I just had and idea for what you could use trees for.
So, I was watching one of the livestreams where Tom was talking about using different kinds of materials, trees and so on. So I started thinking, what else could you use trees for than just building and carpenters.
My idea was that your mason could make a hook and your weaver could make a rope and then you’d combine them and create a grappling hook or something. This could then be used e.g. for scaling walls (enemy or own) or allowing your soldiers / spies… to climb up trees and set up like a hidden scouting platform or something.
The platform would hidden from enemy sight until someone on the platform makes a noise of if the enemy has scouts or something with them.
These platforms could be of importance from a strategic point of view in the sense that you’d be able to post scouts further from your city and close to enemy camps. You could like sneak up to their cams during night and then stay in the tree and observe what the enemy is doing and report back so you’ll be able to prepare your defenses or assault them when they are out hunting or something.
The drawback to this is obviously that your food could run out, the enemy has scouts that spots your scouts or something similar.
What does everyone else think? Is this something you’d like to see in game?
as in many strategy games, information is key, you want to know exactly what your enemy is doing and a scout that can hide themselves is a very powerful tool.
There is one primary flaw with this though, to easily overcome this you could just simply cut down every tree that would reveal too much. Since you would need the resources sooner or later and cutting down a tree isn’t the most significant problem it wouldn’t be a very significant threat unless you don’t cut down the excess trees.
Now i like some greenery in my towns/cities to contrast with the impact of humanity and often have a tree or 2 inside my town borders, surrounded by buildings. getting a scout in there would prove very difficult unless i’m not paying attention. its more or less a high risk high reward issue. When you encounter someone (or something) that doesn’t use trees as aesthetic assets you would probably just lose a scout.
But you inspired me on something though, you could use an animal to scout, a squirrel being in a tree seems pretty darn natural to me, a dude sittin in a tree; well not so much.
I actually have to admit that I like the squirrel idea better.
But I don’t think that they are something that you should be able to start with, instead it would be an upgrade from for example, scouts in trees. Then when you finally have a beastmaster of sufficient skill you should be able to replace the scouts with squirrels.
They would obviously be harder to detect (unless it spies on like goblins that eats squirrels :-p) and they would be able to provide you with more and more detail as the beastmaster gains experience. Plus you get to employ your scouts to something else.
@CTheRain I simply do not like that idea at all, ents maybe (but trees with faces are pretty damn recognizable). Besides a timbermancer doesn’t sound very appealing to me, make it a druid. The druid would have to walk into the enemy base (Being a spellcaster he will probably die instantly) and then begin casting a spell (spells would probably take some time to cast) in order to create the sentient tree that does the scouting. Yeah, i’m just going to go ahead and say that that won’t quite work out. I really think critters would be the way to go here.
No I agree, ents could be quite awesome but they should be there own faction or something and nothing that the player would be able to control. I mean they are old and independant and wouldn’t really bow to someone who’s so inferior to them as humans.
And the idea of scouting trees, hmm no I don’t really like that either I think it stretches a bit far and it wouldn’t be natural.
A druid would be good. Like a more buffed up Runescape version of the druid. In Runescape druids make potions “lore wise” so it would fit well in like an upgrade from the herbalist. But more tied to magic in a sense of controlling magic and wood, maybe make more durable wood bridges from branches or create a grand tree like from Wind Waker who protected the fairies from the great hyrule flood.
Also the ent that could be spawned doesn’t have to be a full tree. It could be a small sapling that could eventually grow up after a couple centuries to become an Ent similar to the welp.
there are a few ways we could go about doing this but here’s my suggestions:
you could make a mage/healer/priest caste/progression to druid. the druid as befits druids in general would have semi control over wild animals and growth speed of plants later on maybe ents but im not in favor of that. the druid would be able to take control of a wild animal for a given time or radius reach or both and be able to scout with it the enemys movement without them being able to distinguish the animal (rabbit, rat, boar, bird etc) as a spy. as of reason the druid would have to be in a certain range of gival animal and thus if not handeled right might be seen and die escaping. if animal gets out of control range it would turn back to its wild state and you will lose the vision. precautions could be taken by you or the enemy, like shamans who’re able to ditinguish controled animals from normal ones or just sending your hunters to kill any roaming animals nearby
The trees don’t have to have eyes to do the spying necessarily, they can here like through knots in the trees.
Or they could have they’re eye’s at the bottom of a hole in the trunk. Or they just listen and watch then say in the night they uproot and either scuttle using they’re roots or use the two biggest roots for legs and walk to a some sort of wizard and tell them what they saw or heard. Just my idea
Heres a funny Idea, How about my enemy sends a spy into a tree near my camp and then somehow I find out about the scout (Maybe there might be an animation where the tree rustles or something) and I send one of my scouts into the tree next to the enemy scouts tree, So then I have an enemy scout spying on my camp and Im spying on the enemy scout, I wonder what would happen because the enemy would think that Im stupid and have not spotted his scout but really I have seen the scout and am spying on that scout opening a whole load of ways to trick my enemy into thinking what Im doing
That could be a good way to start unlocking magic, (herbalist, while finding ingredients, could make a potion that give small magic. This is how he becomes a druid, he… overdosed on the magic juices and became a druid)