Re: Marketing Xconq?

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Hi Lincoln,

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> It sounds like you're talking about random units being created at random
> places

Possibly, if the game designer thought it would fit the game.

> on the map for random sides

For random sides? That's an interesting thought, though game 
balance could be unduly influenced in this manner. 

>, although none of those are likely
> meant to be 100% random (e.g. it would be ridiculous for a nuclear bomb,
> owned by your opponent, to randomly appear next to *your* capital
> city!).

I don't think I mentioned randomness. But now that you bring it 
up, I must say that it has possibilities.... :-)

> I recall thinking that something like that might be interesting in
> bolodd.g: Every so often, an independent unit (perhaps goblins at low
> levels, with more powerful stuff as the game progresses) appears out of
> nowhere (but preferably in an area that nobody can see) and wreaks havoc
> with any non-independent units it can find.

Yes, this is more like what I had in mind. But also I was thinking 
that one could design semi-specific scenarios with reinforcement 
zones (countries being a good candidate for these), where each 
side is _guaranteed_ to get certain forces at regular intervals, 
but without the designer needing to create each unit that can be 
brought in. And as I mentioned earlier, some form of regular 
production could (but need not) accompany reinforcements.

Another possibility would be to reinforce based on territory held. 
This would go some way towards making a game such as Risk or 
Warlords (that Alan mentioned) more feasible on the Xconq engine.

>  Of course, I don't expect
> anything like that to become possible until well after 7.5.

Nor do I. To be honest, aside from possibly spiffing up the 
compound terrain effects that I put in awhile ago, I have entered 
a self-imposed feature freeze. My focus is on bug fixes, 
packaging, and documentation until 7.5 (are we shooting for a Dec 
25th release date, Hans? :-)

  Regards,
   Eric