I really like the idea of a main quest line for each faction. It makes each one play through uniquely and the story itself is fairly interesting. I do however feel that the linear progression is a little lacking and have a few ideas to help with that, all three of them are compatible with each other.



First, the simplest solution I can think of is making the quest line progress more like a branching tree then a straight line. Maybe having a few quests here and there where you choose how to proceed.



Examples:



Broken Lords Quest 3: Our Baser Nature: Depending upon which technologies you research, you may be given a different quest, sending you down a different path.



Wild Walker Quest 2: Echoes of the Past: Maybe instead of just industry it could be which ever resource reaches 15 first starts a different quest.



Second, you could include a campaign for each of the individual factions. This way the various main quest lines that involve invading forces of other races (like one of the Necrophage quests where Vaulters attack from a ruin) could actually be another empire’s army instead of just roaming ones. It would also allow further control of the world itself surrounding the quest line then would be possible in the simple sandbox mode.



Finally, probably the most complicated, but my favorite option. Completely remove the basic progression of quest lines that is currently being used. Instead, replace it with a complex series of small quest lines started by a complex web of triggers. For example, the early quests trigger would be the turn after your first city is founded. Later, a quest may trigger if you own a certain number of cities while another may trigger if at a certain turn you still have less than a certain number of cities. A small quest line my start if you search a ruin with a hero that has Cold Operator and Level two India Bones because you find some strange artifact that interacts with the winter. As you get further into the game the quest triggers could also be dependent on previous decisions made in quests. So if you hire certain hero after you exploit the artifact found in winter as best you could, he finds a new use for it. This would allow multiple ways to win, one quest line may help you win by recreating a small spaceship and leave while another help you survive the apocalypse or even prevent it. Assuming this is done well enough that even without a linear quest progression you still almost always have a quest, this will make each and every play through unique even when playing the same faction because you would be seeing new faction specific quests every single time. This is the most complicated option to implement but, I think that it would definitely pay off because of the massive increase in replayability.

A lot of interesting things here, very different ideas too



First, about the branching and variations, it exists but not the way you present it in your examples.

Currently, you can have alternative steps for a same quest that will make the entire main quest itself a bit different than in the last game. But what you show implies that we keep variables in memory and get those variables back at some point to trigger chapter 8 or 8Alt for instance. Our system does not really allow that for the moment but it is something we thought about and it might be a possible evolution.



Secondly, about the campaign for each factions. As you can see in our post about community feedback (http://tinyurl.com/lksde2g) we prefer the concept of scenarios.

Please note also that parallel quest for 2 different player (one invading and the other defending according to your example) sounds a bit complicated. If done it will be more about putting a same objective with only one winner, or a cooperative quest...



Thirdly, this option suggesting to recode entirely our system seems quite a bit impossible at this stage of production. However, what you describe as small quest lines could be some derivative of the main quest line. Like side quests but with faction lore in it. I will add the idea to our community feedback list in order to keep a look at it.



Thanks a lot for all the suggestion!