Building a Civ-like game, need help with Nation bonuses

[Buufreak]

So in many (maybe all, not played them all) of Sid Meier's Civilization games, selecting which nation you play as is an important step and strategic, because it determines certain boons your nation gains throughout the game. For example, Qin Shi Huang in Civ 6 can use builders to accelerate the production of World Wonders.

I am trying to find reasonable analogs for the various races in D&D, and I have a few already, but I'm struggling in filling out the roster. I have them listed here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OEYhKHPjgPJM4_uREcDbVsbdAJaj0TOrnoGNzh7-NOg/edit?usp=sharing), if anyone would like to take a look and make some suggestions.

Please and thank you!

Edit: AN UPDATE! I'm now looking to make a Racial Boon, a special modification to some sort of building, and a specialized unit for each race, in an attempt to be more Civ-like.

[Yakk]

I'd strip out this assumed racial nationalist thing entirely.

First, I'd have Heros, including founding Heros. The legend of the founding Hero would shape the nation. We can have fun because some Heros have much longer lifespans, would be living legends.

Second, having access to a particular race could be treated like a technology or cultural expertise. Ie, if you have integrated Goblins, you gain Worg Riders. Now, multi-ethnic civilizations are presumed possible. You can make multi-ethnic civilizations as hard or as easy to form as you want, and reward ethno-nationism or not.

Most 4X games split technology from society advancement nowadays. In this way, forming multi-ethnic civilizations forms a kind of society advancement. If you go HoI style "tech trees" there, each of those sub-societies can have branching choices.

So basic goblin integration has benefit X. Your goblin society can go down a bunch of paths; tinker-like goblins, or chaos goblins, a goblin hive. But some of the advances are going to be common between the branches, and are just goblin-ness flavour.

Most fantasy races have multiple stereotypes. The old wood/high/wild elves, for example.

As a fun bit, maybe the branches aren't mutually exclusive, but you need a certain population base of that species per branch. If 10% of your population is Goblins having 3 different and powerful Goblin sub-cultures is harder than if 90% of your population is Goblins. So your demographics determines the width of your cultural tree, not depth.

A fun side effect is that empire merging is pretty natural, with social conflict occuring if their societies are incompatible. Similarly with migration - migrating Tinker goblins could cause your Goblin population to move away from Hive, or trigger xenophobia.

As a top of head list of subcultures:

Gnome: Tinker, Forest, Deep
Halfling: River, Hill, and Vale
Kobold: Draconic, Tunnel, Scavanger
Orc: Primal, Clone, Warlock
Elf: High, Wood, Wild
Goblin: Tinker, Nomad, Fey
Dwarf: Shield, Hill, Shoe
Changeling: Doppleganger, Secret, Extrovert
Human: Sea, Plains, Forest
Drow: Spider, Shadow, Free

[Buufreak]

I'd strip out this assumed racial nationalist thing entirely.



Not the direction I am wanting, but thank you.

[Vogie]

I would actually go the opposite direction - instead of running from the Racial bonuses, I would make that the feature, and have each nation require at least 2. You'd have to reword some of your racial abilities, but that gives each player's nation sort of unique team-up. The Halfling/Goblin nation would work differently than the Halfling/Gnome nation or the Goblin/Orc nation. It would end up something closer to the Magic: the Gathering Draft archetypes - where "blue" acts in a specific way, White/blue also plays different than black/blue and Red/blue... except yours would be much cooler as you've got 12 races to choose from.

One way to do this is by creating subtypes that you can reference for the units that would be grouping the basic elements of the civilization together. Things like:

Basic
Core
Defensive
Cavalry
Specialized
Elite
and so on. This allows you a certain level of latitude when you are mixing and matching. Each race can have different emphasis, which allows the player to decide if they're going to use their pairing to make their nation more focused or more well-rounded. For example, Kobolds may not have any cavalry whatsoever, but Goblins have Worgs, so Goblin/Kobold pairing means that someone who likes the Fortification bonuses of Kobolds to still have cavalry. On the other hand, pairing Goblins with Drow would allow you to enhance the Goblin Cavalry bonuses as they ride terrifying giant spiders into battle. Player A likes to pair the Orc's Morality bonuses with the gnomish Shock troops to create a terrifying guerilla force, while Player B will use the fact that both the Humans and Orcs have great bonuses for Irregular troops to really control the battlefield.

Changeling - Specialized troops have infiltration bonuses and can do morality attacks, reduced interior social conflict, no height conflicts,
Drow - tall, Active Predictable Savage deity, access to Underdark creatures, bonus to core units, specialized units are always spellcasters, can sacrifice basic units for bonuses or upkeep
Duergar - small, bonuses to underground construction, access to Underdark creatures, bonus to defensive units, all core units have some spellcasting, inactive unpredictable savage deity.
Dwarf - small, long-lived bonuses to mining & fortresses, access to exotic materials, high morality, bonus to basic units, no upkeep in mountain terrain, inactive unpredictable benevolent deity.
Elf - Tall, long-lived, Active predictable benevolent deity, Access to exotic materials, strong morality, no basic units, bonuses to elite units, no upkeep in forest terrain
Gnome - Small, bonuses to manufacturing, faster non-combat research, long-lived, can steal non-combat technology from enemies, inactive unpredictable benevolent deity,
Goblin - Small, Active Unpredictable deity, low morality, able to improvise tools weapons & armor, bonus to basic units and cavalry, cheaper combat research, no upkeep in plains terrain.
Halfling - Small, Inactive Predictable Benevolent deity, bonuses to farming, increased production without conflict, core units count as basic while in-nation, upkeep lowers when not moving, cheaper non-combat research, bonus to basic and elite units
Human - Multiple Conflicting deities, faster researched and production during conflict, weak to morality attacks, can rally basic units to act as core units temporarily for defense. Bonus can be chosen between core, cavalry, defensive, or specialized, and favored terrain for upkeep purposes can be chosen. Elites have different abilities based on the deity choice
Kobold - Small, increased fortification defenses, bonus to defensive and basic units, no cavalry, No deity but elites and specialized units are spiritually connected to dragons
Orc - Dual conflicting deities, high morality. Bonuses to core and specialized units, lower upkeep while on the move, Elites have different abilities based on the deity choice
Warforged - Faster combat research, can steal tactics and combat technology from enemies, can receive no bonuses from deities, increased interior social conflict, Upkeep is calculated differently

[Buufreak]

I would actually go the opposite direction - instead of running from the Racial bonuses, I would make that the feature, and have each nation require at least 2. You'd have to reword some of your racial abilities, but that gives each player's nation sort of unique team-up. The Halfling/Goblin nation would work differently than the Halfling/Gnome nation or the Goblin/Orc nation. It would end up something closer to the Magic: the Gathering Draft archetypes - where "blue" acts in a specific way, White/blue also plays different than black/blue and Red/blue... except yours would be much cooler as you've got 12 races to choose from.

One way to do this is by creating subtypes that you can reference for the units that would be grouping the basic elements of the civilization together. Things like:

Basic
Core
Defensive
Cavalry
Specialized
Elite
and so on. This allows you a certain level of latitude when you are mixing and matching. Each race can have different emphasis, which allows the player to decide if they're going to use their pairing to make their nation more focused or more well-rounded. For example, Kobolds may not have any cavalry whatsoever, but Goblins have Worgs, so Goblin/Kobold pairing means that someone who likes the Fortification bonuses of Kobolds to still have cavalry. On the other hand, pairing Goblins with Drow would allow you to enhance the Goblin Cavalry bonuses as they ride terrifying giant spiders into battle. Player A likes to pair the Orc's Morality bonuses with the gnomish Shock troops to create a terrifying guerilla force, while Player B will use the fact that both the Humans and Orcs have great bonuses for Irregular troops to really control the battlefield.

Changeling - Specialized troops have infiltration bonuses and can do morality attacks, reduced interior social conflict, no height conflicts,
Drow - tall, Active Predictable Savage deity, access to Underdark creatures, bonus to core units, specialized units are always spellcasters, can sacrifice basic units for bonuses or upkeep
Duergar - small, bonuses to underground construction, access to Underdark creatures, bonus to defensive units, all core units have some spellcasting, inactive unpredictable savage deity.
Dwarf - small, long-lived bonuses to mining & fortresses, access to exotic materials, high morality, bonus to basic units, no upkeep in mountain terrain, inactive unpredictable benevolent deity.
Elf - Tall, long-lived, Active predictable benevolent deity, Access to exotic materials, strong morality, no basic units, bonuses to elite units, no upkeep in forest terrain
Gnome - Small, bonuses to manufacturing, faster non-combat research, long-lived, can steal non-combat technology from enemies, inactive unpredictable benevolent deity,
Goblin - Small, Active Unpredictable deity, low morality, able to improvise tools weapons & armor, bonus to basic units and cavalry, cheaper combat research, no upkeep in plains terrain.
Halfling - Small, Inactive Predictable Benevolent deity, bonuses to farming, increased production without conflict, core units count as basic while in-nation, upkeep lowers when not moving, cheaper non-combat research, bonus to basic and elite units
Human - Multiple Conflicting deities, faster researched and production during conflict, weak to morality attacks, can rally basic units to act as core units temporarily for defense. Bonus can be chosen between core, cavalry, defensive, or specialized, and favored terrain for upkeep purposes can be chosen. Elites have different abilities based on the deity choice
Kobold - Small, increased fortification defenses, bonus to defensive and basic units, no cavalry, No deity but elites and specialized units are spiritually connected to dragons
Orc - Dual conflicting deities, high morality. Bonuses to core and specialized units, lower upkeep while on the move, Elites have different abilities based on the deity choice
Warforged - Faster combat research, can steal tactics and combat technology from enemies, can receive no bonuses from deities, increased interior social conflict, Upkeep is calculated differently

The duos is an interesting idea, and we might play test that down the road. I like the comparison to drafting. Theoretically, players could draft races and end up playing to the hand dealt.

Types of units are already in the system and match many of the ones you've listed. I've toyed with the idea of specialty units for each race, like how Civ has specialty units for each Nation, but again I think that needs to be benched for the time being. Trying to get a product up and ready to have a game before the new year if at all possible.

I had somewhat forgotten duergar and drow have some innate casting. Enlarge size, specifically, could turn into something significant. I'll workshop it when I get home. Thank you kindly, if you have any other ideas, feel free to share. I'm particularly having trouble creating a good and recognizable boon for elves that isn't just copy paste info from phb and/or whatever race or campaign guide.

[Vogie]

One of the reasons I like the draft strategy is that it gives you rails to fill in the "blanks" as you are designing them - in MtG, they refer to this as "hole-filling". Even if there aren't cards and isn't a drafting component, you can still give the players the rock/paper/scissors understanding of things. Also, if you think of a cool mechanic that is too overpowered to give to any one group, divide it in half and split it between two groups. Here's an example of how that can give you a sort of design spiral:

Since buildings and fortifications like walls are really important, then sapping those things is incredibly powerful and shouldn't be a specialized thing that any one group can do
We still want it in the game, but with some restrictions - tunnels are relatively unstable, so maybe it's only something small races can do successfully.
So let's give the gnomes the ability to make bombs - they already have a specific manufacturing bent. They can make block-buster bombs that are incredibly powerful, but the units are relatively weak and could be easily repulsed by the most basic of ranged defenses.
Kobolds are well-known as using tunnels defensively, so lets make them also good at tunneling offensively. Even without the ability to drop bombs, they could tunnel under the walls to gain information, steal supplies, and surprise attack, or maybe they can create hidden pits in battlefields as a sort of crowd control.
Now that we've created sappers through a certain combination, you can then make one group specifically good at countering that strategy. Since we're hole-filling for elves, lets give it to them. Why would that be? Elves are tied to trees, and trees have roots - So maybe we have them grow their buildings and defenses? While other races are sending waves of basic units construct things, the elves could just have a single one plant a bunch of things and then have them grow on their own, not unlike the Protoss in the Starcraft franchise.
That's not the only type of wooden construction that we'll have - in fact, about half of the nations will have wooden buildings. So who will we give a specialization in weaponized fire to...
and so on.

This also gives a certain type of meta-benefit to your game. You never have to explicitly state "You know, you can combine the bombs and the tunnels to make sappers"... just give the players the ability to discover it on their own. This gives players the joy of discovery - that feeling that you, personally, figured out an "exploit" that you can surprise the other players with - as well as increases the playability of the . Sure, your playtesters will often be playing because they're your friends and are interested in helping you, but giving players an intrinsic reason to want to revisit the game time and again.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, I think an obvious one for elves would be to make them sort of mirror dwarves... they get a bonus when they do ranged combat, and they get a movement bonus in forests.

For Duergar, you might give them particular bonuses to strength or effect of fortifications; kobolds build 'em fast, duergar build them well.

For Drow, you might lean towards something like giving them a particular bonus of any race they conquer, or maybe "A unit that defeats X race gets Y benefit"... similar to the human's free feat, if I'm intuiting your system correctly. So, you might have that if the drow defeat gnomes, they get the spellcaster benefit. Defeat halflings and you get an initiative bonus. Unlike humans, these increase the upkeep (you're keeping your defeated enemies as slaves)... but they get to keep all the benefits. This means that an experienced drow unit will be very hard to defeat... but it also means that they have to constantly expose themselves in a fight to get those benefits.

[Maat Mons]

I’m not overly familiar with Civ-style games, but I’m digging the ideas that make your population demographics a strategic choice. In particular, I kind of like where Yakk is going. Have one “tech tree” per race, and there’s a cap on how deep into each tree you’re allowed to go based on the absolute number of members of that race in your society. So going for a mono-race society gets you deeper into your “tech tree” for the same population size. Going for a multi-race society means you can’t move out of the lower levels of the “tech trees” until a larger total population size, but you have more “tech trees” to mix-and-match from.

One major issue with this however is that you’d need to have some way of steering your demographics for them to be a strategic choice. I mean, if you make it so there’s one race that breeds like rabbits, and another that breeds like pandas, you’ll reach your population cap just from usagimimi before you ever have a chance to get very many pandamimi. (Now I want a game with an usagimimi faction that has a major buff to population growth.) And if you do put in the ability to “readjust” your population demographics, it invites the question of what exactly the government is doing to those people who just kind of… disappear.

[Vogie]

One major issue with this however is that you’d need to have some way of steering your demographics for them to be a strategic choice. I mean, if you make it so there’s one race that breeds like rabbits, and another that breeds like pandas, you’ll reach your population cap just from usagimimi before you ever have a chance to get very many pandamimi. (Now I want a game with an usagimimi faction that has a major buff to population growth.) And if you do put in the ability to “readjust” your population demographics, it invites the question of what exactly the government is doing to those people who just kind of… disappear.

That's an interesting thing to point out - I had included how certain races are going to be much longer-lived, which would be used as a sort of benefit if you're using some system to accrue experience. One of these types of games I was thinking of was the Europa Universalis series - where the monarchy is extended through heirs. The longer the lifespan, the less turnover in leadership, the less you're rolling on the "regime change" table. One of my favorite passing executions about this type of story is from CJ Cherryh's The Faded Sun trilogy, a Dune-like story where the antagonist alien race, the Regul, use their long life as an empire-building tool. If they're being defeated, they'll sue for peace, and then wait - once all those who knew how to fight them die off and their opponent's armies are now full of green recruits who have never seen combat, they'd strike again.

But this idea is cool in the exact opposite way - Long lived races also tend to have a long maturation phase. If you're all in on Dwarves and Elves, say, and lose a couple key battles, it'll take hundreds of years to replace that population. In-game, that would mechanically look like a creation time, cooldown, or more complicated set of circumstances to summon those units. On the other hand, the shorter-lived races would be able to replenish and deploy units more quickly. While there aren't actual rabbit people in the OP's list (unless they're going to include the Harengon, or a legally-distinct version of that ancestry), certain groups could have that factor built in. Goblins are likely a shoo-in; if you're drawing from Tolkien's Urak-hai as inspiration for the Orcs, those could be included as well. Warforged could also include faster construction as a part of their (much more literal) tech tree, or may be able to be constructed faster when paired with, say, the gnomes.

[awa]

are you familiar with the mod fall from heaven?

https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

it was a very large scale fantasy mod that I think could be profitable mined for ideas. One of its core things is that many of the factions play wildly differently.

Wolves are one of the random barbarian units and goblins the clan of embers scout unit turn into wolf riders after winning a fight with wolves.
a Vampire can reduce population of cities for free xp and can turn their high level non vampire units into vampires.

[Maat Mons]

Letting longer-lived races use their foes’ shorter lifespans against them is fascinating.

One way to do that would be to have units eventually die of old age. The short-lived races would need to be continuously producing new units to keep up with the turnover. It would make units that are expensive in terms of time and resources next to impossible to use in great number. If the game had an xp system for individual units, the fresh units wouldn’t be as effective as the ones they’re replacing, even if they’re of the same type.

On the other hand, if each unit is an abstraction of multiple individuals, these costs could be handled differently. The costs of continuously training replacements for ageing members could be folded into upkeep costs. This would mean races would gain a multiplier to upkeep costs inversely proportional to their lifespan. Or, at least, to whichever portion of the upkeep cost represents training, if there are multiple “currencies” used to pay upkeep. I guess goblins could get a reduction to whichever portion of the upkeep cost represents wages and food, or something. You know, I guess each unit could have a base upkeep cost, with a general rule that upkeep cost is increased by some multiple of the cost to produce the unit, the multiplier being dependent on the race, of course. The long-lived races could have lower multiplier for the training-related upkeep cost, giving them better economy on units with high training cost. Maybe some other races could instead get reductions to the base upkeep cost, representing the fact that they don’t pay or feed their troops very well. This would make low-cost units even lower cost.

Assuming damage to a unit represents individuals dying, and healing represents replacing them with new people, that would complicate any attempt to track levels and xp for units. Healing the unit, that is adding fresh recruits into their numbers, should lower the unit’s level, since their average skill decreased. To add even further complications, the less skilled members should be more likely to die, with those who have already survived several battles likely having the skills to make it through another. I’m not sure how best to model that. The more skilled members would eventually age out, needing to be replaced with new recruits, which would have the effect of draining the unit’s average skill, their level, over time. Since this would be more pronounced for shorter-lived races, the effect would be that some races need to keep a continuous push going to avoid losing the momentum they’ve built, that is their level. This would be balanced by races with slower reproduction being less able to replenish lost individuals, which is to say, heal their units.

[Vogie]

I mean, we don't know precisely how nuanced the OP is getting - all we know is that it is a Civ-like. I haven't played those types of games in a while - I lean towards more of the Starcraft-style game than the Civ/AoE eras of my youth. But since we're in a TTRPG forum, I'm trying to frame my thinking towards some sort of board game or pre-D&D-esque Wargame. So while things like "age of unit" would be easy for a computer to keep track of, it'd be a bear for people doing things. So I'm going to base things off how things are simplified in those types of 4x games - each unit isn't explicitly an individual (unless they are explicitly called out to be), nor an amalgamation of a specific number of units (the Risk-style representation of one dude representing an entire unit of infantrymen, cavalry, or artillery). It's kind of in the middle, as a sort of abstract unit that's larger than life.

I was thinking of using the idea of experience in any one unit as a sort of minor version of leveling them up. That unit is gaining experience as it is doing things, and that unlocks some sort of bonuses. This might just be a scaling damage bonus, or something more complicated - a gate for spellcasting, amount of resources generated by that unit, damage reduction, and so on. Some units can't gain experience, most units would be capped at 2, then the longer lived races might have ones that go up to 4 (which is widely regarded as the mental cap of a number that doesn't require effort). Who gains experience might vary from race to race, as is what gives them experience.

The way I pictured age being a factor in unit production is abstractly representing how long it takes for a unit to be generated. A lifespan that we're used to (maturation around age 20, for humans & orcs) would be something like 1 round or turn - those with shorter lifespans would either be instant (or you just get more than 1 per turn), while longer lived races (which have a higher age of maturity into adulthood) would take several turns to be generated. You could also do a multi-step process for some or all of your units, depending on the group -

Basic humans might turn into core humans who then can be 'promoted' to different roles;
Elves, on the other hand, simply appear in lower roles fully formed because their youth and adolescence is a century, but can then turn their experience into progression to specialized or elite roles;
Warforged could also also appear in their summoned role fully formed, but not advance, because they were created for that specific purpose
One group could be "clan" themed, so once their clan building is built, they just generate those units from time to time regardless of how their player desires from turn to turn.
Another could be "feudal" themed, so their player has a collection of fiefs and lords that they can request certain unit types from, but then have to return them to get different units - "I can get a ton of farmers or a couple knights from this dude, but not both".
If there is a group that has a particularly small lifespan (such as the Thri-keen where the average life is like 30 years), those units might have the opposite of the experience mechanic - rather, they're counting down, then dying off.

[sandmote]

First Note:

your Orc units gain a +2 bonus to Morality. I'm hoping this was meant to be morale.

Second Note:

Halfing units gain a +4 Racial Bonus to Initiative when actively initiating combat. Is this backwards? I'm used to halflings being peaceful folk who avoid starting fights. Although honestly I think either halflings or gnomes should get an ability to prevent nearby enemy forces from being able to attack them, as a reflection of how their settlements tend to get missed by larger military forces. Maybe say they can't produce anything the turn the population center activates the ability, but combat bonuses feel very weird to me.

Ideas for the unfilled races:

Elves should get extra experience points to start.
Duergar should get base bonuses to morale (presumable +1) and some sort of resistance to to mind effecting abilities (fear effects, for instance)
Drow should have some sort of disunity penalty, and get a larger bonus each time it goes off, thereby encouraging the drow player to regularly try backstabbing their own units. Maybe let attack their own units for extra experience?
I like the idea of a faction that's functionally nomadic, slowly forced into worse and worse terrain as the others expand. I think such a concept would be cool for lizardfolk, with low upkeep and the ability to move population centers, but penalties for being away from the population center and penalties to unit generation that accrue the longer you stay in one spot.


Finally, I'd suggest default bonuses for a faction's favored terrain (mountains for dwarves, forest for elves, caves for orcs, underdark for duergar and drow), to help make this effect more consistent.

[awa]

If I was going to try and differentiate races with long/short life spans I would do it like this

So we have hero units who act as commanders boosting the armies/cities their near and these hero units get traits over time positive and negative both based on what their doing and just generally.

Now short lived races who breed fast get tons of these heroes they just dont last very long and thus end up with few traits, so elves will eventually have these amazingly powerful hero units, but if they lose one they are really hurting; so they have to be very careful to keep them alive because first the new guys wont be as good and second you get them so slowly if you waste them you might end up with no hero units at all putting you at a significant decline.

While on the other end of the extreme the orc units might not be very good but you can just spend them, throwing them away on suicidal attack just to harass the enemy because they are constantly getting replaced. It allows you to win through attrition as your constantly getting new troops.

I'm picturing a system where rather than building units civ style you set up a % of your population to be military and when you start a conflict you than spawn units from that number. So the orc numbers would replenish very rapidly strongly encouraging you to have a high military % and just hurl low value units at the enemy while the elves would have a very slow replacement and would benefit from smaller more elite forces.

[Buufreak]

As was noted at some given point: Keeping track of units aging across the grand course of a game that could run (in world) hundreds of years will be a nightmare, for myself and for anyone playing. It simply isn't going to be done, but I'm glad you guys could make a few stabs at the idea.


One of the reasons I like the draft strategy is that it gives you rails to fill in the "blanks" as you are designing them - in MtG, they refer to this as "hole-filling". Even if there aren't cards and isn't a drafting component, you can still give the players the rock/paper/scissors understanding of things. Also, if you think of a cool mechanic that is too overpowered to give to any one group, divide it in half and split it between two groups. Here's an example of how that can give you a sort of design spiral:

Since buildings and fortifications like walls are really important, then sapping those things is incredibly powerful and shouldn't be a specialized thing that any one group can do
We still want it in the game, but with some restrictions - tunnels are relatively unstable, so maybe it's only something small races can do successfully.
So let's give the gnomes the ability to make bombs - they already have a specific manufacturing bent. They can make block-buster bombs that are incredibly powerful, but the units are relatively weak and could be easily repulsed by the most basic of ranged defenses.
Kobolds are well-known as using tunnels defensively, so lets make them also good at tunneling offensively. Even without the ability to drop bombs, they could tunnel under the walls to gain information, steal supplies, and surprise attack, or maybe they can create hidden pits in battlefields as a sort of crowd control.
Now that we've created sappers through a certain combination, you can then make one group specifically good at countering that strategy. Since we're hole-filling for elves, lets give it to them. Why would that be? Elves are tied to trees, and trees have roots - So maybe we have them grow their buildings and defenses? While other races are sending waves of basic units construct things, the elves could just have a single one plant a bunch of things and then have them grow on their own, not unlike the Protoss in the Starcraft franchise.
That's not the only type of wooden construction that we'll have - in fact, about half of the nations will have wooden buildings. So who will we give a specialization in weaponized fire to...
and so on.

This also gives a certain type of meta-benefit to your game. You never have to explicitly state "You know, you can combine the bombs and the tunnels to make sappers"... just give the players the ability to discover it on their own. This gives players the joy of discovery - that feeling that you, personally, figured out an "exploit" that you can surprise the other players with - as well as increases the playability of the . Sure, your playtesters will often be playing because they're your friends and are interested in helping you, but giving players an intrinsic reason to want to revisit the game time and again.

Various actions are unlockable, yes. Partially through a tech tree, and partially through players simply having ingenuity. But out the gate they are getting a full run downs of rules, regulations, limitations, errata, appropriate starting suite, and then wished the best of luck.


Well, I think an obvious one for elves would be to make them sort of mirror dwarves... they get a bonus when they do ranged combat, and they get a movement bonus in forests.

For Duergar, you might give them particular bonuses to strength or effect of fortifications; kobolds build 'em fast, duergar build them well.

For Drow, you might lean towards something like giving them a particular bonus of any race they conquer, or maybe "A unit that defeats X race gets Y benefit"... similar to the human's free feat, if I'm intuiting your system correctly. So, you might have that if the drow defeat gnomes, they get the spellcaster benefit. Defeat halflings and you get an initiative bonus. Unlike humans, these increase the upkeep (you're keeping your defeated enemies as slaves)... but they get to keep all the benefits. This means that an experienced drow unit will be very hard to defeat... but it also means that they have to constantly expose themselves in a fight to get those benefits.

That's an interesting idea, but I don't want Drow to be, dare I say, reliant on running into other player or NPC nations.

I'm also calling a bit of an audible. Have been playing Civ 5 and 6 a fair bit lately, trying to feel things out and get a better look at how to design all of this. I noticed something, probably far later than I should: each nation/faction/whathaveyou has more than just a boon. They each have a boon that modifies a mechanic, a special unit unique to them, and usually a special building which is often a modified version of one that already exists.

As such, I'm now doubling down on digging through racial info pages trying to find things that stick out for each. Again, as with the OP of this thread, suggestions are appreciated!


I’m not overly familiar with Civ-style games, but I’m digging the ideas that make your population demographics a strategic choice. In particular, I kind of like where Yakk is going. Have one “tech tree” per race, and there’s a cap on how deep into each tree you’re allowed to go based on the absolute number of members of that race in your society. So going for a mono-race society gets you deeper into your “tech tree” for the same population size. Going for a multi-race society means you can’t move out of the lower levels of the “tech trees” until a larger total population size, but you have more “tech trees” to mix-and-match from.

One major issue with this however is that you’d need to have some way of steering your demographics for them to be a strategic choice. I mean, if you make it so there’s one race that breeds like rabbits, and another that breeds like pandas, you’ll reach your population cap just from usagimimi before you ever have a chance to get very many pandamimi. (Now I want a game with an usagimimi faction that has a major buff to population growth.) And if you do put in the ability to “readjust” your population demographics, it invites the question of what exactly the government is doing to those people who just kind of… disappear.

Sorry, everyone is getting the same trees. I'm already elbow deep into this and want to get something out in a somewhat reasonable amount of time.


are you familiar with the mod fall from heaven?

https://fallfromheaven.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

it was a very large scale fantasy mod that I think could be profitable mined for ideas. One of its core things is that many of the factions play wildly differently.

Wolves are one of the random barbarian units and goblins the clan of embers scout unit turn into wolf riders after winning a fight with wolves.
a Vampire can reduce population of cities for free xp and can turn their high level non vampire units into vampires.

I wasn't, but I will try to dig through it and see what I find helpful. Thanks for the link!


First Note:
I'm hoping this was meant to be morale.

Second Note:
Is this backwards? I'm used to halflings being peaceful folk who avoid starting fights. Although honestly I think either halflings or gnomes should get an ability to prevent nearby enemy forces from being able to attack them, as a reflection of how their settlements tend to get missed by larger military forces. Maybe say they can't produce anything the turn the population center activates the ability, but combat bonuses feel very weird to me.

Ideas for the unfilled races:

Elves should get extra experience points to start.
Duergar should get base bonuses to morale (presumable +1) and some sort of resistance to to mind effecting abilities (fear effects, for instance)
Drow should have some sort of disunity penalty, and get a larger bonus each time it goes off, thereby encouraging the drow player to regularly try backstabbing their own units. Maybe let attack their own units for extra experience?
I like the idea of a faction that's functionally nomadic, slowly forced into worse and worse terrain as the others expand. I think such a concept would be cool for lizardfolk, with low upkeep and the ability to move population centers, but penalties for being away from the population center and penalties to unit generation that accrue the longer you stay in one spot.


Finally, I'd suggest default bonuses for a faction's favored terrain (mountains for dwarves, forest for elves, caves for orcs, underdark for duergar and drow), to help make this effect more consistent.

Yea, autocorrect sometimes sucks and I don't catch it. I fixed it, thank you.

Also no, and there is a solid reason why: I have never, in my life, seen someone play a halfling. So the only thing I really know about them is memes and ****posts about Kender, and what I remember about them from the Darksun Campaign Guide, in which they are savage ambush buggers. So I worked with what I had.

As much fun as I had in the Drow campaign I played in where everyone was a mistrusting d-bag that kept killing each other (see: none), I can not endorse an idea based on a race that lives to slapstick itself into the stone age.

Racial bonuses/debuffs based on what terrain units build on is already factored in.

[Tzardok]

Don't take anything Dark Sun has to offer as indicative of anything else; it was after all created to be as different from the typical fantasy setting as possible. I'm pretty sure they started with "Let's make halflings the opposite of what they usually are".
If you want something a lot more typical, I'd suggest reading up on Luiren, the only halfling nation in the Forgotten Realms.

[LibraryOgre]

Don't take anything Dark Sun has to offer as indicative of anything else; it was after all created to be as different from the typical fantasy setting as possible. I'm pretty sure they started with "Let's make halflings the opposite of what they usually are".

All the standard races in Dark Sun are that race with one facet driven up to psychosis.

[Tzardok]

All the standard races in Dark Sun are that race with one facet driven up to psychosis.

Which is also the reason why there are no drow in Dark Sun. Either they couldn't make them worse, or nobody wanted to contemplate the possibility that they could.

[LibraryOgre]

Which is also the reason why there are no drow in Dark Sun. Either they couldn't make them worse, or nobody wanted to contemplate the possibility that they could.

The Drow in Dark Sun are the elves who live near the Last Sea... who are pretty much just normal elves.

[Buufreak]

Which is also the reason why there are no drow in Dark Sun. Either they couldn't make them worse, or nobody wanted to contemplate the possibility that they could.

I choose to believe the blue text isn't required here.

[Tzardok]

The Drow in Dark Sun are the elves who live near the Last Sea... who are pretty much just normal elves.

I wasn't aware of that... Are they actually called drow or look like them?

[LibraryOgre]

I wasn't aware of that... Are they actually called drow or look like them?

No. I'm just being a bit facetious. You want a radically different drow? How about ones that are just elves?