Steph'nie wrote:

Seasons: there will be season events, just like factions (minor/major) can take advantage of seasons. We're still looking at possibilities when it comes to reflecting seasons on the terrain (different textures for instance). As for pathfinding: it will not be affected by seasons.

Seh ich das richtig das das wegfindungssystem vom winter nicht betroffen werden soll?



wenn ja..... warum nicht?

zugeschneite berghänge die sich erst wieder im früjahr öffnen /auftauen.

ich finde das würde a) athmosphäre schaffen.

und b) jemanden teilweise vor ganz andere taktische herausforderungen stellen ^_^



achso wenn wer dem mächtig ist.... bitte übersetzen -.-'

Nasarog wrote:
I concur!!! Bring on the customization!!!



Okay, another question: will combat be like ES, or since you mentioned realtime, will it be like a WH40k (I dislike starcraft) DoW 1/2?

I fully agree!



Combat like DoW 1/2 would be epic (I still play DoW 2 with Friends)

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Wow. This game is stunningly beautiful already. Just 2 questions though:



1) I notice only three types of terrain: Flatlands, hills, and forests. Is it planned to have more? I know the document talks about things like waterfalls, so thats good. But is there a plan to add more "biomes" if you will? ie mountains, jungles, frozen prairies near the poles, etc. I think that would breath even more life into the game



2) Just echoing everyone else's question: Will there be custom factions, and will that be done differently than ES? If so, I hope its more customizable than the one in ES.

I concur!!! Bring on the customization!!!



Okay, another question: will combat be like ES, or since you mentioned realtime, will it be like a WH40k (I dislike starcraft) DoW 1/2?

Here are a few answers

Teodosio wrote:
My comment is: I already love this game so much that my only wish is that you bring it to GNU/Linux. I already have my preferred games on Ubuntu and Rome 2, XCOM e Civ5 ports are upcoming... wouldn't you want me to keep 'that' other OS just to play this game??

We are very interested by the Steambox, so we will definitely do our best to look in that direction, but it is not at the moment on top of our priority list, so I would not expect anything before the gold release for sure

T41 wrote:
will the custom faction design menu be the same as in ES

It will be along the same lines. Just the customization in the game is a bit different, where we try to have less but more powerful traits.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
I notice only three types of terrain: Flatlands, hills, and forests. Is it planned to have more? I know the document talks about things like waterfalls, so thats good. But is there a plan to add more "biomes" if you will? ie mountains, jungles, frozen prairies near the poles, etc. I think that would breath even more life into the game

Yes of course. Actually we have so far 16 main terrain types, and 7 altitudes. We are working on terrain modification by the altitudes at the moment, giving a lot of variety in the game. Sorry if we were not clear about that variety.

Nasarog wrote:
will combat be like ES, or since you mentioned realtime, will it be like a WH40k (I dislike starcraft) DoW 1/2?

We are closer to Endless Space, the main difference is that the battle occur in the terrain where everything else is happening, so it gives a better feeling of continuity. it also makes the terrain so much more important.





ST

T41 wrote:
I'm still in shock so this is my only question (for now): will the custom faction design menu be the same as in ES

same question ; )

Will the environment being living maybe like some mutated plants that could be exploited for defending an approach to your city as they are natural hazard, hunting them down which provide increase of food supplies or maybe selling them to other factions.



DarkMeph

I'm still in shock so this is my only question (for now): will the custom faction design menu be the same as in ES

My first thoughts upon seeing the images of the game were that it looks a lot like Civ 5, which I love, but wouldn't want a copy of. However, after reading through this, I think Nasarog's comment is appropriate.



OMFG... *Faints*

My comment is: I already love this game so much that my only wish is that you bring it to GNU/Linux. I already have my preferred games on Ubuntu and Rome 2, XCOM e Civ5 ports are upcoming... wouldn't you want me to keep 'that' other OS just to play this game??

Hehe, replacing minor races might cause a revolt. I like where this is going. lol



Combat concept seems solid to me, lets hope it works out well

Comments???? Sure.



Here's a comment. OMFG..... /faints.





I am going to dissect your post and give an in depth analysis when I get home from work tonight.



OMFG.....



/faints.. again!

Hey everyone,



We all know how eager you are to find out more about Endless Legend, so here you go! We have prepared for you a new design document on the game overview. It'll give you a better idea on what EL is about. Of course, we are looking forward to your feedback.







INTRODUCTION



Welcome to the world of Auriga, a fantasy world in which you will grow your tiny nation into a rich and powerful civilization.



This world was once welcoming and generous, a rich green jewel. However, ravaged by a terrible cataclysm, Auriga's forests burned and its meadows turned to dust. But life withstands the toughest tests, and your people, like others, was able to emerge from the ashes.



This world is full of hidden mysteries, treasures to be rediscovered, and wondrous and terrifying creatures that you can use to build your empire. The greatest wealth of Auriga is undoubtedly Dust, an almost magical substance that can turn wildest dreams into reality for those beings who can control its powers.



To ensure your survival you must dominate -- by peaceful or military means -- the other peoples of Auriga, better understand those strange ruins of vanished civilizations, and control the mysterious powers of the Dust.











GAME DESIGN



The game map

The game is played on a randomly generated world composed of hexagons of varying altitudes. Even if it is a planet, the terrain is presented in the form of a 2D plane with elevations and textures (vegetation, buildings, etc ...). Terrain plays three roles:

• Tactical: each unit can take advantage of higher ground, which plays a key role in battles.
• Strategic: the terrain has a strong impact on the economic returns of our empire.
• Immersive: the terrain must give life to an imaginary world, be credible, and inspire the desire to survive.
  
  

We face a real challenge because we want to have a random, credible and amazing world that is more than just a gameplay element. That is why we try to encourage player immersion by inserting decorative elements that enhance the terrain: waterfalls, magical forests, ruins of the civilizations who preceded us, caves sheltering mysterious creatures ...











Peoples and assimilation

The planet is divided into several distinct areas which are the natural habitats of many peoples known as "Minor" factions. These people can be assimilated by the player so that they fight alongside him, giving him access both to unique units as well as the skills of these powerful -- if small -- factions.



The idea with this aspect of the game is to have something similar to the Roman Empire which, having conquered a people, adopted their gods and employed their men as military auxiliaries.



These choices can be critical when empires clash, and the players must try to "collect" the support of Minor factions to create difficult and unexpected tactical situations.



A maximum of three Minor factions can join one of the Major factions. Warning: To replace one Minor faction by another may cause a revolt!





Harsh seasons

Auriga is a world subjected to very long seasons that have significant consequences on the economy and on military strategy. Each season can last decades and at the beginning of the game it will be difficult to predict a season's beginning and duration.





The Beautiful Season

During this season farm incomes are high, people thrive and the economy is doing well. Some people are seen as people of summer, and tend to thrive during this period.





The Dark Season

During this season, the sun disappears behind a thick fog and night and day are barely distinguishable. Winter peoples, who need less food from the fields, take advantage of this season to fall upon on their weakened enemies.





Economy

The strength of any faction on Auriga lies in its ability to develop, and to do this it must know how to exploit its environment.



When the player takes possession of a region, they choose a location to build a city.



This city has the ability to exploit its immediate environment. Each 'tile' around the city brings a combination of Dust (money), food, production and science as well as numerous resources of varying commercial value.



But rather than choose which tile to exploit, the player chooses which resource each unit of population generates: food, industry, money or science.

To improve the capabilities of its city, the player builds buildings. Buildings affect revenue production, but can also improve the overall capacity of the city or its surrounding tiles.



The player will soon realize that the city lacks space to grow, and will have to extend its influence by building new boroughs. Each barony may extend the influence of the city to at least 3 adjacent tiles.



But each region has its share of scarce resources to exploit, and the discovery of new technologies will allow the player to link these resources to the main city.





Heroes and quests

Certain extraordinary characters, known as Heroes, can lead armies or administer strongholds. Executing these missions gains experience (RPG-style), allowing the player to choose new powers and abilities in a skill tree.



Traveling the world, the heroes can find extraordinary items to equip a player's armed forces, or discover (for example) lost temples that renew the faith of a people.



These mysterious places can also trigger a series of randomly generated quests that might be in opposition to quests assigned to other players. Sometimes, quests require instead that several players work together to accomplish them.



The quest system has four objectives:

• Strengthen the immersion: The history of Auriga is rich and will be gradually uncovered by the player.
• Forcing interactions between players: Starting early in the game players will be encouraged to play together or against each other, even if they have not met.
• Encourage exploration: The more a player knows their world, the better they can carry out its quests.
• Provide an alternative to science discoveries: Quest objectives can complement the tech tree.
  
  

During these quests, heroes can either improve their own equipment to be more efficient, or improve their armies through the secrets they have discovered.





The creation of units

Endless Legend lets you produce and take control of armies that are made up of one of five different types of combat units. Each type of unit has an advantage over any other type of unit. Mounted are excellent against melee, which are very good against ranged, who are very good against flying units, which are very good against mounted troops. Support units are basically bonus units whose primary role is to strengthen or reinforce other types of units.



Beyond this basic rule, units can be equipped as a result of technological breakthroughs or the exploits of heroes. Thus, an infantry unit equipped with silver spears will receive a double bonus: against riders and against lycanthropes.



As more equipment is allocated to a unit its cost of maintenance increases. A player needs to carefully choose their elite units, because they cannot afford to have all units equipped as elites.





Fighting

Units in the game world deploy as part of an armies of ever-larger size that are led by a general. The role of units in an army will be linked to their base type: mounted, ranged, flying, melee or support. When the army moves on the map before a fight, it is represented by the icon or image of the Hero who leads the army. The rest of the troops are considered to be "embedded" in the visible symbol on the screen.



The battle takes place directly on the game map. When two armies meet, their units are deployed on the ground with one unit per tile. At the end of the deployment phase, all units are revealed to all players.



Thus, location is critical when a player decides to do battle. Each elevation, every forest, every river, every impassable area might have a decisive impact on the outcome of the battle.



The battle takes place in real time over a maximum of 2 minutes, but the fight is divided into rounds on which all the rules are based.







Orders during combat

For the battle, the player can select an overall strategy for each unit type. These actions are in real time, and each type of unit can have at least one action ongoing at a time.



Victory in battle

A fight does not necessarily have a winner every time, and battles can last several rounds. If both armies have survivors at the end of the battle, they may decide to stay and continue the fight or beat a retreat. Therefore a fight may last a while, especially if the players decides to bring reinforcements; it is possible to order other armies to the battlefield that will in turn deploy and participate in the next rounds of battle.





Research

The story of Endless Legend lasts a few hundred years, during which we pass from an age similar to our pre-medieval into the near future. Our characters will move from bronze swords to laser swords, and we will learn to master magic from basics as simple as a fireball fight up to the destruction of mountains, transforming a desert into an oasis, or opening a way to parallel worlds!



There are two ways to advance a people: science and quests.



Science

Science progresses through the accumulation of the Science resource, generally created in areas regarded as prosperous that encourage trade and the exchange of ideas. Scientific discoveries require constant investment and can only be achieved gradually. It is often via this branch that the player discovers mechanical and economic improvements.



Quests

By completing quests, the player seeks to find lost technologies used by the ancient inhabitants of Auriga. These technologies are often very powerful, and cannot be discovered otherwise.



As the Quest tree is generated randomly, it does not necessarily unlock the same items each time. This adds an element of the unknown from game to game. The main Quest tree for each faction allows the player to unlock buildings, abilities and weapons that are unique to their faction.





Diplomacy

Using diplomacy we have the opportunity to interact with other players. There are three main areas of interaction: Diplomatic treaties, coordination, and trade.



Diplomatic treaties

These treaties govern relations between players -- peace treaties, treaties of cooperation, alliances, or even Cold War. Cold War is the default state, and it allows players to attack anyone outside the empire borders.



Lasting peaceful relations allow empires to grow their trade and research. But in order to sign such agreements, empires must gain favor with their diplomatic partners -- one does not engage in peace without being certain of the other's good intentions!



Coordination

Coordination gives the opportunity to propose cooperative strategies for combined actions between empires, such as: Attack Player X in 10 rounds, attack or defend city Y, make a secret alliance against Player Z, etc..



Trade

Trade holds an important place in Endless Legend. Resources can be bartered at any time on a commodities exchange, but you can make specific arrangements with other players to exchange at preferential prices.



Your commercial exchanges will lead to the creation of physical trade routes on land and on sea, which will be vulnerable to attacks and plundering by robbers or enemies.



But most of all, a single interface will permit players to buy and sell anything and everything in the game, which obviously affect the prices of these items for all players.





Winning the Game

In a sandbox game like ours, it is important to provide the tools and motivation to the player to play and win as they wish. War is only one way to succeed, because we will encourage players to show superiority in other important fields such as economics, science and diplomacy. In total we have eight possible victory conditions, all of which are totally different.





VIP FEEDBACK



We've had some interesting discussions with our VIPs once again (okay, tons of questions and requests! ):

• BATTLES! Of course, we saw this coming. Unfortunately, we will not reveal much about them for now: a proper game design document should discuss those a bit more in details in the upcoming weeks. What we can say so far is that compared to Endless Space, you will have more possibilities and ways to automate your actions; unit placement and the terrain will highly influence the battle as well. Combats will take place in real time though all players (including the ones fighting) should be able to manage their cities and such as everything takes place on the same map!
• Seasons: there will be season events, just like factions (minor/major) can take advantage of seasons. We're still looking at possibilities when it comes to reflecting seasons on the terrain (different textures for instance). As for pathfinding: it will not be affected by seasons.
• Approval: the notion of approval will still be in Endless Legend. However, there won't be a tax rate system.
• Minor factions: revolts aren't planned, but the idea is interesting. As for balancing: games will always be different and you won't necessarily spawn next to that one minor faction will incredible abilitie

Impressive, i mean, it's everything someone could ever ask for from a 4X game.

I lose my breath from Reading about this game. Sounds like the fantasy strategy of my dreams so far. Game design, concepts and mechanisms seems really interesting, and it sonds like this will be a real strategical fantasy game. I'm in love already.



Combat seems interesting as well, and very innovative. My impression is that you walk arround with your army using only one tile at the time, but when combat happens, you Place the units out one unit a tile, then Battle happens in real time, but there can be many rounds a turn. Extremely interesting concept.

Ich mach das ma für dich SkOoMa / I'll do that for you SkOoMa!

SkOoMa wrote:
Seh ich das richtig das das wegfindungssystem vom winter nicht betroffen werden soll?



wenn ja..... warum nicht?

zugeschneite berghänge die sich erst wieder im früjahr öffnen /auftauen.

ich finde das würde a) athmosphäre schaffen.

und b) jemanden teilweise vor ganz andere taktische herausforderungen stellen ^_^



achso wenn wer dem mächtig ist.... bitte übersetzen -.-'

Is it true that the path-finding system will not be affected by seasons?



If yes - why not?

because: mountain passes usually would open / re-open in spring.

I think it a.) would ad some atmosphere.

and b.) would create entirely new strategic options/challenges. ^_^



[whoevercantranslateit,pleasedoso-.-']

Holy.... Google Translate butchered that post when I put it in



but I actually think that is a very, very good idea. I mean, they said we will have physical trade routes now. And if the evil factions, who I am guessing do not rely on diplomacy as much, thrive during days of no sunlight (Winter, ie.) it makes sense for the 'good' races to have the disadvantage of trade routes being blocked during winter.



But I didn't see details of seasons in the post (besides in the vip section). For that matter, I did not even see a description of the scale of the turns. For example, 1 turn is 1 year in ES. But I think it would be cool if 1 turn was something like a month in EL, allowing for things like seasons, and creating a game that is 'shorter' than in ES. (I find it hard to buy that I am supposed to be leading my empire yet I'm still alive after 120+ years. It doesn't really matter, but I think it would be cool.)



So can we have clarification on this? is it just not possible? Because if it is possible, I think its worth at least a test or two.

SpaceTroll wrote:
Here are a few answers



It will be along the same lines. Just the customization in the game is a bit different, where we try to have less but more powerful traits.

ST

Pls give us enough traits so that we are able to create tons and tons of different races. Thats the thing i love so much in ES the diversity. There are unlimited possibilitys and in the Multiplayer one race rarely looks like another.



Also i saw how just "a few traits" can ruin the customizations menu.



The 4X Game "Stardrive" uses only "a few Traits" (about 20) and the Race Editor is extrem boring and there are 2-3 combinations which are the most powerfull and widely known.

I have to agree with Sov, I think it would be better to have more traits, not less.

Steph'nie wrote:






Beyond this basic rule, units can be equipped as a result of technological breakthroughs or the exploits of heroes. Thus, an infantry unit equipped with silver spears will receive a double bonus: against riders and against lycanthropes.

Does this mean that I should be expecting werewolves? If so, I hope the game has a unique take on them. It otherwise looked like the emphasis was on avoiding blatantly stereotypical fantasy references and tropes.

T41 wrote:
I have to agree with Sov, I think it would be better to have more traits, not less.

More, more and more and these traits do not have to be major. I like how they were tiered in ES. It gives a lot of control and variability.