INTRODUCTION



Minor Factions are like barbarians: they consider their region as their own. They create units and form armies like Major Factions. Yet Minor Factions will never evolve by themselves the same way Major Factions can. They can’t create Cities or buildings, and if they manage to attack a city, they won’t be able to capture it. Each Minor Faction will have from 1 to 3 villages in their region. Each region has a Minor Faction except the Major Factions’ starting regions. There can be multiple tribes of the same Minor Faction on bigger maps.





PACIFICATION



A player Faction can pacify a Minor Faction by force (fighting), or peace (bribe; doing quests for them):



By peace

To pacify a tribe peacefully, the player needs first to become “Friendly” by completing a quest for them or by trading with them. This approach takes longer and leaves room for other Factions to gain control over the region, but the rewards are also better (quest reward, Approval, possibly intact villages).

Once in a “Friendly” state and with a city built, the Minor Faction tribe is considered as pacified. The player can then assimilate the pacified Minor Faction (see more details below)



By force

At any moment, the player can attack a Minor Faction village, thus changing the current relation to “War”. At this point, the only way to pacify the tribe becomes the destruction of all their villages. Rebuilding these villages will be the only way to once again have the population point bonus coming from each village.



Pacified

Once pacified, the player obtains some advantages:

• The villages stop generating roaming armies;
• If the player colonizes or had already colonized the region by building a new city, he gets 1 additional population points per village (not destroyed) in the region;
• He can assimilate them with Prestige.
  
  

ASSIMILATION



By assimilating a Minor Faction, the player earns the Minor Faction’s Trait as well as the ability to recruit the unit corresponding to the Minor Faction, in any city of his Empire (as long as 1 of that tribe’s villages remains intact). Several Minor Factions can be assimilated at the same time, depending on the number of slots your empire has acquired (this is done through Traits and Research). A player can change his assimilated Minor Factions at any time, but it will cost Prestige to do so. Each Minor Faction can only be assimilated once, even if the player pacifies multiple tribes from the same Minor Faction.











RELATIONS WITH A MINOR FACTION TRIBE



Default status towards a tribe depends on the faction and the game difficulty and can be described as follows:



War: roaming armies always attack the player on sight. They can attack and destroy player cities.

Cold War: the player can negotiate with villages (quests, deals), but roaming armies will attack on sight all armies entering their territory (if they don’t have a quest in progress with him). They can attack and destroy player cities. Friendly: you can enter their territory without harm and negotiate with villages (quests, deals). Roaming armies don’t attack you.









BEHAVIOUR



Economy

At the beginning of the game Minor Factions will either have some technologies unlocked or at least have some equipment unlocked (depending on the Minor Faction. They do not do research the way the player does. However, as long as they have not been assimilated, over time they will obtain free researches/unlocks, depending on difficulty factors and the game evolution.



Military

Throughout the game, the player will become more and more powerful. Minor Factions must always remain a challenge, not just a battle you can always win easily during mid-game and later. To achieve that, neutral villages (not pacified) will constantly create roaming armies to protect their region and to visit nearby regions in order to create local conflicts. Neutral tribes will generate battle units over turns (depending on the Minor Faction and the difficulty level) in order to create armies of two kinds:

• Village armies that protect villages without leaving them, and
• Roaming armies that will roam inside adjacent regions and steal or destroy Strategic Resource Buildings depending on affinities.
  
  

Once pacified

Pacified villages stop producing roaming armies. Existing ones gain their autonomy, becoming neutral roaming armies. Villages become Region Buildings belonging to the region’s player while giving one additional Population point for each “not destroyed” village.

Pacifying a race is not definitive: you can lose their pacification and corresponding bonuses if you lose their region to another faction.





ARTWORK









VIP FEEDBACK



Our VIPs had a few questions about:

• Peace with a minor faction: they will have a "friendly" behaviour towards you and you won't be considered as a threat if you try to settle in their region.
• Cold war with a minor faction: if you visit their region, roaming armies might attack you
• Quests: You have to make contact with one of their villages to get a quest. Their roaming armies might once again attack you on the way until you give them what they want (completing the quest). This should avoid exploits such as accepting all quests from minor factions, assimilating them, despite not completing the quest. So watch out!
• Bonuses: once pacified you get 1 population point by village and the peace with them in your region. If assimilated, you get their trait and their unit to recruit.
• Spawning village armies when pacified: they keep creating village units to defend the villages but the player doesn't have any control on them. He can only create new ones after having assimilated them. However, they won't create roaming armies anymore.
• Alignment: the question of alignment has been asked several times but it is not planned for now though we think it is a very interesting idea. We are hoping to have some kind of combinations between the faction skills and such. To be discussed. What we can say is that we imagined minor factions with important differences like their power, their number, their price to recruit, different difficulties to pacify them, biome affinities, traits, etc.
• Any plans for arachnid races? surprise, surprise! (I hate spiders...)
  
  

Oooooooh, I like it. That's one way to add uniqueness and immersion. Now the question is, let's say you have a faction that is good, will this minor race react to it differently? What about influence? A good faction will affect the minor one way and an evil another.. so on and so forth. Diversity is key here.

1.

Nasarog wrote:
Oooooooh, I like it. That's one way to add uniqueness and immersion. Now the question is, let's say you have a faction that is good, will this minor race react to it differently? What about influence? A good faction will affect the minor one way and an evil another.. so on and so forth. Diversity is key here.

BUMP! In other words: will there be factions that'll be better at conquering/assimilating minor factions?



2. If there will be no arachnid faction then maybe insectoid one?



3. How many different minor factions can we expect?



4. Will there be an option to tweak minor faction aggressiveness?



5. Am I asking too much and too soon?

I guess that we can't be friends with all factions at the same time? Would add a lot of immersion too.

I agree. Path choices, especially difficult ones, usually define games in a number of factors such as expansion direction, general friends, general foes and your overall success within the game depending upon those choices - be it good or bad.

So does a good A.I.



I can not stress this enough, there must be several A.I.'s at work and they must all have unique characteristics.

Hmmm... is Endless Legend gonna use the same "alignment" system as Endless Space, i.e. "Evil" means warlike and "Good" means peaceful/diplomatic? Because if it is, that might be used for the minor races, with "Evil" minor races suffering a lesser Approval malus because of a "might makes right" mentality?

would it be possible for two factions to try and settle for peaceful way of taking a village?



DarkMeph

We want to make sure the Minor race mechanics offer a great variety of choices and events.

As an opponent during your explorations, as moral (i.e. economic) choices when expanding your empire, and as reinforcements to your faction's armies.

And still make it all easy to understand.

And balanced.



So there may be some adjustments to Minor faction mechanics before the Alpha.

So all comments are welcome!

All the concepts and game design described so far for this game sounds so cool! Very creative good ways to make a fantasy 4X. Can't wait to order the alpha/beta, chaps!

I like the peaceful assimilation possibilities, works into my general playstyle. It would be interesting if a pacified village would provide you with troops of their race while a military forced village only benifits you in other ways. Sort of a bonus to the added time it takes to pacify the village.

I am liking the approach they are taking with the minor factions.



DarkMeph

Steph'nie wrote:




Our VIPs had a few questions about:

• Peace with a minor faction: they will have a "friendly" behaviour towards you and you won't be considered as a threat if you try to settle in their region.
• Cold war with a minor faction: if you visit their region, roaming armies might attack you
• Quests: You have to make contact with one of their villages to get a quest. Their roaming armies might once again attack you on the way until you give them what they want (completing the quest). This should avoid exploits such as accepting all quests from minor factions, assimilating them, despite not completing the quest. So watch out!

The depth of this system is really compelling to me. I always wondered about the non-playable heroes in Endless Space and their role in the galaxy.



I have a few questions based on the responses to the VIP questions:

• Will minor faction AI recognize when they are hopelessly outmatched and simply avoid conflict on those grounds?
• Could a quest be generated by current game state? E.g., can minor factions request assistance from the player if they are being overrun by an opponent and vice versa?
• Will minor factions interact with each other or will they necessarily be geographically separated?
• Will there be events associated with minor factions in the same manner as the pirates of Endless Space (hero assassination attempts that leave them with less health, etc.)?

That's all I can think of for now. This game is looking great!

Is there a possibility of having a special game mode where you only play as minor factions? Might be interesting



Also such epic art! I can't wait to see art for all the Minor factions

will minor factions, besides their traits offer any FIDS bonuses? will assimilating them grant the player any new technologies? also, is it possible to wipe them out completely? will there be any super-aggresive factions like the cravers that cannot assimilate minor factions but can get bonuses for destroying them?

Steph'nie wrote:




Default status towards a tribe depends on the faction and the game difficulty and can be described as follows:



(snip)



They do not do research the way the player does. However, as long as they have not been assimilated, over time they will obtain free researches/unlocks, depending on difficulty factors and the game evolution.



(snip)



(depending on the Minor Faction and the difficulty level) in order to create armies of two kinds:

Since "Difficulty" does not appear to be implemented yet, is there any chance it can be more multi-tiered? Like a separate difficulty for Minor Factions, each major factions, and maybe overall? Maybe even sliders to set exactly what advantages are conveyed to the AI, rather than just a vague "Easy/Medium/Hard" type of setting. Is it too late to discuss difficulty?