Here is a brief excerpt from my Design Treatment for a RTS that I have been designing in my free time. I propose a RTS that is purely strategy and does not require the player to be directly responsible for gathering resources. Here it is:

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is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game that follows the genre of games such as Command & Conquer, C&C:Red Alert, Starcraft and most recently, Cossacks and Empire Earth. Although is an RTS much of the game play will be borrowed from a Turn Based Strategy (TBS) game. Empire was, in the late 1980''s, one of the games that made war gaming cool. It had a Play by email (PBEM) feature that allowed players to play against opponents from around the world. The game play that will borrow from Empire is the manner in which you ''collected'' resources. In today''s RTS games you gather resources, such as Food, Stone, Wood and Gold with peasants or non-military units. In Empire wealth or resources were not gathered but ''awarded'' to the player based on the population of his empire. The number of citizens had a direct impact on the amount of taxes that you collected (or something to that affect). will distribute resources in a similar manner. will create a government (possibly the player will select the form of government) that will track the players actions and the number of citizens that belong to the empire. Other factors will be applied to the calculation and then at the end of each fiscal year the player will be given a budgeted amount of money with which he can build new weapons, enlist more troops etc. The player will not build new citizens. The citizens will be created based on the conditions such as, economic, social, political. Essentially the citizens will procreate much in the way that citizens in the real world do and for the same reasons. will be Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven in many aspects. As you have seen above the Government and the citizens will be AI driven. The player will command units that are AI driven as well. Another element of Empire that will borrow is the ability to set patrol routes for tanks, ships and aircraft. The way it works is like this: You decide you want to guard an area around a port – place a few of you ships into a group and then select the start and end points of the patrol. The group of ships will move from the start to the end and back again. This group (or single unit) will continue to patrol until given orders to perform another action or when it detects enemy action. Most every element of a traditional RTS is present. The one missing element of the traditional RTS is micro-management or collection of resources. Typically the player has to create a special unit to mine or harvest resources. My ideal of a Real Time Strategy game is strategy. The collection of resources isn’t necessarily strategy. As stated above the player’s performance determines the budget that he is awarded for the next year.

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I know there are many debates concerning too much MM in RTSes or too little - I think what I propose is an alternative to MM or at least the part that I don''t like Dak Lozar
Elysian Productions, Inc.

I like the idea - sort of like SimCity meets C&C. Fiscal year seems like a long time. What about building in a private sector? Governments take loans too - except they call them bonds.

Might consider different political-economic forms for each of the different players - democratic-republics, constitutional monarchies, authoritarian police states, etc.

A study of history shows that those nations with the largest economic capacity tend to win at wars - take WWI for example - it was a stalemate until the US got involved and was able to throw more "stuff" at Germany than the English or French were able to.

History also shows that military expenditures can quickly become over stretched and often drain the economic capacity of a nation. Look to the taxation histories of England and France for examples of that.

Collecting resources does have a strategic aspect - consider the imbalances that occur in more rts games - not enough wood, can''t build a factory, not enough food, can''t build most units - part of the game involves adequately preparing for defense and offsense through a balanced acquisition of resources. And taking out an opponents resource gatherers is often a useful tactic at least.

quote: Original post by LessBread
I like the idea - sort of like SimCity meets C&C. Fiscal year seems like a long time. What about building in a private sector? Governments take loans too - except they call them bonds.
<SNIP>

Yea, maybe it is somewhat like SimCity meets C&C
The fiscal year wouldn''t be that long - maybe something like 10 game minutes or some factor of the game speed (fast, medium, slow). I have not thought of the private sector aspect... good point.

quote:
Collecting resources does have a strategic aspect - consider the imbalances that occur in more rts games - not enough wood, can''t build a factory, not enough food, can''t build most units - part of the game involves adequately preparing for defense and offsense through a balanced acquisition of resources. And taking out an opponents resource gatherers is often a useful tactic at least.

You are correct. My dislike of collecting resources has engulphed much of my thought processes here. But, like in the game Empire, land is the resource. Not just land but cities on the land. At the start of the game there are a couple of cities that are already placed. These cities have a population of citizens and the ability to manufacture weapons and they have a starting bank account. The players are placed in one of the starting cities and from there go out and try to ''acquire'' the other cities on the map... So, there is a resource aspect, it''s just shorter. I don''t want to fail to mention that you can take over an opponents city... in most RTSes you destroy the enemy cities - what I have planned is a take-over of people and thier ability to manufacture weapons.

It should also be said that this game will most likely be set in some modern era like present or ~1940.





Dak Lozar
Elysian Productions, Inc.

I have but one request: Units have to be able to move through each other! (j/k, if you played Empire you know what I mean)

I like the idea. I kind of envision a real-time Civilization. One thing I''d add would be resource disparities. I know Empire didn''t do this, but it might be cool to have certain cities that were better "prizes" than others. This would promote asymmetrical empires, and (more like Panzer General) fights around key cities.

What about resource loss when cities are fought over? Say, a city that might produce 10 resource points, if shelled into the ground, only produces 1 or 2 for the next few turns until rebuilt. This might allow different strategies and units: for instance, maybe you could use spies to overthrow the city; or practice a scorched earth policy of destroying cities and withdrawing.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

If land is the only resource, then how can a losing side possibly hope to turn the tide of war? Sure, you can try to run your actual battles better than the other guy, but that only works if the imbalance between the two sides'' is still small. If one side holds significantly more territory than the other, then it won''t matter how good your battle tactics are, the war just becomes an unstoppable landslide.
Which is not to say that a resource model such as this cannot work. You just need to take issues like these into consideration, and build in something that hinders the side with more territory. It needn''t seem like an arbitrary and unrealistic hindrance either; in the real world, armies that hold a lot of territory must cope with communication diffulties, maintaining long supply lines to the front lines, etc.

quote: Original post by Wavinator
I have but one request: Units have to be able to move through each other! (j/k, if you played Empire you know what I mean)
<SNIP>

*BIG GRIN* Yea, I remember that - No worries Wavy! SoW will allow 1024 units per tile

quote:
What about resource loss when cities are fought over? Say, a city that might produce 10 resource points, if shelled into the ground, only produces 1 or 2 for the next few turns until rebuilt. This might allow different strategies and units: for instance, maybe you could use spies to overthrow the city; or practice a scorched earth policy of destroying cities and withdrawing.
<SNIP>

Good ideal... One other item that I was thinking about is when you capture a city - maybe there is some span of time in which the citizens are not as productive - simulating the dislike or distrust that they have in the new government. That could be interesting.

I will post a link to the full treatment in a few days... for nothing more than discussion.



Dak Lozar
Elysian Productions, Inc.

quote: Original post by Plasmadog
If land is the only resource, then how can a losing side possibly hope to turn the tide of war? Sure, you can try to run your actual battles better than the other guy, but that only works if the imbalance between the two sides'' is still small. If one side holds significantly more territory than the other, then it won''t matter how good your battle tactics are, the war just becomes an unstoppable landslide.

Your assumptions are correct - but only in the end game situation. The start and middle portions of the game will determine the end game situation. And my comment to this is that if you think about it... that''s how wars usually end.

quote:
Which is not to say that a resource model such as this cannot work. You just need to take issues like these into consideration, and build in something that hinders the side with more territory. It needn''t seem like an arbitrary and unrealistic hindrance either; in the real world, armies that hold a lot of territory must cope with communication diffulties, maintaining long supply lines to the front lines, etc.

I do agree with you completely... This will take place durring the middle and end game situations. The army with the largest land mass to defend must be sufficiently large enough to defend its borders - or at the very least the major cities.

Land is not the only resource... cities are the real resource and should be defended by all means.

Another bit of info:
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The type of units and the speed at which a city can manufacture them is determined by the location of the city. If a city is located near water (specifically a river that leads to an ocean or on an ocean) can build ships. This is really another adaptation from the game Empire.
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If you can''t tell I really liked the game Empire My ex-wife and I used to play the hell out of the game. I will try to find some links to sites that have information directly related to the game and place them on my site. I think the designer/programmer was Mark Baldwin???

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

While I see how difficult it would be to model the real world - a couple of things about resource gathering in rts games that seem phony to me are the lack of supply lines. Take AOE for example - to shorten the distance that workers travel one builds a ''helper'' building near the resource and then the resource immediately transfers to the central bank. Whereas in the real world, the ''helper'' building would only constitute the first step on a long journey to the eventual product. From the forest, to the truck, to the mill, to the furniture factory, to the store, etc... Of course, putting all that into a game would likely make the game take too long and turn out boring.

Another thing about rts''s that seems phony is that when defending a city - errant missles don''t produce any damage to one''s city like they would in the real world - anti-aircraft fire that misses has to come down on something, a patriot missles that misses hitting a scud still lands on something. Defending one''s city ought to have some costs associated with it too.

But I see your overall point and dislike for resource gathering in rts games. It seems like too much time is spent building and not enough on fighting. If you can come up with a solution, you''ll be onto something big - no doubt.




But truth''''s a menace, science a public danger. Aldous Huxley

Are there more than two players involved? If so you could have trading between cities which might reduce any resource imbalances. Also a losing player could make alliances and redress his situation.

quote: Original post by Crydee
Are there more than two players involved?

Yes, I have been planning for up to 8 players - any combination (4 Human + 4 AI or 2 Human + 6 AI or 1 Human + 1 AI : I think you get the picture).

quote:
If so you could have trading between cities which might reduce any resource imbalances. Also a losing player could make alliances and redress his situation.

Here is another snippet from my doc...

Another element missing from the RTS genre is diplomacy. SoW will allow for political victories.
This diplomacy will allow for trade between your allied players...

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser