J-Dx

Only a few pages off finishing the notes for the last chapter! Can't believe I've nearly finished!!

Quick update: Life is very busy at the moment so I'm only making very slow progress. I'm also just shrugging off a bit of writers' block! But things are moving forward slowly!

Once stamina is added properly terrain could easily be more important. Things like cavalry not being able to charge through forests/swamps, or long distance marching lowering stamina so charges become difficult/impossible. With roads allowing long distance travel without affecting stamina it would provide more tactics and strategy. There's the option of making terrain even more interesting by making ranged units have a shorter range in forested areas if it's not too complex to add. Or formations can't be used in forests. I always find in games that the more you can use terrain to your advantage the more fun it is. If walking along a road, or standing in a forest, makes no difference to the battles then all it will be is eye candy (and resources in the case of trees). What could/should be added out of the many possibilities is the main question though! I'm not sure whether being able to build roads would be used enough to warrant adding. I think I'd prefer them to be already present on certain maps. As long as all maps have a few routes that are good for marching then i think that would do.

Cossacks II uses roads in an interesting way. Might be worth taking a look if this is a serious idea. I liked the way roads worked in that game - namely for marching armies across the map quickly without loss of stamina/morale and then the fighting took place when armies met.

The next chapter has been uploaded, so you should be able to read it now! Progress may slow a little from here as there are more characters and plot lines to keep track of! I'm getting quite excited about bringing it to some sort of ending/conclusion and the ideas are buzzing round my head! My notes have got a little bit disorganised though so I'm going to have to put a lot of effort into sorting them all out. Feel free to keep your comments coming! Its great to get feedback

Not far away from finishing this next chapter, so keep your eyes open! I have also read through the previous chapters and have made a couple of very minor changes to make sure a major plot line links in properly. It made me realise I'm actually looking forward to finishing the story so I can go back through it all! I might be done after another eight chapters or so I think, but I might stretch it out a little more, not sure yet...

My fingers ache a little from all the typing, but Chapter 8 is all done! The link should be updated for those that have it! At just under 150 pages (A5) I reckon I'm around half way through the book, though I don't know how many chapters I'll end up writing!

Notes all typed up and the week off! I wonder if I'll manage to edit the whole chapter?

I work for a local council who allow a surprisingly generous amount of AL! And thanks, me too! I'll message you the link now Hope you enjoy it!

Feeling a bit frustrated at the moment. I so want to be writing but been a bit too busy! I have managed to type up about half the next chapter though... On the bright side I have two weeks' annual leave to take by the end of March!

I like the idea of fighting a battle and then clicking on my civ centre to see how many slaves I 'caught'! If they were a new unit added to the game I like it. It would almost work as a reward for fighting - kill an enemy and have a % chance of getting a slave. I imagine it as appearing as a trainable troop from the CC but having a set number trainable dependant on your kills (easily displayed by a number upon the slave icon that decreases when you 'train' a slave). If slaves were free or very cheap to train then it would be a decent advantage to using citizen-soldiers and women, though I think the idea of the slaves slowly losing health might be necessary to ensure citizen-soldiers and women are still used by players! Perhaps also only the winner of a battle should gain the reward of slaves (or both players if the kill ratio is near equal). I'd make it so you couldn't heal slaves with priests as well to make sure they always die eventually. Perhaps slaves could be sold at the market, 'garrisoning' them which makes them available for other players to buy (price dependant on how many other slaves are available globally on the map. This seems to be reasonably easy for the player to deal with, as they do little more than fight a battle as per usual and then 'train' the slaves after. No micro-management involved in getting the slaves or transporting them back to your base. I would much prefer a system such as this to simple conversion or slaves appearing randomly on the map during a battle which would require a lot of micro-management and in some ways clutter the battle field. I can imagine that, during a battle in which slave units appear, I would ignore them until the battle had been won, which would leave the slave units wandering around. Not very realistic and I wouldn't enjoy that as much.

Chapter Seven is added to the link! Happy reading! It's a fairly short chapter I think but hopefully I will have time to quickly work on the next few as the story is starting to develop in new directions and its quite exciting to write! As always feedback is most welcome!

When you have the time let me know and I'll send you the link to the full version (all I've written anyway!). I'm now halfway through editing the notes of Chapter 7 so hopefully that won't take long to add to the link! I've also been busy writing more notes and reading some dark ages history for inspiration. So far I'm enjoying the writing and the ideas seem to be flowing

Well, that's Christmas out of the way. Hope everyone had a good time? Notes for the new chapter are nearly done, so editing will start in earnest fairly soon I hope. And Happy New Year to everyone too!

Well, that depends on how good the AI is. If it could respond by changing formations when it spots your troops. Once formations give good bonuses it won't be easy. A column, which offers no protective or offensive bonus, would be easy to kill compared to other formations (hopefully! Otherwise formations become little more than eye-candy). It also doesn't have to pause long, just a handful of seconds to give you time to react.