I was wondering, will this game feature ‘outposts’ as well as our towns? Since the devs say the world will be very, very large and randomly generated, will we be able to make well functioning outposts?
I don’t mean just going out and building far away, because that could pose questions if not properly addressed–such as your settlers going all the way out to an outpost just to talk to someone or take care of a farm there, and then go all the way back, or soldiers going all the way to town to get some food, and come all the way to back, even if he has food at his outpost.
I think there should be a manual way to say “THIS IS YOUR MAIN TOWN,” and to say that “THIS IS A SMALLER BRANCH TOWN OR OUTPOST” by building and designating some sort of ‘capital’ or ‘main building,’ or some other form of designation.
I saw a picture of a little barracks in the media section. Outposts could be like that, with either some farms and one or two villagers to manage them at the outpost, or just cart in the food (though you’d need to protect that caravan)
If it’s too big to explore, what’s the point of having that much terrain? =P
Of course, if they are smart (and seeing what they created so far, I can’t shake that suspicion!) they only save the changes in the terrain and have the rest generated on the fly by the seed so the world can be practically unlimited.
If you have a game with real resources to collect (instead of 1 or 2 like traditional RTS), meaning clothing, wood, minerals, food (farmed, domesticated, hunted), then it makes a lot more sense to build outposts strategically. To fit the safe collection of all those resources securely within your castle, you’d spend a fortune on the walls.
Outposts will be awesome because they will let you know whether you should send the army out, meet the invaders in the field, or pull all the peasants in and prepare to fight off the siege. Or, if you have a good outpost, the marauding hordes of goblins can’t even get to your outlying areas, unless they bring decent siege weapons to destroy the outpost.
Of course there will probably be lots of alternatives to outposts, depending on your playstyle and resources available. If you have mines or stout wood, outposts might be good. Neither of those, but plentiful on horses? It’ll probably be better to have mounted patrols. Maybe if you don’t have any of that, you can go up a tech tree and get magical seers that warn you when enemies are coming.
I like the open-ended possibilities here. Plus things like outposts and patrols make a lot more sense then sending one of your workers out to scout. Can’t imagine that here, the workers have their own names! What kind of ruler would send MuddyPants the Younger to his death, just to see what tech the goblins are building?
I really like the idea of functional outposts and maybe even watchtowers.
Now anybody, including myself, can create a watchtower for this game, but what I would like to see is that they only function if manned by a staff of for example two. So a watchtower would provide a better line of sight if manned, warning the player of any approaching threats. An abandoned watchtower would be useless until manned again.
I dunno team, they made it fairly clear it is a city management game, not an empire management game. Not that I would mind of course, I just don’t see it happening. I think it is more along the lines of, “make one big city and keep it alive” sort of thing.
So outposts and watchtowers are a must as they increase the city’s situational awareness. Otherwise you’d know a goblin horde is approaching when they knock on your gate. Also, the world is supposed to be big and wild, it would be a shame not to capture this feeling of living on the frontier by being confined to a single settlement that ends at its walls.