Dynamic History for EWOM

Another wish here.

When the game is first fired up, gamer is presented with the usual choice of ‘New Campaign/Scenario’ or create a new RMG map. Once the map is decided, the Family tree of all players in the map is displayed. It’ll look like this:

                                         Sovereign1    Sovereign2    Sovereign3     etc
MapThumbnail00    Year 0    Aragorn   Gandalf   Sauron           etc
MapThumbnail01     Year 1
MapThumbnail02     Year 2
…
…
MapThumbnailXX     Year X

The AI will control all Sovereigns & play the game turn-by-turn automatically in the background & without gamers’ input. Gamer witness history unfolds before his eyes, pausing anytime he wants. There is no victory condition in this mode; the AI can go on & on forever.

The Family tree will develop, showing when Sauron is defeated/killed, or when Aragorn marry Arwen (a hero) and then produce offspring (a hero), or when Gandalf die from aging, or any other major events.   Gamer can hover the mouse over Gandalf to see how AI levels him up, or what equipment he obtained.

When the gamer decided to play, he can pick any year (& any Sovereign) the AI played so far. He can zoom into the MapThumbnailXX to review one of the Sovereigns (respecting the sovereign’s fog of war). For example, he can start on year 25 as Gandalf. The MapThumbnail is basically an autosave every game year.

When a gamer halts playing the game midway, he will be brought back to the Family tree screen. The AI will immediately take over where the gamer leave off in background.

But of course, if the gamer later want to continue where he previously stopped, he can. When he comes back, he starts EWOM; choose the map he last played; there will be a marker underlining the year he last played. He loads the game on that year.

The family tree does not only show Sovereigns & his family, it also shows all heroes (& his family) that work for a Sovereign. The gamer can start a “Hero only game” by choosing to play them. This hero, a representative of his Sovereign, can visit other player’s settlement as long as the diplomatic relation is of Peaceful or higher. The hero can complete quests, loot settlement, fight, level up, upgrade item, trade, and hire monster for his personal gain. But his action is bound by the environment & his Sovereign’s diplomatic status.

However, the hero can revolt & achieve the status of a new Sovereign player when he later decide to “Capture a Settlement” for himself. At this point, he can establish border or channel essence.

More and more heroes will revolt this way, whenever a Sovereign got seriously sick, old, die, do something evil (if hero is good) or is losing turf rapidly. Since heroes can revolt, even when after the map is united by 1 Sovereign, it will eventually turns into chaos in long run.

Effectively, the gamer is can rewrite the history that the game AI has already creates. Moreover, any map doesn’t necessary start at year 0. If gamer wants to play on a map with most cities fully developed, he chooses to start playing on Year 40.

[Above is a major refinement of my Lineage Chart wish (which I renamed it as Family tree)]

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I've updated the OP, rgds to how "hero only" game mode is useful for establishing a dynamic history.

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The hero only mode reminds me of D&D, which is really good and would be a very intresting part of the game. That being said I do not think this is a feature the game needs/should(?) ship with, it seems like it would be pretty tricky to implement, but knowing stardock they can always patch it in or even release a content pack.

I like the other point you made though - AI preplay, but I think that after you selected a kingdom to play as (such as Sauron year 15), the game should make a save on the select screen, so that you can go back and let it play from that point. but as soon as you played as a faction the AI won't be able to take over (in that save).

so in essence it really would be a randomized advanced start

and an idea i just thought of, when you are watching the year by year progression, wouldn't it be fun to be able to summon a few (not an absurd amount) on natural disasters? like a flood, tsunami or earthquake?

EDIT: I haven't posted here in a while so if they said they are going to fully flesh out the hero system ignore the first part of my post

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I would imagine the "hero only" mode would be best fit as a "dungeon mode" (rather than "hero only" in title). You simply could focus on heroes, but might still want some generic follower fodder. Such a mode would benifit being restricted to the dungeons, ruins, and such and play like X-com (if anybody recalls, one of the original descriptions of Elemental was Master of Magic meets X-com). There would be no over world, just the local town(s) that could be visited for supplies and rest and such. I think such a thing would be a very easy mod to make, if it isn't default with the launch game "modes"

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Landisaurus, it is technically easy (for SD devs) to make such Heroes only mode; as basically it means when gamers’ hero goes to a town, the hero cannot capture it. But how this relates to the overall game design is tricky. How to start a new game as Hero only? How do they win? Can hero become Sovereign & how? I’ve tried describing all this in this post & other. And making AI understand how to play a hero will require our AI expert Frogboy.

Bootss1, Thanks!
AI Preplay & Randomized advanced start are both good terms. What I’ve described include so many things, it’s hard to precisely describe. I’ll say it is about the full lifespan of heroes too. I also agree with what u say above the game save.

I believe your thought about summoning disaster is awesome. The game ship with a world builder (like CIV4) allowing you to change map tiles. Devs always say essence is needed to turn the polluted land productive. It will be cool if gamer can modify the land with the world builder by paying essence as cost, after you saved & pause the game in this Family Tree screen. Making tile changes or summoning natural disasters on opponent land costs way more essence than within your own border. This can be fun and strategic, play a God just like in the good old game of Populus II. Definitely a very different game! As pre-game option if there is this Dynamic History feature.

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