Re: suggestion
I was playing through Master of Orion 2 again recently and that is what we need. We need each province to have a separate population of every kind of basic humanoid in it. In the game so far, that's:
Ex-Imperial Humans (Marignon, Ulm, Arco, Pythium, Man, Ermor)
Norse Humans (Vanheim, Jotunheim - Utgard)
African Humans (Machaka)
Central American Humans (Mictlan)
East Asian Humans (Tien Chi)
Demons (Abyssia)
Caelumites (Caelum)
Hoburglings (Hoburg Alliance)
Jotun (Jotunheim)
Vaetti (Jotunheim - Iron Woods)
Tritons (Oceania)
Shamblers/Atlantians (Atlantis, Rlyeh)
Amazons (Themaskyra)
Barbarians (none)
Satyrs (Pangea)
Undead Hordes (Ermor)
Icthyds (none)
Woodsmen (none)
These should matter, and grow at different rates depending upon scales. Furthermore, these races should be required in a province to make specific troop types.
Thus, Caelum should go ape trying to grab Raptor provinces, because they are populated with Caelumites and allow the Caelum player to make troops they can otherwise only make in the capitol.
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And like MOO2, provinces should have a basic carrying capacity that should engender a certain level of growth until populations reach it. Growth scales should increase populations faster and increase the carrying capacity over time. Death scales should just kill population and do nothing to the carrying capacity (but even death 1 should kill people faster than base replacement rate).
You could have a little house diagram that was partially filled out in various colors on the main screen that would give your a proportional idea of how full the province was of various types of creatures, and then when you went to the hire troops screen it could give you an exact breakdown of how many people of various races are in the province.
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Finally, every race should put forward at least two nations that can use them, and every race should be represented on the world map with occassional provinces. Sometimes a waste should just have a bunch of Abyssians in it. Sometimes a province should be defended by vaetti. The Revenge of the Raptors should be a separate nation from Caelum so that the Seraphs and the Harab can do battle over the all important Caelumite populated provinces.
And even so, that's not enough population types! I want to be able to play a "Rise of the Vine Nation" nation, and that means that there should be Vinemen populated provinces. I want to play with Willard as my god, and that means that there need to be Rat infested provinces.
And there should be a few troop types that are set by population type, to the extent that when I conquer Abyssia, I should be able to recruit humanbred soldiers from the Smouldercone.
Finally, I want either a MOO2 or AoW style population "management" system, where I can purposefully genocide peoples whose religions aren't mine or settle desirable population around so where I want it. It's OK if it's time consuming, or even just not very good, in a game like this I think it's important that you be able to have sub-goals like "kill all the Abyssians" or "populate the entire planet with Van".
-Frank
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