Switching Loka to a Hexagon-based Territory System

[Skuhoo]

Recently I made a suggestion to use clumps of hexagons as territories rather than squares. There has been some confusion in how existing towns would be implemented into the new system. To help explain my idea further and clear up any confusion I made some more images to go along with the explanation.


Let's take a look at the great town of Eldritch:

This is it's current region:

In the suggested system new towns would claim a hexagon as their town region. This is how Eldritch's region would look if it was changed to a hexagon-shaped one:

Unfortunately existing towns aren't going to line up perfectly in the hexagon grid:

The solution to this is simple. Just create the suggested hexagon clump territories around existing towns:

The territory that a town is located in would become it's "home territory" where no other town could settle. This eliminates any possibility of conflicting town regions existing. New towns created after the update would still claim a hexagon on the grid to be their town region. The territory that the hexagon is a part of would still become their "home territory" as well.

 

[Magpieman]

I do like the idea of hexes but would go about it slightly differently. I would like the hexes to be smaller and then grouped by the admin team in areas of 4-6 hexes based on the landscape. Each group of hexes would have a T Gen in and if a town claimed it, they would get the whole group of hexes as their town. (protected land they can build on) This way coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers etc could be better grouped into 1 T gen zone. The reason the hexes would be smaller is that I would like 4-6 hexes to be a similar size to a 400 by 400 or 500 by 500 square.

 

[Skuhoo]

If there's going to be all this work put in changing conquest to be hexagon-based static territories, then how conquest plays out desperately needs to change as well. Currently, players set up a town and place a 10 or so tgens around their town. When someone wants strength they attack someone else's 10 tgens. That's boring.

Players should be able to actually fight for control over their continent. Seeing daily pushes for buff territories and attempts at severing off a group of an enemy town's territories would be so much cooler than the system we have now. Having such a massive number of tgens per continent (which would be the case with your suggested smaller territories) would make it completely unrealistic for towns to actually compete for territory. The number of tgens needs to be limited in a way so that there's actually competition between towns for control.

 

[Cryptite]

Players should be able to actually fight for control over their continent. Seeing daily pushes for buff territories and attempts at severing off a group of an enemy town's territories would be so much cooler than the system we have now. Having such a massive number of tgens per continent (which would be the case with your suggested smaller territories) would make it completely unrealistic for towns to actually be compete for territory. The number of tgens needs to be limited in a way so that there's actually competition between towns for control.

That's always been the plan. I think Mag's just saying smaller hexes, but bigger groupings of them so that we can have tighter control on following landmarks around. With this hex/grouping system we can come up with a good number of "Total TGens on a Continent" that we feel is enough for a lot of towns on a continent but not too many that owning them all becomes too daunting to even take.

 

[Skuhoo]

With this hex/grouping system we can come up with a good number of "Total TGens on a Continent" that we feel is enough for a lot of towns on a continent but not too many that owning them all becomes too daunting to even take.

That's good. I do think a map split up into 400x400 equivalent regions would be too many regions, though. Also, keep in mind that this thread is really just me explaining how to transfer existing towns to the new system without messing with the shapes of individual hexagons.

 

[Ajaxan]

One issue I realized with both this system and the original square idea is about starting a new town. If a player wanted to start a new town, how would they go about it?

If you are trying to fit all the existing towns into this grid you have to ensure future towns will also follow this. Towns are big and they could very easily extend outside their hexagon unless a certain area is unforced. Unfortunately this will get highly confusing trying to squeeze a massive town into these hexes.

I suggest allowing all TGens that are neutral to be converted into a town generators. When this happens the TGen is replaced by the generator and the Town is started.

Unfortunately this raises another problem, what happens when that town goes away? You'd have to transform back into a TGen. I guess this isn't too difficult but its important to consider.

 

[Wolfegger]

Given that wannabe towns will have to claim a t-gen in order to create the town, shouldn't we have a lot of them? In my mind, I'm trying to balance out what that would look like, optimally, in numbers with what a feasible number of t-gens would be for conquest purposes. I suppose you could have a lot of t-gens, but only have some, of those that are neutral, that can be attacked by towns.

Looking at the square grid map in Cryptite's document, there might be 110-120 t-gens, assuming there is one per grid. We could have it so that any were attackable by wanderers and nomads, but have a subset of them that would be attackable by towns (these we would compete over). And taking control of one of those in the subset would give you control of several of the surrounding hexes that towns cannot attack? Options abound.

Still, for the sake of progress, what do you all think is the right number of t-gens from a conquest standpoint, on all three continents, in total? Consider our size now, but also project into the future and imagine if we had five towns on each continent active in conquest (or ten towns on each continent, dare I dream?).

 

[Wolfegger]

I suggest allowing all TGens that are neutral to be converted into a town generators. When this happens the TGen is replaced by the generator and the Town is started.

That is in Cryptite's document, no? Or maybe I'm misreading what you say.

 

[Ajaxan]

I think bigger is better to be honest. Have more TGens than less. Loka should optimistically assume that the number of towns on each continent will double or even triple. We want everyone to be able to have territory. If a new players sees the map and it shows no open territory it'll be discouraging.

 

[Ajaxan]

That is in Cryptite's document, no? Or maybe I'm misreading what you say.

Ah, you're right, it was covered. My bad

 

[Otvm]

I think these hexagons could be grouped by biomes. Any territory near another biome would be cut off at the border. This would help new players create their towns without being worried about their players exploring, suddenly finding a territory generator, and exploding or being disintegrated.

 

[agorednocit]

I made some concept art for the map layout.

 

[Lazuli73]

So, this would be like Civ V?

 

[Ajaxan]

So, this would be like Civ V?

But better because Minecraft