I have thoughts on the upcoming additions. My thesis is that performance in combat should affect the development of the player’s economy, and that developing the player’s economy should develop his combat forces. This relationship between the economy and the army should be such that there are a bunch of little interlocks between the two so that the player is required to develop both in order to increase his power.
Floor System
The floor system looks promising, especially the part about magical effects producing different outcomes depending on who stands on them. It’s the first instance of strategic decision making at the macro level. I’d like to see floor types influence the specific abilities that minions can learn.
Experience system
It’s good that you tempered the experience bonuses. I wonder if the upgraded version of furniture could just recruit more competent minions (grave stones, work benches, and such could all be upgraded). This means that the base experience level of your (non-legendary) minions would reflect the stuff in your dungeon and this experience level could be augmented by 50-100% through training or successful combat.
Why do it this way? Such a system would serve to buffer the player’s power curve. It also makes your economy more relevant, so you can’t just one-minion your way through an entire campaign. (Of course, enemies have to gradually get stronger as the game progresses, otherwise it’s unfair).
resources
I’ll also test whether it makes sense to add an analogous method of iron production, such that you’ll melt iron ore in furnaces to create iron plates,
Factorio, the Roguelike? (Well, I hope not :p)
But I have a couple of suggestions regarding resources.
1. Torches should also require a constant input of wood. Since wood production is dependent on the number of imps you have, the player has to grow his imp population to grow his base. (He also has to place torches smartly, which makes torch placement have SOME consequence, rather than being completely cosmetic).
2. Get rid of the Tree Spirits that spawn from cutting down wood. They don’t really do anything from a gameplay perspective (other than provide free XP because they attack so slowly).
3. Iron ore requires smelting into iron plates, as you suggest, and smelting should require wood directly proportional to the amount of iron smelted.
4. Maybe require iron picks for mining granite, and then granite for producing steel. This would form sort of a progression for resource mining (wood -> iron -> granite -> steel).
Lastly, keep gold the way it is: to increase supply, or for purchasing legendary items from merchants (of which we need more, by the way). The way I see it, it should only be acquired as the spoils of conquest or discovered in remote squares, because it should be representative of how many enemies that the players has vanquished and as an indicator of overall game progress.
