Dwelvers is a real time strategy game inspired by the old time classics Dungeon Keeper and Settlers. The player needs to guide their minions in digging out paths and rooms, and claiming them for themselves, growing their dungeon. The game will be based on creating your minions and keeping them pleased in various ways. Then you will lead them into battle to defeat your enemy and claim victory! The most challenging part for the player will be creating advanced production chains so as to have enough food to keep their creatures well fed, enough weapons and armour to outfit their army as a force to be reckoned with, and of course enough beer to keep them satisfied with you as their master. A drunk minion is a happy minion! The theme of the game will have a lot of dark humour, and each creature will have its own personality, demands and fighting style; forcing the player to handle all the creatures in different ways in order to max out their potential.
I don't know if you like this idea, but I think it needs to be experimented with.
You know, Dungeon Keeper games are about the only RTS games that require claiming of tiles before the player are able to build there. In fact, I don't see the necessity to actually claim tiles at all. If the player can see the land they are building on (not in for of war), and are able to actually run over there with building materials and build the structure, then we could say with all honesty that the enemy has very little control over that area.
So this is my little experiment:
The player can now build buildings on unclaimed tiles. And the player can also build roads as you can see in the picture. Every tile the player build roads on becomes his, meaning that creatures that has nothing to do will patrol these roads and rooms that they lead up to.
Another thing is that all land that isn't built on will have the movement speed reduced for the creatures with 40%.
Roads and reinforced walls now cost stone to build. But are built instantly when the player click on the tiles. I don't know if this is what I want for the future, and it sort of goes against the current "physics" of the game. But I do know that many games have road building as an instant feature, and if it adds to the gameplay then it is a good thing.
Another good thing about this is that the imps don't run of into the wilderness and start claiming tiles, which allows for a much more flat terrain without destroying the gameplay.
So what do you think?