I recently came across new game YMIR and really liked the concept of how world map works it being divided into provinces… I believe it’s the way to go for this game, it would make it possible to build multiple cities and create countries as well as nice AI competition and maybe even multiplayer options. I just would think about the rule, that you can’t build other city less than 4 provinces away and should reach decent establishment before expanding into othe territories.
That concept is simply amazing idea how to make city builder/grand strategy game of the dreams.
I simply believe it’s healthy to explore ideas and possibilities. Maybe not as base game, but as DLC or future of the game. We have quite few city builders, but nothing like like that concept. Meaning it’s a huge unexplored gap ready for filling in.
You are right, but a city builder and a grand strategy mix would requiere a far bigger team than we are and a lot more time to develop it. Just to try to do it all would make us fail on both sides, if ever finishing the project.
All ideas are welcome of course, but then the reality knocks the door
[quote=“UncasualGames, post:4, topic:3623, full:true”]You are right, but a city builder and a grand strategy mix would requiere a far bigger team than we are and a lot more time to develop it. Just to try to do it all would make us fail on both sides, if ever finishing the project.
All ideas are welcome of course, but then the reality knocks the door ;)[/quote]
That’s that type of reactions that makes me very confident with Ancient Cities: through all your interviews and posts on the forum you clutch to reality, which makes far higher probability that the game is finally released in a very decent state, even if some features are necessarily left for improvement for post-release DLCs and patches.
Compared a myriad of nascent video game companies that propose very nice things but just avoid thinking about any practical but so important considerations, this is very reassuring. Keep on that way!
We try every day to be honest with our limitations, and that is a very difficult thing to do!
But we are also aware that we are building a platform, and that means that deciding to not implement some nice feature at this moment, or even developing a feature only to the minimum to be meaningful for gameplay, or not optimizing a system as much as we could, because of current time and budget, does not mean to park it forever.
Development will not stop after release.
But our current goal is to release a limited ( for what we would like to build in our dreams ) but working, interesting and fun game to play. After that everything we add to the game in the future is sugar.
If we can do that, for our first pc game, that would be a very good start.
That seem to be a totally reasonable way to proceed.
The DLC policy, when used honestly and managed with common sense, is a great leap forward for video game industry – not for every game, but at least for such ones as AC, that aims to offer an experience to the player.
And the balance of limited DLCs (e.g. new buildings of new climates) with heavier ones (e.g. for whole new eras) should be a sound way to keep the players interested with various experiences
