Birthrates

[Swellick]

Has it ever seemed strange to you that you bought a villager, well - a new dawn has come.

Birthrates are the answer, 2 villagers (guy and gal) will under certain conditions* create a new villager every 15 seconds.

*1. You set your maximum # of villagers (type in box at the capitol) to a number that you think suitable at the moment ( you can always change it) as villagers mulitply, naturally the brithrate does so as well.

2.Increase in birthrate is done by several methods, but only one condition. is that there is a guy and a gal.

3. If your villagers are in the area effect of a temple birthrates increase 30%- 15 seconds is as high as it gets, 60(and then none) is the worst.

4. At the market there would be a special reasource - wine(for civilized civs) beer for barbarians. Increase in birthrate 30% - cost of one 30 second round is a reasonable price of gold.

5.Victory - death of 20 enemy units increases birthrates by 40%.

I know that this is sort-of edging on city building, but it would be more interesting and factual than just buying a person.

Questions? Bugs?

[DarkAngelBGE]

Wow, this sounds like a revolutionary idea. Reminds me of Settlers III and the bunch somehow...

[Quacker]

Maybe things like the plague and such would be implemented and the birthrate stops (babies die at birth and such), and people die too...some ideas.

Very good Swellick, i like it.

[av_nefardec]

Populus also did this back in the day. It seems like a good idea, but the fact is, RTS games in the style of AoK, Starcraft, etc are meant to be representational, not fully realistic.

What I mean is that 'buying' a villager is a way of representing the food that it would take to raise the villager as a child, and then when he appears he or she has 'come of age'. If you were to make birthrates then you'd have to make children villagers who grow into teenager villagers who grow into adults - thereby complicating a simple system that works.

I'm against the birthrate system for this reason.

(not to mention that it's generally better for games based on a small, tribal scale, like populus, and not an epic, civilization-scale like TLA.)

[Quacker]

Maybe your food count slowly decreases to reflect the raising of the child?

[Swellick]

Hey guys something to clear up - Villagers do not grow. The cost of the villager is not decreasing food, thats the parents job, you make the parents happy, and the villager is born insantaniously, not growing from child to teen to adult - I agree that is too complex just say thats part of the birthrate - 15 seconds for and adult villager. Av_nefardec, I do fully understand the philosophy started in AoEI that a food and time represent a villager growing to adult and all, but something new needs to happen, I'm sick of *Drony voice* Historically based Real-time strategy game spanning the ages - THEY ALL SAY THAT. Sure they all have different aspects of gameplay, but there needs to be a revolutionary game - like AoEI in its time. Why not do it in 0 A.D. - its the PERFECT testing grounds for the next generation of Real Time Strategy.

[Black Op]

Sorry, but under this birthrate system, this would create too many villages in too fast a peroid for a mortal player to handle (assuming they are poor at multitasking). Also, they take space away from military units (assuming 0AD and TLA have AOE-style houses) that you may need when the Enemy is slaughtering your populance, sieging your city, and it looks like your Allies won't come to your rescue. And besides, you're supposed to control every aspect of your peoples lives in a RTS, surly you can control birth as you see fit as well?

[av_nefardec]

Well swellick, the fact with a game like TLA is that a scenario could take place over many years and to do a birthrate system would destroy the sense of time by making everything into a very small scale. This is great for a game in which everything is meant to be based in a maximum time of say, 10 years, but when you scenarios taking place over an entire Age of the Sun, say in TLA, then the birthrate system doesn't do the game justice.

Think of 'building' villagers more as paying them to work, because it's given that at any given time there would be villagers not working, villagers not yet able to work, and villagers taking care of the household. In a civilization-building game or any game of massive scale, you can't represent everything all at once or the game's complexity spirals upwards without bound. If you have birthrates then you have to have to physically send soldiers in to be 'equipped' instead of 'building' soldiers, you have to have individual cornstalks be cut, you have to gather lumber in groups and have villagers physically bring them to a house, etc, etc. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and it's much more realistic for an independent, freeware developer with no paid members and no timeshares, like WFG to develop a game in this representational method. Frankly, (at least with TLA), we're going to be original with our game, but it's just out of reality for us to be 'revolutionary' and still complete a project that is hard enough to complete already You have to be realistic with these things, have to keep in mind the big picture - what's better for the project as a whole?

So that's TLA's rationale at least

[Swellick]

Black Op - Remeber villagers birthrate only reaches 100% after the defeat of units. Thats precicly why I made a victory the most assuming, also this would increase the game speed as a whole - think about it. Recruiting(I forgot to mention) would be the same as the regular game, except that a villager the nearest villager would be recrutied - simple. Well?

[Black Op]

But what about when you're in the middle of a war? Chance's are, you're too busy trying to build up an army or fighting to worry about villages. And suppose you don't want any new villagers, you just want to make fighting units. You'll waste resources for villagers and their housing when it can be spent on more important things.

[Swellick]

Ad – I know that you can’t worry about cutting individual cornstalks but equipping soldiers is a good idea (just kidding). Also, I’m not a RTS fantasy type of guy I’m talking more about 0 A.D. - of course you can use these ideas on anything.

Have games reached the limit of ingenuity, has the pinnacle been reached? Perhaps I am overly concerned about RTS repetitive syndrome, but where will a NEW game begin? Freeware is an excellent place to start: you have plenty of time, money is not an issue, and the big businesses have a hard time being revolutionary because it is so hard to test new things in our competitive world. Hey, I know that you can’t use every new idea and suggestion, but where will tradition end and revolution rise? Look at Rick Goodman – he had a revolutionary idea with AoE I see what happened? You (WFG) have an excellent opportunity to explore new ideas that the market can’t produce. WFG has so much potential if only you would use it.

One day if any of us that are involved with WFG become a computer game designer this game will invariably help us – you would know that this idea is going to be a smash hit, or a solid flop. If you have put so much work into your game, can’t you put in the extra mile just to see if it’s a success – that’s what’ll make your game that much better than everyone else’s – the guts to take the risk. Again see what happened with Rick? See what happened with Myst? Look at the big picture – Leave RTS for the moment, and go to RT (Real Time) and maybe this is the threshold of a wonderful opportunity to explore, if failure – then who cares it was fun to make, and maybe you enjoy playing it right, and you know that it doesn’t work so if you become a designer that’s one less thing to worry about. Can Wildfire Games begin the revolution that forever changes gaming?

[Swellick]

Rember you don't spend reasouses on a villager - you only increase birthrates. Furthermore, when I said nearest villager for recuiting I meant anywhere - you always seem to end up killing villigers anyway. This will mean less of that you recruit a villiger instead of butchering them. Also, You set the birthrate at the capitol to whatever you want say 100 citizens (the birthrate works up to that) by typing it in at the lower UI - if you need more change it, if you need less butcher or recuit.

[Aeros]

I personally don't like the idea. It'll be too distracting, people in the middle of battles will have to go back to their town to task their new villager populus.

But heres an idea that makes this concept better:

How about after you create a certain building (nursery maybe? Well you think of a better name then ), it'll spawn villagers based on the amount of male/female villagers you have. To add depth the building has small children or teenagers animated around it. The building would have similar functions as the capital, you can task the villagers that spawn from there to a resource and like someone else said, you can set a max of spawned villagers

This will decrease micro-ing and will give players the decision if they want villagers to spawn or not, because if they're in a tight spot in battle they wouldn't like it if extra villagers are taking up their population limit. Also by tasking the units they won't have to worry about having to go back and forth to asign the new villagers a task to do.

Furthermore I think there should be a set limit to how many villagers you can spawn. This could play well historically with laws of overpopulation that some empires had (or should've had), so lets say you can spawn a maximum of ## villagers based on the amount of houses or buildings or villagers (or some other variable) that you have

[Black Op]

I don't really like the concept of nurseries from a historical standpoint, which I think didn't exist in Ye Days of Yore. Feels more like a cloning hatchery or Jacksonian Orc pit to me (then again, Ye Classical Town Centere of AOE/AOK can give this impression too). Maybe give this function to houses, that'll seem more natural.

But I still distaste this idea very much.

[Swellick]

That is the most ridiculos thing I have ever heard!

RTS are not supposed to have nusery rhymes - he he.

Everyone doesn't understand though villager Birthrates are controlled at the capitol - if your going to war simply type 0 in the bottom UI when the capitol is slected, and that entirly stops the birthrate - to start it up again simply type in the number you want, if you want new villagers to be created in a certain individual part of the map - tough send old villagers there instead or try to increase the brithrate in that area by building a temple. This means LESS microminding you only have to slecct one building to create your entire populace, while all the while staying factual.

[av_nefardec]

Have games reached the limit of ingenuity, has the pinnacle been reached? Perhaps I am overly concerned about RTS repetitive syndrome

Absolutely not, but there are other ways to make a game unique besides this.

I can't speak for 0AD, but we use the same engine and TLA at least discussed this issue a year ago at least and came up with the same conclusion - it's not the system that works best with the scale and scope we are using.

[Swellick]

Okay, maybe your right that games haven't topped off... BUT let's see if 0 A.D. uses my idea...

[Wijitmaker]

The closest thing 0 A.D. has to a villager is a female worker. There isn't even a male 'worker' in the game. This is because of the new 'instant army' (by Ken Wood) concept that is new to the RTS genre (to our understanding)

This idea of birth wouldn't really have any relivance for 0 A.D. because the units in the game are 'hired' not born. All the 'king' has to do is supply his 'hired' man with the appropriate ore, wood, and food - then the unit is equiped to fight.

[Swellick]

Well... I guess that turns a page on the history of my genius... *deep breath in* Eahha *deep breath out* AHhha___ I THINK I'll make a post at the battle forums - GARRRAG

[Aeros]

Yes, well I thought the word nursery would claw at people

Either way I don't see how this birthrate thing could be a fun thing in a fast paced RTS game.

[Wijitmaker]

Ah... no worries Swellick I gave you 20 Currency just for your genious