Blob wars
In this document I am going to try my best to give a detailed description of blobwars, a game that I hope will be made.
RTS (real time strategy)
You control a colony of blobs. You build cities and then through diplomatic agreements will ether war or trade with other blob colonies.
Economy - the biggest emphases will be on the economy
Politics – you got to run your glob kingdom somehow... why not make it a little like the real world when doing it. It's always sorta bugged me with all the RTS games out there how you're the supreme dictator and your empire does exactly as you say without even a complaint!
Trading – You can't produce every thing in one city, trade with other blob kingdoms to get what you don't have. That will make your popularity with your blobs higher as well as help to advance your city in technology.
Technology – Your empire has to advance some how :)
War – last and least, the war. I want very little emphases on war, this is meant to be an economic/politic/trading game. But it needs war to make it fun. So it will have it.
The game revolves around the cities.
The city – how the city is built
Each city revolves around it's warehouse.
The warehouse is the first structure in a new city, it holds resources and can house a certain number of blobs.
The blobs are what makes the city run, they planet and harvest crop fields, mine stones, gold, and silver, build structures, and protect the city from invading armies.
Blobs have to live somewhere, so you must erect houses.
The city – buildings
Some buildings are upgradeable (as well as downgradeable).
warehouse – holds resources as well as a small number of blobs – is upgradeable (holds more resources, the number of blobs it can hold stays the same though)
house – Holds blobs, they have to live somewhere. Residants pay taxes unless they are militia blobs – is upgradeable (houses will upgrade and downgrade automatically depending on the city's economy and happiness)
training camp – makes normal blobs into militia blobs– is upgradeable (trains blobs to fight harder)
militia house – holds more blobs than a house, but only holds militia blobs. And blobs living it them will do nothing but sit there. so you have to pay for their living expenses.
market – acts as an additional small warehouse (for resources only), it's also where trade caravans go to and from. all buildings must be in range of a certain distance of a market unless transportation is provided. all markets and warehouse contents are shared (global) to the city – is not upgradeable
road – used to provide transportation to buildings as well as from one place to another, blobs move faster on them as well - is not upgradeable
rail – you can connect two or more markets together with rail (it doesn't mater whose market it is). Trains move along it which act as caravans (more on trains under 'units' section). Rails are not owned by any one person, any one can set a train on it and start chugging away! So you have to guard your track and trains from enemies and bandits. The rail must be connected to one of your markets for you to set a train on it - is not upgradeable
pittery – changes pittifle cherries into cherries (which can be eaten for food) - is upgradeable (pitts cherries faster)
gold ore refinery – refines gold ore into gold - is upgradeable (refines faster)
silver ore refinery – refines silver ore into silver - is upgradeable (refines faster)
coinage – turns gold and silver (gold makes more coins than silver) into coins (if you have a gold based currency) - is upgradeable (produces coins faster)
iron ore refinery – refines iron ore into iron - is upgradeable (refines faster)
paper mill – turns trees into paper - is upgradeable (produces paper faster)
resurch lab – uses paper to research technology - is upgradeable (works faster)
There are resources scatered around the map, and if they within a certain distance of a market or road connected to a market, you can higher blobs to gather the resources by setting it in the market. so say there is a cherry tree nearby to a market, you can set so many blobs to gather cherries to the market. The requested number of blobs will then fill the position (you will of course have to pay them). They will go back and forth between the cherry tree and the market.
The scatered resources are:
cherry tree – produces pittifle cherries
stone – can be queried for brick
stone with gold ore – can be queried for brick and mined for gold ore
stone with silver ore – can be queried for brick and mined for silver ore
stone with iron ore – can be queried for brick and mined for iron ore
trees – can be choped down to the stump for wood, will grow back after a wile
The city – economy
Each city has it's own economy (as well as poloticial feelings, and technology level). The amount of resources is specific to each city. If you have several cities you can have them automatically even out the resources between themselves trough trade.
An economy is the amount of resources stored in a warehouse or market, as well as the wealth of your government (the wealth is global, but not the resources).
You can choose between two forms of currency to run your kingdom with. Gold, or paper money. Gold is hard to get, but retains it's value and anyone will take it for pay. Your second choice is to run your kingdom on paper money. It is easy to get, you just have to use a little bit of wood! You can make as much as you want! But, you have to deal with inflation and depression. And other players may not take your paper money, as it could become worthless overnight (by your decision to drop the currency). If inflation becomes too out of hand, some or any of your blobs may not take it for pay from you. I want the economy as far as currency goes to simulate the real world as much as possible.
Now there are actually two different economies with the resources. There are your resources in a city and there are the civilians owned resources.
The civilians will produce their own resources and trade and sell them themselves. They will also use their own resources to upgrade their houses (if they don't have the right resources to upgrade the will buy them from you or some one else). They can mine raw materials such as gold and silver, but they must sell it if they can't refine it themselves.
There are several ways you can get resources. You can buy them from your civilians, buy them from foreign cities owned by other players, or produce them yourself.
To produce resources yourself, you must plant the fields, build the refineries and mines, and all that stuff. And you must higher blobs to build/plant and to run your refineries. The cost to run and build stuff will always be the same resource wise (unless technology reduces it), but the amount of money changes constantly depending on the strength of your currency and blobs wealth and other players currencies.
Currencies are different that other currencies in the sense that it's global for your kingdom, although when trading them you still need to transport the cash or gold from your market to another player's market.
The city – trade
Trading is the way you make your cities grow and stay alive. You can trade resources and currencies with other players. You also can trade resources between your own cities to even out resources.
When trading between your own cities, you can set it up so that all your resources are automatically evened out.
When trading, you need to transport the good you sell (or moving from one of your cites to another). There are four ways to do so:
by caravan – this method is by far the cheapest, but also by far the slowest (roads help, but they still move slow). They also have to rest every so often and pitch tents. When a caravan reaches it's destination, the technology level of it's destination increases slightly. It requires no technology advances. You also have to guard against bandits!
by train – train is faster than caravans, they also can carry a lot more goods. But they also cost quit a bit more than caravans and require technology advances. They do not increases the technology of their destination. You also have to guard against bandits!
by boat – you got to get across the water some how! There are different levels of boats. you get bigger and better ones depending on your technology level. You can build boats with no technology advances, but they will just be rafts! If it is a great distance that they travel or if their destination can not be reached by caravan or train, the boats increases the technology of it's destination slightly (like a caravan). You also have to guard against pirates!
by airplane – This is the fastest and safest form of transportation, but also the most expensive. It also requires a high technology level. They do not increases the technology of their destination .And no, you do not have to guard against bandits! :)
You can guard your caravans/trains/boats by sending soldiers with them (which is set before you send send out the caravan/train/boat). The more you send, the bigger the force of bandits that you can ward off. The guards you send with your transport act just like as if they where going to war with a war flag, the transport just acts as their war flag. In a caravan and a boat, the blobs transporting the resources can fight back like any other blob, just not as well as a guard. trains do not have a work force, there is just the engineer, the globs at the cities load and unload the train.
if a transport's (caravan/train/boat) guard and workers get eliminated, the contents of the transportation instantly belong to the player that owns the bandits. The bandits then have to transport the caravan/train/boat back to their city in order to obtain the resources in the caravan/train/boat.
If it's a boat that was captured, you can just haul it behind your boat (if you controlled the bandits) and pull it right into port. If it was a caravan, you can tell your blobs to take the place of the eliminated workers and carry what you can back to your city. everything left behind will vanish if not claimed after a certain amount of time. If it was a train and the tracks are connected to your city or a peaceful city, you can just take over the train and chug it right over (you own the train). If it was your city you can go on as normal with your train, but if it was just a friendly city, you have to sell to contents of the train and then sell the train (and if they don't want it move it to a different city or just give it to them. if you don't like or cant do ether of those, you can drive it out and detonate it... or detonate it in the city and blow up all nearby structures)
To setup a caravan (applies to train, boat, and airplane as well), you select the starting city and the ending city (starting city must be one of yours). You then set how many of which resorces you want to taken in the caravan. If it is a caravan you will need one blob for carrying a unit of resources (ie. 10 gold/silver/wheat/ect or what ever), while with a train and plane you just need one blob to transport. and then with the boat you need so many blobs depending on the size of the ship.
You then press 'start' once all the blobs have gathered with the resorces at the market, and the caravan/train/boat/plane will head out.
When started, the caravan will automatically take the quickest possible path, but you can at any time swith to control it manuly. When you do, a flag is placed which the caravar will then follow in the same way militia blobs follow a war flag. You can then change it back so that it heads strate to it's destination (same thing can be acomplished by moving the flag over the caravans selected destination as well)
Caravans (not trains, boats, or planes) will stop and set up a camp dring the night. If attatcked while camped and there is no gaurd, the blobs will be surprised and abandon all resources to head for home, while if there is a gaurd all the blobs will fight back.
When a caravan/train/boat/plane reaches it's destination it will then bring up a bardering box for both players involved in the trade where they can then buy and sell resources with each other. After the barding session is done, you can set a new destination for your caravan. press 'start' for it to begin it's jurning again. If no new destination city is set when you press 'start', the caravan will head for home.
When trading, the independent blobs that are carrying their own resources arn't gona let you trade it off, they will trade it with the destination city's blobs (of wich will exchange with them to best even out the number of resorces they have... all blobs work twards having all the types of resources as they can as well as as many as they can get, but they will trade for one type of resource that they have less of with one they have more of). The independent blobs will follow around the caravan untill it reaches their home city.
The different types of units:
bandits – are just like your militia, except they look autonomous to all other players (even allies).
blobs – are the unit that makes the world go 'round. They are the ones that plant and harvest, mine and refine, and transport good in caravans, trains, boats, and planes. They can fight, but are not as strong as militia blobs. They will not answer to a war flag, but they will help defend their home city unless greatly outnumbered (in which case they surrender). All blobs have to eat, and if they don't grow food themselves, they will buy it from you. If they can not obtain food from your city, they will packup and leave.
militia blobs – are blobs that you train in a training camp. They act just like other blobs (work in fields, live in houses) except they are stronger and can attack harder. They can also be housed in militia houses, which if they are just sit there and you have to fund their living (if they live in normal houses you do not have to pay them). but if they live in their own house like any other blob, they will go a bout everything like before, just if you set a war flag, they will finish what ever action they are performing and then head over to the war flag (if the are in a militia house they will go directly). Militia blobs also move slower than normal blobs. militia blobs do not have to pay taxes like other blobs.
Militia (and bandits of course) will work in thier home city untill a war flag is placed. A war flag will have several options. First one is how many blobs you want to go to the flag, then the radious of the flag, the next is what streaght level of blobs you want to come to it, and then you can set from what cities you want the blobs to come from.
Then there is the different modes of the flag. The default is 'attack', where they attack anything and everything inside of the flags range. You can set it to 'sneak', which they will move very slowly, but are not visible to other players unless they are very close to them. The third is 'ambush', in which the blobs scater and hide (makeing them invisible unless very close to enimy units like sneaking) in strategic spots in and around the flag. When they are set to ambush, if you move the flag it will automaticly chage the flag statous to sneak. When you set a flag status to 'ambush', it takes a little while to get setup. If your blobs are attatcked while seting up their ambush, thier attack is decreased. while if the enimy runs into a setup ambush, the attack strength of the enimy units is decreased.
There is also an onption on the war flag to switch between bandits and milita. All blobs in the flag will quickly chage thier clothing to the designated costume (bandit or militia). The only difference is that no one but yourself can tell what team a bandit is on.
There are three different diplomatic stages you can be at with other players: war, nutral, ally
war - your globs attack them if they see them. your blobs will not trade with them.
nutral - your globs will not attack them unless attatcked. If attatcked, stage is automatically set to war. your globs will trade lightly.
ally - you share vision. If attatcked, stage is automatically set to war. your globs will trade freely.
Blobs will always be doing one of four things.
Working away from home - that's when the blobs go and work in your fields and factories. You have to pay them to do so. If there are not anough jobs for the blobs they will stay home and work...
Working at home - is when the blobs are at home. As mentioned before, each house has it's own economy, so the blobs at home will work and produce small amounts of resources.
Trading - If you have set a caravan to travel from one place to another, you need blobs to carry your goods and protect them. so you higher blobs to do those two things. If there are free blobs and a caravan is leaving, they will pack up some of their resources and tavel with the caravan as independent blobs. Blobs can not go on trains, boats, or planes as independent blobs, only caravans.
War - If a war flag is set, all militia blobs within resonable distance will finish up what ever task they are doing and head over to the war flag (if they are in a militia house they will go right away as they are just sitting there). If a city is being attatcked, all the blobs of the city will help defend (unless greatly outnumbered, then they will surrender).