Hello! I have an interesting question to ask: would/should it be possible to have several (5-10) cities on one map? This could allow many interesting things, including trading, civilization-wide progressions, etc. But you wouldn’t have to travel a massive distance to settle each one. You start off with a new game each time, or something like that, and build each city up. Eventually, trade would be possible between each. And by “cities”, I mean a population of about 70+, a fairly large settlement. Would there be a way to do this without utterly meltifying our CPUs?
in theory, it should already be possible… at least, the having multiple “cities” aspect… trading between them, however, would be something entirely different (i’d imagine)…
Will there be colonization aspects to the game, where form your main city you have satellite settlements?
“That sounds like a great feature for an expansion. We want to make sure we nail one city management, that’s not to say you can have only one city. If you chose to send some guys off and make two cities we’re not going to stop you, but that’s not what we are going to optimize for.”
Indeed… well, the real thing that I was asking was if you could have a far-flung empire of many cities, potentially dozens, which could somewhat self-manage. However, I think that if the persistent worlds ever pop up, that would be a fantastic use of features… an alliance made of X cities, each of which are huge and self-supporting, but lacking in specific resources… perhaps a max limit of, say, 15 cities are allowed in each Empire/Alliance/Civilization? But man, that would be sooo cool… Setting up trade and recon outposts, attacking opposing empires, etc. In Stonehearth, though, that would be the cool thing. It’s not just a 4X, it’s a Stonehearth-based 4X, of sorts. But, just theoreticals here.
1 Like
I think this is a very similar topic, and actually provides an interesting sounding mechanic to compromise with the whole “kingdom” thing.
We know that the team want you to focus on your individual settlement, and that they want you to essentially know the inner workings of your settlement. Obviously when you create more than one settlement you start moving into the territory of a different style of game.
Whilst it is something I imagine quite a few people would like, it would seem like it has to be managed appropriately.
I personally feel that if the way you are suggesting was to make it in, those other settlements would have to be completely autonomous. I imagine it would be pretty chaotic trying to manage the systems of each settlement.
They way you’ve described it @ManOfRet reminds me of Sim City, where you would build a city in one region, link it up to the edges, build a city in the adjacent region and the two could interact in terms of commuting, waste, water electricity etc. (If I remember correctly).
Nevermind, I don’t particularly like the idea anymore… 
Just kidding, but the mainest point in my post was that different cities would be able to have large-scale caravans, military consorts, diplomatic relationships, etc, and they would have a defined “region” of sorts which they collectively owned. It would be very nice to be able to have 2-3 of your own cities in your own game, but what I was getting at was the multiplayer aspect of the game. It would be especially cool if there were rival kingdoms which also appeared in your world. Basically an MMO out of Stonehearth (which may be several years down the line, but I REALLY like the idea, especially given the level of micro which is possible.)
Anywho, basically you have several “regions” (a la SimCity, I suppose) which have the ability to make unified decisions and war-making, etc, with other kingdoms. There could even be “seasons”, between which your city would reset and the world would reload, giving you a different starting position, etc, and the goal would be to see which kingdom has the largest X, the most Y, the longest Z, etc, in each season. Then, of course, the obligatory world Leaderboards… I think you can see where I’m going with this.
I have to say, the idea of a non-turn based real time Civilization sort of thing is what I had thought I would end up doing when I pledged 30 dollars. I just hope that team radiant doesn’t take any steps to prevent that from being possible (Ex: Population cap). I would even be content if they made it so that you could have your save files interact in some way.
Wow, just realized that what you said there sums up the idea perfectly…
I’m afraid it’s looking like there will be some sort of population cap, although we don’t know specifics.
I think that, as Ret has said, this description has some of the elements he is drawing on, but in terms of Stonehearth, I think the goals they are aiming for occupy rather different spaces than that of a Civilization game.
To use the example I always use, I would liken Stonehearth to something in a similar vein as Dwarf Fortress, Gnomoria, Timber and Stone et al.
That is some nice pleonasm 
.
I dont think population cap will be a problem. Just modding an extra 0 to the cap or maybe 00 wil do the job.
1 Like
If that doesnt melt most PCs, I do hope it’s well optimised D:
1 Like
I’m going to fall back on a few things I said and just go with the idea that I think will work best. That being the interactive save files. Users should be able to designate “Worker A” to carry “1 log” from “Save file A” to “Save file B” every 5 minutes. In return, “Worker B” would carry “2 buckets” from “Save file B” to “Save file A” every 5 minutes. This system would allow users to set up a sort of trade system. People could also be transferable, allowing you to distribute armies, or evacuate cities that are in a bad position, or are being overrun. This would allow users to get the feel that they have an empire, and it would not come into conflict with the teams goal of having players focus on a single city. Perhaps they could toss a regional map in there too that lets you see just how big your empire is. This would probably be best used on servers, where you could perhaps have multiple cities in different worlds as well, but if was not mistaken, they are going to make multi-player be capable of hosting more than one player at a time in a single world. Did that make any sense or did I just scramble everyone’s brains with my commie rambling?
1 Like