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unmerged(323382)

Zeal Game dev
Jun 1, 2011
93
0
Hi everyone,

If you have had your eyes open during the latest months you might have hear me talk about two things quite often; Research and Influence. I thinks it's time for me to explain these two features in greater detail than earlier.

Influence
During the course of the campaign you will gain influence points, you can spend these in the influence menu in order to upgrade your prince or your settlement. These upgrades stay with you throughout the entire campaign. I'm not gonna go through every tech but I'll touch on the three branches in the influence three.

First we have the Battle Branch – The techs here will increase your military power and the battle ability of your Prince. I recommend people to take at least the first point here since it gives your Prince basic combat skills so he won't die from simple goblins.

Then we have what we call the Production branch. Upgrades here will help you progress you settlement. The branch have a focus on resource management and gaining new dwarves quickly.
Last but not least we have the Research Branch, techs here will greatly aid you while researching on the different campaign levels. This might actually be stupidly powerful right now since you gain several free techs at the beginning of each level so I might have to nerf this some.

Below I'm showing you the evolution of the Influence tree through our development starting with the first rough draft and ending on what hopefully is the last one.
The influence points you need to unlock stuff are gained by completing side quests in the campaign. You'll be able to access the influence techs in skirmish-mode as well, somehow.

influence_progress.jpg


Research
Next, we have the Research Tree. Research points are gained by having a scholar attend to a research bench. He will then conduct research and when he have spent sufficient time working, you get one research point.

The Techs in this tree have large effect on your settlement and could be considered you general strategy for the particular level your at. For a short level or when playing very aggressive I recommend putting early points into techs that will enhance your military dwarves. Second Wind and Cloth Armor comes to mind. Second Wind grants full HP when a dwarf reaches a new level and Cloth Armor increases the HP of all your dwarves.

Should you on the other hand be playing on a longer level I'd recommend investing in techs that grants quicker researching and then taking more techs than when rushing. Maybe even go so far as to take some of the last tier techs and upgrade my settlement to perfection.

This is the current GUI build of the Research Tree - it might not be the final one, but you get an idea of what we're going for here.
IMG_12072012_162513.png


//Thorwaldsson
 
Interesting, I like the UI evolution shots.

It looks like research is done on a strict left-2-right progression on 4 tracks so what are the gaps for, are they gaps in an exponential cost progression?

What kind of granularity is their for Influence 'points', the prominent numbers 3 and 4 seem to imply that upgrades cost more then one point? When you do a side-quest are you awarded X 'influence points' that can be accumulated and spent freely so long as you have enough to pay the price of the particular upgrade? Your shot shows upgrades unlocked in no particular order so I assume it's not like research in that it is entirely free-form.

Are particular buildables like Beds or Traps going to be items in the Research lines, or are they all 'buffs' to existing items/dwarves like the examples you gave?

Suggestion: Would 'Lore' perhaps be a more Dwarven sounding term then Research? Research tends to make me think of people in white lab coats mixing chemicals, aka too modern. Likewise 'Craft' rather then 'Production'.
 
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Suggestion: Would 'Lore' perhaps be a more Dwarven sounding term then Research? Research tends to make me think of people in white lab coats mixing chemicals, aka too modern. Likewise 'Craft' rather then 'Production'.

I want Dwarves in white lab coats making explosions now.
For science!

Also I noticed this thread not being listed on The "A Game of Dwarves" developer diaries (deluxe) collection!. Is there going to be a "The "A Game of Dwarves" developer diaries (complete) collection!" possibly to be followed up with a "The "A Game of Dwarves" developer diaries (chronicles) collection!"? :)

On the influence screens themselves I notice that the text around the big "4" on the second shot appears to have gone missing on the third one. Which obviously has me rather intrigued on what that text might've been saying.
Also are the "influence points" refered to in the post the reputation on the screenshots or is this something seperate again?