I debated whether to put this in Community Content or Feature Requests. I decided on Community Content as this isn’t necessarily a request, it was more something I came up with as a design exercise for myself and wanted to share it with the community.
#The Hero Kingdom
Story
After travelling the length and breadth of Krystara, our wandering hero longs for a place to call home. Sure, they’ve had homes in all of the kingdoms in the land, but they were all temporary, mostly taken for some sort of gain (or the gain of others), but never has there been a place where our hero can relax, put their feet up and just forget about the world for a while…
But one day, a messenger arrives. She carries a letter from Lord Luther, with an interesting proposal. The island in the bay south of Stormheim has long been a disputed territory between the giants of Stormheim, the dwarves of Khaziel, the priests of Whitehelm, and the undead of Khetar. The four kingdoms have battled bitterly for control of the island, but none have been able to lay claim to it for long, and after a recent devastating battle, Lord Luther decided to step in with an unconventional solution to the fighting. Why not let the hero that has wandered all the lands, and helped many races from all the kingdoms, have control of the island? The four kingdoms would get something out of it, of course, the hero wouldn’t be able to take control for free, and the fee paid would be divided up equally between all four kingdoms. As such Lord Luther’s proposal is this, our hero could pay the nominated fee, buy the island, and setup a headquarters there. This would halt the wars between the kingdoms over the land, and the hero would finally have a place to call their own.
Our hero begins to pen their reply……
Introduction
Design Notes: I initially was planning on detailing the functions and mini-games for all the buildings at once, but decided to, rather than just explain the minigames, I wanted to actually prototype them and give people a more interactive demonstration of my ideas. (As I did with the traitstone farming proposal I did a few weeks ago). As a result, I’ll be focusing mostly on the kingdom itself, and the Great Hall in this installment, and do the buildings as an addendum once I’ve prototyped them.
The hero kingdom is designed to give the player a centralised base of operations in Gems of War, giving them access to a number of bonuses and activities.
The main features are:
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Create your own banner, choosing the colour bonus and penalties that go with it, and display it proudly in your seat of power, your Great Hall,
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Use the Forge to create Mythic weapons for your hero to use in one of the new mini-games.
More details here:
Hero Kingdom - Weapon Forging Proposal -
Upgrade and customise your hero’s classes in new and exciting ways in the Armory.
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Recruit specific troops from the Barracks in the other new mini-game.
To be able to purchase your kingdom however, there are some requirements that must be met first:
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The hero must have completed the quest lines of 20 kingdoms, including Stormheim, Khetar, Whitehelm, and Khaziel.
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The hero must level 50 or above
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And must pay the fee of
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150,000 gold
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10,000 souls
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1,000 glory
Also each building must be built, costing the player more resources for each building:
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Great Hall: Free (comes with the purchase of the kingdom)
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Forge:
- 250,000 gold
- 20,000 souls
- 2,000 glory
- Armory:
- 300,000 gold
- 30,000 souls
- 3,000 glory
- Barracks:
- 400,000
- 40,000 souls
- 4,000 glory
Edit: Gold prices adjusted upwards by a factor of 10, and souls and glory costs added. Thanks to @Ivar and @efh313 for the suggestions.
Requirement Reasoning: These requirements are designed to make sure the player has some knowledge of the game, and its various elements before adding a number more. Also the gold costs for the various building is meant to act as a gold sink for players who have all their kingdoms at level 10 and to force them to make a choice in how to spend their gold, rather than just dumping it all into guild tasks.
Great Hall
The great hall is the center of the hero’s kingdom, and their seat of power. The Great Hall allows the player to create a banner for their kingdom, which can be changed anytime. However, the player only gets one banner, so if they change it, any teams that were using the old banner, will automatically be switched to the new one. The Great Hall will also allow some level of aesthetic personalisation, with the possibility of custom wall papers, thrones, or general items (statues, plants etc) as IAPs, or discoverable as the player completes quests and battles in various kingdoms. Eg you might unlock some Knight statues once you finish the Sword’s Edge story line, or a icey throne after completing Glacial Peaks. The throne rooms of Civilization II are a good example of how it might look.
There are some restrictions on how many colours and what mana balance can be used on the banner:
- The total net mana gain must be +2, same as all other banners.
- A banner can only have a maximum of 3 colours on the plus side.
- A single colour can’t be higher than +3.
- A single colour can’t be lower than -2.
For example:
Slynthia’s Banner
+3 Brown
+2 Green
-2 Blue
-1 Red
Design notes: This was the original idea that set this whole hero kingdom thing. The idea is to allow players more customisation when it comes to banners, and try out some teams that might not have been viable otherwise. The restrictions would likely need tweaking based on some playtesting and how strong a +3 banner might be for mono/duo colour teams.
That’s it for now, let me know what you all think! I’ll add the Forge, Armoury and Barracks in the coming weeks.
I wish I could remember what game it was but there was a game in the late 80s/early 90s that allowed you to pick troops from a stack of troops - for a cost.
Also, and this is directed at