Here's a few things I'm wondering about.
[quote name='AltarofScience' timestamp='1326241311' post='4901465']
Creatures select locations for their lair. Each creature has a desired terrain type and a random chance to pick any square with that terrain as home.
Are you speaking of where creatures will spawn, or where they will move? The latter sounds hardware expensive, but the AI we see in new MMO's (Rift, SWTOR) ain't exactly pushing it. Having fewer creatures would make it more viable.
[color=#ff0000]Creatures wander the world pushing outward from the rift where they were spawned. Prior to selecting a home location they will check any areas they move through as to their settlement validity.
Social creatures are more likely to pick squares where there are creatures of the same type.
Lairs have a sort of level system. Beyond certain population blocks creatures have a random chance to level the settlement every time a new creatures joins or is born.
Individual or very small groups, 2-10, of creatures who are within a certain number of squares of a much larger settlement have a small chance every certain time period to move to that settlement.
How will you prevent extreme concentrations? They gradually flock to a few tiles, just like mass is concentrated in giant spheres. It's something that needs to be considered. There can be many solutions to this problem, like attractiveness goes up to a top, and then degrades if the "settlement" gets to big.
[color=#ff0000]Um, it will take a while before creatures form huge enough groups to make a difference. I think we could cap it at 50% to join and after that extra size doesn't matter. This is somewhat of an overview, I planned to do some organizational factors. Generally anything with 11 or more creatures will stay in that spot. There will be some relatively extreme concentrations, probably 2 or 3 larger cities for each rift spawned and some medium ones and some smaller ones.
Lairs have a certain area of operation centered around the lair. The size of the lair determines the area of operation. It also determines possible creature actions. Larger lairs have a larger area of operations and more actions.
Small lairs may only have sentries while large lairs will have patrols and scouts. The function of the scout is to search for human settlements. Larger settlements have more scouts with longer search ranges. Scouts sentries and patrols increase as the lair population increases. New actions are gained with larger sizes.
Raids begin to happen around 100 or more creatures. They in size and frequency as the lair grows. Raids can only happen if the lair has a creature who located a human settlement. As time goes by and raids don't happen a larger percentage of creatures will be sent out on scout missions.
Lairs at 500 population will start the seeding cycle. They will send out colony groups of 100 which will travel as a group and follow the standard lair algorithm. Sometimes creatures will come into the game as a large group on a colony mission, but generally they come alone.
Lairs with creatures of similar types are capable of forming social links. Generally any group of creatures of the same type with overlapping areas of operation have a chance every cycle to form social bonds. Groups which have a creature who has met a creature of the same type from another lair have a much smaller chance of bonding.
Socially bonded groups have an increased breeding rate depending on the level of the link. Higher links also allow for other actions. Each level of bonding has a smaller random chance of happening. Some actions of higher bonds are information sharing. Any human settlement location discovered by a group with social bonds will be spread across those bonds. Further, the groups who get the info through bonds will spread it through their own bonds with other groups. Groups with more than one secondary bond with another group have a small chance to bond with that group.
Groups with a bond over a certain strength will have a mutual defense pact whereby based on the strength of the bond they will send reinforcements to the territory of any invaded group. At very high levels groups will form kingdoms with the lair with the highest connection to all the member groups as the hub. Kingdoms will move beyond information sharing and mutual defense to become a single integrated unit. They will have higher birthrates even than groups with social linkages. Although lairs will still have their own sentries and patrols on borders that don't touch borders of other lairs in the kingdom, they will have a unified sentry and patrol system as well as garrisons. Areas of operation work in circles and groups who have no or minimal exposed borders will send their troops to the borders of the kingdom. Raids will be launched by the kingdom as larger groups. Kingdoms will send troops to any border penetration event as well to aid lairs in danger. The amount of assistance will be much larger than with mutual defense pacts.
Kingdoms and individual lairs and even groups of lairs can be connected to much larger networks by social linkage. Any creature group can be a part of this type of alliance with other groups of any size.
So, you meant to have very small groups involved in social bonding (2-10)? It may be better to keep this for the slightly larger groups, to reduce complexity of bonding.
Are you preventing settlements to be placed near one another? If not, how are you gonna make sure their area of operation doesn't overlap.
What are border events, and where is it possible that they take place? Sounds like you want a kingdom with a geographical area (no other lairs within). How wiill you implement this? Will you allow lone colonies far away? This needs to be taken into consideration when defining the border.
[color=#ff0000]Um, all levels of groups can bond socially. Kingdoms are made up of several lairs, just like human kingdoms. As it says in the post, lairs with powerful social bonds to say, 4 or 5 lairs will form a more formal kingdom as opposed to a tribal alliance which is formed by weaker bonds.
Also, creatures would have a list of locations of human lairs and these would be exchanged in the circumstances described above by simply adding new entries to a creatures list when their group gained that knowledge. However the knowledge would only be exchanged if the creature was in contact range with another of its group and would be passed to the group only when they entered the border of the society.
This would allow players to attempt to kill creatures prior to their getting intel back to their group and prevent the enemy from location them for raids.
Will every creature have a list of every human settlement it knows about, or just the settlements it's seen itself. In the first case, that's quite demanding. There's lots of creatures, and each will remember every human location. If individuals only remember thing's they've seen themself, which might be erased after sharing this with their group, then you reduce the problem, but it might still be to complex if you allow this with the very small groups.
[color=#ff0000]Creatures will hold human locations in an individual list until they reconnect with their parent group at which point that location will be removed and added to the group list instead.
I am somewhat skeptical about this. I believe it can easily be unstable, difficult to balance. It will require quite a bit of extra power, yet the players may see little of it. I think you could accomplish something similar with a more manageable system. If you want to have a deep complex dynamic system, I'd want to actually make it visual to the players in some way.
[/quote]
[color=#ff0000]Kingdoms will be shown visually with some sort of color. Maybe colored clothes or face paint or something depending on the species. There might be territory markers or something, too.
