Sons of War - opinions gathering

[Martin Barbov]

Not long ago I started a thread here with an idea to combine Aos and Footman Frenzy to form a new map. Now I made enough planing to start the project. This is the first place I release info on it:

Sons of War

Sons of War is unique combination of several genres.

Overview:
The map is Aos where you can specify the rally point for your army.
In the map every race will be chosable only once which means that every player will have its own race. I plan to make at least 7 races for the first release and then add more to reach at least 13 races.
Gameplay:
The game is basically a free for all footman/Aos. Each player has his own base which spawns units that are uncontrollable. He can upgrade the units in the base.
Races:
Each race have at least: 6 war units, 3 heroes, its unique specialty(ability that is unique for the race - example: dwarves can build goldmines, human empire have bureaucracy and so on.). Each race will have a long backstory.
Modes: By default it's FFA game but the host can enable alliances or a 6vs6 match.
Heroes: each hero will have 3 normal abilities and one ultimate(each spell with 5 levels)
Items: Don't know yet

The most important part::::
Proggress:
Systems: 90%
Races: 1 race is ready, 6 are fully planned waiting to be implemented.
Terrain & everything else: 0%

As you can see it's quite an ambitious project. Making 13 races unique is quite hard but my proggress by now is very fast. Now I'm gathering opinions. Do you like the idea of an Aos where each player has a base. What about the items. I thought of making unique set of items for each race. Also do you think the tarrain should be star like(where each everybody meet in the center - that would allow for huge battles but will make the game very long) or full of paths so everybody can attack everybody(that would allow more alliance based tactics and is overrall bether I think.) I also plan to add capturable mini bases throughout the map and a huge fortress in the center.

When I add at least 7 races and finish the tarrain I'll make a real thread in the maps forum.
So, what do you think?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Wow, that is really ambitious I don't believe anything like it has been done before... either way I think if you finish this it will be an amazing expierience - what would make it really cool though is having some choice of where to "build" or place your base!

Keep with this project it sounds great

 

[Martin Barbov]

Thanks for the comment.
Right now the bases are placed in a circle (clock type). That may change, however there must be enough space for battles and capture sites so the main bases better remain where they are. But there are some special buildings that can be build wherever you want. For example Empyr(the main human race) can build forward outpost that spawns additional troops. the Tribunion(nomads) can deploy portable buildings and so on.

 

[Martin Barbov]

Update: Finished the Empyr Lore. May start a post in the story forum when I get back from holiday.

Update: Almost finished the diplomacy system - that's the last unfinished system for now. It is dialog based instead of the common -ally. When you want to ally someone a diplomat unit will be sent into his base and he will be asked if he agrees. Then you ally. That's to avoid the numerous one sided alliances. No player can ally more than 5 players. The system is fully functional except one strange bug. One of the buttons in the dialog automatically pushes all others(no idea how) and sends diplomats to all players and at the same time breaks all current alliances.

 

[Vosty]

The bug may be that you forgot ot add a condtion to which button is cllicked.
WOW! A great Idea, but do make it a little less unit spammed than footmen wars. It causes lag, and you can't get your hero anywhere, because they surround you and clump.
Star shaped would be fun. The whole point of footmen wars and such is to have long battles until it all comes down to how lazy were you when got tech. But fi you can control the flow of the units, but not the units themselves, how does that work? Or do you control them, because tht would be awesome if there is secret paths, to get to other player, but only the near ones, because the far ones should be the tough ones.

 

[Martin Barbov]

You do not control the units directly, neither you can control the spawn. The thing the players can control is the rallypoint for the army. You actually set a point where the army auto attacks when it comes out of the barracks. You cannot gather massive force in your base and then send it like in the footmen maps. Instead the units attack as soon as they are created, like in an AoS (initially 3 at a time. With upgrades you can increase the count to 9).

 

[Vosty]

Nice...
That was what I guessed when I read the first post, but thanks for completely making sure I knew teh answer.
3, then all the way to nine....
Can you build barracks?
If you ever played Humans vs Orcs (By Hvo-Komobuster), you would see that there are classes. The builder can build buildings, that make the barracks spawn certain units, but the old ones still remain.
If not, how else do you increase the spawn?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Will the units be different types? (I should hope so!) =) Like 5 melee, 2 ranged and 2 spellcasters? And would you have to make choices - so for e.g. you could choose to just buy 9 melee spawns, whereas the other teams could do maybe 4 ranged, 2 melee and 3 casters?

That would add an extra dimension of strategy to it =)

 

[Martin Barbov]

You increase the spawn by an upgrade.
By now each race is supposed to have 9 spawnable unit types - 3 melee, 3 ranged, 3 special (for some races flying, for some - mages, and so on).

 

[Vosty]

Like Grey Nighmare said, it would be more strategic to choose. I have seen efective ways to hide archers with crapp health behind stuff, whether it be melle guys, or trees/builidngs etc.
Is there gonna be any Beta testing, cause I love some of the ideas here that people make. Most maps I DL are kinda pieces of #$@.
One note: If your gonna get famous, try starting with a smaller filessize. People don't sit and wait to DL some 3.9mb stuff, that they have never played or heard of. Leave that to DotA =D
Have you heard that Icefrog has requested that Blizzard change the limit on map size to 8mb? That is HUGE!

 

[Martin Barbov]

The army won't be controlable but I'm planing full AI support.
There will be beta testing but that's when the map is at least 70% ready(for now it's 20%). I try to reduce importing to zero but sometimes there are small stuff that have to be added. For now the size of the map is less than 500 kb.
And I'm already famous. People just don't know it.

 

[AIagremm]

Lie! You gems tell me that you will become famous soon enough.
Im starting to think that they are some sort of fortune cookies.
The idea is nice, i dont think I've heard 'bout anything like it. Controlling forces may be annoying, but some will like it, im sure.

 

[Lightstalker]

Already made a cross between AoS and FF. Never released it tho. Still have it on my PC.

 

[Martin Barbov]

[Guess the tag]It's so great that you did. Thanks for informing me.[/Guess the tag]

I'm back home and can start working on the map again. Let's hope that the school will disappear by itself(perhaps fly to another dimension) freeing some time for warcraft.