Realms of Magic

[Wazzz]

Realms of Magic

Hello hivers! As you may or may not know, I am also working on the Galactic Conflict mod and also help out with the Pokemon RPG project. Check those out if you are interested, and feel free to post your suggestions on either one.

This thread is about a new idea of mine which I have decided to call Realms of Magic. It is an involved, slow-paced RTS game where you choose your race and choose a different path. In other words, although you might get two players with the same race, they still have great potential to be different.

RACES:
Humans: Although the Humans don't have the most powerful units in the game, they are capable of surviving heavy blows from their enemies. At best, they are noble, proud and mighty. At worst, they are self-righteous, pretentious and arrogant.

Orcs: A war hungry race, the Orcs enjoy rushing their enemies and fighting them in quick combat. At best, they are honourable and strong. At worst, they are blood thirsty and barbaric.

Elves: A mysterious race, the Elves are silent beings capable of accomplishing in both defense and offense. At best, they are mysterious, powerful beings. At worst, they are caniving, malicious and power hungry.

As you may have noticed, I am leaving the interpretation for each race very open. This is because there are, as I have mentioned, different paths you can choose for each race.

PATHS:

Arcane: The race you have chosen will study in magics arcane, learning powers of healing, blessings and ressurection. While this only covers the surface of what can be accomplished with this path, it gives access to a wide range of holy beings.

Nature: The race you have chosen will obsever the wonders of nature, involving the manipulation of animals and plants alike. Research in this area will provide your race with access to improved scouting units, better war animals and the likes.

Demonology: The race you have chosen have turned to worshipping demons and may gain access to their powers, such as raising the dead, manipulating flame and darkness alike and summoning demons. Research in such evils will provide your race with units granted power of the demons they worship and even some demons themselves.

Well, now I have told you about the basics of the idea, here are some things I plan to include in the gameplay:

Squad System: Units will come in squads (unless they are the more powerful single units or leaders), and these squads will replenish over time while near your recruitment buildings.

Epic Landscape: While this may not be seen as a major feature, the main point I am trying to get across is that you choose a preset location on an island at the beginning, and I hope to make it so no 2 players can start in the exact same location. So, some islands will be big enough to hold 4 players, some to only hold 1. With that said, you must choose wisely. Yes, it will most likely require a level of knowledge of the map in order to choose a good island, but other than that things will be pretty even (tooltips will tell you the basics of the area you are considering).

Favor: In order to gain better access to your full tech-tree, you must be prepared to appease the path you take. If you choose the Arcane path, holy statues will be required. If you choose the Demonology path, you must create statues of darkness. Choose the path of Nature, and you must protect the forest and build shrines to the Forest Spirits.

Well, for now that is it. If anyone has any other ideas or would like to comment on what I have so far, feel free to. Afterall, that's what this thread is all about .

 

[Yixx]

It seems to me like somthing of Age of Mythology, where you choose to worship a god each time your town center advances,, Although this is still warcraft and you only choose one time,,
I think you should add more different choises, not mainly in the first ones, but also lower ones, where you can choose to use nature for things, or provide help to nature (and get a reward of it of course!) under nature, and maybe choosing (Dark) magical demons or War-Demons (using powerfull demon weapons instead of magic),,
For arcane you could think of Healing magic or War-helping magic,, Like healing/resurecting, or summoning light for the sake of killing enemys

Note: These are only examples to explain myself! The idea i am bringing is a big choise with smaller choises to really adjust your race,,

 

[Wazzz]

Lol, the ironic thing is I sort of had Age of Empires in mind when I was going to explain it, but didn't want to draw comparisons as you don't go through set ages like in Age of Empires and the likes. Rather, you invest in many different areas such as different types of armour and weapons to gain access to different units, economic research and trying to build up an empire with decent health and satisfaction. I'm not going to make 'happiness' a factor, but am thinking of doing a Civilization style way of getting resources in that there are different animals and minerals to control for varying amounts of income. But what do the viewers think I should do? Is this a good idea for resources, or does anyone have any better ideas?

Also, there will be lots of units, some strict to the path you choose (e.g. If you choose demonology, there will be certain demon units that aren't race specific), some strict to the race (Some units will merely gain an ability depending on what path you choose) or even a combination (race specific units you can only get with a certain path. For example, if you are Human and choose to worship demons [yes, I am loving the demons idea ], you will gain access to many different units unique to the Humans, such as Beastmen).

At the moment I am coming up with as many ideas as possible for different units. Once I feel satisfied with the amount of units for each race, I will attempt to make a sort of techtree for all to see. So, you will see units specific to certain paths in each race and the likes.

 

[Zelda.Alex]

Rather, you invest in many different areas such as different types of armour and weapons to gain access to different units

Instead make the research names as something like Bronze refining or gold plating.

Civilization style way of getting resources in that there are different animals and minerals to control for varying amounts of income

Meaning we just control & get the income on a regular basis?

 

[Wazzz]

Instead make the research names as something like Bronze refining or gold plating.

...what names did you think I'd use? It would be like Bronze Plating and the likes so that you get the armour, and I'll prlly make it you actually require control of the Bronze Resource (that would make it rather tricky to play, however, as you'd have to find Bronze. However, the realism of it is there)... why am I still in brackets? What do you guys reckon?

Meaning we just control & get the income on a regular basis?

Yes, essentially you just get a Merchant and control the point with that. Each Merchant will take a small amount of your population (only 2, which isn't much considering how much your squads will take ), so you have to expand to get control of more resources and manage your economy along with your military.

Another thing I'm thinking of adding (simply because of high population costs) is unlimited food cap. Basically, you get more population by building Town Centres on Settlements (sort of like Age of Mythology style ), so you can't ever reach and 'impossible' amount. However, you can also upgrade your 'Town Centres' (In quotations because they might only start as Village Centres) to give you more population. So, they might start off only giving you 50 population, but then the next upgrade gives you another 50 and so on. Basically, it will cost more to upgrade than it will to build a new one, so that's to increase the difficulty of getting a very high population limit, but also to increase the desire to expand. A race requires expansion to thrive and prosper, after all .

The 2 primary resources will be Gold (your primary currency) and Knowledge (that which lets you research more advanced items and such). I might also make expansion and upgrading centres cost a small amount of Knowledge, too, making the use for that resources never die out

Well, my unit ideas are still in progress. I am doing the Humans to start with, and will prlly move on to the Elves next to finish nicely on the Orcs . Another thing I should mention: The path you choose does have a small effect on the base units of your race, too. Elves will experience this the most. If they choose Demonology, for example, they will become Dark Elves. While their basic units will remain the same, they will look darker and some will even have an extra ability. Their base buildings shall remain the same (I will choose a neutral model for them) as no other race will experience a difference in their primary buildings.

Another thing I'm wondering about is favor. If you choose a path, how would you gain favor from whatever you are following? Some ideas on that, plz

 

[Zelda.Alex]

Another thing I'm wondering about is favor. If you choose a path, how would you gain favor from whatever you are following? Some ideas on that, plz

1......Gods' messages appearing
>to give their requests like killing creeps which are disrupting the realm is one idea.
>to make their requests to build building that can solidify the gods' basis in the world.

Like for Nature a miniature forms of the world tree with some animations of lights around it. These buildings can be costly & if done give a lot of favor to the person who do this. The Nature God can give a sapling & the person has to use some magicians of nature to make the sapling grow.

2......For Path of Nature
>Can use that if you have chosen Path of Nature then stopping others from gathering lumber. This may be tricky seeing you will have to stop the others from lumbering which can be done even inside other people's bases.
>How about the demonology path gives the terrain a demonic aura. To gain favor of nature you have to make the terrain look back as the natural one.
>The arcane Path gives the terrain a kind of magical aura which we have to disrupt.

Other thing
>The magical aura that i mentioned above can also be used to make the strength of magic of many path. More is the aura of one kind on the map stronger gets the magic.
>One more thing that can be done with the aura is that if Aura of one kind gets too high then the other 2 gods get angry & the players can channel the anger to use a ultimate spell of their kinds but for only once or after a long duration like 15 minutes. This spell can help in making sure that the lower magic abilities due to the aura do not make the map impossible.


Will think & if something else comes in mind Will tell.

 

[Wazzz]

Well, I was thinking of gaining Favor by getting more statues and such, but what shall it be used for is what I meant. So, what would it be used for?

I have an idea, actually, that I like (still open to any suggestions, though). Basically, you have a range of God Abilities which require 'mana'. When you get a statue or something, it increases the mana regeneration (let's call this mana favor for now), thereby letting you use global abilities over time.

The only problems I have with this are as follows:
1) I was going to use mana as an ability cooldown for units
2) I don't really want global abilities >.<

Another thought for statues (the main reason I thought of favor) would be that they just have auras that benefit nearby allies or do the opposite to nearby enemies. Other than that, the favor idea might be given a miss (the thought of doing quests when you have a whole civilization to build with economy and military might be a little overkill, sry )

 

[Paku]

I might make some terrain for this one too. I like ur ideas. But i think it will be very hard to make.

 

[Wazzz]

Well, this is going to be one huge map, so it could have its difficulties. I'm not sure how much terraining help I'll actually need for this, as there will most likely be a specific look I want (the Galactic Conflict maps are meant to be different, on the other hand).

BTW, I also plan to make it that you require different resources to get different researches as well. Each island will have at least one of every resource, so there will be no imbalances in that regard. As for competing players, the strongest survives, as with any proper civilization wars thing.

I also think this map would prlly be better for LAN. Not to say it wouldn't be playable via Battle.NET, it'll be more than playable on Battle.NET lol, but it would be a lengthy game and ppl often don't let you have breaks while you play on Battle.NET lol.

 

[Tha Flamestorm]

By the looks of it, your turning this into a warcraft-aom map, good luck with that

 

[Wazzz]

Well, it's not really like AoM at all, just people keep making that comparison (which is the last thing I want, as this is an individual project).

If it's similar to anything at all, it's Ghost765's Age of Heresy project which I found out about only recently. The main similarity is that you get different tech's by doing a different research at a certain place (which, funnily enough, he implemented after I found out about it ). Anywayz, it's an idea for all to use so that they can get multiple tech-trees off of the same race.