Ideas Wanted

[Alex]

There are some problematic aspects of the game that still need to be solved:

1) Turn length and frequency
A) How often - we would say at least daily but how much sense does it make to have several turns per day? It shouldn't be a game one has to manage every 5 minutes but it shouldn't be boring either.

B) How long is one turn? If one turn is a (real) day how much game time goes on? Our last suggestion was 3 months gametime (=one season) for one day in realtime so you could see children grow up.

2) Technology
How do tribes advance technologically? It should cost resources and time but we are still figuring out how to represent this in the game. One suggestion was a shaman who can sacrifice ritual goods.

These two aspects give us the most trouble at the moment but we're eager to hear ideas about the rest of the game as well. Nothing is written in stone yet (ha!).

[Caiman]

hi stoneballers,

after reading through the basic concepts of the new game, I got some ideas for the problems

1) Game turn: What about two game turns each day? Working folk would find the game much more playable if interaction takes place before and after work, i.e. 7:00 am/pm. One turn could be "summer", the other "winter". One real day would be one game year; a newly born tribe member would be adolescent after about two weeks. Alternatively, if 4 seasons are wanted (perhaps because of seasonal variations for jobs), a year takes 4 turns (2 real days).

2) Technology: each adult individual coud give an amount of research points to develop a specific tech, based on her skills and age.
Example: An adult skilled in Hunting generates research points for new techs like bow, trapping, leatherworking aso... someone skilled in gathering pushes research in Herb Lore, Weaving, ... .

If that is too complex, and research of a tribe should be focused on only one tech, skills of the tribesmen could be ignored and one adult just generates research points based on her age

Spending ressources could increase reseach points further. Shamans and sacrifice could also give additional research, but in my opinion it would be better if shamans affect stability

[Christof]

All good ideas.

1) 2 turns per day should be doable and anything that gives players more to do is a good thing.

2) I like this idea better than what we had because it's more realistic, but if players don't have to spend resources on tech we need to find another use for them. We should probably also come up with more technologies

[Caiman]

There's another problem with technology. Technological advancement in stone age was really slow, f.e. between the invention of fire and shamanism was a huge gap of about 700.000 years. Techs like cooking or toolusing were used long before birth of modern men (homo sapiens).

Some techs and their date of invention:

- Bow ~ 12.000 B.C.
- Fire ~ 800.000 - 300.000 B.C.
- Domestication ~ 8.000 B.C.
- Ceramics ~ 7.000 B.C.
- Shamanism ~ 30.000 B.C.
- Clothing (manufactured) ~75.000 B.C.
- Spear ~ 450.000 - 350.000 B.C.
- Tent ~ 40.000 B.C.

As we see, it will be really difficult to create a realistic and playable tech tree for the game, if one real day equals a game year.

What we can do:

- change game form realistic to fictional
- set game background into neolithikum. Most techs are already discoverded, but tribes have to aply them.
- change game setting: why not a survival game in post-holocaust

[DCB]

Caiman has a valid point here which I would like to comment with a quote from Yahtzee's Saints Row 2 review: "Realism is an acceptable sacrifice if it means that I get to throw old ladies into jet turbines."
In other words, fun should come first, realism second.
The Wiki can explain when all the technologies were invented and why we didn't stick to that timeline.

[Alex]

Caiman has a valid point here which I would like to comment with a quote from Yahtzee's Saints Row 2 review: "Realism is an acceptable sacrifice if it means that I get to throw old ladies into jet turbines."
In other words, fun should come first, realism second.
The Wiki can explain when all the technologies were invented and why we didn't stick to that timeline.

Good Point and I like the idea to inform about the "real" history in the wiki.

[DCB]

Heard about this recently:
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-GB/game/far-cry-primal/