Looking for thoughts on this idea. The game is your basic RTS with building structures and harvesting resources but you start off with a limited number of peasents. Once theyre dead they''re gone for good. You also don''t train warriors or bowmen out of thin air. If you want some warriors you send some peasents to a training ground structure and spend a little ore on weapons and armor (created at a blacksmith) and in a little while they''ll become warriors. Now my problem is I want to see a village grow and expand as the level progresses but I don''t want to start the player out with 50 peasents. Should I go for the somewhat realistic (but unrealistic timespan) Black & White approach with children growing into adults? Or maybe just the ability to recruit new peasents from neutral farms in the surrounding area? Hm..actually I think I decided which I prefer. I just needed to type it out and see it =) Comments are still appreciated though.

quote: Original post by mumboi
You also don''t train warriors or bowmen out of thin air. If you want some warriors you send some peasents to a training ground structure and spend a little ore on weapons and armor (created at a blacksmith) and in a little while they''ll become warriors.

This is exactly what Stronghold does. You have to keep the people of your castle in good spirits towards you in order to recruit them to become soldiers of whatever kind. You might wanna try that game out to get a feel for the system.


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I´d not limit the absolute number of units, a supply system would work far better. If every one of your warriors requires food and supplies in the field, the max size of armies is automatically limited.
I think there´s a new game out (3d rts, japanese setting), i forgot the title, which uses a similar system.

The game is Battle Realms by Liquid. It is an RTS based that train/upgrade units by sending them to the appropriate building to train. It also include a interesting feature that the base peasents require nothing to build and they pops out of townhall every 30 seconds or so. Instead of having player micro, gather the resource, and then "train" the unit, you could just leave all that basic stuffs behind. The game also has another feature that limits down the total units on the field. The AI would count how many units you have on the field and then adjust the peasent growth rate (how many seconds before the next peasent pop out) according to a exponential decay model.

Yup, and it''s such a pretty game too!

George D. Filiotis
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quote: Original post by Mooglez
The game is Battle Realms by Liquid. It is an RTS based that train/upgrade units by sending them to the appropriate building to train. It also include a interesting feature that the base peasents require nothing to build and they pops out of townhall every 30 seconds or so. Instead of having player micro, gather the resource, and then "train" the unit, you could just leave all that basic stuffs behind. The game also has another feature that limits down the total units on the field. The AI would count how many units you have on the field and then adjust the peasent growth rate (how many seconds before the next peasent pop out) according to a exponential decay model.

Interesting... I like this ideal alot. In fact, it''s something that I have been designing myself. How old is this game? I want to check it out.

Regarding the initial poster mumboi :
The way I was planning to do this... in my game. First of all my game really isn''t an RTS and it is What I''m planning to do is with the starting citizens that the player has, economic, social and other factors would determine the "birth rate" of new citizens. Now these new citizens aren''t born babies but after the "gestation period" the new citizen would appear. One of the things I am going to allow is for the player to select the percentage of citizens to be trained as {insert type here}. So, for instance if my birth rate for a given year is 50, I could set it up so that x-percent are trained as archers and x-percent are trained as infantry. The player has full controll over these settings at any time in the game.

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Thanks all.

Mooglez - Downloading demo now (blasted gigex).

Gaiiden - I recently played the stronghold demo but it was pretty frustrating. It''s got too much city sim built in for my tastes (taxes and peasents being displeased, yuck). I might try it again later.

Battle Realms just came out few months ago