The Kingdom Traits

[Ry Vor]

Impressions on the major new 3rd Cycle development of Kingdom Traits.

[Lord Diamond]

Devout is outstanding. You get Noble Maidens (the HP Adept) for no influence cost and can raise her to HP with no influence cost. Them you get half priced divinations. VERY powerful!

I loved the Riders ability of the Amazon. The combat bonus in the plains was nice, but the L4 recon for every group was better. It included the inactive group, so I got a reconof my capital each turn.

Rick, do you want us to details out the Traits here?

Without going into great detail without permission, I will say the the concept of Traits is great.

[Jumpingfist]

Kingdom traits is likely the first thing that will really give you the wow factor of 3rd cycle. Where 2nd cycle you get your T0 and setup. Most would look at the setup once and maybe a couple times just to see a special order or how many recruits you get. In 3rd cycle you open the setup and will find all these little special abilities your kingdom has and will likely look it over again and again throughout the game. I know I opened up my setup file for each turn I issued in our first game. These traits are kind of like special abilities of 2nd cycle only there are much more and they really help to define the character of your kingdom. Another big difference is each of the 4 pure Mage kingdoms have there own traits and special abilities. So instead of just having text saying your the evil necromancer, you really do have abilities and traits that separate you from the tree hugging Druid.

[Ry Vor]

Yes, I am happy with our internal emails on how each player viewed the Traits so to just copy and paste their comments here and get some discussion and disclose where we are going.  And somewhat to my objective, is that those opinions that the testers took the time to write show the differences in opinion.  Like balancing kingdoms, we hope to balance the Traits, and the Customization options, and then we have the special orders (for a single kingdom), the magic differences, the emphasis on revised artifact capabilities, the greater human control, Stir Unrest, well, I could go on.  But first we need a beginning.

As AC/DC might say, "I gotta tell you folks, it's harder than it looks!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDCs7ijNUVM

[Ry Vor]

I don't think we've posted a kingdom dossier (setup file), or a list of traits, or a Turn 0 at this point.  Attached is the setup file for the Sacred Order that was used in the Alpha game.  We still don't have all components of the dossier completed, but I thought you might be interested in some of the Traits and think about how they can apply to various kingdoms. 

Would like some feedback in general, again not on missing sections, but on the Traits, Companions, the newer look (not done). 

[Ry Vor]

Just a quick update.  I've got six of the 12 kingdom dossiers ready for Mike in the test game - that was 12 hours today.  I hope to have the rest to him tomorrow.

Still need to clean up the design doc, which now is in seven different files: design overview, new orders and rules, spell lists, new spells, kingdom dossiers, traits, brigade characteristics including Companions.  All together I would guess 70 pages and about 20 Excel sheets.

[VballMichael]

I don't think we've posted a kingdom dossier (setup file), or a list of traits, or a Turn 0 at this point.  Attached is the setup file for the Sacred Order that was used in the Alpha game.  We still don't have all components of the dossier completed, but I thought you might be interested in some of the Traits and think about how they can apply to various kingdoms. 

Would like some feedback in general, again not on missing sections, but on the Traits, Companions, the newer look (not done). 

This looks awesome. Kingdoms are going to be very different from each other and from what we have seen in the past.
Lots of things people will need to learn (like that Sacred Order pop centers are harder to usurp than normal).
I am sure we will have the usual arguments over full disclosure versus learn all of this on your own. I favor learn on your own as long as we are all in the same position of lack of knowledge.

[Ry Vor]

Attached is a pdf file outlining the kingdom traits.  At some point, we will list which kingdoms have which traits, or the kingdom dossiers will be made public. 

Traits are in many ways a new concept.  Not all traits are equally powerful, or of equally utilitarian use.  And kingdoms are balanced on all game elements, not just on Traits.  So a few spellcaster kingdoms might have only 3 kingdom cultural traits, but they obviously have major magic advantages given the new spells, spell lists, abilities, and other benefits of Magical Supremacy.  On the other end of the spectrum for kingdom cultural traits turns out to be The Onyx Imperium of the Dark Elves with 12, followed closely by the Amazons, Nomads, Pirates, and Sacred Order.

Hope you are excited by this important cornerstone of design to The Choosing.  It really allows us to move much faster to create new kingdoms and to make adjustments.

[VballMichael]

You are rocking the house. Let's do this.