19 hours ago, Daniel13 said:

Are adding money and separating inspiration and influence good ideas to implement?

Your ideas are good, and you should have more faith in yourself. You should prototype the game system; a paper prototype should help you refine your ideas. 

24 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

Your ideas are good, and you should have more faith in yourself. You should prototype the game system; a paper prototype should help you refine your ideas. 

Thank you very much! Will try :)

Just brain storming here...

An adventure game where M. G. short for M. Gandhi goes on an epical adventure to promote the hot topic of non violence (80's seller mentality for platform game).

History based game like Myst or riven where quests must be solved trough puzzles. Reward for the puzzles in game whise must be stimulating to maintain engagement. 

Strategy game where instead of fighting you replace it with non violence you instead of attack go to talks with your opponent ... but fun is the key here these must be serious and "Monty Python" silly.

Is this a good idea?
Gameplay will be based on working with active population. This means that we can add different "states" to provinces. Like, people in Bombay may dislike the idea of buying only British goods. But they are not active and the player can inspire them to change the situation by spending different resources. The player can also spread other ideas (like, using different non-violent methods) and add different "states" to population.

On 8/16/2019 at 4:25 PM, Daniel13 said:

is it possible to make such a game exciting and interesting enough?

Yes and why not. The reality is that such games are need of the hour.

Farming, Shop Management Sim, Puzzles, Music, etc.

The list honestly goes on.

I don't understand where you get a strategy game has to be about politics or war.

On 8/16/2019 at 6:25 AM, Daniel13 said:

"Ok", I thought, "why not create a game based on something entirely different? Like, let's make a game about Gandhi and non-violence!". And I started creating it.

You just said you thought strategy games are about politics or war.  Gandhi was a huge political figure and was, unfortunately, surrounded around a lot of violence.

Farming is strategic since you have to plot your crops in good positions, harvest them at certain times, combat disease, etc.

Shop management is strategic where you have to make sure your workers are well paid, keep their mood up, make the shop's layout efficient, make sure customer reviews are good, etc.

Good evening everybody!
Yes, I'm still fighting against the game-design issues of my old game about India.

What I realized is that I've the following general problems:

1. Hard to create a core-loop. Basically, I have a feeling I should somehow create a mechanic that would allow the player to gain resources in an interesting way and then spend them. This could be the core mechanic but I've got no idea about how to make it interesting because simply clicking on buttons that add +1 resource time for -1 of another type is… boring
2. The map has provinces that are rather generic. I thought they could be the source of resources but I think I've to make them unique somehow. Or simply get rid of provinces at all?
3. What should be challenging. Right now I have an idea that the main challenge of the game should be balancing between parameters. But again it sounds rather boring
   
   So, all these problems, I believe, have a common source - my lack of understanding what should the game core gameplay look like.
   So, how do I invent it?
   
   Thanks in advance!

Daniel13 said:
I have a feeling I should somehow create a mechanic that would allow the player to gain resources in an interesting way and then spend them. This could be the core mechanic but I've got no idea about how to make it interesting because simply clicking on buttons that add +1 resource time for -1 of another type is… boring

I would say resources are usually the means to achieve the goal. In RTS, harvesting stuff isn't the goal but you need it to achieve anything in the game.

You can make resources the goal if you have reach some huge number of them to win. No idea if that is interesting.

In both cases, the collecting/spending process itself is indeed not very interesting as you said, basically just book-keeping. So make it automatic, and shift attention of the user to increasing the amount or the rate of getting them, and/or how to make spening the resources effective or more effective.

Daniel13 said:
The map has provinces that are rather generic. I thought they could be the source of resources but I think I've to make them unique somehow.

Have more than one type of resource where provinces are good at one and less good at another. These could shift during game play. If you connect an opponent to some provinces, that might open interesting options??

Daniel13 said:
What should be challenging. Right now I have an idea that the main challenge of the game should be balancing between parameters. But again it sounds rather boring

I think politics are far from boring. In a democracy, every politician is playing the balancing game, give the opponent some room as well but not too much. What I find most interesting is the long-term consequences. You push now, and it back-fires several years later. This is especially the case in geo-politics.

“Sounds boring” is mostly about how you bring it. A new user doesn't know how the game works, a big part of playing a game is finding that out (at least for me). Obviously, you shouldn't tell the user the winning tactic. Give an array of tools he/she can use, and let him/her figure out the path to victory.

Note that as a designer, you have more knowledge about the game than any user. Thus what may seem trivial to you may be much less trivial to your users.

Daniel13 said:
So, all these problems, I believe, have a common source - my lack of understanding what should the game core gameplay look like. So, how do I invent it?

Stop desiging and make an actual game perhaps? You can forever toss around ideas and concepts. Instead, make a choice, and stick with it to something playable. Then you can give the game to other people and get feedback about that choice.

@Alberth thanks a lot for your support!
Well, you are right. I will try to stop designing constantly and will try to make something more material.
I think I will be able to improve some aspects of the prototype right during the process. Maybe will post some kind of a report here when I've some progress.
Thanks again!