The City-State.

I'm not sure if anyone has suggested it before, but lets see how it goes.

Cities have an economy right? They are what make your troops, give you money, you just have to defend it, what's so different from a country? I want to suggest making it an option to turn a game into a city-state game.

- You start as a rogue-city-state. The amount of starting money should be greatly reduced, say 500, 1000, 3000, and 5000.
- You take other cities, and cannot capture a country just by taking the capital, you must take every city to take a country(with obvious country bonus). The capital should hold some importance, say a money bonus or defensive bonus to your units when inside a capital. (not sure how you'd integrate city-capital bonuses, but whatever)
- The game continues, almost as normal once you've captured a country.
- Completely new, as your city state is your over-all capital, if someone starts in the same country, no one, unless they destroy each other, can have the country.
- (Possibly) destroy the current boarders. If Silverlight, or more likely, you Amok and Ivan, can make boarders expand as you take cities. Make the boarders flexible, just around cities, but when two cities are close to each other let the boarders combine.

This opens an entire new height to the game. Maybe the game maker can choose one single country to play in, or two, or play the huge long games of a full map like world or Eurasia. This would be epic, imagine fighting for Germany, as, say, a rogue Hamburg? Munich? What about fighting for Turkey as the only country with cities playable? (obviously would need more cities input into the game) The point I'm trying to make is, everything outside the play-country(s) would be none-playable. A France/Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/Switzerland game? Possible, it won't be as small as you think either. If you made a scenario normally, it would be small, but with only those countries in city-state mode you only start as one city.


Some of my ideas that are unfounded and not well thought out lol:

- Integrate sub-units into these games only. I've read somewhere that the units in a regular game are actually armies in itself, not just one tank(or other) unit? Break these armies down to divisions, along with the cost. If its 1/10, a 12 gp tank would be epic. Units defence/attack would have to extend a digit, say an infantry division would have .4 attack instead of the 4 attack a full infantry unit would have. Would require even lower starting units and money.
- Objectives, to win the game, might change. I can't say how.
- I had other ideas but forgot them when I came back from the grocery store. Damn pork chops made me forget everything.


Another suggestion I have is add the Vatican right beside Rome. I know it is inside Rome itself, but I want to conquer all of my papal states back from Italia. The State of the Vatican City shall rise, and the New Papal States shall make itself into an Empire of Papacy. /troll
By the way, for those who don't know, the Vatican City is a sovereign state. Smallest country in the world.

I also know some of this might take months to complete along with the other updates you plan to do, but this would bring another level to the game. It would get rid of the sameness that goes on if you start a Europe game and rape everyone, well it'd get rid of the sameness for a month or two at least.

Comments, criticisms, and more suggestions appreciated. Just an idea.

Sounds interesting. The division of countries into city controlled regions and flexible borders reminds me of games like Europa Universalis - the growing empire would feel more organic. Also the starting phase of the game with the fighting over the first own country leads to potentially longer and more challenging matches. Possibilities of trolling on the other hand would rise exponentially, too (just an example: "Hmmm, that guy took Hamburg? Well, I gonna take Cologne and fuck his game up before it even really begins, lolz" - while all other players can conquer their home countries without challengers).

Balancing however might turn out to be a nightmare especially for huge maps and it would also require a lot(!) of new cities to be implemented as well as a new map with higher zoom level (even countries/regions like Kosovo or Switzerland would require additional cities) and an improved economy or unit cost system. I also don't know much about all the coding issues involved in that kind of huge changes and how much work would be needed.

I really like your idea and also see the potential for really epic matches as well as completely new scenarios that would feel like you play an almost entire different game. Perhaps some of the features you mentioned can be implemented. Looking forward to see what other players and Ivan/Amok have to say about these ideas.

Written by TheMonarch, 21.06.2011 at 12:31

Sounds interesting. The division of countries into city controlled regions and flexible borders reminds me of games like Europa Universalis - the growing empire would feel more organic. Also the starting phase of the game with the fighting over the first own country leads to potentially longer and more challenging matches. Possibilities of trolling on the other hand would rise exponentially, too (just an example: "Hmmm, that guy took Hamburg? Well, I gonna take Cologne and fuck his game up before it even really begins, lolz" - while all other players can conquer their home countries without challengers).

Balancing however might turn out to be a nightmare especially for huge maps and it would also require a lot(!) of new cities to be implemented as well as a new map with higher zoom level (even countries/regions like Kosovo or Switzerland would require additional cities) and an improved economy or unit cost system. I also don't know much about all the coding issues involved in that kind of huge changes and how much work would be needed.

I really like your idea and also see the potential for really epic matches as well as completely new scenarios that would feel like you play an almost entire different game. Perhaps some of the features you mentioned can be implemented. Looking forward to see what other players and Ivan/Amok have to say about these ideas.

I wouldn't want them to try it all at once, just make it so Premium players can click a box to make a game city-state game, just to allow players to start as one city in the current maps. Would be kind of cool, and they could add onto that as they feel. It should be easy enough to start as one city rather than one country, without any other changes into the game.

Another significant change that would have to be made is; any city can be a spawn point. This will seriously mess with people as you can fly a plane into their country and spawn units the next turn haha. Single cities will become way more important, and it will become important to wall EVERYTHING. lol.

Anyways, while everyone is busy discussing problems and debating about trolling in other threads, my thread looks dead.

Just choose Luxembourg or Singapore.