Theorycraft: Alevice's Custom Melee

Something I have never really liked about Warcraft 3, is how little unique from each other the playable races are. For the most part, they are conformed of the same structure, with a small glimpse of racial identity to add a little of flavor to each; I believe this similiraties is what makes balancing just a matter of number fiddling.

The purpose of this project is pretty much make a set of palyable races/factions that are diverse enough to provide each of them a unique flavor, and make balancing be a matter of identity tweaking.

Without further ado, let's list each of these factions:

Humans
Tentative Faction Name: The Holy Order of the Crusaders of the Concealed Rose
Brief Description: This faction is kind of remniscient of the ancient empires, in particular the Chinese and the Romans. It should reflect fast expansionism, technological progress, labour exploitation, xenophobia under the guise of humanism, and a zealously religion. Armies should be large, resembling plagues.

Racial Identity: Bases would be managed under the concept of cities. At the start of a match, a base would resemble a rather feeble encampment, which would be eventually promoted, until it becomes a vast metropolis. To enforce the concept, structures close to each other would provide a defensive sinergy, echoing periodic maintenace.

Houses would automatically deploy civilians at a given rate, whom are rather weak on its initial stage, but serve quite well as support workers, who can assist dedicated workers in constructing and repairing structures in the vicinity. Each civilian can be specialized in the battlefield to either offense (swordsmen, etc) or support (clerics, etc). Offense by itself is not terribly powerful, but support units can cause an impact on its effectiveness.

Since anything resembling sorcery is the product of the devil, humans have a type of unit called the mageslayer, who can wreak havoc with several lowly tactics, like disarming opponents and laying traps.

Once the city has progressed, humans have access to a few machinery, like huge ranged siege machines (designed specifically for building razing), and heavy transport.

If enough devotion is put into religion, a city can summon from the Heavens one of the two immortal (even gameplay wise) demigods, whose main purpose is to inspire your units into fight for the empire.



Undead
Tentative Faction Name: The Restless Dreamers
Brief Description: This faction is remnisicent of those secretives cults to the Death. It should reflect methodicism and perseverance. Armies are significantly smaller, but considerably thougher.

Racial Identity: Bases would be rather sparse, as most of their structures are just small underground cloisters that rise to the surface to support the units in the battlefield, which become rather fragile due to the exposition of sunlight. The HQ would be a huge tomb of sorts, that actually is the encased amalgamation of souls of those that have submitted their lives to the cult, acting as a sort of hive mind. Said HQ would be the one of actually raising the structres of the ground, disregarding any sort of worker unit per se.

Units would be deployed directly in the battlefield, by means of imbuing dead bodies with relics appreciated by those encased souls, who would be in the task of reanimating said corpses.

The HQ would eventualy rise from the ground, becoming a massive siege vehicle. Destroying the building in either form (stationary or mobile) would actually expose the souls, debilitating all the units and structures in the battlefield, but giving the chance of reassembling the tomb to protect themselves again, assuming they do not dissipate before.


Beasts
Tentative Faction Name: Animal Circus
Brief Description: This faction is remniscient of those barbaric nomadic animators. It should reflect domination and brutality. Armies are medium size, but will consist of large beasts at the service of tamers.

Racial Identity: Bases should reflect farms and circus carpets, which means a little of hravseting and such that has not been defined well yet.

Beasts have to be 'domesticated' in order to deply them, so the tamers can control them in the battelfield. All of the units, even workers, are quite strong, and can open severe wounds on opponents, making them bleed to death. They are also classified under the follwing groups: mammals, aquatic fauna, flyers and reptiles.

Eventually, access to one of four mythical beasts, each representing an aforementioned animal group, can be obtained, which additionally provide large bonuses for said groups.


Spare Gameplay Mechanics
One of my goals is to reduce resource recollection, automatizing as much as possible. Alas, i still haven't defined a consistent mechanic across the faction taht I am happy with.

Other of my goals is to discard mana and substitute it for a morale system, which has different effects on each faction once it is depleted: Humans would succumb to terror, and will have significantly increased movement speed, and reduced attack speed and accuracy; Undead would drain necroplasma, which would leav them on a state of hibernation, completely immobile, but with increased armor due to Rigor Mortis; and Beasts would rebel their masters and attack everything on sight, with the added posibility another player using beasts can gain control over it.

I want to replace as much the hero system. Currently I have in mind a single commander unit for each race, who will be in charge of crucial tasks, live reanimating and keep beasts on check.

I'm still conceptualizing what would be ideal for a fourth race. I am contemplating demons, who would be summoned and sustained by a sacrifice system, or perhaps some interdimensional beings, who would always come in a fixed amount of units, who can constantly change their role by morphing and dimension phasing.




Some of the key concepts are already implemented in a map that resembles more a crude draft. I am still a little paranoid of releasing it to the public, so I would prefer to give it via email or pm to anyone who wants to see it.

I really want as much feedback as I can get, as I believe this thing could be rather fun to play if i ever finish it.

I dont think this quite accomplishes what you meant to do. You seem to be getting lost in the woods with a lot of random ideas, but no consistant gameplay charactristics to speak of. (hell, you dont even have your recources planned out except for this "morale" thing.)

That aside, the human race seems like it'd own face unless rushed right at the beginning. They get a whole city, loads of free units, demigod, heaps of dope shit. Undead get one building and stuff that... raises? I have no idea what you even mean by that!~

This here "theorycraft" is nothing more then ramblings, no coherent ideas, not a game design.

Basically. What erwt said. there's a few interesting ideas here, but this isn't a theory, this is ramblings, random ideas you've thrown together to see what would happen. This is like the hypothesis for a game, and it needs considerable examination, testing and modification before it can become a proper outline.

Well, the singular Hero idea reminds me a bit of Supreme Commander.

The Beast/Cirucs idea is lame. Sorry to be blunt, but who the hell wants to play as a Cirucsmaster, or clown, against an army of the undead? Well, you might get people like that, but I'm sure they don't play WC3...

Undead race has possibilities, but you would be well served by doing some research into death- and doomsday cults. Like their practices, what they believe, how they recruit people, etc. It would also expand your scope of buildable structres - things like covenant halls were civilians are lure and then slaughtered, to be raised as some for of undead; safe houses that look like normal neutral/civilian structures, but can be used to store/stockpile cultists and undead creepies; haunted woods where units are sacrificed Acolyte/Shade style (have certain map regions with a unique resource point - like a Gold Mine-ish structre - that the undead Entangle/Haunt to create the Haunted Woods); etc

As resource point, you could have things like Mines for gold, but also neutral structures like Taverns and Gambling Dens. These structres would then function like an Entangled Gold Mine - you send a unit into it, and it keeps on generating small amounts of gold as long as it is in the Tavern/Gambling Den. A simple trigger would then restore a certain amount of gold to the Tavern/Den at regular intervals - eg at sunset - to provide a constant flow of resources.

As for lumber harvesting, long-term play would require something like a Forester that can go to de-forested areas and regrow trees. With triggers, it won't be too difficult, and it would be greatly beneficial to long-term continuity.

Have more ideas, but am hunting for AvP resources atm. Send me a PM if you want to chat more.
Or just keep this thread alive.