HannahStroble commented 7 years ago

Winter is coming and all the beavers in the forest must make a log fort to survive! Unfortunately you are not the only beavers in the forest and must fight for the remaining wood and supplies. One good thing on your side is that these beavers are very polite and will not turn down a good fish which will take a second for them to eat as you snicker away with the loot. Also you can distract them by sending a hot beaver lady to go talk to them. You and your minions can both fight over the wood but in the end it's the fort that wins the game.

Edit: Updated a few things here and there. Look in the game mechanics for a few corrections, the gameplay for a few more details and the units for some more super cool beaver additions! 💃

Objective: Build the fort first!

Gameplay: Turn-by-turn based with randomly generated supplies around the board. AIs are spawned in random places on the board and must fight each other to harvest the tree groves or sabotage/distract each other with fish and hot beaver ladies. There was some discussion about getting the AIs to actually attack each other. Something that I was thinking of is to only allow one AI at a time to harvest from a log spawn or river section. Also if they are waiting for the log spawns to grow they can have the option of getting workers to the other AI forts, chopping on them and literally running away with logs from their walls. This will defiantly cause some chaos.

Units: Chop Beaver - low-power, fast-speed, fast-build (chop down trees, very low attack) Fish Beaver - low-power, fast-speed, fast-build(catch fish, distract with fish, collect sticks, water speed bonus) Buff Beaver - mid-power, mid-speed, mid-build (mid tank fighting unit) Micheal Phelps Beaver - mid-power, mid-speed, mid-build(water speed bonus - has a one tile range attack) Tank Beaver - heavy-power, low-speed, long-build (heavy tank fighting unit) Hot Beaver lady - super low power, mid-speed, mid-build (heavy distract power - up to 2 turns freeze unit, low health) *Chatty Granny Beaver - low power, low-speed, mid-build(super heavy distracting power - up to 3 turns freeze, because who is going to be mean to someone who gives you cookies)

The units can be spent on gathering a resource, attacking, distracting or moving depending on which unit it is. Workers can harvest logs,

Resources: Fish (1 turn distraction, can only be used by Fish Beaver) Trees *Sticks

Fort completion: -30 logs -20 sticks

Game Mechanics: Turn-by-turn Must create or move a unit per turn. If there are less then 10 units then you must create AND move a unit per turn. (otherwise you have to create OR move a piece per turn) Log spawns grow as they are left alone and shrink if being harvested from. Sticks and fish spawn randomly along and in the river, BUT they can also disappear due to the water washing them away (if too difficult to implement the feature of disappearance can be removed)

This picture is a rough concept of the visual. Basically the resources will be spread out and randomly generated but there will not be enough for everyone. Thus battles! Here you can see sticks, tree groves which will give logs when harvested, and fish in the streams that can be caught. The beavers will probably have a bit more color or detail to tell the certain ones apart. The whole thing will be on a grid.

log wars

HannahStroble commented 7 years ago

Note: Will not allow me to add the right label to this post. Apologies for that.

russleyshaw commented 7 years ago

I really like the theme. Also the constructive aspect, most games focus around destroying enemy's base, units, etc.

Typically simultaneous turn based means turns happen at the same time. Usually this is pretty difficult to handle on our end (as developers) and on competitors programming the AI. Fortunately it seems like if we wanted to make a switch to a turn-by-turn game (where A goes, then B goes, then A, ...) it would be easy.

Also typically with random/procedural generation we mirror resources & unit placements so that it is completely fair on both sides, rather than one AI winning because of the luck of the draw.

Some things to think about:

What would make the units interact? (Seems like the beavers could just collect resources as fast as they can, bothering to try to stop an opponent might cost them time)
With a limited number of resources and a constructive goal, would we want to have more resources than it takes both to build (so the fastest wins), or if there is only enough for one.

An idea I had (take with a grain of salt):

Logs & sticks on the river degrade over time (the river sweeps them away), and there is a constant in-flow of new resources.
More unit types? Beaver units r cool
Allow certian beavers to move faster in water than on land and vice versa?

HannahStroble commented 7 years ago

Honestly the simultaneous turns was an idea I was playing with to make it harder to predict enemy movement but turn by turn will not make much of a difference on gameplay. Something to make the units interact is if the tree groves only allowed one person at a time to harvest. You can keep harvesting from them until they are very small and then you have to wait for them to grow again. I really like your river idea where it can wash and bring sticks. It will make it more fair. Maybe there will be more resources but only one can harvest at a time. Will work on more unit types.

JacobFischer commented 7 years ago

I also love the theme.

Russley already pointed out problems with simultaneous turns, so I won't restate that.

I only have one real concern:

If this is essentially a game of who can get the most resources the fastest, this is then "how can solve the traveling salesman problem the best", and that is almost a solitaire esc problem where you don't have to interact with your opponent.

I'm not sure how to solve this, but it is something to keep in mind. The Lady beaver sort of achieves this, maybe we could lean into that.