Rise of Civilization (is back!)

[Coaxke]

Yup, it's back.

Last year I started a very ambitious project of the same name. I would have loved to have been able to complete if not for my very busy schedule at the time and the difficulty (more like the time needed) for the coding.

Soon after I stopped all work on the project, I realized how very complicated the gameplay was as well as the time needed to complete a single game and bad replayability. Thus, I decided to completely rethink the way I was doing this.

So now I present to you the new Rise of Civilization. COMPLETELY redone and re-thought out. As the philosophy changed, so did the gameplay. It simplified.

My NEW goal was (and still is) to make the game as simple as I could without completely losing the key aspects the game was first based on. This means I made the game more... ANL and AoE, so to speak. It combines the strategy of resource-management with the militaristic gameplay of Wesnoth. This time almost completely making the game with the military functions and strategies of this game in mind.

The only resources of the game this time are gold, food, wood, and stone. All of which can be obtained by using workers, of course. The old version had technologies - now so does this new version, at a much smaller extent, as the older one had like 50 techs. This version only has... say 10 or a little more.

Game Specifics:

The game has buildings that workers can construct, they are the following:
Barracks, Archery Range, Stable, Temple, and Marketplace (much more simple than the old RoC). Players start with a City Center, which workers CANNOT construct but instead are used as the player's leader unit. City Centers are used to produce Workers, Militia, and build farms.

There are 5 categories of MILITARY units in the game (with the building that creates them):
Infantry (barracks)
Archers (archery range)
Cavalry (stable)
Magic (temple)
Militia (city center)

Then of course there are Workers as well, who can construct buildings, build mines, gather resources, build huts, etc.

Inside of each MILITARY unit category, there are two units you can produce, a light variant and a heavy variant (i.e.: the barracks can produce Light Infantry and Heavy Infantry).

And of course there are the techs which are in two categories: Building techs and Unit techs. Each category has 4 techs that the player can research (4 building techs & 4 unit techs).
Building techs improve buildings, unit techs improve your units (obvious, right?).

Techs are more important because they give your units a strategic advantage in combat

Anywho, the game is much more simple. Now the game is NOT complete yet, but it is seriously 90% there. Sadly, however, my laptop has recently developed a huge crack in the screen which puts a big limit on my visibility so I can't really do anything with it right now. But it should be soon until I either borrow someone else's and I'll be buying a new one soon.

With that being said, RoC on!

EDIT: added link to the old project & added more info on techs
EDIT2: added the beta attachment

[Gambit]

If you have an old monitor from the days before laptops lying around somewhere and if your laptop is fortunate enough to have a spot for it, that might help you out until you can get a new laptop. Just clone the desktop onto it.

[Coaxke]

And thanks to Gambit for constantly accepting, with open arms, my bombardment of WML questions and for his nifty fixes

[BOnZO]

FSR has been working diligently on this, since he's called me and I've called him thousands of times talking about details and edits he's made.

If you've got any questions or concerns, contact us whenever you want and we'll be glad to answer you.

I'm looking forward to everyone's feedback as much as FSR is.

Hope you all enjoy,
BOnZO

[Coaxke]

Alright. I just put up version 0.5b as an attachment to the first post.

The game is still in beta stage, so some things don't work.

[BOnZO]

EDIT:
The add-on is released on the add-on server and is 99% complete.

Enjoy!

[Zigg]

This is a Good Era/Scenario. You use mainline descriptions for units. I'm bored, so i've written a few.

Worker
A Worker does many jobs for his Civilization, including gathering Food, Wood, Gold and Stone, constructing various buildings and securing Forts. Due to all the Tools and Resources he carries, he is slow and very Venerable. He cannot fight for the same reason. Through Research and Inventions, he can get faster, stronger and able to fight for his Civilization. But, despite this, he will always be weak and slightly slow, compared to Militia, Fighters, Archers and even slower when compared with Cavalry.

Both types of Militia (Shared)
In times of need Cities will call upon it's people to become Militia, in order to protect themselves, their homes and their freedom. Militia tend to lack any armor, and carry only crude weapons, like clubs and bows. Militia can be grouped into two, Infantry and Archer. Infantry are of stronger builds and carry Clubs to strike the enemy with. Archer tend to be of weaker builds, but have better eyesight and carry Knives and Bows.

Light Infantry
The Backbone of most Armies, Light Infantry are easy to train but have a few requirements. Civilizations only allow Men who over 18 to join. They also need be strong enough to carry their equipment and move quickly at the same time to join. They wear basic steel armor and light helmets, carry small, circular shields and long spears and use them to great effect, especially against Cavalry, due to their long reach and sharp point.

[Coaxke]

Excellent

There are a few problems I need to fix, mostly concerning the technology, and population and building huts really doesn't do anything yet. So I will be fixing these soon and upload a new version.

[Zigg]

Huts are really useful! They give income.

[Coaxke]

Sorry, I meant that they are useless in terms of giving population.

Hopefully I will get to update this soon and fix things, however, I am going on vacation for a week so I won't have the time until I get back.

[lindsay40k]

Some constructive feedback:

Okay, so I was typing some suggestions which kind of evolved beyond my initial points, so rather than make a rambling post that concludes in a different direction to which it started off I'll condense my points here:

- Having to make and harvest farms and forests will be very time-consuming on larger maps. It would be more practical if Workers simply generated +1 Food or Wood when starting the turn on the appropriate tile. This would also eliminate the problem whereby a player not micromanaging their resources can find themselves unable to produce Food or Wood and forced to resign.

Right now, it costs 6 Gold to produce 1 Food unit and 2 Gold to produce 1 Wood unit; if you want to retain a price on these resources, charging 4 Gold for each Worker generating resources in the above manner seems like a fair replacement. And there's no reason these tiles couldn't still be plundered, be it for a quick fix of resources or as past of a 'scorched earth' strategy.

- It's nice that Fords can be 'fished', but replacing them with Shallow Water is an odd way to represent this that can cause problems if you should need to send cavalry over the river at any point. How about a Worker upgrade that, with the above farming suggestion in mind, enables Workers to generate +1 Food when starting the turn on an aquatic tile?

I would suggest that such an upgrade could also unlock new actions for Workers, enabling them to create Merfolk barracks in a Water tile so that Merfolk units can be deployed, and also to create the swamp and aquatic huts.

- Of course, there are things to be said for modifying terrain, so perhaps allow Workers in Shallow Water to create a Ford at a cost of (say) 4 Stone, or a Bridge at a cost of (say) 4 Wood (and take some resources back by destroying and reverting to Shallow Water).

- Restricting Farms to the vicinity of the main building puts serious limits on expansion, which would be an issue on larger maps. Moving the 'create farm' function to Workers would solve this, and also be more consistent with that unit's role.

- The Temple only seems to produce Mages. Couldn't it also produce a Priest or suchlike, using the White Mage sprite, with a weak spell and Heals +4?

- It's not clear to me how income works. It seemed at first that there's a base income of 2, which is increased +2 for each gold mine owned and then upkeep is deducted; however, I'm sure I played one game in which huts seemed to increase my base income... could be mistaken though, as I've not observed this in any other game.

- I mentioned over Yahoo that I'm up for making a mapset for this add-on, though as I say I've got no experience of WML and would need assistance in making the final results work with RoC.

[Coaxke]

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. School is using up most of my time.

This project is going to be on hold for a while, but your suggestions will be remembered . All you need to do is make the maps in the editor, I can add the WML for you.