Ideas for the scenario editor.

I have waited for it for a long time and here it is and it's pretty awesome but there are some features I would like to see added in the future. Of course there is a lot bugs to work out first but after those it's time to improve!

[Small Additions]

1. Ability to force all of the match settings. It's great that I can change and force victory conditions and starting money but that is not nearly enough, I would like to have all of the settings like the "100 additional cities" or "chance of rare units."

2. Make all of the colors available. It's not a huge problem but I would like to set the team colors from a larger variety, I know there is a lot more to choose from, I just can't get to the colors I want without using some of the colors first.

3. Fix some annoying things about capitals and teams. You can't change them easily after you have made your choice, to change a capital city of a player you have to disable the capital country and make all of the other countries neutral again, then enable the capital country so that you can see the flag over the city and then change the rest of the neutral countries back.

And if you wan't to change the number of teams after some time, you can only do so if you remove every single player in the game and have to basically start all over again. It's not a game breaker but it's so damn annoying that when you get this neat idea where you need a new team, you can't do if you don't start again from the beginning.

4. Possibility to just disable a single city, not just the whole country.

[New Features]

1. More victory conditions. Like "Assassinate the General" or "Move your General to your enemies capital" and "Defend this city until the last turn". It will add some more flexibility to the core game experience and add some choices and variety to scenarios. I have some very interesting ideas for these kind of objectives that I would like to try out in the editor.

2. Victory conditions that differ depending on the player. I would like to set different objectives to different players. For an example, other one could have the objective "Defend this city until the last turn" and the one "Capture this city". This would add some great possibilities for us who like to tinker and balance our custom gameplay to the maximum.

3. More event-types. Not just adding more units, and even that feature is very limited because you can't use rare units with it. How about capturing countries for a team. Or disabling some? I want the battlefield to feel like something but I can't achieve this just by adding more units.

4. Passive changes to the gameplay and locking out certain strategies. For an example. If I wan't to make a scenario that is much slower paced than the normal matches, It would certainly help me if I could add a passive status change to the game, like all units have -2 movement all the time. Right now I have to use event created defense lines to slow down the game and even that is not 100% proof way because people can just use a strategy to make the defense lines a strong attacking force and invade on the very first turn when that is exactly what I don't want so if I could choose what strategies people can use while playing this scenario would help me very much in designing them.

5. Not just global events. Right now the events are something I like to call global events. It means that the event itself is not meant for just one player even if only one of the players gets something out of it. Everyone can see the description. I wan't to have events that differ depending on who you are playing so that the event is only for you. It has it's own description and you can have it at the same time as the other players events.

Oh and that is another thing.

6. Multiple events per week. This is so needed right now. If I want to make a lot of things happen on the very first turn or some other turn at the same time. I have to fill the changes to the one event the editor gives me and if I wan't to change something I have to do it with this one event only when I could just change the things from an event I made especially for this one change. Please add this some day?

[Huge Features]

These are features that I know are probably way too big to add, at least anytime soon but I still wan't to tell about them because I think it would make a big difference to the game if it would be possible some day.

1. Dynamic events. Not just events that give you something or take something away from you. Events that have their own objectives that need to be done if you want the event to go off. Events that have multiple outcomes depending on how fast you did the task or if you did it at all or maybe someone else did it before you and you were too slow. A feature like this would change the way scenarios are played immensely and would give players basically an infinite amount of content to play.

2. Changing single city and country stats like reinforcements, income and population. This is a massive feature but it would help people like me and others who are interested in making the best scenario possible. Right now the balancing work is pretty hard to do because you can't change anything but what countries you have and the rate of reinforcements. After those it's just about you and how you can balance things out with events and events in the current state are not the optimal way of doing things. A possible way, yes but horrendously hard and time taking. If we could change some of the bigger factors like reinforcements of certain countries and cities or income, it would help huge amounts, making things easier, faster and then there is no need for such a huge amount of events just for balance.

*sigh* 'nother wall of text... some of this is viable, but pay attention to what everyone else is suggesting, as I am seeing much of the same ideas.

If it was too long for you, no matter right? It's a good thing you don't have to read all this if you don't want to. It's not for you anyway, these are MY suggestions for the future development of this game and even if the developers don't want to read this or any other this kind of post, players who want to share and help them make the game better in anyway are always welcome to share their minds, their ideas.

In my opinion at least. It's not like I'm going to filter my writing just because someone else has a suggestion that is similar to mine, after all isn't that just the way developers find out what the players want the most? Finding out that more than just one person asks for certain missing feature tells a lot how wanted it is.

Scritto da Solidamus, 30.04.2011 at 16:09

... even if the developers don't want to read this or any other this kind of post, players who want to share and help them make the game better in anyway are always welcome to share their minds, their ideas. ...

We have no problems with reading, don't worry. Thanks for the valuable input, we really appreciate the effort. As I said in the other thread, we constantly have to prioritize - thing that make the game more fun and versatile and are also easier to implement obviously get the priority. Other things might have to wait.

Some things that seem minor to you (like being able to force all match settings or change the number of teams) are actually more complicated than what you listed as 'huge' (changing country stats is relatively easy). So don't be upset if some 'minor things' won't be implemented.

Anyway, you have some good ideas there and we will certainly consider them. Thanks!

Ability to restrict units would be good, kind of ruins it to see stealth units in a WW1 scenario or bombers in an ancient warfare one.

Scritto da Mr.Wigglesworth, 01.05.2011 at 19:04

Ability to restrict units would be good, kind of ruins it to see stealth units in a WW1 scenario or bombers in an ancient warfare one.

Working on it. Plus, you'll be able to change pictures and names of all units.