Intermediate settlements: Crime and classes

Suggestions
1

Summary: Sorry for this being long, disjointed, and not that well articulated. My main point is i would like to see shinobi in the game as a class, doing little sneaky things and having hidden bases in the settlement, giving another level of depth to the game. Also, while the game diverges from being an RTS, i would still like to retain some control for those annoying moments (however, the points made shouldn’t be that far from the games style).

So with the Pirates, Ninjas, and Politicians, i’m assuming there’ll be a way to combat their threat. In mid-game when the cothers are full, i was thinking that the jail man could be unlocked to guard dissident residents running amok.

To the ends of catching the criminals out, i was thinking about having our own shinobi. For a tier above footman to be promoted to a shinobi (maybe a scout of a certain level), they would have to have a high loyalty stat. The loyalty thing is because you can’t have the guard themselves ready to betray you. The shinobi’s job is to at day pretend to be a guard, but at night an investigator to search out dissidents that have swayed from the order of the town. I know this runs counter to the idea of a happy game, but it’s just a bit of spice to be added to the main dish.

The leveled shinobi would be able to unlock more abilities than just surveillance, such as: marks, shadowing, capture, and even assassination. These skills are meant to be directed towards the corruption that sneaks into the town. For these to work, they must be in sequence; if not it could lead to the shinobi turning on you. I mean, if the shinobi doubts that a target you’ve ordered to be “dealt” with in either interrogation or assassination since they haven’t ascertained their “guilt” themselves, they’re likely to doubt if it’s the just thing to do. Fitting with the game, you can’t really go into the underground of a city.

The shinobi would need a bit of micromanaging is the only real drawback to implementation, running counter to the main game. However, it would really annoy me to see some slime ball stalking around, and not be able to nip it in the but before things develop too far. As mentioned above, the player would be able to give their shinobi orders:

  1. Surveillance: Set a building to be watched and for them to report any who enter (i.e. treasury, storehouse)
  2. Mark: Mark a citizen to be investigated with their actions reported (a small thing like the journal, giving impressions of suspicion)
  3. Shadow: Sets a shinobi to follow them.
  4. Capture: Must be shadowed to be used. Captures and brings the citizen to the shinobi’s base or the jail.
  5. Assassinate: The citizen is killed and brought back to base to be disposed of.
  6. Interrogation: Must be caputred and brought back to the base’s torture room. Have the citizen confess or give up co-conspirators-

The first three will not cause any unhappiness, but if four or five are employed the town’s happiness will be lowered, leading to the bad scenarios (i.e. citizens abandoning the town).

For the shinobi to remain secret to the populace, there will need to be a base constructed for them. Something like an underground basement with a house above that has a hidden hatch leading down. There will need to be a sort of suspicion mechanic added though. Each time a major action is under taken, the suspicion of the general population will increase: think shinobi hunt instead of witch hunt. If you take too many suspicious actions, they will be hunted and jailed or kicked out by the citizens, coming back to turn on you later(ninjas).

To run counter to the shinobi, there is the investigator. I don’t have much for them, but it would be like a publicly known personnel (who causes unhappiness to the citizens?), that will work as a policeman investigating thefts etc. Though this may be a bit much as well.

I think there’ll need to be a bit of democracy, so a judge should be added to increase happiness. Though that would buy into corruption with them being able to be bought off (Oh look: another use for the shinobi).

There will need to be another punishment to imprisonment, since there’s no way a town of a few hundred at most would keep them around. I’m guessing the gallows are off the game in the spirit of being pg? So maybe a fine or banishment depending on severity.

If there’s going to be pirates and not bandits, a navy is necessary. So one class could be the watchman who observes the coast for pirates. This is assuming that the ocean will be added and that the pirates aren’t just bandits.

So the promotion item for the classes as follows:

  1. Guard: Keys on a ring
  2. Shinobi: Short blade or mask
  3. Judge: a gable obviously
  4. Investigator: Magnifying glass
  5. Possible Executioner: Black hood
  6. Watchmen: Spy glass
3 Likes
2

Genius! Its a great idea!

3

shinobi* :wink: no plural

I’m really loving the idea. However I think it’d be interesting if the Shinobi was “hired” in some way.

4

You could do both. That way it would work the ninja part into it. It would be that you get a already skilled spy class, but their loyalty is always in question.

5

I could see this working as well. It be cool as a “special” class that you can’t normally promote to. For example you could hire a shinobi if corruption gets too bad, however if you maintain a high loyalty level for awhile the shinobi might ask to build a determine base of operations in your town. Though you’d have to maintain loyalty to encourage them to stay.

6

I agree with all of this. I was caught up with the fact that i wanted secret hidey holes to be easily done, but this would work well; it could be a whole scenario chain ;).

It could start with low level treachery (theft), with a jail needing to be built. With the jail as the pre-requisite, like the jail being designated like a stockpile, a traveler will appear in a few days. The traveler will say they heard about the rise (not really much though) in crime rates, and offer their skills in keeping watch. This will be something like a wanderer. After a certain amount of time at high happiness (bed, food variety, luxury items, etc), they will inform you that they are actually a shinobi/ninja. After leveling and doing a “master assassin” kind of ACB thing, they’ll come to you if they’re still happy, and discuss that they beleive it would be best to build a base.

The base will need to be built in a basement, like what has been suggested with the implementation of mining, with multiple entrances/exits and all be hidden. Then after another period of time with loyalty maintained, they’ll ask for more recruits to supplement the increase in crime, with the affirmative upgrading them to a master shinobi. This will lead to your hidden right hand and his “guard”. Then again, this would mean that there will need to be a general? Another scenario right there.

Sorry; that got a bit long.

7

A few thoughts in response;

The word “shinobi” is used a little too much here for my liking, but that’s personal preference. The main gist of crime in a game like this is having your own citizens do things you don’t want them to do, and countermeasures for that. You don’t need throwing stars and katanas and all that to address that gameplay aspect. If one of the factions has a more eastern-ey theme, then they could have a ninja for their investigator, perhaps.

The biggest question is what will your citizens do that you don’t want them to? Food stockpiles are communal; you can’t exactly steal food form your town, nor can you steal tools or outfits from a craftsman. There’s no gold (yet) to be stolen from your communal coffers by outside or inside agents, and you’ll hardly be devastated if an internal criminal decides to tuck some wood or cloth under their bed for themselves.

Loyalty as a measure of how often/how likely citizens are to do things you don’t want could be a good idea; alternatives could be “Selfishness”, where a high value indicates a high crime rate. But that brings another question: will you start profiling your citizens and rejecting/“disposing” of selfish applicants?

Whether or not a dedicated Guard class separate from the Footman is desirable is up in the air; they would likely both do similar things (defend locations, patrol the town, etc.), so it’d be reasonable to overlap them so that you’re not divvying up your limited supply of villagers between two redundant roles.

Being able to set up a zone to cover law enforcement - such as an “Investigate” zone to look into crimes - would be very interesting!

2 Likes
8

Indeed. To be perfectly honest i was trying to pitch it so that there would be secret bases that even the majority of your citizens wouldn’t know about. As the game advances, i was assuming people would gain property like luxuries that are kept in dressers and the like; they’ll need to wash there clothes sometime over the years. I was also expecting commerce to be a later gameplay feature. Well, there’s a lot of assumptions.

I do like your idea though; even if it does make my underbelly of society useless :frowning:. However i don’t quite think the simple footman would be capable of it. A bug problem with this though is we don’t know where the games heading. The population could be anywhere from fifty to a few hundred.

9

A couple of hundred is probably going to be the max, if only because most computers will likely struggle to run anything bigger. All those units needing pathfinding etc done for them… eep. I suspect that getting to even a hundred hearthlings will be an achievement.

10

Very likely. I’m running a 2.6 i3 and 4gig of ram on my laptop… Although optimization still needs to be done so there might be a way for them to max it