forum.empireclassic.com

[Ben]

(re-posted from Empire5, once it was determined these were too futuristic)

Many of the best play features of Empire4 need to be brought forward, while automating the drudgery of battle and economic maintenance.

Empire6 will again be a multi-player turn based game, which can span many months of play. Key game features should include:


User Community
Exploration
Economy
-Money
-Investments
-Industries
-Skills
-Products
-Trade
-Supply
Technology
Warfare
Government


User Community:
One thing about Empire I've always enjoyed, is that the players become a community. They sign on and the same players are there, with a slowly developing game environment. They sign on - and check to see who else is online. They read the news, exchange email and radio messages discussing the current global situation and speculate on what will develop. It's a community. Identities can be annonmous, which provides a bit of intrige, any allows users to "play a role".

Empire 5 should strive to preserve and strengthen this sense of community and role playing. Clients should support improved communications (better news, threaded discussions, avatars)

Exploration:
Exploration is fun. Like Empire 4, Empire 5 should create a large random world, and then hide it from view until explored. I would prefer one large contigous map, rather than islands in a large sea. This would mean that terrain is constant, but the contents (objects) can change on that terrain. I would suggest a bit more varied terrain. Coastal, flatland, forest, swamp, desert, hills, mountains, rivers. Construction projects may be able to change terrain (or at least attributes of terrain). This implies the possibility of roads, clearing forests, plowing fields, preparing a harbor, bridging a river.

Discovery would result in initial naming rights, but if your nation fails to colonize an appropriate percentage, then naming right would automatically transfer. In a world without clear islands, I'm not sure what would be named. Maybe regions would be named - and eventually subdivided further into more official states/counties/provinces. Analogous to something like Western Territory later becomes Washington, Oregon and California. As war reshped national boundries, names of land regions changed. We might need to name Cities as well. Cities would be an object, which would be a container for industries, supplies and population.
I like a lot of what Sid Meyer did with Colonization relative to this.



I'll have to finish this post later - we need a Wiki.