Royal Empires

Three Royal families lie within their castles, looking out at the lands before them. Lands which could be theirs, if they chose. Lands that should be theirs. Through war and peace, diplomacy and subversion, they shall sieze what is theirs.

But another empire lurks, its power growing. It looks on greedily at the lands; it cares not for the people, nor the towns. Only for the land. The towns shall be swept away, as the families bicker in their meaningless conflicts.

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Royal Empires is a map based around three royal families carving out their empires. Each empires has at any one time three male heirs, who will gain control of the kingdom in turn as each king dies.

There are two main resources: gold, and recruits. Both come mainly from towns and hamlets, which can be captures, but recruits do not carry through income turns, while gold does (but about 12% of gold is lost each income turn due to corruption - this is to stop gold building up). Gold is also used as upkeep for units, with at present town watches requiring only 1, normal units 2, and cavalry 3. Gold is also looted from the corpses of fallen foes, in small amounts.

There is also horses and iron. Horses are needed for cavalry, and iron is needed for more powerful units. The main source of each is from horse stables and iron mines, which can be captured, but they will also be obtainable from trade with each other, when at peace.

Towns, hamlets, horse stables, iron mines and castle can be captured by melee infantry, so long as they are neutral. Those controlled by the enemy must first have the enemy driven out (by heavily damaging it) before it can be captured. The neutral buildings are dotted around the map, and are displayed as neutral buildings on the mini-map.

Combat system in place is my one hit/no damage combat system for most units. There shall be a bonus to armour for defending, alongside the advantages of walls, and there shall be a global morale system across the map. A happier people will have better fighting troops and produce more gold and recruits.

I'm planning on having a class of units in the aristocracy, as well. Only a limited amount available (1/hamlet, 3/town?), but would provide small AoE auras and be powerful units. I'm also thinking about having mercanaries, with the possibility of having one player a hirable mercanary player, with units that can be upgraded using gold, potentially making them the most powerful non-aristocratic/hero units on the map.

I'm also planning on putting in a system of supplies, but I may make this an option for the map. This would entail having supply wagons on patrol between the supply centre in the main base, and each town/hamlet/castle, with supply wagons possibly losing small amounts of supplies on route (so places further away would require more frequent resupply). Of course, these could be intercepted and destroyed, but a well supplied town/hamlet/castle would be happier, and would also provide a greater bonus to nearby units.

I plan to make diplomacy an important thing as well. The barbarian empire will permamently be at war with everyone, and unable to trade, but they will be stronger than the other three teams, and will gain in strength over time. This will give an incentive to the other teams to deal with them quickly. However, doing that would mean expending troops on a war with them, and so not expand as quickly and not be as able to defend your own borders. This would leave you open to one of the houses not fighting the barbarian empire, and so thus they would have a decisive upper hand against the other two. However, the other two could then form an alliance against the one that didn't fight, and stand a pretty good chance of winning.

Diplomacy will also be linked back into happiness of the empire. So if you decide to make an agreement, it would be best for morale to stick to it, especially if it is sealed by the marrying off of a daughter (which incidently would give the player who marries off the daughter a watcher in the enemy base, but would give a happines bonus to the one accepting the daughter in marraige; but if they decide to kill her to stop the vision, or she accidently died, then the people under that family would become unhappy, because no one likes to be under a murderous family, do they?).

CURRENT PROGRESS:

Basic layout of the map; basic system in place, and basic units.

Still to do:

- More units. (aristocracy? mercanaries?)
- Supplies.
- Morale.
- Diplomacy.
- Trade.
- Family.

This sounds cool. I love maps like this. Shame most bnet morons are below it :)

It sounds brilliant but, it is just going to be 3 players?

Ahh, did I not explain that? No, not really.

At present, I'm going to have 3 players in each Royal family, who will play as male members of the Royal family. The 'king' shall have overall control of the majority of the forces, and the other two shall have smaller, yet still sizeable, forces under their command. The king shall start off as red, but when his hero dies (which may be due to natural causes - eventually all heroes die, but as they age this probability will increase), then the person with the next oldest hero in the family shall become 'king', and get overal control of the army.

There will also be, probably, two people controlling the barbarian empire, and possibly a last person who may be a mercanary captain, who can be hired by the three royal families.

Make sure you do a pink Barbarian to get Tim's vote.

Afraid not. Grey and dark green will be barbarians (or possibly dark green and brown).

Offtopic again, but you could implement a player colour changer for any players called 'Tim' :)

Anyway, back to work.