Acharis

I find Extra Credits simplistic, it's useful mostly to new designers. Videos made by actual game designers are far more useful in my humble opinion.

 

Chris Crawford
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105363132599081141035/posts/2c8nSivyukS

 

Sid Meyer

 

John Cleese from Monty Paython (not a game designer, but his talk about creativity is more than related)

Hmmm, indeed horizontal audience cards can fit reasonable amount of text.

 

About grant audience button, maybe fit there a list of possible choices as well? It's kind of repetitive to first click grant audience and then a new screen/window pop up and asks which option you choose...

 

I wonder about the throne picture, somehow I find it annoying... Maybe it's because of the black background and it should be inside a border+background (as a big picture at the top?) Or maybe drazw this throne as a screen background and it will become fully visible after you get rid (deny or grant) of the audiences for the turn? Or maybe make the throne picture part of the interface (some buttons representing guards that you can click and change your preferences to security or icons of your advisors?) I'm not sure, maybe that's just my personal feeling only...

 

i recommend against taking focus-points to the next turn, btw, since focus-points feel like available time, and bringing time to your next turn would break immersion.

I don't know... I like the mechanic that does not force the player to grant audiences every single turn (with +5/15 max it's one big audience per 3 turns if you want). Favours sound complicated and, well, I want it to feel like the personal time of the emperor.

Again, please people, SPACE EMPEROR, not historical It's for a SF game. Please, please, don't turn this topic into a useless historical discussion.

Do not forget we are talking about space emperors here Do not be tied by Earth's history (it's just one measly planet, thus not representative at all )

Hmm, what you wrote sounds a bit similar to my thoughts.

 

Time limit

Originally, I was thinking of making 5 turns limit for trivial audiences, but yours 1 turn is better since it would not hog the queue... Most of them need to be 1 turn OR there needs to be some mechanic to reject unwanted audiences early (which sounds complicated and troublesome).

 

Number of audiences per turn

Instead of a fixed number I was thinking about "focus points" that you can accumulate and manage a bit (resource). You can have max 15 focus points, you get +5 per turn and can use them anytime (this would not force the player to deal with audiences every single turn which might be more convenient/fun). In addition you would be spending these focus points on other things, like imperial editcs (yet the mayor use would be audiences), so you would need to skip some audiences if you plan something bigger (a reform of the empire).

 

When you get an assasination attempt on you, you always survive, but your health deteriorate temporarily and you get half focus points for the next X turns, so an empire might get into trouble because of the emperor "not feeling well" even through the economy and army is in a perfect shape.

Also, if you obtain "court efficiency" upgrade/project/trait you get +1 focus point per turn.

 

Representation of the throne room (audiences interface)

I have a trouble with that one and need advice.

Generally, I want a picture of an imperial throne and siome guards on the audience screen, that's very climatic. Then there needs to be an overview of people/audience requests. I think I can fit 2 rows of 6 each if I make it small (check the first picture, it's for another part of the game, but overall direction of the UI should be the same http://www.gamedev.net/topic/643014-personnel-strategy/ ) but I'm not sure if that's enough size to fit any info. There could be also some icon with "queue" symbol and a number of people that are still waiting (not visible on the screen at the moment because there is no space). These would be sorted more or less by importance (except for reports from previous turns actions, these need to go to the front so the player does not miss them.

The audience petitions would need some quick button to "deny" it, for quick disposal. Or maybe there should be a marker (2 buttons?) "grant/deny" and you click these and then you click "process queue" button and the granted ones pop up one by one (except for pure informational ones which would be ommited).

I'm not sure...

 

Misc

"Important audiences block". When there is an important unressolved audience (like a war declaration) the next turn button would be blocked (althrough I'm not sure what to do if the player has no focus points at that point...) OR make the button blocked until a player visits a throne room (this turn, therefore assuring the player sees the audience/event)?

 

"Free audiences". I think there need to be some free audiences (no focus points used) for pure information audiences (like a report that a fleet arrived somewhere). These could be drawn in grey (others could have different colours depending on severity or category).