I'm not sure how much this will be developed before the release, but now we'll get to use the land to create assets with which to further our goals.
For now, these assets will come from two different sources. The first will involve local aristocrats, while the second one will involve your own acquired abilities. In the first case, if you own enough unused land and you manage to invite and positively impress a local aristocrat, he or she might propose you to employ your land in a certain manner.
In the second case, you'll have a fourth option when using abilities to develop an asset if you have enough land and enough stock of whatever that ability employs. For example, if you learn the ability to restore antiques, you own 1 hectare of land and you stock up restored furniture, you will be given the chance to spend that furniture in creating a recreation of an old building or a museum.
These assets will be listed in a new screen next to the "Bio" ones and such. You can get up to 20 assets at any time. The lines describing your base have been moved to this screen as well to make more room for afflictions in your character screen.
The effects of these assets will vary. They might increase a certain kind of population or affect in some way overall economy or the usual values of tension, Arkhe, Merits and such in different combinations. They are shown along with a level, which indicates their durability and their effect. If for example an asset is shown at level 3 and it shows something like "++ Arkhe + Local Tension", it will increase Arkhe and Local Tension according to its level, but will increase Arkhe twice as much as it increases Local Tension. The values however are balanced, so a single positive or negative level for example will yield 2 Arkhe, but only 0.5 Local Tension. These values might of course change after further testing.
Each asset will also depend on one of the existing tendencies, that is, Farming, Heavy Industry and such. Decisions benefiting any matching tendency will increase the level of that asset, while detrimental ones will lower their level.
Finally, if your base territory (Fortress/Dungeon, etc) accumulates over 100 Weariness, your assets might also start suffering and lose levels. An asset with level 0 is destroyed and automatically gives you your land back.
Of course, lots of fun things could be done with these assets in the future, but the idea is to have a release ready once the afflictions are finished and proofread, so just like the local aristocracy before, assets will probably be released in a barebones shape.
Instead of kindly giving the player back their land if assets reach level 0, perhaps brigands (essentially a random unit) could take over the decrepit asset and land. So the player would have to fight off the squatters before getting their land back.
ReplyDeleteAt first I was thinking about making assets leave a unique ruin that would require cleaning up of some sort. Such ruins could involve confrontations and negative effects, but it was tricky to come up with a counter-asset for every asset.
DeleteSo yeah, perhaps less specific events like brigands and such could be the answer. I'll give it some thought.