In the last three weeks my main focus has been on "higher level" game mechanics (in terms of level of planning required by the player). The most important changes in this regard are the new features, Revolts, Technologies and Guilds. In these article I would like to summarize the way these mechanics work in Sword&Scroll.
Revolts
Revolts are for punishing the player (and allowing him to punish other houses) for being tyrannical with their population. Currently revolts can have two causes
- Too high taxes
- Instigated revolts
The first case is rather boring and seen in many strategy games of this kind. So I would like to talk about the second one. Two new intrigues have been added to the game. One of them is "Create Incident". This allows you to instigate an "Unrest source" at any given border holding outside your realm given you have the target has some kind of "controversy" and will male the inhabitants want to be ruled by you. For example if he has a high honor rating while you have a high honor rating, then this intrigue is possible to execute. Should a revolt successfully occur, the people of the holding will rise up and should they win the holding will come under your control.
In order to ensure their success, in case of a successful revolt, you can invest money into mercenaries to stenghten their military power.
Another added intrigue is "Destabilize". With this intrigue you can drastically increase the chance that a revolt will occur.
This combination of mechanics allows you to expand your territory not only by means of direct warfare, but also using indirect warfare.
Technology
Another feature also found often in other strategy games is technology. Usually it is a game mechanic where each faction competes on their own against every other faction. In Sword&Scroll I aimed to make technology a mechanic to strenghten the need of cooperating with other Houses.
Technology is researched by investing funds and then using research provided by holdings you own to unlock the technology, until here everything is pretty standard.
However, technology can also spread to neighbouring holdings. In particular within the same Dynasty (ie. between Houses in the same realm) technology spread is fast. This allows you to instead of performing the research yourself, to support other Houses to perform the research and then learn the technology by waiting until it spreads to your holdings.In order to entice competition for actually performing research each Technology has 2 effects. The research effect which is gained upon learning the Technology and the Discovery effect. The latter is only obtained if you are the first House in the current game to unlock the Technology.
As overlord there exists also a special diplomatic action to help your vassals research. A vassal can ask their overlord to "Fund Research". This lets you pay the funding cost for a Technology and gets you favor from the vassal which you can then use in turn to ask something of the vassal.
Guilds
The last important new game mechanic are Guilds. They are the top level mechanic for the economic system. Usually, what kind of goods can be produced by a holding is predefined by the holding type (which cannot be changed during a game). Guilds are meant to provide a way to allow for econimical customization. Each castle can have 1 Guild. A Guild adds a new Production rule to the castle. For example, the "Bakers Guild" take Flour and produce Bread. The "Smiths Guild" takes Iron and produces Weaponry. And so on.
Additionally, there exists a special "Merchant Guild". The main problem the player has to solve in the economic system of Sword&Scroll is that he has to connect the base resources to the holdings which can further refine them. The "Merchant Guild" provides an easy means to do this. They allow the player to select any barony they own and then goods available in the barony of the Merchant Guild will be transfered to the target barony. Of course, the backdraw is that then the guild slot at the castle is used up.
What is next
There is one core mechanic missing now, namely Cultures. However, for now I will focus on expanding the game content for a bit and adding more terrain/goods/etc to test the new mechanics before advancing further.
