Finite resources, creatures and other suggestions

[Killemallgod]

Having played about 5-10 hours of aplha 10 the biggest problem is thats theres a finite amount of resources and creautes on the map.
All the gold, stone and iron you can mine is revealed at the start as well as the location of secrets. Paying minions when theres finite amount of gold and depending on what minions you get you can run out before being able to claim more, just a matter of time before theres nothing left.
The tribes will keep attacking you till theirs none of them left or when you have killed them, you're the only one that keeps getting immigrants. What immigrants you want to get should be up to you and the limit you would want to keep them at could help with gold.

The best way to deal with finite resources would be to have a multitile building thats a mine that can be much richer then the veins currently in the game and could even be infinite. The mines should be hidden and you should have to send workers into it to, the value of how rich is it should affect the speed that the worker gathers from it.
Dwarfs should also get their own mines that are super rich and infinite.

• Multitile
• More resources then vein, even infinite ones
• Hidden and must be found.

Mines are just one way of dealing with finite resources, there should be other intresting buildings that could be found and used.

• Ancient Cypts, powerful undead monsters and if the guradians are defeated can be used to aquire a mana source & special minions.
• Hellgate used to call forth powerful demons and some might just come out and attack everything.
• Chasm that monsters just come out bad for everyone even keepers.
• The deeproads its where dwarfs come from to reinforce themselves, its where they send the resources they mine from their deep dwarf mines.
• Dwarf mines, some dwarfs might come out to attack their nearby enemies or even horrid monsters that come when dwarfs dig too deep and greedy.

Tribes are pretty finite with their population and will just suicied themselves by attacking you and have no means of getting more troops after they're dead from what I have seen so far. Might be worthwhile allowing them to grow in size and even come from off the map so you could have adventures that would attack you first rather then tribes. Theres the issue of them just knowing where you are right away and as been suggested else where that it might be worthwhile changing it so you have to be detected and scouted. Expanding upon that a threat level system should be given to you as it goes up the more adventures are drawn to attack you and as you become more powerful even armies and epic heroes might try to stop you before its too late.

• Calling everyone tribes isn't the best thing to do its more suited to the lizardman and nomads. What they're called should reflect their power. Human Kingdom of Nysan, Dwarven Empire of Steel theres alot of other ways kingdoms are called depending on their culture. The main point of calling them a kingdom or empire is to know how much they can throw at you if you make yourself a big enough threat. All that would be needed for having the off map would be its strengh, wealth? and its current ruler, he/she might show up with his armie or something to kill you or die trying.
• The races on the map should really just be villages, towns, cities or outposts belonging to a larger kingdom that exists off the map, they need to be able to send units, resources and items onto or off the map. Buildings for them need to change so they can build more or rebuild or remove a destroyed building, would help with nomadic tribes that could move onto the map or off when they want to or when they're driven away. Might be awsome if you could burn their crops and wooden houses or anything wooden.
• There needs to be natural caves for bandits and other monsters to make their home in, brood of evil giant spiders anyone?
• Diplomacy at some point so you could take tribute from the places on the map or even appease the dragon or ally with bandits, evil giant spiders and other things that are evil and willing to side with you at some point. Would also allow the other races to be fighting each other so that your just not their only enemy or biggest threat in existance.

Magic might want to be changed and separated from the current research system so theirs other uses for it and more ways to gather it. Master of magic springs to mind with having magic nodes, then theres also spending mana. Some minions should be summoned and cost a mana upkeep to have them around instead of just relying on gold to pay everyone.
Theres also globle speels which gave nice bonuses, Dominions always had a nice array of spells that could be used.
Spells like to cover the map in darkness, cause everyone to age faster, making everyone in their domain healthier. Some pretty devasting stuff could happen from them and they could either be dispelled by either investing enough magic for the dispell spell or killing the caster, though it might be a better idea to be able to bind it to an object rather then the caster seeing as that will most likly be the keeper.
Could also expand the magic system where you can pick the levels of schools of magic & type your character or keeper starts with and expands upon.

• Schools of magic, each having spells associated with it. Conjuring is one, useing death magic for undead and fire for elementals.
• Type of magic, death, fire, air and other ones.
• Mana upkeep for magical minions, demons might need something different.
• Schools and type of magic each have there one level.
• Magical nodes that give mana and are a type of magic, can be used by tribes or other enities.
• Max mana cap and income depending on keeper's magic levels.
• Spells that can effect the whole map untill caster/object is killed/destroyed, some could just cost alot of mana and some might have an upkeep. Eternal night and Infernal pact might need to be paid in prisoners.
• Rainbow mages, jack of all trades master of none.

Character custumization it doesn't really exist at this point though it would be worthwhile to do it at somepoint, might be worthwile allowing us to pick the grapihics of the keeper, sounds simple though i don't know how complex that could be.
Picking schools of magic would allow you accese to spells that you would want to start with.
Picking a race, gender if the race has the option and alignments.
Traits, something that could really add more of a theme to it like if you just wanted undead minions because the living think for themselves. There alot it could add though undead only dungeon might be a bit far off.
Thens theres stuff like becoming a lich, demon, vampire or some horrid monster. Theres some interesting ways becoming something else like a lich could effect the way the keeper could be killed, such as them binding their soul to item so when they die they come back later if the object is still there. A demon couldn't die and would only be banished so as long as you had minions left they could resummon you.

Finite resources and creatures are the most pressing problem with gameplay at the moment, most if not all should be renewable or infinite in some form. Might not hurt having different conditions to pick from for winning though i would rather lose. Magic ideas mainly stem from master of magic and other games that came from it, might really be only worth while useing the neutral to evil ones.
Well it might not have been well organised or layed well enough, might have got carried away with it.

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