This is more of a question than an idea. But would it be possible to take the concept of these games and expand them to a larger Multiplayer scale. (I''m not sure MMO is exactly the right word) Where you break the world down to the size of provinces in Shogun Total war, but then allow in massive amounts of players with the aim of taking over the entire earth? A few questions in this area. First is a game of this scale and type possible? (Technology/Programing wise?) How would lag be? etc. How would you prevent someone on at 3am from conquring the world? Would you keep the servers local (I.E. Pacific, mountain, central, Eastern?) and open them during certain peak times? Should the game be able to be won? (Should someone actually be capable of controling the world? (make it hard yes, but impossible?)) Would the game need to be "Dumbed Down" (I.E. Planetside vs normal FPS games) in order to be played on this scale? Should diplomacy be allowed in the game, or should it just be total warfare?

quote: Original post by robert4818
A few questions in this area.
First is a game of this scale and type possible? (Technology/Programing wise?) How would lag be? etc.

Yes, you could scale the world into mini-sections, and then have armies go into those. If a battle is raging, you''d have to give the player a choice of entering. The lag would be somewhat huge, you''d have to do some sort of Peer-to-peer thing, because having 200 or so troops fight, would be brutal.

quote:
How would you prevent someone on at 3am from conquring the world?

A good AI, of course! This is prolly the biggest stumbling block... You could also do something where battles are only fought when people are ready, but that will definitly slow down your game.

quote:
Should the game be able to be won? (Should someone actually be capable of controling the world? (make it hard yes, but impossible?))

Yes. If the game is war, it has to be winnable. Any game where you directly compete with someone, it has to be winnable, or else its pointless.

quote:
Would the game need to be "Dumbed Down" (I.E. Planetside vs normal FPS games) in order to be played on this scale?

It would depend on how much money you have to throw around.
Whatever your limitions are, will prolly effect how much it will have to be dumbed down...

One last question...would this game be fun?

I wouldn''t play it. Way too huge. Japan is a well-defined scope. Medieval: Total War''s expansion to a full continent was the main reason I hated it. Too frickin'' big. Rome looks alright, but I haven''t heard enough to judge whether it falls in the same category.

Well this is actually just an idea. it would probably end up having to be a made up world since, unless you want to expand to a new era of technology, most of the world doesn''t know of the rest of it until gunpowder comes into play.

But if they break the world into regions, and make it semi-mmo, you could focus on conquering your little region (japan) first.

You don''t get what I''m saying - MMO wouldn''t work for a game of this scale. Go play Diplomacy if you want to see what I mean. It would simply be too big and unwieldy to play a game of that size with a lot of other players. A single player game? Maybe. Multiplayer? If you''re willing to spend a week on a single move, be my guest.

What I would do, rather than a full MMOG, would be to have a 4-8 player world-scale multiplayer that can be paused. Get a few friends or people who like the game, each choose an empire, and each day you''d run through one turn, where everyone would choose where to advance their armies, etc., and then engage in any battles that occur. The game would then be paused for the next day''s battles. Personally I would prefer if the game would take more inspiration from long-term board games than MMOGs lest it fall into the Planetside pit of being too massive for its own good.

i think this would be one of those games where you and your friend sit down in a big comfy chair and play this game for a couple hours each day all summer long... Kinda reminds me of risk.

Like I said - Diplomacy. (Far better than Risk.)

http://www.diplom.org