Hi!
Ive wanted to make a total war-like empire builder set in modern times/post apoc. It may be tricky, but this is the plan so far (it will not aim to be as serious/realistic as total war or the paradox games). Plz comment!

1. Its set in a near future, where a global virus or asteroid or something has reset the world and killed off most humans. The player controls one of several upcoming empires competing for world domination. Some cities remain but in reduced state. Empires are influensed by the world before but new dogmas/religions exist.

2. Its single-player, turnbased. You control cities on the world map which build units and structures.

3. Units form armies and when armies meet (typically to defend or conquer cities) a turn-based battle starts. Battles are played on a grid/board like a simple version of advanced wars or heroes of might and magic. Inf, tank, artillery, choppers etc are moved around on the grid and attack the enemy. Inf are stronger in forest/urban tiles etc. I know, this is NOT how modern war are actually conducted (armies meeting in "line battles"), but i hope the player can accept this anyway as it makes fun gameplay.

4. There is also long range bombing, firing missiles, bioweapons etc, this is handled from the map (not during battles).

5. 4 resources.
a. Funds. Pay for most things. Earn from taxes, mining, agriculture etc
b. Fuel. Needed for mid/top level vehicles (tanks, aircrafts). Earn from cities with drilling or synthetic factories.
c. Power. Needed for structures. Produced by powerplants in your cities. For simplicity, power balance is empire-wide.
d. Tech/Development. Unlocks units/structures and bonuses.

6. Managing cities is a big part of gameplay. Setting taxes, managing order, corruption etc. Im not sure how to handle production. An idea:
a. Infantry units available to recruit is generated by strcutures ("barracks"). Once available, ordered infanty units always take 1 turn to recruit.They have their own training cue. This works as in medieval 2: total war.
b. Most vehicles are built in "military factories". Each one has production (like 40p/turn). A tank may take 20p so that city can make two tank units per turn. These items go in a separate "factory cue".
c. Structures should have their own cue. It feels wrong to mix with military production. Maybe fixed time: like a "large barracks" always takes 2 turns?

.

Thoughts? Both on the setting/lack of realism and the mechanics presented.

Thanks!
Erik

Thoughts? Both on the setting/lack of realism and the mechanics presented.

 

You may have found something you can work with. the setting doesn't limit you the way some settings can.

The "line of battle" would be the only concern, but if the gameplay is good, abstraction is ok. 

remember that the strategy game in total war (one of the 2 games i play the most) is actually a strategic game of public order maintenance cleverly hidden under a  killer war game engine.  sort of like simcity - keep 'em happy.    increased game difficulty reduces the amount of public order bonus you get, with a separate setting for combat AI difficulty.

For a post apocalypse setting I'd prefer to see a smaller scale. Not much of an apocalypse if you still have tanks and helicopters coordinating between cities.

I'd like to see something more tribal. Manage the bunch of survivors in a small town with outposts. Have technology slowly fading, and a key challenge of the game is to replace or work around the increasing unavailability of tech. Underground gas reservoirs will decay after a few years. Most canned food too. No more tobacco unless you can trade. Most machines will start to have mechanical problems. So instead of working UP a tech tree, you would do the opposite.

Think mad max cars powered by pigshit. Tanks replaced by armoured trucks. Guns replaced by crossbows. Loss of metalurgy. Steel replaced by iron. Concrete structures replaced by wood. So by the endgame you've gone from a handful of people with lots of resources to a large tribe of savages under the iron fists of warlords

Well that would be a completely different game:) By all means, make that game, but this will be an empire builder on global scale. Think risk meets hearts of iron meets total war.

Ps.
Not all post-apocalypse has to be fallout-style. A plague wiping out 80 % of earths population would be a true disaster, but there would be settlements after it still.

On 6/8/2017 at 2:37 PM, suliman said:

meets hearts of iron

is that the one that "Commander the Great War" uses the engine from? IE basically a computerized turn-based, hex maps and unit counters style tabletop war game? i've only heard of hearts of iron but have the great war, panzer corps, panzer general, blitzkrieg, panzerblitz, and panzer leader.

RTS style realtime combat as opposed to turn-based hex map wargame style combat might be cool. the code changes required are trivial. the map actually becomes easier to implement if you're doing true hex maps (1). just a thought. you'd have to try it out to be sure.

one thing to look out for in realtime god games though, if the player can accelerate time enough, they seem to tend to become boring. instead of sweating over every engagement, you sort of deploy and wait and see. i'm talking really fast here - insanely fast. like a RTT where the whole thing is over in a matter of seconds. I've noticed this in RTTs i've worked on. The same would apply to the combat portion of RTSs.

(1) you can just use a high resolution 2d array - say 10x the resolution of the hex map - with no need for hex style movement and adjacency code.