Hi

Im designing a realtime empire-builder, which is also multiplayer (think realtime total war city management with very sijmplified combat).

You manage cities, train units (16 tanks, 200 infantrymen, 10 choppers can be a single unit for example) into armies and move armies on the map.

When armies meet on the map they enter combat:

Combat (battles) goes on in realtime and the world around continues (no pause)

A 10 unit army has 3 "active units" at a time. This means the rest ("the reserve") waits until an active unit dies and then takes its place.

You can add reinforcements to the battle by simply move another army on the map into the battle.

A player can "enter" (take control of) a battle and issue orders, but only which unit moves to the front lines when another is dead. Enemy has tanks active? Send forward your AT guns. Your units is eaten up by enemy choppers? Replace dead units with stingers or AA vehicles. Units will pick suitable targets automatically (those they deal most damage to)

If the battle is NOT controlled the AI will appoint replacements from your reserve randomly, making your army less efficient but not worthless. Early you control a small empire so you can babysit most fights, but later on this will not be possible.

Could this work/ be fun?
Any alternative for such a game, given i want it to be realtime. I could freeze the world for each battle and let the players control every fight but i think that would be slow (you also fight AI factions on the map and there might be more than 2 human players).

Thanks for your input!
Erik

well the mechanics are pretty simple so if i add stuff like that it takes away the incentive to control your battles at all i think... Leaving your units to fight their own battle should have a drawback.

But other than how the battles would work, the bigger issue is if it would fit in the larger, empire-side of the game (and letting it run while the world runs), which i cannot really protoype, that would make the whole game. But what's your initial feeling?

Yeah but from what it sounds like watching or participating in a battle might be a downside as well. It seems like if you do control battle you end up with lost time building and making more armies. Where if you don't control the battle you lose out on controlling the battle. It seems like from this point that participating in the battles is a huge downside no matter what especially depending on how long the fights are..

I like the idea but I think a simple AI that controls your battles properly for you to an extent would be better. Maybe only allow players watch the fights unfold or even maybe add in a strategic game play element where the players can give commands to their commanding officers. Like setting variables for certain strategies.

You could even maybe add experience to armies that win allowing better AI, and the more battles an army wins the better its AI gets.

Or go full on AI and just allow the players to watch the fights unfold, maybe a mini window in the corner of the game can popup and allow the player to watch the fights happen there.

I'm inclined to recommend simply building a small prototype

^ This is a fantastic idea. It will allow you to test out your ideas quickly and make changes without being worried about whether its going to work or not. Do something simple and easy at start and build from there, you may find that the entire idea doesn't work or that its super fun and shouldn't be changed at all. As said before don't worry about the building part of the game yet until you have solid gameplay mechanics that you know work.

Small iterations to the gameplay are the key to balancing and finding a fun yet challenging game at the same time.

good inpput guys. The problem with freezing the world during combat is that i plan to make it multiplayer (its sort of the point) which makes it PRETTY boring for the other players to randomly sit and wait out the game world when someone, somewhere desides to have a fight.

If combat is rather self-governing i think i might work. You can drop in and issue some orders for a "boost" of battle efficiency if the strategic layer is slow at the moment, otherwise you can let battles play out themselves and just watch they for afar.

There is also the option of making the game turn-based and turns dont end until all combat is resolved, but that becomes an entirely different game.)