One of the major flaws of the game at the moment lies in the campaign AI and scoring. I’ve spent this week overhauling the Kingdom AI. It was always pretty tame and primarily was in the game as a proof of concept and something I’d always considered coming back to later down the line. Well, it’s now later down the line and I wanted to make the other Kingdoms feel much more alive, more active and more competitive. So, now the game is tied to a scoring system throughout (this would previously only show at the end and never compared you to other kingdoms), at the end of every year your score is compared against the AI and you’re ranked accordingly. Different Kingdoms act in different ways and so you may find some competitors more challenging than others. Previously, the player would just breeze past the AI but I want the game to feel even just a little bit competitive. I still need to rework the end scoring Menu, but the idea with this is that if you work hard enough by the end of the game you’ll have a higher score than the AI and be crowned the best kingdom and win but if you fail to make poll position, you’ll fail the campaign. Adding a touch of challenge to playing campaign mode. Regardless you’ll still be able to continue your kingdom at the end of the campaign, but each campaign will enter onto a local score board for you to compare each game / kingdom you play and hopefully add motivation of self-improvement for the player and a bit more replay-ability to the whole thing.

I’ve also spent some time over the week working on improving Villains and Bounties. Bounties work much the same, however I’ve streamlined the menu system and contracts available to the player integrating the system with the updated settlement mechanics, so a settlement now requires the Notice Board upgrade in order to have bounties posted. I’d never been very happy with the villain system, it’s gone through various iterations of design but nothing ever felt as though it had stuck, until now. Villains are now found while out on epic quests with your Heroes. The improved Epic Quest Event system allows the player to encounter an event that will unfold to unlocking the location / threat of a villain. The player can then designate a party of Heroes to attend a special “Vanquish” Epic Quest which focuses all events towards Villain story events, the party needs to succeed in every single choice in order to slay the villain successfully. If a party fails a choice, they lose instantly and return back to the player’s Kingdom. It plays a lot better than it reads, but essentially it’s tied in a lot tighter to the core mechanics of questing and should allow for some interesting variations in game play, adding a bit of depth to the Quest Events.

Linked to this is the new Kingdom Modifier mechanic, whereby specific events or instances will cause either a temporary or permanent affect on a Kingdom. For instance once a Villain is defeated the player will receive a temporary bonus into the Kingdom’s happiness, attractiveness and various other attributes while glory spreads across the land. Instances of events that affect the world will occur and cause an impact on the kingdom, such as a global gold crisis lowering/raising gold earned or an article from a local settlement newsletter altering the turnout of adventurers in the kingdom for a while. It’s a small feature but it helps make the game world feel alive and adds a bit more challenge to the player to take advantage or work to counter any modifiers affecting their Kingdom.

I’ve also added a few new designs into the game. I’ve been meaning to add a castle in for a while, there’s no way to currently unlock it but I want it to be part of a dynamic event system that allows you to build it towards the later stages of the game as a kind of trophy item. I’ve also been working on a few new adventurer models. I’m hoping to get a couple more done over the weekend / the start of next week. I’d like there to be a little bit more variation in characters.