Fantasy Game Design in the LH/FE world.
Elemental Forums
Scenario: Brad gets hit by an alien armed with a stupid ray, and decides to hold a lottery- winner gets to design another game in the universe, using the same engine, with a reasonable budget and timeframe (one year to get game in a releasable state). You win.
What do you guys do?
What I would do:
Try to make a new game, alternate universe as not to screw things up
Factions: Kingdom Factions, Krax, a new human faction, and an unplayable AI superpowered Fallen faction. (kinda like the idea behind At the Gates with the Romans- conquering Fallen cities can give tech, but they can curbstomp you early game easily).
Scenario: due to the influence, everyone forgot their knowledge of magic, and has to rebuild it, while conquering/allying with the other factions to make one kindgom strong enough to defeat the Empire.
Research: would be used for spells, and traits, which would be faction-specific
Heroes: Each faction would have their own heroes, with unique trees. 3 times as many heroes as LH. (to ensure some variety)
Tech: most tech is buildable (like in the upcoming game), some tech gained through research/quests.
Wargs: food source for humans, mounts for Empire Horses: food source for Empire, mounts for Kingdom Warhorses (variety) would be quest (Capitar gets a bonus to mounts as one of their traits)
Shards: Empire has corruption, uses death shards for their magic. Everyone uses uses Elemental/Life Shards. Shards give research bonus for sphere-spells, half bonus for dual-sphere.
Crystal: no more crystal stuff for troops, crystal is used to buy artifacts for heroes. Staves for troops are removed from the game.
Unit customization: armor sets would be unique by faction for leather/chain/plate/masterworked versions of each. Hero bonus slots would be rings/amulet/ suits of armor (would include dresses and such) /weapon/accessories.
Artisans: out in the world, find and place them in your city to gain a bonus in your city (sharp weapons, or Admin I/Merchant I/Loremaster I, other bonuses)