Wonderous Things and Crazy Ideas.

[Scoundrelous]

I'm relatively new to the game. I have just finished several campaigns and scenarios and fiddled with the map editor. I am aware that my suggestions are often over the top, but dreaming is free for now, so I'll just post a long rant and hope something about it will inspire something.

As a big fan of Age of Wonders 1, I can't help but noticing that this game looks just as gorgeous. The units advancing and growing, each with their custom names, are wonderful and unique and there's skills and traits that bring back the good old nostalgia with a new, unique flavor... and I feel I want MORE! Here are some random suggestions to spice up the game (note: don't do it the Age of Wonders way, but rather use the ideas you need, Wesnoth style)

This game allows for easy terrain and unit modification, so why not take this to its full potential? There are some mods that add terraformation so this is definitely possible: traits that make grasslands grow or that turn the grass you touch into a wasteland. Spells that cause floods or use the trees to summon treants/curse the woods so nobody can cross without taking damage.

Magic: magic is generally either a ranged attack with an effect or a melee attack with an effect, but I think magic should be much more. An arch-wizard or a hero should have a vast set of spells to use in different situations. Perhaps even Area of Effect Attacks. Mass blessings and holy auras from old, veteran priests, raising recently deceased as a lich... if you can code it, it exists.

To prevent magic from being overused you could simply make it so that certain spells require a high unit level (and a specific rank) and they drain HEALTH. So your level 5 necromancer can raise the dead a couple of times, but overusing this will drain his own health to death. Or you could have a heroic mage that casts a final AOE attack to save the day... at a high cost.

Units and creeps: The game has a wide range of creatures that would make the world more alive and every game more unique. (See that fairy grove? It occasionally spawns healing fairies. See that cave full of holes? It spawns hostile, territorial goblins. Make it so by conquering that lair you can recruit some unique units there... or plunder it and raze it for gold.

Building: We humans are a crafty lot. There's lots of fun stuff we can do. From building roads to towers, forts or castles, even villages. Terraformation would allow your kingdom to actually look like a kingdom instead of a few villages without roads. Why do the villagers even pay taxes for?! Master of Magic handled this quite well.

Building Growth: This pretty little village has been there for quite a while and still looks the same. Perhaps you could make it so stationing units of a certain type inside your villages makes said villages level up. Just like units. Want that village turned into a city? You can do it now. Of course if you spend time and effort raising a village and your enemies capture it... well, they get to reap the benefits of your investments.

More special buildings: The world is filled with fantastic things. Forges to create common items, dungeons to obtain overpowered mcguffins, towers with sages that can teach you spells... or tombs filled with ancient horrors who will not be happy after disturbing their ten thousand years old nap. Things you can either build or find around the map. Things that will spice up the game while still keeping some balance. You have an absolutely beautiful world, make it worth exploring!


Razing: Because you can still be the player with the nicest village if the other villages are smoldering ruins. Razing buildings and forts should leave a ruined, unusable version of said building behind. You can repair it with the right unit... and some gold.


I hope you enjoyed the ideas and I hope some of them weren't so far-fetched. That said... is there a roadmap for the things that were/are planned for the game?

[Spirit_of_Currents]

villages level up. Just like units.

I like this idea. Higher-level villages would give better defence (except for those units that don't gain extra defence from ordinary villages), give more income and upkeep, and heal more HP.

[Yomar]

Hi Scoundrelous, so let me understand, what are you proposing exactly ?
Do you would like to see all these features added to the main game ?
Because most of the features that you proposed are already implemented in various Add-ons.
So just download the add-ons with the features that you are interested in from within the game, play and have fun.
Beside I don't see the necessity to add all these features to the vanilla game (if not through mods), it would also not go well with Wesnot's Philosophy, KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), at least in my humble opinion.
Plus if you like overly complicated strategy games, you can find many games of this kind (both paid and free) out there to download.

[Scoundrelous]

Sorry about that. My head tends to be a bit of a mess all the time, so I'll try to go bit by bit. I like simple but varied fun, and I understand that sometimes making things intuitive and accessible can be very difficult, while some ideas might be unrealistic or not aligned with what the devs want. These are just random ideas, feel free to discard them or scavenge whatever useful bits you may find. Here it goes:

PART 1:
What I propose is to add tiers for villages to make them less useful at first, slightly better after a while.
Villages are currently better than castles in terms of defense. 60% advantage plus healing. If we added tiers for villages we'd have simple settlement variety. I imagine something like this:

Village 1: Heals less than the current village we have now, only 30% terrain advantage
Village 2: heals the same as the current village. 35% advantage.
Village 2 alternative: Fortified village: heals slightly less than the current village and has 50% terrain advantage. (there's already a tower addon that makes something similar happen, but it doesn't look as nice as inn-game assets)

Sometimes those little things do make a difference, and it's as simple as it can be. It even recycles the good old unit advancement system.

PART 2: make it so there's more than just villages on every map. Nothing too fancy: just add some buildings with certain benefits, buffs, debuffs or (at most) units spawning in them. It adds variety while still keeping the same pace. The players won't really be sratching their heads on this one.

PART 3: Terrain modification and effects. It can be done. Some addons already have a simple way to terraform and it looks impressive in-game. Creating roads or flooding areas should be something easy to do for those great empires and powerful wizards.

Part 4: There are some campaigns with trees coming alive and the dead raising from graves instead of castles. Why not bring that kind of fun into regular scenarios?

And a bit off topic, what are the planned features for Wesnoth? A bit of a set route or plan for it. I'd love to expand things with my own addons and the editing tools. The scenario editor is looking superb so far, but I see it still has missing features or things you cannot quite erase yet.