Just want to start by saying that the game is great fun! It's a unique spin on the typical RTS formula that is just a blast to play!
One thing however that has been bothering me is the mechanics behind the population pool, specifically what happens after it runs out. The design intent seems to be that it's supposed to be a game ender. However I find it can also cause the game to come to a serious stall, where neither team can field an army strong enough to break through the enemies defences.
My suggestion is that, after the maps population pool is completely depleted, that only the player/team which controls the most construction sites will continue to produce population, but at a significantly slower rate than normal. This rate is increased depending on how significant their lead over the enemy is.
This fixes a number of issues:
- Controlling the map remains important throughout the game. Currently after population depletes you have little reason to care about controlling additional construction sites or recruitment citadels. You likely don't have the Population to utilise the extra production power or support cap. With this change you likely still won't be able to utilise those bonuses, but at least they'll count towards something else of importance that will be worth fighting for.
- Helps break through turtles. Currently one of the most effective strategies after population depletes is to turtle your remaining army in your strongest base, and hope your opponent wastes forces and attacks you where you are strong, so you can clean up and win afterwards.
- Prevents stalemates. By giving bonus population to the leading player, this will force the other players to be aggressive or inevitably lose. The leading players gain is rather slow however so the other players don't have to go into a complete panic rush or instantly lose, but they will at least need to come up with aggressive plans.
I feel this will prevent annoying stalemates. But still stay true to the "end game" where population is extremely limited and every unit counts. The leading player still won't be able to make careless attacks, or they risk losing the bulk of their army and having the map control taken away from them.
Here are some numbers on how I envision such a system could be implemented.
The game keeps a tally of each players "points". points are given as follows. All construction sites count whether they have a building on them or not.
Construction Site - 10 Points
Naval Construction Site - 10 Points
Resource Construction Site - 10 Points
Turret Construction Site - 2 Points
Recruitment Citadel - 10 Points (20 Points total if you include the construction site itself.)
Each player/teams points are then totalled up. Whoever has the lead will be given the bonus population production depending on how much they lead by. I suggest 1 Population every 10 seconds for every 10 points they are leading by (Rounded up.)
For example. Lets assume a simple 1v1.
Red Player has 72 Points.
Blue Player has 56 Points.
72 - 56 = 16
Red Player will receive 2 Population every 10 seconds. (16 rounded up to 20.)
In the case of a team game just split the population gain between the players on the winning team.
Well that sums up my suggestion. What are other peoples thoughts/opinions on this matter?
