Previous Post | Post List

Introduction

Hello again, and Happy Nondescript Winter Holiday / New Year!

Over the last few months we’ve made some decent strides toward our goal of alpha testing. It’s still at least a month away, but our progress is promising (if you would like to help as a developer, please contact either myself or /u/sharpcastle33 by pm or on discord by dm. We’re looking for java devs, people familiar with mythic mobs, model makers, and lots of other things. So long as you don’t touch the map, lore, or secret configs, you’ll be OK to play on the next iteration, just like /u/ukulelelesheep!). On that note, we would like to thank Uke for his hard work, he was vital to development and helped push us forward while I didn’t have the time to contribute.

As for content, we’re finally ready to discuss the biggest gameplay-affecting change we’re preparing for the next iteration...

Nobility

After years of playing in the Civ Genre, analyzing it to its very core, Sharp and I realized the most fundamental problem with the game: Territory Control and a general lack of Specialization. We realized that all similar formats struggle with this issue, even ones that give players a massive amount of control over territory (e.g. Towny/Factions). It’s not as simple as giving players the ability to claim chunks, even if we were willing to do that (which, to be clear, we believe that is fundamentally against the spirit of the genre).

Our answer to this problem has been conceptualized, developed, re-developed, and re-evaluated many times--beginning even before First Light was a concept. We drew inspiration from a variety of sources, from other civ servers to MMOs that succeed in solving similar problems. This, more than anything else, is the real, mechanical change we want to make to the genre.

Our goal is to create a system that focuses on allowing players to protect their cities and wealth easily while at the same time making raiders ineffective without a public presence (that is, fully exposed infrastructure). Major portions of the tech tree will be locked behind nation-building mechanics that ensure all important factions are clearly part of the political landscape, and players will be given fantastic tools to protect their wealth from everyone except prepared invaders who made significant investments.

Nobility is, fundamentally, three things: It’s a group/permissions system more fluid than namelayer, a territory control system stronger than Bastion (but weaker than chunk-control systems like Towny/Factions), and a tool to encourage trade/specialization. It’s meant to work on top of the existing civ formula (all ‘core’ civ plugins are maintained) while significantly changing certain mechanics in order to improve both casual and strategic gameplay. I shall break down each part of the system below…

Nobility Groups

Groups in Nobility are quite similar to Namelayer at first glance, but they are used for different things--and they are far more fluid. Anyone can create a group at any time--and you can be a member of as many groups as you wish. Membership in a group will grant you access to a private chat and (hopefully, if we can get it working) a NameLayer group (note - this integration may not be feasible, and if so we will have Nobility and Namelayer side-by-side, they will still have some interactions though). When a group is first created it is considered ‘unlanded’, meaning that it has no territorial control. If you are only a member of unlanded groups you are considered a ‘nomad’ which means you will get none of the  bonuses and will experience all the penalties during gameplay as if you were an enemy of all landed groups. Unlanded groups cannot form relationships or engage in siege mechanics.

Landed Groups

Groups become landed if they construct an Estate. A landed group requires at least three active members as citizens to start, and if it ever drops below that threshold it will have some amount of time to get back to par or the Estate will be deactivated and the group will become unlanded. Citizens of one group cannot become citizens of any other group, meaning that you can only reap the benefits of one Group and its relations.

Relationships

Landed groups can form relationships with one another that allow them to share bonuses with or place harsh penalties on each other. There are a few basic relationships which, when combined, can form alliance networks, confederacies, or even empires. We are also considering the option of customized relationships which will allow groups to share certain bonuses in exchange for certain drawbacks. This will be the core of mechanical nation-building in the game and should encourage people to work together and facilitate conflict with real rewards (e.g. vassalization).

Guilds

Unlanded groups can also form as subservient entities to landed groups. These are known as Guilds. A guild has its own NameLayer group (again, if we can get it working). It’s membership must be citizens of the landed group. Due to the way specialization works, guilds can have a significant amount of control over the extraction of strategic resources by a landed group, giving them power. Although it will likely not be present at launch, we plan to include civil war mechanics which will allow a guild (or group of guilds) to overthrow the leadership of their landed group. Guilds can also align themselves with other guilds in a variety of landed groups (acting as chapters of a multinational organization), though we have no current plans for mechanical incentives for this.

Privileges

Permissions (called privileges in Nobility) can be granted to individuals by the leadership of a group, but they can also be granted to Guilds. In this way, permissions can be handled through a ranks-like system that isn’t strictly hierarchical, but with the consequence that these guilds gain some power over domestic politics. If a citizen is a member of multiple guilds they will get all matched permissions, and the superior of any contested permissions (e.g. estate interface access might be enabled for a ‘House of Dona’ guild, but disabled for a ‘Worker’s Party’ guild--an individual that’s a member of both will have access to the estate interface).

Territory Control

Estates allow a group to have a material presence on the map beyond what bastions and citadel have to offer. It is loosely based on Sovereignty Ascending’s Sanctuary system, as well as a number of other territory control systems from a variety of games. Estates provide both the ability to and strategic purpose in control over what should be the most important resource in the game--the land itself. An Estate grants resource extraction bonuses to the citizens of its associated landed group and their favored relations, as well as passive resource generation, and resource penalties to their unfavored relations within the Region that the Estate is present in. These bonuses and penalties are dependent on the relative power of the Estate in the Region as there can be multiple Estates in a given Region. This power is exerted on specific resources dependent on the developments on an Estate and where Timebank is spent.

Developments

Developments are upgrades to an Estate which provide additional functionality to it. They can be anything from mine (which grants a mining bonus relative to the Estate’s power), to a Trade Hub (which could allow citizens any neutral-and-up relation to access a worldwide trade interface at the Estate). Developments are limited by prerequisite developments, material cost, and capacity. An Estate has a limited number of developments it can have at any time (called its capacity) which is dependent on its Activity Level. Many Developments require ‘timebank’ in order to function, which is an abstract representation of the Activity Level of each citizen of an Estate. Each citizen can choose where their timebank is spent, but they may be limited by their privileges into choosing from a subset of Developments. This is how guilds can have power in an Estate as they control where the cumulative timebank of their members is spent. It is likely that we will add more developments as expansions after launch, tying them in to new mechanics or events.

Activity Level/Timebank

A citizen accumulates Timebank as they play, up to a certain threshold each week. This means that even if a player has a playstyle that is contrary to what would normally be supported by the genre, they can still have a significant impact on the economy of their group by their activity level alone. This should make people who want to play more casually (or even roleplayers/builders/etc.) to be strategically important. Timebank is spent to maintain developments and influence the amount of resources that are produced by those developments in competition with estates in the same region (this is being reworked at the moment and we will have a post in the future explaining exactly how these mechanics will work).

If a player regularly falls below a certain threshold in the Timebank they will be marked inactive and lose their Citizenship. This can be disastrous for a group as they depend on Timebank to maintain their developments as well as their existence. If a group’s activity level falls below that required for the number of developments an estate has, they lose their most recent development (it can be restored cheaply if they regain the activity level they had before). If a group’s activity level falls below that required to have an estate at all they will have a certain amount of time to regain it or the estate will be disabled.

Stockpiles

All Estates will have a special storage system known as a Stockpile which will allow players to protect their stuff from everyone except for well-prepared and invested raiders and conquerors (see: Siege Mechanics). It is meant to replace the concepts of storage vaults and drop chests in a way that ties players to their primary Estate. With this change we will add a tool which will allow players to easily find drop chests which should make this system mechanically preferred to any other method of storage.

Stockpiles will be inaccessible to anyone without special permissions and can be separated into private ‘lockers’ for individuals and larger group storage. Storage is finite, but can be upgraded (the system acts like many other developments which can be upgraded themselves). Some, simpler items might be able to be stored in great quantities (food, planks, cobble, etc.), while other more valuable things might take up more ‘storage weight’. The exact details of how this system will work beyond this hasn’t been hashed out, but you should expect a detailed explanation of the system at a future date.

Siege Mechanics

Loosely based on the EvE siege system, these mechanics will allow for conquest of territory--something that has never been successfully, mechanically implemented in a civ server. We will provide a more in-depth explanation of our plan for these mechanics in the future, but as a general overview they will allow enemy Estates to ‘Alert’ each other. This will trigger the opening of a Vulnerability Window at a time set by the Defending Estate the next day (after a minimum of 24 hours and under a maximum of 48 hours). This will give the defending Estate time to prepare for conflict, calling on allies and freeing up their schedules.

The window will be open for a couple hours (subject to change) and during that time the attacking alliance will have to overcome a Siege Stage. The number of Siege Stages required for raiding, conquering, or razing an Estate is dependent on the developments of the defending Estate (they might have inner walls, outer walls, battlements, etc). Each stage has certain requirements to fulfill in order to defeat (e.g. walls might require cannons to be set up and fired a number of times). In order to conquer an Estate the attackers must succeed in a number of Siege Stage battles. After a victory for the attacking alliance in a Siege Stage, a random portion of the defending Estate’s Nobility Storage will ‘pop’--an attacker may choose only to do a single siege battle as a raid and not bother continuing for a full conquest.

Since each stage is separated by at least a day, a full Siege can last a week--or perhaps longer if a Siege battle is won by the defenders (requiring the attackers to do the previous stage again in order to continue). This makes politics extremely important as maintaining a coalition to defend or attack an Estate over time can be taxing. At any time the attackers may choose to end the siege, conceding defeat, but leaving with the spoils they received from each successful stage. At any time the defenders may also concede defeat.

After a Siege is won by an attacker, they may choose to vassalize or raze the Estate. Vassalization will force the defending Estate’s Group into an Imperial relationship. Razing the Estate will remove it entirely from the map and the defending Group will become Unlanded. The attackers may also choose to force the defending Estate into any other relationship with other groups--for example they may break alliances, force them into Federations, or force Enemy relationships. These will not be changeable by the defending Estate for a time after the Siege.

Specialization

The fundamental issue with the economy in a civ server is the relative ease of access to all resources. Past attempts to solve this were based around the idea that making it more difficult to get these resources would increase scarcity and force people to trade, but in reality this just meant specific individuals would have everything (and thus no incentive to trade) while everyone else would just stop playing because they didn’t want to commit the time to grinding (or they would play severely sub-optimally). A better solution to the problem is specialization.

Strategic Resources

In order to develop an Estate a group will require a wide variety of strategic resources. These resources are only produced by a development’s passive generation and are limited by which strategic resources are available in the Estate’s Region. Because of the development capacity, prerequisite requirements, and environmental limitations (some developments are only available to Estates in certain Regions), not all strategic resources can be produced by a single Estate. These resources will, therefore, have to be exchanged between groups in order for an Estate to develop. This exchange could be a simple trade, but it could also be a raid or a tithe from vassalage. There are many ways to go about acquiring the resources necessary to develop an Estate and we aim for this to be the primary driving force behind trade and conflict on the server.

Strategic Resources come in two kinds: regional goods and refined goods...

Regional Goods

Regional goods are resources that are present in a Region (e.g. Iron Ore, Wood, etc). They are the first strategic resource of importance for any group and they are required for most developments (the most basic ones will generally not require them). Regional goods resources are required for the production of refined goods, so estates may choose to specialize in the production of regional goods to subsidize the economy of estates which specialize in refined goods. A considerable amount of Regional Goods will be required for siege defences as well.

Refined Goods

Refined goods are resources that can be produced anywhere, but require regional goods in order to produce. They are required for more advanced developments which unlock the higher tiers of the tech tree (top-tier armor factories, for example). Specializing in Refined Goods is risky business since such an economy will be highly dependent on other Estates to produce Regional Goods for them, but they are also extremely valuable as they produce the best items, armor, and weapons--as well as pearls and potions. Often times an Estate which specializes in Refined Goods will specialize in a certain group of them, as there are a large enough number of Refined Goods that one Estate could not efficiently produce them all (e.g. one group may choose to specialize their Estate in potion-crafting and prison-pearl production, whereas another might specialize in delirium armor and enchantment.

There will be a massive trade-off in terms of defenses and refined goods developments, as defenses will protect the estate from attackers--but eat into the development capacity, but refined-goods producing developments will make them a more valuable target for attack. Many estates may choose to add some minor production of Refined Goods while primarily focusing on Regional Goods. This will significantly reduce their efficiency, but it will also reduce their dependency on other Estates.

Nation-like relations (confederates, federals, and imperials) might choose to have each of their constituent estates specialize in a specific area in order to make the whole nation largely self-sufficient. This interconnectedness is both an advantage in that it makes them largely independent of the whims of other groups, and a disadvantage in that if they lose an important estate in their supply chain their production might come to a complete halt.

Outro

It’s been a while since our last update, but we hope that this post has largely satisfied you guys. Everything said in this post is still under a massive amount of development so a lot of it could change, so now is the time to voice your opinion on the direction of development. That being said, this is the direction we have been going in for a long, long time and we will not be significantly changing the plan from here. If you want to help out with development, as I said at the top, please send myself or Sharp a dm on discord or pm on reddit.

Happy Holidays Everyone!