Greetings all. I'm currently in the development process on a game and need either some feedback or suggestions regarding one of the more crucial aspects of it. The game itself is envisioned as being an online 'world' where players stake out their claim on their own little area. You can leave your area and explore elsewhere but with large enough territory, this could become unnecessary. The game itself is well and truly underway. It is a hex-tile field with extremely dodgy programmer graphics but the basics of movement, conversation and very basic combat underway. Technical details include that I'm using C++ for both back and front ends on client and server, developing in Eclipse with the CDT and that the backend could end up being moved to a Project Darkstar (Java) setup, but that isn't happening until the game starts to take more solid form. I'm drawing in OpenGL (A first for me) and things are going well. The situation that has arisen currently is though, I cannot fathom a method with this territory control in which: New players can start effectively Old players can see a reason to expand/maintain their domain Battles over territories are not necessary, but one method of territory acquisition. There are a variety of methods I am considering for 'claiming' hexes. Player has a 'home location' and a number of hexes allocated for their level. When borders meet, territory is squeezed, but total hexes remain the same. Players will not be able to have home locations too close together. Player starts in a location of their choosing (or in a 'neutral space' town) and then goes out into the wild green yonder to stake claim to land. Players are shown a map of the world and given recomended starting locations based on violent activity, rate of territory being claimed in each area and other variables. They pick one, and start staking claim. Each of these suggestions has it's own problems. I'm personally not a fan of the first at all, and currently am choosing between the latter 2, but I am open to suggestions on other or similar ideas. The big problem with people 'staking claim' either by planting a flag, moving a border fence, or any other means of 'ownership declaration' is that new players are significantly disadvantaged against older ones. While it is rather imperative that old players have SOME advantage, new players should never be in a situation where they must struggle desperately to begin. Mainly though, here and now, I'm looking for suggestions on either other methods of saying 'this land be mine' or other ways to make this world 'fair' for both new players and old. Thanks for having a look.

I have a design in progress at the moment for a social establishment type system and one thing I really like is the action of recruiting other players. Some people, like myself, I'm sure might rather help someone else stake a claim to land or expand the land. This helps new players because larger groups will need members for their village/town/city but just make sure to protect them somehow from the onslaught of spam "Join our town!" messages.

Hope this helps.

Alliances/guilds are something I've made notes about, but haven't put much thought into as I'm trying to round out the territorial side of things first. My main note regarding that sort of set up is you can opt into an alliance at which point all your territory is shared with the group. This would then mean any member of the alliance would see your territory exactly as their own (Maybe a slight delineation, so as to see exactly what you own and what you are being given access to). You could opt to include/exclude areas from the alliance, and you could continue to expand your territory, either for the group, or for yourself.

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Original post by mrbaggins Mainly though, here and now, I'm looking for suggestions on either other methods of saying 'this land be mine' or other ways to make this world 'fair' for both new players and old.

How about military force? Wherever the players set up an army, the army protects the area it can reach in a turn. A visual indicator of where the enemy can apply damage this turn(next turn?) could be something like a heat map of damage the enemy can apply to the hexes.

New players could examine the damage map, and choose a location away from danger.

The reason why an old player can steamroll a new player is mostly due to the advantage they gain for being longer in the game (more resources, more armies, etc). A way to offset this advantage is to reduce the ability or make it harder for older players to field their advantage against the newer players.

1. Limit the maximum number of units, culture, priests or whatever way a player uses to claim a hex, from crossing a hex-side. Thus an older player cannot simply field an army a few times stronger then the newer player, but instead must try to encircle the new player's hexes before hitting them to truly overwhelm him.

2. Introduce a variable (e.g. infrastructure) that increases the cost of taking over a hex, if an attacker send a force that is higher then what the variable is able to support cost of the attack increases. Being a new player the infrastructure level for the hexes will be very low, forcing the stronger player to seriously consider whether it is worth it to commit a huge amount of resources just to hit the hex. Note, this is not to prevent an attack but to prevent the stronger player from sending a huge army, instead the player will send a smaller force that the new player will hopefully be able to handle.

3. "Open" up new segments of the map bit by bit to new players. For example, every month a new province of say 100 hexes will be open to new players. Within the first month no outside force can intervene, while the new players fight it out among themselves. At the end of the month it will join the rest of the map and be open to attacks, hopefully some players are able enough that they grow big enough to be a fight for the older players.

Just some ideas that I came up with without knowing more specifics of the game.

Just an idea, take it or leave it.

Two areas.

Area one is PVE, no PVP. Controlling a hex in this area allows you to get some basic resources, build armies to fight PVE enemies, and build settlers.

The settlers can go claim area in the second area.

The second area has PVP, it has better resources, and it has stronger PVP enemies that you can raid but will also raid you.

Simple yet able to cater to the hardcore players and the more casual players or late comers.

When I thought about balancing a "slow time" game the first balance I considered that was needed was a unit limit, but at the same time allowing a large amount of customization.

And a secondary ability similar to "resistance" fighters where after taking over a town the fewer units you have to handle the resistance the longer the resistance takes to put down and the greater the risk you have at losing units to the resistance that the town generates(resistance level based on distance from capital, number or resistance aid structures, size of empire(smaller better))

Basically someone can have 40 units (55 if paying member). You can claim as much land as you want, you can attack as much as you want. However if you have a massive claim, or are spending time to attack/prey on small people you won't have "much" defense at home.

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it's obviously very necessary that information gather be pretty easy and/or social in the sense that people can easily find out who's attack who, their sizes and similar.

I seem to have given a slightly misconstrued vision of what I'm trying to achieve. Whilst the feedback is still useful it is kind of out of the scope of what I was referring to...

A player isn't in charge of an army/civ/race or anything. They are a single entity in the form of one hero/salesman/villain. The person walks/rides around and can claim land as their own, much as a lord and their estate.

AngleWyrm, your suggestion of a 'heat map' is very similar to what I had in mind, except instead of 'military force' the heat map would show the hostile behaviour and population density of areas.

Do you see there being an issue with either being asked to choose/placed in a location deliberately to make your life easy?

Do you see there being an issue with players turning up in a neutral town that has an unclaimable area around it? IE: You load the game for the first time, you're a guy in a small town, and the surrounding hexes are all unclaimable (claimed by the town/game if you will) but provide all the intro quests/some resources/a viable (but small scale) market? Players would then move out to other towns/remote locations and start making claim once they'd amassed some resources, levels and skills?

So you mean there will only be a single person that can take over hexes? Will there be anyway to defend against an opponent from simply taking it back right after you claim a hex?

Good point... Will have to work something out on that.