Hello everyone,

I am prototyping a game currently and I need some help about the most basic feature.

About the game

In this game there are cities on the map. Each city has its own population and some workplaces that produce and consume goods. Price of the good is formed on city-level and it depends on supply and demand.

Player has their own merchants that they can use to buy/sell and transport goods between the cities to make profit. And AI is doing it as well. Transporting goods take time, it doesnt happen at once. Keep in mind that AI is doing same thing, so there is a possibility of AI getting somewhere before player and doing the same thing, and thus the can influence the price or buy up goods before player arrives.

Ive tried implementing that basic trade three times and cant decide which way to go, so I am going to explain them here and hopefully you can help me out.

1. Home-destination-home

First implementation is simplest. Player is sending a merchant from home city to another city with instruction to either buy or sells something. As soon as its done, merchant is teturning to home city. This is the method AI uses.

2. Planned route

Second implementation requires player to plan out the route before sending the merchant out. So it can be planned like: buy A in city 1, sell A and buy B in city 2, buy C in city 3, and then sell B and C in city 1. Player gets the money from trades only when merchant arrives back home in this case.

3. Individual instructions

This is kind of a hybrid system between 1 and 2. Here players sends the merchant to location. When merchant arrives player can decide what to sell (if merchant has it) or buy. Then player can either send merchant home, send him to another location or have him wait for resources to accumulate.

Comparison

So, here are some pros and cons of each system that I was able to determine from trying them out.

1. Pros: easy, fast, simple. Cons: since evrytime merchant is returning home, trading from one non home city to another takes a lot of time and makes it very slow for player.

2. Pros: allows for multi city trade, passive. Cons: reuqires most planning out of all three methods and also is very slow compared to AI so it usually leads to player not reaping the benefits of longer routes and multi city trade.

3. Pros: fast, reactive and easy to understand. Cons: too much micro management since player has to individually give instructions for every merchant.

I honestly doubt I will chose 2 since it is most complex and AI is killing its benefits. But I cant decide between 1 or 2. I am also open to hearing your opinion and ideas of maybe some other methods I could try out.

Hello everyone,

Not sure if this type of post is allowed here, but I believe mods will decide it.

Anyway, I have been developing my game for a year now, and kinda felt burned a bit from it, so I started making some random things and playing with the engine as a “side project”.

I have made a map generator, town creator which creates little towns and its inhabitants, a simple economy and some basic individual behaviour for each person. Its basically a framework for any type of strategy/economic sim.

But honestly, since I kinda went with the flow with it, I dont have any idea what to do with it. Bunch of random ideas are popping up in my head but none of them is sticking.

So I wanted to ask you if there is anything that you feel is missing from the genre?

Any time period, any mechanic, any aspect of ruling or making strategic decisions? Is there any type of strategy game that you feel is missing out there and you would like to play?

Hello everyone,

I found my self in a very strange situation. Whole my life I have had different ideas for games that could be made, but I didnt know how to do anything about it.

A year ago I started working on one of those ideas and have been working steadily on it, and I like the state of it now. Have even released a prototype a month ago.

But I felt little burned out and decided to start a side project in order to test some things and play with engine.

First I have made a map algorithm which generates different maps every time, then algorithm for creating small towns and its inhabitants, then a simple economy. And each person is being simulated in there individually and have some basic behaviour.

It is basically a good framework for a strategy game or a tycoon game or anything similar to those genres.

But I have no idea what to do with it. Its like I have a game (simulation since there is no player input), but no idea what to do about it…

Have you ever found yourselves in similar situation and what did you do with it?

Hello everyone,

I started working on a side project. It is supposed to be some type of strategy/tycoon game, think guild meets ck3, a medieval tycoon. But that isnt important at all.

In this game I want player to be part of the living ecosystem. So everything a player can do, AI can do as well. So its not really a game driven by player and their decision, its more like player interacting with active simulation.

So when designing and developing features and mechanics, what approach do you think would be better: player first or AI first.

Going player first would allow me to feel it directly before coding a lot of things in order to make it work for AI, but going player first can also lead to making needlessly complex things for algorithm to understand and recreate.

So whats your practice and advice regardin this?

Hello everyone,

A year ago I started with almost zero knowledge in everything and have been learning and working on my game every day. I like where I am now, but I felt a little burned out, so I wanted to take some time and rest.

But not from playing with godot, so I started making some things for fun and have made:
- a primitive sims like wall and object placing mechanics
- a terrain randomizer with different biomes
- natural population growth simulation with primitive economy.

Now theres nothing strange about those things, but they are relatively useless right now since I dont want to abandon my own game and dont want to work on 10 things in parallel.

But that gave me an idea, there have to be some people out there who made some strange and useless things just for the sake of it. Out of pure fun and boredom.

So I would like to hear/see those strange things some of you made with literally 0 need for it.