Capstone Project - 1st week

    This is the fifth week of CST 489 where I am required to update my capstone project - Wealth and War. I have been working on it for a while, and it would be impossible to speak about it all in one blog. Therefore, I am going to talk about what I did since the last meeting with my mentor two weeks ago.

Adjust Production for Buildings

    Instead of one simple happiness for the whole settlement, the happiness & satisfaction system is divided into different social classes as well as different Districts (on District System & Population Change session). This is drawn from Total War Napoleon and Total War Empire, where the satisfaction is also divided into Noble and Commoner. This mechanic allows buildings and events that provide happiness & satisfaction become further meaningful and detailed instead of “3 happiness / satisfaction for the settlement.”

Population Happiness

    Instead of one simple happiness for the whole settlement, the happiness & satisfaction system is divided into different social classes as well as different Districts (on District System & Population Change session). This is drawn from Total War Napoleon and Total War Empire, where the satisfaction is also divided into Noble and Commoner. This mechanic allows buildings and events that provide happiness & satisfaction become further meaningful and detailed instead of “3 happiness / satisfaction for the settlement.”

Global Market

    When playing many video games (not just with strategy games), players usually encounter the situation that they have resources with large quantities and low on the others. One way to reduce this is, of course, letting players to trade their resources. However, strategy games tend to force players to trade with factions, in many case players may not have anyone to agree with. In the image above, players can see the resources and their price on the market, as well as the options to trade with copper coins, silver nuggets or gold nuggets. In addition, there is trade limit per turn that players can increase via multiple sources: buildings, laws, faction’s traits. The prices also adjust based on how qualities and price adjustments.

    In order to balance this mechanic, other factions will have access to Global Market as well and can exploit it. For example, in one turn, players may sale their weapons because of high prices. But that helps reducing the price of weapons and other factions may purchase for themselves.

Notifications

    Notification is not any special implement that Wealth & War has, but it is a necessary one. With this, players can see what is happening after a turn. For now, there are notifications for building completion, triggered status effect and successful Global Market trading.

Satisfaction & Status Effect

    There are three important things in the image above. First, we can see that District 1 – Regular District is the one being display, not the whole settlement of Nameless Village. In other words, District 1 is the main district of the settlement, but its population, satisfaction and status effects are independent.

    Second, we can see that satisfaction of people are decreasing. Unlike other games, satisfaction here plays a crucial role, not just reducing flat percentage of production. It affects the migration of the district, determine the change and amount of rebellion, in which it will affect the production itself.

    And third, we can see on Debuff table that High Tax is active, the other is Food Shortage. In order to make these status effects have their weight and catch players’ attention, they will degrade overtime. In other words, if players don’t solve it immediately, the satisfaction decline every turn and may lead to other debuff such as rebellion, famine, disease, etc.

District System & Population Change

In here, we can see District 2, which is different from District 1, to showcase the District System. The main purpose of this mechanism is to let players to expand their settlements rather than occupying or establishing new one. In addition, District 2 is indicated as Farming District. That is because player can choose the type of district, including: regular, agriculture, residential, harbor, market, military, industrial. Besides the obvious bonuses that they will provide, districts also offer unique buildings that make the district type special. For example, in residential district, there is Settlement Houses to store large amount of people. Or military district is required for certain buildings to upgrade furthermore.

            We can see the green numbers next to the population’s amount, that is to indicate to players how many people migrate in or out of that district. This number is not just flat or randomize, but also affected by satisfaction, vacant space (Capacity) and other status effect.

Of course, more people don’t mean better. District 2 is suffering from Food Shortage. Every person is another mouth to feed, and 3 food resources are needed every turn. If players tax food production too much, it won’t be enough to feed the population. This will make players to readjust carefully rather than full production like other strategy games they play, which helps combat against resource inflation as well. I also plan to add the overpopulation penalty in the future, but that is for later.