Development Timetable

A reset after the updates seems only natural. I can understand the yearly reset concept but after reading the ideas of The Carolina Scotsman and Taliesin I really like the idea of a random "disaster" or the maintenance programs Taliesin recommended. It would give the game a much more realistic feel and would naturally and fairly control members from being able to get to big of an advantage in the game.
Surely it wouldn't be too hard to implement something like this into the game, I think this need some serious thought put behind it and I totally support the idea.

I agree with Taliesin that having large amounts of workers or soldiers should require more food and managing. Right now all the food a soldier needs is for training it but nothing to sustain it. You could take a step further by having workers or troops die after a variable amount of years, that way large armies wouldn't be worth much unless you intend to do something with them because they would only be good for a month or so real time, same with workers. That would even things out quick, players who just sit and stockpile wouldnt have anything unless they played a bit.

With all due respect my lady Natalia...I too agree to a certain point...
But the concept of the game is "participation" as far as "piling up" well one piles up when NOT participating in the game and again with all due respect my lady we haven't seen you much on the front.

Building up assets is costly as well as training that in itself is a "natural" occurence in real time...as for sustain it well all I can is that the game is based on war... and war means you send out your army out to fight and again the game is designed that once your army is on the march it takes only seconds for battle but takes hours to train and cost resources to train back what you have lost.

Just building one farm cost tremendous food and takes 14 months before completion but then to get full amount of hourly resources one must have his or her post rating at 100% and even then depending on the amount of buildings one has in his or her kingdom the hourly amount received vary upon what is own....
Say one owns 250 farms the hourly amount is approximately 20000 to 25000units of food per hours but the minute you get over 350 the hourly amount will jump to about 75000 per hour that is a huge difference thus helps rebuilt faster after battle.


But again one has to be logged on at least 2 or 3 times a week to keep up with his assets otherwise like you say...if a player logs on just to take a peak here and there of course it'll pile up for nothing,

JMHO.

Lady of Avalon

I cannot speak as to where Natalia was coming from, but I can perhaps further define what I was speaking to.

The question of yearly resets is coming up, and what was being discussed were other ways to accomplish some sort of leveling of the playing field.

I proceeded on some assumptions, namely that the reasoning behind the yearly resets were to even things out, and give the new players a chance to build up a mighty army. I can see where this kind of concern comes in, as I used to play Trade Wars on the BBS Systems of yore. It didn't take long for experienced players to completely wipe out any new players, thus preventing anyone from really building up a trading empire. Another concern is that it could be considered impossible to catch up to longtime players because while a new player is building up resources and building their kingdom, so are the experienced players. Sort of like catching up to an older sibling in age. These games are generally designed such that the advancement is sort of an exponential curve where it requires FAR more assets to continue to build, the further along you are. Still, when newer players hit the same area as the longtime players, they, too hit the steep curve, and slow down, so apart from a longtime player taking time off from the game, there is still no real way to catch up. Those were my assumptions.

What I affirmed was the concept of plague or disaster randomly striking kingdoms. It wouldn't take someone down to nothing again, but in my mind, it would reduce the worker population, maybe remove buildings or reduce resources, as well. As in real life, it would be a temporary setback to overcome. This would add realism to the game, and would help to show new players that they DO have a chance to build up, even while experienced players are doing the same.

I further expanded upon the plague/disaster concept to add a percent chance based on a player's score (or something else equally representative of their progress), such that the more lands and resources a player has, the greater the chance of one of these disasters striking. More people means greater chance of plague or illness, and more lands means a greater chance of earthquake, fires, etc. It would affect the more experienced more often than the less experienced, but as the less experienced builds their realm up, they too will face the same problems that come with a larger kingdom. Again, this is not to be taken as a "Down to 0 again" sort of disaster. Experienced players would be able to recover by the judicious application of their resources, etc., and it would not be a "reset".

Finally, I suggested adding a maintenance cost, based on the number of armies vs. farms, etc. I know these things cost money, food, and wood initially, which is itself a bit of an equalizer. However, maintaining said farms, armies, and other assorted buildings would require more resources for repairs, food, maintenance, etc. This would also affect the experienced and further commensurate with the holdings of the player. This maintenance could be as great or as little as the developers desire, of course, allowing them to fine-tune it so it's not so great of a drain on resources that a large kingdom becomes impossible to maintain. This would be another way to allow this game to be ongoing, once out of the beta phases.

My suggestions should not be construed so as to make it impossible for experienced players to advance, but rather would force everyone to allocate more resources to maintain a large kingdom, much like the responsibilities I mentioned in the Lady of Avalon's thread. What's more, the chance element of the plague/disasters concept means that it's not CERTAIN that your kingdom will be affected, but rather contains an element of the seeming randomness of God in the blessing or smiting of your kingdom.

I am, however, VERY interested in feedback on these issues, as I think if we flesh them out some, the developers will have more to work with if they decide to implement any of these concepts or features.

I just want to thank everyone for their feedback and my apologies on the slow development of this game. I can promise we will move on this game.

We will definitely keep all of your suggestions into consideration before we decide on a reset or not. I like the idea of an upkeep fee for large armies and workers. Seems only natural. I think we would experiment with these type of scenarios before doing a reset.

For now though, the game is what it is until we finish up on a few projects.

Perfectly understandable, and while I can certainly see the potential in the game, I think it's pretty darn fun as it is.

Fun would be an understatement about this game and it's concepts.

Paul has done a wicked wonderful job of maintaining the databases involved and even more work into the development.

For me , the game is a wonderful way to pass time here and there, between job searching and such since it doesn't require the vast amounts of time other games do such as Guild Wars etc.

I'm not always one to do a lot of posting, but still knowing that the game takes this into account, it's one way to keep folks like me a wee bit more active in OTHER areas of CR, not just the game. I'm enjoying the video's etc here on CR and the various types of Celtic *and other* music.

Keep up the good work, and I'll see you all on the battlefield one of these days I"m sure

Seamus

Again, thank you all for the feedback and the kind comments! We will take everything into consideration for this unique online game.

One theme that should also stay with this game is it should be something you can come back to from time to time and not spend a whole lot of time. I find those games to be the best as no one has unlimited time to play!

Now some good news on the development time table. We have 1 more project to complete (which is our web services control panel) - estimated completion time is no more than 3 weeks.

After that, we see Medieval Kingdom as our only project for the remainder of the year. So, we will start to see some movement on these ideas and also on the web-front end of Medieval Kingdom - plus the action house where you will be able to spend your virtual gold.

Since October we have had alot of set backs, mainly alot of server work and new hardware, but the new system is rock stable and is really boring to maintain (it runs so smoothly). I guess that is good and will help us get back into developing Medieval Kingdom without any server issues to deal with.

Bump......

Is there anybody out there?

echo... echo...

yes something is here

*GASPING*

"Something" is out there.....oh goodie!!!!!! Let's go see if it's edible! It could be something chocolate

I'm new here and have been reading the columns ...has something happened...it appeared that some new stuff was supposed to appear on this game....where is the auction house? I haven't seen it, could someone point me in the right direction...not that I have a lot of gold to spend, but I'm trying to check out the entire site..there's a lot to see and I'm afraid I'm missing some parts...

Welcome Lady Emmalou,
The aucton house is on the game home page, http://medieval.celticradio.net/ just scroll down and you will see it, it is still under construction but we are hopefull

We are nearing the end of our Web Services project which we expect to be completed within the week. As we have mentioned here and elsewhere on the site, after our web services project is completed we will be devoting all of our time for the reminder of the year to Medieval Kingdom.

I know it has been long promised and many false starts. Part of the delay has been with the Web Service project taking longer than expected and a TON of hardware and new system configuration work this past spring.

Looking forward to restarting Medieval Kingdom very soon!