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Unformatted: Player Designed Buildings

Proposal:
Allow Players to design their own buildings:
1) Graphics would be drawn from a standard pool for 2x2, 2x3, 3x3 etc size buildings. Players could additionally choose a building colour and a building name (either from a pre-populated list or free text?)
2) Player designed buildings would be weaker (capped) than event buildings and slightly weaker than other buildings (e.g. Speakers Corner).
Players could choose, however, what parameters they wanted a building to contain - the more they choose and the greater the bonus, the higher the Gold, Supply and Medal cost and the larger the space required. Choosing more than say two parameters would also add a Diamond and Gem cost to the building with each additional parameter. All costs would ramp up with increasing number of parameters (and bonuses/amounts) and also be linked to the player's Era.

* i.e. attack bonus, defence bonus, goods bonus, gold bonus, supply bonus, supply production, goods production, gold production.

If a building was determined by the formula to require a certain number of spaces (e.g. 24), the player would have to choose the configuration - e.g. 4x6, 6x4, etc.

The use of One-Up and Renovation kits on buildings would trigger an upgrade cost to cover the differential building cost between the eras.

Reason:
This will add something different to the game - a bit of player tailoring to a city and allow some player creativity. Some of the best games around allow players some form of tailoring.

Details:
As per proposal.

Visual Aids:
N/a

Balance:
As noted, player designed buildings will be slightly weaker (i.e. capped) in terms of maximum bonuses compared to Event buildings. The Gems cost is the key to preventing a proliferation of player designed buildings (i.e. power gaming). Diamonds are a lesser control given that some players are prepared to spend a lot of money buying diamonds.
The Diamond cost, however, must not be too high that it dissuades players from trying to build a few moderately powerful buildings.

There may be a benefit to limiting access to Player Designed Buildings to reaching a particular era (e.g. Modern - Prefabrication? HMA -Cranes?)

Abuse Prevention:
The Gems cost and building size determination is the key to preventing a proliferation of player designed buildings (i.e. power gaming)

Summary:
Player Designed Buildings would add an interesting element to the game by allowing players to indulge their creativity.
They would also allow cities to have a bit more variation aesthetically in terms of Residential and Supply buildings especially.
The designers must already have a design basis for the estimating the power of event buildings. This could be used to determine a design basis for weaker Player Designed Buildings.
Player Designed Buildings would add new demands for Gold, Supplies, Medals, Diamonds and Gems which would present players with some new choices.
 
Players have billions of spare coins,supplies and medals and diamonds are free to come by in their 1000s a week if you know what you're doing.

Not sure what you mean from gems - from selling stuff in the antiques dealer perhaps? Again people have them in their 1000s

Your idea would anyone to build many overpowered buildings for zero cost, the only limiting factor would be city space
 
@Emberguard: Because you could build them immediately and replace them when you get the event building that is stronger. A more complex building design would take longer to replace with an event building. I'd gladly pay a penalty for a "signature" building. Power gamers would give it a miss, but, this isn't aimed at power gamers.
 
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@Cursedveggie - perhaps size would be the more effective control then? The trade off would be personalisation versus something that is a bit less less efficient. So the equivalent of a Speakers Corner might be a 3x4 building.
(I'm in SAV and have only got 500 Gems from the AD so didn't think people would have thousands of them)
 
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@Cursedveggie - perhaps size would be the more effective control then? The trade off would be personalisation versus something that is a bit less less efficient and has a lower bonus cap.
(I'm in SAV and have only got 500 Gems from the AD so didn't think people would have thousands of them)
I have about 2k, should be much higher but I can't be bothered to sell stuff most of the time.

If they gave an attack boost then I could see people building them but like @Emberguard said, there are many small buildings already that give these kind of boosts so they would have to be very limited so as to not overpower everything else.

Would be nice for a bit of city variety though
 

Shad23

Emperor
i guess for this feature you'd have pre-designed walls and roofs to choose from to design your building yourself
 

Janet Devlin

Corporal
Feel free to discuss this, but keep in mind that in the end it is DNS in more than on way.
Please define DNS (domain name server)? Sorry but I'm not on this page.

@Emberguard: Because you could build them immediately and replace them when you get the event building that is stronger. A more complex building design would take longer to replace with an event building. I'd gladly pay a penalty for a "signature" building. Power gamers would give it a miss, but, this isn't aimed at power gamers.
I myself elected not to play as a power gamer so this idea really points to a different game strategy which I like. I've read in another post how a power gamer mentioned he was frustrated. I'm not here for frustration. This idea has such an enormous potential for attracting gamers other than power gamers. The only question left is I wonder is how many people out there would something like this capture? I for one think its a great idea.
 
@Knight - thanks for the clarification. I don't think that the idea breaks DNS rules but it definitely would be a significantly new feature like Settlements or GBG.
Cheers
 
@Emberguard
Without getting into an argument with you, the two statements aren't contradictory. Some people might want to build a weaker form of an event building immediately (e.g. like a 3x4 equivalent of a Speakers Corner) rather than wait for the better item to turn up in the AD or via an event.
Others might spend hours designing (like I used to with ships in MOO2) a signature building that obviously stands out as different. People might have different reasons for doing it.

People will still want event buildings as they are also unusual and will be more powerful/efficient.
 

Knight of ICE

@Knight - thanks for the clarification. I don't think that the idea breaks DNS rules

Some people might want to build a weaker form of an event building immediately (e.g. like a 3x4 equivalent of a Speakers Corner) rather than wait for the better item to turn up in the AD or via an event.

What Not To Suggest?

In particular, please do not suggest the following ideas, as they will not be implemented:

  • Ideas to make yourself richer.. or make the game easier. The game is meant to be played over time and is meant to have a lot of strategy to it.
  • New buildings or items. Buildings and items are decided upon according to a feature, event, era and need to ensure they are balanced within the game
  • Extreme changes (new battle system, ...)
 
Another reason to suggest a new mechanic like this is to increase the creativity element of the game. After playing so many years, I'm finding all of the new fighting features pretty repetitive and boring so would welcome something other than more fighting - the Mughal settlement looks to be a good step in that direction with more puzzle action. The wildlife event has also got an interesting puzzle element.
 
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