UI/gameplay suggestions

[jarm]

I've been playing the game on and off for several weeks now, and I have a few suggestions/ideas for gameplay stuff. I couldn't really find anything detailed about the planned features, so I have no idea if any of this is already on the list... Also, hopefully these are some new ideas, I've seen that other people have discussed stuff like patrols, waypoints, etc.

When creating new buildings:

• Snap-to-edge building - Snaps new buildings to existing ones, within a given threshold. Especially useful for houses or farms, I think!
  
• Shift-building - I know you can hold shift to produce multiple buildings, but this idea is, if you hold both the shift button and the mouse button you can drag the cursor out in a line to produce a nice neat row of the same building. Again, useful for houses or farms, but also barracks could be good.
  
• Shift building - When you produce multiple houses with the shift key currently, they're all the same model. Might be nice to randomise them
  
• Automatic road generation - This one is entirely frivolous, but generate roads between built-up areas of buildings, purely to look more 'town-like'. So if the threshold is three buildings within a radius of x, a road appears (or is layed out to be built by a worker) free of charge! It'd be even cooler if the roads changed depending on the building density (eg. a dirt track for a few houses, cobbled roads for a whole bunch of buildings).
  
• Snap-and-rotate towers - Also frivolous, but snap and rotate them flat against a wall or other towers within a certain distance threshold. I like things neat and tidy!
  

When creating new units:

• Aggression mode selector - Set default aggression mode on a building for all units built there - useful if, for instance, you rally a bunch of soldiers at your gates, and set them to be defensive.
  

Citizen work:

• Working orders - Have a list of work orders, so you can set guys to mine, then if they stop (mine runs out), go to next order on list (so can go from stone to metal, or if farm runs out, rebuild farm, instead of going to another farm). Maybe you could select a unit and hold down a key (like control or something) while giving the orders, to tell them to do it once whatever they are doing finishes. The ability to loop this order list could be useful, too.
  
• Area orders - For wood chopping specifically, but other things generally, select a region outline (again perhaps with a hotkey while dragging out a box with the mouse) to work within, so the unit can only work in a certain area. That way, if you want to clear a certain bit of forest, you can tell them to just concentrate there.
  
• Clear land orders - use workers to clear forest quickly, no wood gains but a lot quicker than chopping it.
  
• Aggression mode when working - when the citizen soldiers are working, they won't stop and help someone if they're being attacked. Maybe have this behaviour linked to the aggression mode, eg. passive - they don't do anything to help, aggressive (? the default one) - if someone nearby gets attacked, they go and help, violent - if an enemy soldier even comes in earshot, they go and attack him. Also good for tigers/boars/bears/etc.
  

Fighting:

• Standard-bearers - Maybe like groups, assign a bunch of units to a standard bearer (or a hero - making them stay close to the hero to take advantage of aura bonus), and they fight with him (and maybe defend him automatically).
  
• Bridge building/razing - Build bridges or raze them, also ability to destroy the marsh crossings. Useful for combat engineering. I'd love to see more combat engineering, like poisoning the town water supply, digging trenches or ditches, etc.
  
• Line-of-sight fog of war - Give different objects different fog of war 'ratings'. Eg. Can't see past enemy walls entirely, can't see type of enemy unit behind a forest (just that there is an enemy unit there), etc.
  
• Rotate battle line - the ability to rotate how the soldiers are marching; useful if I'm trying to hunt down and kill some pesky enemy citizen, I can march along lengthwise instead of in the normal column.
  
• Line-of-sight fighting - I'm pretty sure the ranged units can fire over things like walls, thick forests, etc. Might be better to either get rid of this, or have some sort of progressive range penalty. This would also be good from a combat engineering point-of-view (eg. easier to make a Battle of Thermopylae-style bottleneck between walls/forests/mountains/buildings etc.). You could also incorporate a tiered system of range penalties (eg. foot archers get the worst penalties, then horsemen, then towers the least).
  
• Scaling walls - I think you might have this one covered, because I think the Romans have a siege weapon in game, which was historically used to do this, but this could also be useful for positioning archers on the walls for a defence bonus, and also give them a better penalty, if the above point was incorporated (eg. the foot archers would then have the penalty of a tower, meaning they can pick off incoming archers without the incoming archers being able to defend themselves).
  

General:

• Training - Have either a training ground/war academy type building, or train soldiers in the barracks, so you can garrison them in there, and they slowly build up experience as long as they stay in there.
  

Okay! So there's some of my ideas. What do you think? Some of it might be completely impossible or would be a very low priority, but hopefully some of this stuff appeals to you!

Edited August 14, 2012 by jarm

[theShadow]

One thing I would add is some kind of "call to arms" button, so if you click it and click somewhere on the map, all citizen soldiers you own will drop what they are doing and attack there.

[MishFTW]

I've suggested implementing a grid and roads before but thats probably not going to happen. Although it wouldn't hurt to change the ground texture around the CC to a paved texture as you progress through the phases. Also, +1 on the training idea. A nice way to get elite units without having to send them to battle.

[idanwin]

I wouldn't want a grid, but building snapping sounds fine, as long as it leaves space for creative city design xD (you can override the snapping with a hotkey or in the preferences menu)

[theShadow]

rather, have the snapping be initiated by a hotkey (i.e. holding shift)

Edited August 15, 2012 by theShadow

[idanwin]

But shift is already used to place multiple buildings... and I don't just want to be able to build rows, I want a house to be able to snap against a barracks or a wall as well. Or is that what you mean?

[jarm]

But shift is already used to place multiple buildings... and I don't just want to be able to build rows, I want a house to be able to snap against a barracks or a wall as well. Or is that what you mean?

The multiple buildings idea is separate from the snapping idea. The snapping idea would be for all buildings. Basically, that idea is, if you've got the placement of the building within a distance of, say, one soldier width from another building, it will snap to the side of that other building

The multiple buildings idea is just so you can quickly build multiple buildings of the same type, so you'd still be able to build 'free-form' like it is now, but for example, if you've got some people picking berries and they run out, and you want to build five farms for them, you can hold a hotkey, click and drag out, and it automatically puts them down in a row. Basically, similar to how placing the walls work currently. The shift key wouldn't necessarily have to be the hotkey, maybe the control or alt key, because you might want to build in two dimensional rows (eg. lining houses along a wall which has a corner, or placing rows of farms around a city centre), so the shift key would still have it's current functionality, but the effect would change whether or not you have another key held down.

[idanwin]

I personally don't click-dragging for farms (you want to build them as close as possible to a drop-off spot, not just in a row! But it would be a nice feature to have for houses. I certainly don't want click-dragging to replace the placement of multiple buildings of the same type in different places (but if you can click-drag and just click here and then there, both holding shift, that sounds pretty neat!)

[jarm]

I personally don't click-dragging for farms (you want to build them as close as possible to a drop-off spot, not just in a row! But it would be a nice feature to have for houses. I certainly don't want click-dragging to replace the placement of multiple buildings of the same type in different places (but if you can click-drag and just click here and then there, both holding shift, that sounds pretty neat!)

That's why you would combine the click-and-drag with the existing function, so you build three in a row around a civil centre, then go up the side, behind and back down, creating 8 farms with the civil centre in the middle.

[historic_bruno]

I couldn't really find anything detailed about the planned features

Did you see this link? http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameplayFeatureStatus

[jarm]

Aha! No, I didn't. I think I saw something similar in the Weekly Report after I posted my original message, but I didn't see that page. I can't seem to see any direct links to it on the main page here: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki (that's where I looked for the planned features, maybe I was looking in the wrong place...)