TimTrain
Big Huge Games
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2015
- Messages
- 18
This Design Spotlight is brought to you by Lead Designer John Hawkins. Enjoy!
Hello Leaders!
Today I wanted to take a look at the development of one of my favorite buildings in DomiNations – the Library. In the interest of full disclosure, I was heavily involved in its evolution, so I am a bit biased.
Initially, the Library started off as something very similar to the Library found in Rise of Nations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_Nations). There were five different research tracks, each themed towards a different part of your civilization – Military, Civics, Commerce, Science, and Diplomacy. Each research track had a focus that would increase with every level, as well as a few upgrades unique to each level. For example, the first Military research would increase the troop limit by 15, as would the second one, and so on. However, the first Military upgrade would also increase the stable limit by 1, while the second one would increase the siege works limit by 1, and so on. The other lines:
This brought about the third revision of the Library, the one with which players are familiar. The key breakthrough here was having multiple Chapters for each library technology. This allowed us to provide a deeper and better themed feature, while still retaining the uniqueness of the 3 different lines (Army (red), Defense (blue), and Economy (orange), which had been established in the second revision). This was also when we decided that we wanted the Library technologies to have a slightly different ramp than other part of the game – they start off somewhat expensive for your economy, but they increase in cost slower than other upgrades. We also decided to keep the research times short, so that players could re-engage with the feature more often.
Overall we are very happy with how the Library turned out. It helps differentiate DomiNations from some of its competitors, and fits in very well with our theme of human history. It also provides players with smaller and cheaper upgrades that don’t require citizens to accomplish. Lastly, it gives us a place to put concepts that don’t fit elsewhere.
Looking forward at the next update, we will be adding another upgrade to the Library in Industrial Age, unlocking a 7th tier of technologies. Here’s a quick preview of what they are and what they do:
- John Hawkins
Hello Leaders!
Today I wanted to take a look at the development of one of my favorite buildings in DomiNations – the Library. In the interest of full disclosure, I was heavily involved in its evolution, so I am a bit biased.
Initially, the Library started off as something very similar to the Library found in Rise of Nations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_Nations). There were five different research tracks, each themed towards a different part of your civilization – Military, Civics, Commerce, Science, and Diplomacy. Each research track had a focus that would increase with every level, as well as a few upgrades unique to each level. For example, the first Military research would increase the troop limit by 15, as would the second one, and so on. However, the first Military upgrade would also increase the stable limit by 1, while the second one would increase the siege works limit by 1, and so on. The other lines:
- The Civics research line increased road and wall limits as well as the limit on many defensive buildings.
- The Commerce tech increased the caravan level and number of allowed farms and houses.
- The Science research line increased how good your civilization was at hunting and removing debris
- The Diplomacy research line never really took off, but would’ve impacted donated troop limits as well as other alliance features.
- British: free archers from army upgrades, defenders from the forest, archer bonus vs. buildings, increased trade goods from attacking, and extra loot from revenge attacks.
- Chinese: extra walls and higher wall health, extra caravan income, extra siege damage, extra defensive buildings, and higher defender and troop attack.
- French: extra farming income, an extra stable, higher cavalry and siege health, siege take up less troop space, higher supply healing, and stronger generals that have a faster recovery time.
- Germans: more resources and trade goods from mines and fruit trees, shipments contain more resources, extra mercenary capacity, and more traps.
- Greek: cheaper techs, cheaper age costs, upgrades free to complete under 10 minutes, extra building health, an extra war tactic and more war tactic damage, and an extra fire tower and higher fire tower damage.
- Japanese: extra resources from hunting, higher archer damage, higher defender health, more melee troop damage, an extra garrison, higher range and health for towers and forts, more health for generals and troops.
- Romans: extra roads and road income, extra towers, extra farm and caravan, more troop attack and health, generals get extra tactic usage, and players get longer battle timers.
This brought about the third revision of the Library, the one with which players are familiar. The key breakthrough here was having multiple Chapters for each library technology. This allowed us to provide a deeper and better themed feature, while still retaining the uniqueness of the 3 different lines (Army (red), Defense (blue), and Economy (orange), which had been established in the second revision). This was also when we decided that we wanted the Library technologies to have a slightly different ramp than other part of the game – they start off somewhat expensive for your economy, but they increase in cost slower than other upgrades. We also decided to keep the research times short, so that players could re-engage with the feature more often.
Overall we are very happy with how the Library turned out. It helps differentiate DomiNations from some of its competitors, and fits in very well with our theme of human history. It also provides players with smaller and cheaper upgrades that don’t require citizens to accomplish. Lastly, it gives us a place to put concepts that don’t fit elsewhere.
Looking forward at the next update, we will be adding another upgrade to the Library in Industrial Age, unlocking a 7th tier of technologies. Here’s a quick preview of what they are and what they do:
- Internationalism: increases League rewards
- Negotiations: increases Peace Treaty lengths
- Air Defense: increases air defense limit as well as air defense attack and health
- Aviation: increases air capacity as well as Biplane and Zeppelin attack
- John Hawkins