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Discount NinjaJust some feedback from my experience with Alpha 11 with a lot ideas to keep in scope with the direction the game is going.
The game has gone from a Turn based strategy/rpg game to a sim-city/rpg. The main difference is you can't summon any minions. You have to build a lair and attract your minions. I had to play through a few times to understand the new mechanics.
Previously you had a limitation on how fast you could grow your base by Mana. You required mana to summon minions and research. If you built your base right, you could get away with very few minions. A fun/easy exploit in old versions was to make a series of traps. Web and a boulder in a zipper like design for you entrance. 8 Boulders would keep just about everything out…forever.
While the old limitations are still there, you no longer spend mana to summon minions. Currently your limitation on base size is on how fast you can gather resources. It's an interesting take but there's an interesting issue of gold, but I find it isn't a big limiter. Gathering resources as fast as possible to expand your base. Rather then having a period of slowly acclimating power I can attract everything I need very quickly. Gold is a not a big factor because if my army gets big, I send them on a suicide raid. No gold out of my pocket, but it's nice to get back my old pay checks when I loot the corpses of my own men! If the raid is successful, great! If not… great! It's a win/win for the keeper. Unfortunately, with no one else to raid, you're base will become obsolete.
I have to add that having other creatures being able to study is great. I can finally send my Keeper on raids! Also, I've noticed the updates to the terrain generation. Good to see more use for the rivers.
Growing in power is absurdly fast. It's at ridiculous levels really. If you want to limit growth, you may want to implement a new resource: food. A few people have asked about it. Now this is nothing you need to actively use, everyone just picks up something from storage and is automatically consumed when needed. You already have live stock. Having your minions bring back corpses to be cooked would be good. Mushrooms from foraging, bread from wheat farms. Day and night cycles are what trigger growth for the food/live-stalk.
Caravans are a great idea, I look forward to it.
New room ideas:
Study: Produce magic manuals for trade and creation of temporary spell scrolls (That the keeper already knows)
Shop: So other races/keepers can trade.
Lair: For live stock
I know this is alpha, and the work looks promising. I've seen talk about some AI work. I know how taxing AI can be on a computer. I don't think anyone would mind if you dedicated a thread to AI. I think AI should be divided into professions. Each town should have their own leaders who control the professions; farmer, hunter(animals), forager(wild fruit/mushrooms), Guard, thief, blacksmith, nomad, spy, scout, witch etc. For your own minions too, you should be able to assign a profession, to which they stick to. It would be amusing to catch thieves using invisibility potions to try to loot from my treasury.
Speaking of which, a new minion that would be great to add is an Imp Lord, OK well the name sucks. Basically the master imp would be the Keepers personal steward. He would fetch items for the keeper, act as a diplomat. And assign jobs to the rest of your minions. The Keeper could talk to him (menu) for help on any subject. He would be the one that gives you all of those tips, giving context to the help messages. If you wanted to attract any specific monster, he's the guy to ask on how it's done.
This game is great and would be better if it was a dynamic world. Meaning there are many ways to win, and your enemies are ever changing too. Building, growing, destroying things. In an example: gnomes fighting with explosives and tearing mountains apart. Each race that didn't get a long could be coaxed into fighting each other. Or even starve one of resources and watch them die out.
When I first heard about the shrines, my first thought was: OK, how long is this going to last? To me it never made sense as a game concept. However, I think shrines should be changed to pay tribute/worship to YOU! People that are afraid of you or want you to attack someone will pay the shrine a visit.
As for the dragons/gods and other races. Instead of the old shrine idea, I would like to see diplomatic relations and dialog. Albeit very simple for now. Each race/dragon will have it's own desires. If you happen to meet these requirements they will treat you like an ally. With that, each race could be VERY difficult to directly fight with out making the game too difficult. Let me give you some examples:
Green Dragon-
Desires: To clean the forest of infidels (elves)
What to do: Kill off the elves
Reward: He will part with some of his treasure
(Wandering) Red Dragon-
Desires: Good food supply
What to do: Throw corpses(3) at her!
Reward: She will want to roost in your lair have her own separate room, but needs to be kept fed.
Dwarves-
Desires: Gold
What to do: Trade goods, or bribe them
Reward: They leave you alone, but become more greedy each trade.
Elves-
Desires: Forest Sanctity
What to do: Replant any tree you cut down
Reward: They will open trade (wood) and offer minor protection
Farmers-
Desires: Protection
What to do: Post guards near them
Reward: They will give you a portion of their harvest/live stock
Humans(Baron)-
Desires: Hunting you down
What to do: You really can't appease these guys.
These guys will put a bounty on your head and slowly increase it with each failure. Even hiring dwarves and legendary heroes. If that all fails, they will go in for an attack.
Lizard Men-
Desires: Slaves
What to do: Sell off your prisoners
Reward: They become your allies until their slaves you sold die off
As you start off as a Keeper, you're a fugitive in a new land. The only people that know of you is the baron. He should send scouts to locate you and work to escalating the threat/difficulty. I know it's easier to have the AI cheat to know where you are. It would be great if they each had to discover you, open diplomatic talks. And when attacking, have to explore (flag) each room until you're discovered. With that, each race could have a perceived threat level instead of a random chance. After they think you're a threat, they attack when they think they can take you on.
I know this is a rogue like. So saving is really cheating. But for now, could we get an auto save?
That said, good work and these ideas should be beta features (or later).
