Kingdom with ruler: introducing economic challange

I think i have a pretty idea for an modpack, but I’m not such a great modder. I would definitly like to start modding, but i don’t know where to start! :open_mouth:

My idea
I was thinking about having a (very demanding) king ruling your hearthlings. The king would do absolutely nothing around other than sitting on his throne and getting served with food and money, which he spends secretly. As every king, his demands will grow over time and will depend on the population size. Ofcourse this ruler wants a bigger kingdom, and will get a happiness boost when a new villager is added.

To fulfill his needs, you have to maintain a good economy: sell enough goods for a positive cash-flow and have a good food production. When you fail the demands of the king, the morale of your hearthlings will crash. When ignored long enough, the king will get angry and banish a random worker-hearthling, effectively reducing your population and fitting a challenge into place.

Where to start?
On this moment I’m not fully aware how to start modding. I’m able to do some C# programming, and programmed an AI before. But where to start here? After some reading, i figured out that:

  • I can make the king’s entitie and animations with qubicle;
  • I need to inject code with mixintos;
  • I have to work with .json files.

But I’m not aware if there is an API and don’t even know if this current idea is possible at all.
Can someone give some help or advise on that? :wink:

The work so far
Thanks to @voxel_pirate I’m running already:

Though this was the easy part…
Other objects and animations is the next step. :smile:

Update: due to my busy time schedule, this project was abandoned. Sorry! :frowning:

Opinions
What do you think about the idea on overall? Would you like to have it?

3 Likes

Nice idea! Actually I have something “similar” in my mind… but that’s another topic.

What I suggest to think of is some kind of reward, to run your mod. So far it sounds more like a “punishment” to install a mod which consumes your resources and provides a debuff if you don’t support the king. How about a buff if the king is happy or some unique units?

At the moment the “API” is very basic, i.e. you have only overrides and mixintos. More will come for sure. However, you can start getting into it step by step. Maybe you can split your mod into small chunks? Modelling the king could be step one. Creating some animations could be step two (which will not work with Qubicle, you will need something like Maya or Blender).

I would (and am doing that) try some basic mods first to understand how it all works. Take it from there. I have wrote one or the other tutorial… as a starting point if you like:

2 Likes

That’s a pretty good help, thanks a lot! Those tutorials made my day.

I like your ideas on adding a kind of bonus when the king is happy, like giving a speed and/or combat bonus for happy hearthlings. Or probably some other rewards too, like specialized funiture or stuff.

… if you can make the animations entertaining that could also do the job. Does not have to be a real buff, just a reason to go for it. Maybe you can add a jester wo tells jokes ^^.

1 Like

I’m going to think about that during the process. :blush:

For now, I’m happy designing.

Hmmmmm I really love this idea. I’m not a programmer in any sense so I’m not sure how far you could get in this design in the game at it’s current state.

However I’m an armature stonehearth modder and I’d suggest looking into the goblin_war campaign in the stonehearth/data/gm/campaigns folder and see what you can dig up.

You could always start your idea off as a campaign similar to the first tier of the goblin campaign, requesting goods and gold as tribute based on your town score. If you fail to meet his demands he might send troops at you. From there maybe even kidnap a Hearthling of yours if you can figure out the programming for it as well as making the king an actual entity in the game.

Just starting off with that and developing your own campaign should definitely get you antiquated to the simple modding system as it sits right now.

I love the idea and look forward to see what you can come up with. :smile:

1 Like

I actually emailed a suggestion about having a ruler of the hearthlings, but my idea bestowed positive buffs for various things. He worked on diplomacy, buffed soldiers when he was in a combat group and a list of other things. I even worked out a “rank” thing based on his level and the number of hearthlings/wealth you had. Started as a Count, then became a Duke, then a King. An alternative ranking scheme I had was Baron, Count and Duke.

Actually that’s a great idea to get started. Thanks for throwing it up! :smile: