The latest dev blog got me thinking about the value of unique starting conditions and how important they are. Not only do they add depth and replayability but they shape the story of the colony as the game progresses. In Dwarf Fortress, the starting biome determines what initial challenges the player faces: wood may be present in various quantities (or not at all). Iron or flux may be absent which will limit the steel industry and force the player to either use lesser metals for their military or rely on imports. Large veins of precious metals may be present. Hostile fauna is a concern in evil biomes. Magma may be easily accessible. All these factors influence the story that will unfold in each fortress. Unique starting conditions create unique stories. However, while Dwarf Fortress showed us the potential of randomized starting conditions, it doesn't even come close to realizing their potential! I think Clockwork Empires could easily surpass DF in this aspect. So what are DF's flaws? In DF, an economy based on agriculture is simply overpowered because it's viable in every biome, can be easily scaled up, provides food, drink, clothing to dwarves while producing valuable goods for exporting, which then allows the player to get everything they need via imports. Even though one could theoretically create a fortress that depends on livestock (cheese and meat), leather for clothing and bone crafts as export item to get booze and weapons it just doesn't happen because agriculture achieves better results more easily. As a result, fishing/livestock/crafting/etc economies are neglected and the economy part of the story tends to be the same or similar every game. Not good. The way I imagine it in Clockwork Empires is that a colony in the tundra would only have very limited agriculture and instead rely more fishing, with a few randomized extra resources available that can be exported to create wealth (ie. whales, gold, special healing herbs, etc). With that wealth, the colony could then import whatever they needed or perhaps tap new resources that need a certain investment before they become available (deep mines for example, large manufacturing plants, etc). A colony in a temperate biome might have poor fishing grounds but be able to grow good food crops such as wheat. A colony in a dry climate might be forced to rely on cattle or goats for food because that's the only way to make use of the land filled with dry grass. The point is that no branch of the industry should be able to carry the whole economy of the colony by itself and which industries are good (or are even available at all) should heavily depend on the biome. Another reason why DF fails to realize the potential of randomized starting conditions is the import/export market. It doesn't really reflect supply & demand and there is no apparent limit to the amount of goods one can obtain via imports. So the initial scarcity of certain types of resources eventually stops mattering. Not good. A better model would feature prices reflecting on supply & demand which means that an economy heavily reliant on exports/imports would need to differentiate the types of goods it produces. The availability on the market of certain types of goods should be limited (ie. surplus coal on the market would be limited to 200 tons per season). The scarcity of resources could also be randomized so that for example in one game, the world aluminum supply would be rare and precious and thus quite costly, whereas in another game it could be relatively abundant and cheap. Yet another problem of DF is: since it's actually easier to create mostly self-sustaining underground fortresses than it is to to build aboveground fortresses, the surface climate and dangers don't really matter that much. Being able to safely wall yourself off from any danger also removes said danger. The lesson here is that if you add stuff like evil mist, disease, monsters, etc to the surface, don't let people just ignore them easily. Dealing with these challenges throughout the game will shape the story of the colony. Just remember the elephants of Boatmurdered.
So will the colonists have money and a salary to purchase goods and services or will everything be run like an autonomous collective?
Good question. The colony leader (ie. the player) should have money, because trading with other colonies and the homeland by bartering would be too backwards for the victorian era the game is based on. As for your question, the moment colonists get a salary things become complicated. I can see the merit of having colonies run like a communist utopia hellhole for the sake of simplicity.
I think the old majesty had a preety good way of handling salary. The heroes in your kingdom did some random exploring and killing, for which they got a bit money, but you could also put bounties on monsters. With that gold the heroes would buy equipment which generated taxes. The taxes then where collected by tax collectors at the shop giving you money. And then the circel repeats. I don´t think it would be difficult to give the colonists money. Would also make the think more realistical. A higher Colonist wouldn´t just get better things because he is a noble or something, but also because he has the most money. Of course there should be a separate gold stash for the colony (your money), that can be used for import/export and salary of the military and public workers.
Umm - I think that there is no real way to "balance" a game with a truly "random" biome generation system. The best road to go down would be to do what the later iterations of civ do - rig the game so you do have enough random components around your starting area to make sure each game feels unique, but have enough "guaranteed" spawns that you can default to one specific style or the other if you don't like what you get. One of the ways to achieve this would be to give all colonies means of generating certain amounts of certain key resources independently of the terrain around them. That is, of course, assuming you want to have balance. Imo, i wouldn't mind if CE tried to maximise the single player experience instead of trying to balance for a multiplayer mode that might never take off. When trying to maximise the single player experience, the key factor is creating a system where you have no "default route" whatsoever. The infamous agriculture econ is a very good example of what NOT TO DO. In the same spirit as DoD (which follows the spirit of Rogue), there is nothing wrong with starting a game and finding out that no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot beat the game with what you start with. As long as there's no PvP involved, it's A-OK. Because losing is fun. Duh.
I really hope that they rob control from the player to make a more capitalist society because the victorians were really big on that. That whole school voucher idea? Did that. Privatized the mail system? Did it. It'd be fun to have to administer your colony through nudges rather than being able to command and control like in most games, and there were some games (like A-Train or Sim City 3000... wait what?) that already went to a degree in that direction.
I think you can make an easy compromis on this one: Add a button where I can decide weather I wanted a completely random world or one tha gurantees me certain resourcess. I think Civ 5 did this, too?
^You could adjust the amount of starting goodies. Not sure if you can disable the mechanic that guarantees you will spawn in an environment that's favorable to your race (i.e. if your civ trait is dependent on being next to mountains, you will always spawn with civ in your immediate vicinity).
