Journal Short Circuit's Journal: Macrogame Update 5
I came up with a name for my game: Macrogame. Not particularly creative, but it's at least descriptive.
What I wrote yesterday has been changed slightly. Rather than discerning between citizens and military, you only have citizens, but they may be of a variety of classes. (Spartans? What is your profession?) This is due to a friend's insistence that he be able to use hoards of civilians as shields.
I also began to devise an alternate combat system for cases when there is an insufficient number of people interested in the hack-and-slash side of gameplay:
As it happens, there are four basic combat modifiers: Melee attack and defense, Ranged attack and defense, medic and scouting. Scouting aids offensive actions, while medic resources aid defense. Each class has its own set of each of these modifiers.
The cycle of combat between two sides (A&B) plays as thus: (Side A is whoever has the higher Scouting score)
- Side A sums up all of the Ranged Attack Scores for all of its characters, and adds its scouting score sum.
- Side B sums up all of the Ranged Defense Scores for all of its characters, and adds its medic score sum.
- Side B's sum is subtracted from Side A's sum, and the resulting value (if positive) represents a damage score to be applied to Side B.
- Side B loses characters depending on the damage score. (Not yet sure of the exact system, but it will likely pick off characters with low ranged defenses first.)
- Side B sums up all of the Ranged Attack Scores for all of its remaining characters, and adds its scouting score sum.
- Side A sums up all of the Ranged Defense Scores for all of its characters, and adds its medic score sum.
- Side A's sum is subtracted from Side B's sum, and the resulting value (if positive) represents a damage score to be applied to Side A.
- Side B loses characters depending on the damage score. (Again, not yet sure of the system, but characters with low ranged scores will likely be picked off first.)
- Side A sums up all of the Melee Attack Scores for all of its remaining characters, and adds its scouting score sum.
- Side B sums up all of the Melee Defense Scores for all of its remaining characters, and adds its medic score sum.
- Side B's sum is subtracted from Side A's sum, and the result (if positive) represents a damage score to be applied to Side B.
- Side B sums up all of the Melee Attack Scores for all of its remaining characters, and adds its scouting score sum.
- Side A sums up all of the Melee Defense Score for all of its remaining characters, and adds its medic score sum.
- Side A's sum is subtracted from Side B's sum, and the result (if positive) represents a damage score to be applied to Side B.
- The battle is over for this turn.
Hopefully, that makes sense.
Here's a preliminary list of modifiers: (Needs to be tested, then likely changed.)
All modifiers are positive, and add to a base score of 1.
Class: (Melee Attack/Melee Defense) (Range Attack/Ranged Defense) (Medic) (Scout)
Commoner: (0/0) (0/0) 0 1 -- Not good for much. But nobody notices a commoner, so they might get a small benefit to scouting.
Adept: (1/1) (0/1) 0 2 -- Has access to some minor spells (such as dancing lights, light, flare and ghost sound) that can benefit both combat and scouting.
Expert: (0/0) (0/0) 2 2 -- I'm assuming a trained medic and scout.
Warrior: (2/2) (2/2) 0 2 -- Cheap combat unit.
Barbarian: (5/3) (0/5) 0 0 -- Rage grants a benefit to melee attack, but a detriment to melee defense.
Bard: (2/2) (2/2) 2 5 -- His music inspires everyone to do their job better. Plus, he can go into town ahead of everyone, sing a few songs, and get people to tell him things. So he's something of a scout.
Cleric: (3/5) (0/5) 10 0 -- Traditional healer, with a bit of fighting ability.
Druid: (5/5) (0/2) 0 5 -- Some combat and scouting potential. Not sure how this class fits in to the overall environment, though. May be removed later.
Fighter: (10/10) (5/5) 2 0 -- More powerful combat unit.
Monk: (10/10) (0/5) 5 5 -- Walking death. Knows healing herbs. Not so great at range.
Paladin: (10/10) (5/5) 3 0 -- Kinda like a fighter, but able to perform better healing.
Ranger: (5/5) (15/5) 5 15 -- Good with a bow, and an awesome scout. Also knows how to heal.
Rogue: (5/5) (5/5) 0 20 -- Nobody can ferret out information like a rogue.
Wizard: (0/5) (20/5) 0 0 -- Magic missile, fireball...A wizard with the right spells, at the right distance, is deadly. Scry would be helpful for scouting, but I left it out.
Some final details on macro play:
It's known that land produces food, and that the population consumes it. The population grows by 10% per year if 100% of food demand is met. Population growth drops by 10% per year per 20% below 100% food demand satisfaction. So between 80& and 99% food demand satisfaction, population growth is stagnant. Between 60% and 79% food demand satisfaction, the population shrinks by 10% per year. Between 40% and 59% food demand satisfaction, the population shrinks by 20% per year. And so on. (If you don't feed them at all, don't investigate how the few remaining survive...you don't want to know.)
In times of starvation, I give the player the happy choice of deciding which groups begin to die off. Do the commoners die first, the minor military units, or the top brass? Just something to think about.
I haven't given any thought to how much it will cost to train a level 1 unit of each class, but I did decide that any unit that survives a battle automatically gains a level. I haven't decided how that might affect their combat bonuses for the alternate battle mode.
Other name suggestions (Score:2)
Metagame or Multigame also seem somewhat appropriate.
You've probably already thought of this, but there should be additional reasons why Commoners exist. My thought is that a "die roll" will often result in an individual who doesn't have enough skill points to be anything else.
Demographics (Score:1)
male: infant, adult, old
female: infant, adult, old
Every turn, a percentage of infants would become adult, and a percentage would become old, and a percentage of old people would die. You don't need to administrate every person to get a reasonably accurate demographic.
The population growth would depend mainly on the number of adult females, and the military strength mainly on the number of adult males.
Non-adult people wo
Re: (Score:1)
I'm assuming the existence of youth and elderly...but neither is productive, nor do they reproduce. Since those are the only two factors I care about, I'm comfortable ignoring both demographics.
Perhaps in subsequent revisions, I'll add demographics, but it's not necessary for now.
Re: (Score:1)
Still, demographics will make the game more interesting:
If you were in a bad war recently, you'll have few adult males left, but you might still have lots of infants, and you'll get a larger population growth in the adult male demographic than you'd get if you just had one generic population counter.
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