing on Military generals. It has had a decent amount of ground work completed as a proposal and something Alex has personally given interest to. We are hoping to link this idea to re-tooling baseball into a more relevant game mechanic (more to come on this at a later date). I cannot really give a firm date on when we might see this mechanic. It is certainly something we would like to see in the game ASAP once the design process has been completed. You should expect to hear from me (or someone from the team) again on this soon with more details.

 

The Future: Building on current mechanics & continuing with formerly proposed changes

Tariffs were a announced change that seem to have a high approval but were never coded into the game. You can find the original proposal thread here:

The other aspects we’ve been exploring are ideas surrounding colours, projects achievements. Ideally we’d like colours to become less focused on booting newer players and alliances off a colour going forward, this one is still early days but if you have an idea please do voice it!

Achievements are also fairly early in the works but basically we want to have more achievements with more relevant rewards. These could not just be cash rewards but also projects or reductions in city/project costs. E.g. Completing 30 raid wars at c11 allows them to be granted a free Urban Planning project. Ideally these would be a mix between assisting smaller players to be able to actively do things in the game to see faster progress but also some larger aims for whales to aim for. Again, any further ideas for this would be greatly appreciated.

Projects, no my current aim is to not add a bunch more projects and call that an update (although I won’t rule out adding any). I do however believe it is about time we look at rebalancing a few. This doesn’t just mean making a few obsolete ones more relevant (fallout shelter) but also making the price make a little more sense. Will have more details on this soon.

Quality of life tweaks, there will be an announcement explaining a few minor tweaks to current things in the game.

 

The distant possible future:

This is the part where I will likely spit ideas out but do not expect them to come any time soon or even at all. 

• A few new mechanics we would like to introduce are national and alliance decisions. Whereby you can make a decision to improve your economy or military but with significant debuffs for other areas of your nation/alliance.
• Colour councils, allow players and alliances to have more politics around colours. Tariffs, voting and embargoes.
• Revamp perks, I feel like perks moved away from ‘choices’ to just some interesting ideas that are basically just a reskin of projects. I think if we strip it back quite a bit and start basic we can add more over time.

The design team is also looking for some new members to join our ranks. If you’re interested please hit me up.
 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Keegoz

[Jacob Knox]

Oh, finally! One of few shimmering lights in this dark day I've had. Thank you.

[AustinH]

finally

[George Clooney]

Quote

The design team is currently focusing on Military generals. It has had a decent amount of ground work completed as a proposal and something Alex has personally given interest to. We are hoping to link this idea to re-tooling baseball into a more relevant game mechanic (more to come on this at a later date). I cannot really give a firm date on when we might see this mechanic. It is certainly something we would like to see in the game ASAP once the design process has been completed. You should expect to hear from me (or someone from the team) again on this soon with more details.

Military generals has always sounded interesting, though making it something that isn't just a CN rehash of the generals mechanic would be the challenge.  Baseball is basically just a bit of chrome for the game at this point.  I'm not sure what you could do there that would be a) interesting, b) not just a money grab ripe for people to try to automate so they can grab even more money.  Perhaps have tournaments where the reward is a achievement of some sort?

Quote

The other aspects we’ve been exploring are ideas surrounding colours, projects achievements. Ideally we’d like colours to become less focused on booting newer players and alliances off a colour going forward, this one is still early days but if you have an idea please do voice it!

Tempting to say "why don't you just create a financial incentive to up the number of nations on a color?" but then knowing players, suddenly everyone would be on the same color and abandoned the rest.  I mean, there are solid reasons for wanting to have a color with few, high end nations on it.  So the challenge is to encourage people to spread out a bit, without creating "gated communities".

Quote

Achievements are also fairly early in the works but basically we want to have more achievements with more relevant rewards. These could not just be cash rewards but also projects or reductions in city/project costs. E.g. Completing 30 raid wars at c11 allows them to be granted a free Urban Planning project.

For the love of God, no more buffs to reward/encourage raiding.  We have enough.    What I *could* see is an achievement for fighting in 'X' number of Attrition and Ordinary wars that would result in something like a free Military Academy project that would help you create better/more military generals (and presumably military admirals).

 

[Themonia]

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

E.g. Completing 30 raid wars at c11 allows them to be granted a free Urban Planning project.

Can I have a bit of what you or the team were smoking when you came up with this?

[RobinHood]

Man what a lot of positive progress over the past year, It’s always nice to see what’s being worked on and released soon. If a road map with hard fixed dates with content releases doesn’t get more people donating and becoming super contributors I don’t know what will.

Great job! I’m looking forward to next year already 🙂

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by RobinHood

[Spukey]

2 hours ago, Hecate said:

Can I have a bit of what you or the team were smoking when you came up with this?

I think it's just spitballing. Let's save tearing them apart for when they propose something more concrete

[Jesus Prime]

Add global daily objectives which come in multiple difficulties which can give varying rewards. It gives a better focus then just completing the objectives and leaving them to rot.

[Vanek26]

I've been asking for distinct tax rates for different resources for like 8 years at this point.

[Benfro]

5 hours ago, Hecate said:

Can I have a bit of what you or the team were smoking when you came up with this?

Aye the big reminder here is that UP/AUP were partially designed to consume significant food to reduce the glut sitting in storage. We would need to sort out another way for food to be consumed. 

[Themonia]

5 hours ago, Nukey6 said:

I think it's just spitballing. Let's save tearing them apart for when they propose something more concrete

Keegoz has been lead for too long without anything to show for it. Off with his head!

[MBaku]

14 hours ago, Keegoz said:

 

Achievements are also fairly early in the works but basically we want to have more achievements with more relevant rewards. These could not just be cash rewards but also projects or reductions in city/project costs. E.g. Completing 30 raid wars at c11 allows them to be granted a free Urban Planning project. Ideally these would be a mix between assisting smaller players to be able to actively do things in the game to see faster progress but also some larger aims for whales to aim for. Again, any further ideas for this would be greatly appreciated.

Projects, no my current aim is to not add a bunch more projects and call that an update (although I won’t rule out adding any). I do however believe it is about time we look at rebalancing a few. This doesn’t just mean making a few obsolete ones more relevant (fallout shelter) but also making the price make a little more sense. Will have more details on this soon.

Quality of life tweaks, there will be an announcement explaining a few minor tweaks to current things in the game.

 

The distant possible future:

This is the part where I will likely spit ideas out but do not expect them to come any time soon or even at all. 

• A few new mechanics we would like to introduce are national and alliance decisions. Whereby you can make a decision to improve your economy or military but with significant debuffs for other areas of your nation/alliance.
• Colour councils, allow players and alliances to have more politics around colours. Tariffs, voting and embargoes.
• Revamp perks, I feel like perks moved away from ‘choices’ to just some interesting ideas that are basically just a reskin of projects. I think if we strip it back quite a bit and start basic we can add more over time.

The design team is also looking for some new members to join our ranks. If you’re interested please hit me up.
 

Generals - Glad this is happening, it'll be a major update to the war mechanics. I don't know if I like everything about generals, but it's something different and new and that's good. 

Tariffs - Same thing.

Colors - New players get booted because the colors are worth money when they right people are on them, but it's a "rich get richer" kind of set up. May you could look at having the colors giving benefits. Small population boost, reduced disease, boost stadium commerce, reduce food consumption, etc. tiny things that are relatively the same power. Separately, you could give the current income boost to alliances (as opposed to nations) based on the percentage of their members that are on the color. This way, the boost is more about alliance unity than kicking off new players and random people on the color don't punish alliance members. 

Achievements - I'm a big supporter of having achievements for large milestones on units destroyed/lost. I think it encourages game activity and could be the big milestones that whales can work towards. 100m soldier kills could provide an extra project slot or something. 

 

Projects - I take the opposite view as @KeegozThe REALLY beneficial thing about projects is that they can add new mechanics to the game for very little work. Because of this, I think they could be a massive asset to game development. I think we should have double or triple the number of projects available. This would force nations to choose between a vast array of benefits for their nation because they are slot limited. We could split project slots and provide a different number of war or economic project slots. Large achievement milestone could unlock additional slots. We could also have upgradable projects that operate as resource/cash sinks. This allows the war meta to change by providing a way to increase military power in a way other than just buying another city and reduce the impact of tiering on the meta. 

Project ideas -

Econ -

1.) upgrades to specific improvements this could be like 10 project options- EX: Bauxite mining technology - increase bauxite per mine, Supermarket superstores - increase supermarket commerce  

2.) Resilient economics - lower population has less of an effect on commerce 

3.) Modernized NPP - each NPP covers an additional 250 infra/ Clean coal - coal plants- double infra - mega turbines - covers more infra 

4.) Skyscrapers - more population for the same amount of infra

Military - 

1.) Surface to Air missiles - boost casualties to airstrikes by 1% per level (max 3 for all level-type projects)

2.) Stealth fighters - nullify SAMs by 1% per level 

3.) Advanced radar - nulllify stealth fighters by 1% per level (requires SAMs) 

4.) anti-tank mines - boost casualties to tanks on ground attacks by 1% per level 

5.) Mine-Resistant Armor Protection - nullify ATMs by 1% per level 

6.) Armor piercing mines - nullify MRAPs by 1% per level (requires ATMs) 

7.) Advanced aircraft Aerodynamics - increase dogfight casualties inflicted by 1% per level 

8.) Advanced flare technology - decrease casualties received by 1% per level 

9.) Airforce/Army/Special forces/expanded ports Academy - allows another hanger/factory/barracks/drydocks to be built in each city 

10.) lightweight tanks - reduce gas consumption on tanks 

11.) Sharpshooter training - reduce muni consumption on soldiers 

There's so much potential in the project space to create more specialized nations and make nations an alliances choose how best to optimize their growth/military ability with limited slots that make it so they can't have everything. You could also make the military projects exclusive to each other. If you start developing Air Tech, you can't develop Tank tech and vice versa. 

If there's enough support for implementing this route of development, I'd be willing to help the design team ensure that the military projects add balanced benefits. 

[darkblade]

15 hours ago, Keegoz said:

The obvious one being me taking over from Village, but we’ve also had quite a few design team members move on. Furthermore, Village was our main coder and his irl situation has become more busy. Our former slate of ideas that were proposed to the game has had to be adjusted.
 

Sounds like to me that Alex needs a some interns :serious:. But jokes aside, there are many people who play this game while also good coding. I think adding one or two more developers (who are paid in credits) that show they are capable of programming in PHP or just in general, while also being vouched by either the design team or the community itself should help speed things along. Now while I understand that can be risky since you are trust strangers to the codebase of the game, it seems to me like that there isn't enough manpower to code in any worthwhile updates to the game. I think a good start would be people in the API team who have contributed towards the API codebase in the past and working down from there.

Edited December 6, 2023 by darkblade

[Jesus Prime]

1 hour ago, MBaku said:

Skyscrapers - more population for the same amount of infra

A population category in cities as in Stellaris that gives buffs to army and population related statistics?

such as skyscrapers buildings to increase population or military expos which decrease army recruitment costs? Eg. Ships 30 -> 27 (With 3 expos)

[Raphael]

On 12/5/2023 at 11:28 PM, Keegoz said:

Projects, no my current aim is to not add a bunch more projects and call that an update (although I won’t rule out adding any). I do however believe it is about time we look at rebalancing a few. This doesn’t just mean making a few obsolete ones more relevant (fallout shelter) but also making the price make a little more sense.

I know this was addressed earlier in the post as a potential achievement award, but it would be nice to see city discount projects become cheaper/free as they get added on the backend.

Example: When the MPP got released, the UP became free and the AUP became half-priced.