Skip navigation

Great game, minor feature requests

Forum NavigationHome > Forum Index > Hegemony > Great game, minor feature requests
sage2
Level 6 Human gamer
Alignment: True neutral
Posted on April 6, 2012 at 12:48 pm

First off, this is a really superb game. You've made some outstanding design choices that lead to very hard problems. Simple mechaics, complex design. The total war folks could learn from you. Terrific. Can't wait for Rome.

Few thuoghts:
1) I would really like an option to put a city to the sword. Perhaps it would drop population very low, recruits to 0, and keep them from rebelling for a long period of time? I believe this was period appropriate (e.g. the Athenians at Melos), and would provide an interesting option for empire management. It could also have some other effects -- + hostility, +intimidation to the city co-ethnics elsewhere.
2) I would really love to see random events: storms, plagues, bad omens reducing morale, drouts or bad crops, outbreaks that kill sheep. These global or localized events might really spice things up a bit by creating uncertainty.
3) It would be helpful if the middle view level (operational) showed some additional information, including: cities in a rebelling state, highlighted blocked supply lines and some indication if one of my units is in a routing state.

Great game, thanks.

 
P-Dynamo
Level 6 Human Dad
Alignment: Good
Location: Iowa
Posted on April 6, 2012 at 6:29 pm

I really like your 2nd thought here. I think we have to remember this programming team is small. Lets not demand too much. But the subtle visual clues like rain and storms, even if their infrequent are certianly realistic, and they're a very real strategic consideration. One way this would really helpful is campaigning in the dry northern mountains. I would have liked a little graphic representation that reflected the sparseness of the terrain which would make the need for extra food/workers a little more obvious/intuitive. I had to start a game over once because I over extended myself. A little subtle graphic help might make a intuitive game even more intuitive...and that's never a bad thing.
Having said that putting a city to the sword works well in other games. but hegemony is little more realistic. And sure, in reality you can wipe a city off the map in the short term but the outlaying populations will continue to harass/irritate a brutal destroyer. I like to believe Hegemony forces a player to plan and deal with the very real consequences of maintaining the territory politically and logistically. Its that realistic maintenance which directly impacts the ability to move on and conquer the next territory. If they didn't have features like this, this game could play much like any other past strategy game.

 
rob
Level 16 Extraplanar gamer
Alignment: True neutral
Posted on April 7, 2012 at 12:41 am

Thanks for the ideas and the comments are much appreciated.

I would really love to see random events ...

I know these can be common in other games but I had actually been trying to avoid them in Hegemony under the (possibly flawed) assumption that few people actually enjoy seeing their intricately constructed plans brought to ruin by random weather they couldn't have predicted. We were also trying to avoid scenarios where the player would be encouraged to load up an old game and sidestep the random event or unrealistically prepare for it.

I might be more interested if the player was warned there was a high risk of bad weather so they could choose whether or not to take the risk, but that wouldn't fix the reload issue.

I would really like an option to put a city to the sword.

I know we talked about this during development (especially as it was my favourite option in Rome Total War) but I'll honestly say I can't remember how the discussion went. I know that we originally had it as a consequence to the Methone objective in the Philip campaign (since he really did tear down the city after they shot out his eye) but we realized players might not actually want to finish the objective if we "penalized" them by taking away their city so we dropped it. It might come up again in the objectives in Rome since Caesar did completely destroy a few tribes; however, at this point we don't plan to have it as an option you can do anywhere. We'll keep it in mind though.

It would be helpful if the middle view level (operational) showed some additional information,

We're always trying to find a balance between showing the important information and cluttering the screen with too much info so that nothing stands out. Usually we can't get a good idea of what will be most useful until we really play the game a lot and even then it tends to vary a lot between players so feedback in this area is always much appreciated.

I think we have to remember this programming team is small.

We're actually a little bit smaller for Rome since Rick's spending much of his time writing the campaign. However, somehow that doesn't seem to stop us from a very ambitious schedule of new features and tech upgrades (it might explain our delays though).

I would have liked a little graphic representation that reflected the sparseness of the terrain which would make the need for extra food/workers a little more obvious/intuitive.

While part of the reason for improving the graphical detail in Hegemony Rome was just to make things prettier, we were also trying to make it better reflect the state of the world so players could evaluate situations more intuitively and we could reduce some of the gui clutter. For example, the fertile Po valley is depicted using unique textures that make it look distinctly more cultivated than other areas with little farm land like the Black Forest, and in cities you can now see the resources and garrison directly on the 3d map rather than needing to go into the gui.

 
Email Twitter
P-Dynamo
Level 6 Human Dad
Alignment: Good
Location: Iowa
Posted on April 7, 2012 at 9:17 am

Rob,
Great explanations as always. I think I speak for all the players when I state we all appreciate the concepts and execution of the game you and the Hegemony team have created. I am very encouraged by your last topic in your response. The increased accuracy/intuitiveness of the geography combined with resource and garrison strength represented graphically is perfect. Combined with AI improvements...Rome's gonna rock. Hope

 
dushkin
Level 6 Human gamer
Alignment: Chaotic good
Posted on April 7, 2012 at 9:59 am


3) It would be helpful if the middle view level (operational) showed some additional information, including: cities in a rebelling state, highlighted blocked supply lines and some indication if one of my units is in a routing state.

Great game, thanks.

Love the game (also love Greek history, but I digress) and a bit of a pet peeve for me is that I found the map's transition too fast and too clumsy at times. Additional information would be very nice though.

 
Vitabrevit
Level 6 Human gamer
Alignment: True neutral
Posted on April 11, 2012 at 9:44 am

For putting a city to the sword you could give the player the option to eg. destroy a clan or leave them. with either option resulting in consequencs or giving advantages to the player.

 
Vitabrevit
Level 6 Human gamer
Alignment: True neutral
Posted on April 11, 2012 at 9:45 am

For putting a city to the sword you could give the player the option to eg. destroy a clan or leave them. with either option resulting in consequencs or giving advantages to the player.