BuildingCastlesInTheSand2012
Introduction/Definition/etc
Describes a little game, Valor, a commercial but no cost to download
(but lots of gotcha sales type things once in...) available for iPhone and Android
smart phone OS based systems (separate worlds, you can't transfer Players/
Cities between device types, as of yet...)
Body
So just before Thanksgiving, I was introduced / sold on
(read drug dealing like hooked on/ first hit is free budding addiction...) Valor,
a game that takes all your free time, and would take some money,
IF I Allowed It To...
Marketing for the game is slick, the graphics are advanced, but not 3D,
like First Person Shooter type games (see later blog posts given recent shootings...)
which I would avoid...
But before all that, I'd been trying to get something going,
first you build the City/ Castle/ World, it's Old England like,
with various components
Administrative
City Hall (seen as helping build things faster, unlike modern meaning of Beaurocracy (sp?)
which was invented later, as a response to the feudal systems...)
Industry
Barracks (military housing/ training area)
Workshop (siege weapons which break down walls... )
Forge ( ironworks for knives, swords, armour, etc )
Rally Point
(where the troops meet to get orders to go fight or just hang around and defend the city )
Production
(required resources to build and sustain the city, think InfraStructure)
Lumbermill (Take timber, make 2x4's, plywood/ boards)
Quarry (mine clay make bricks)
Ironmine (ore to steel?)
Support stuffs
Market (buy, sell, trade, requires merchants to transport, time to get delivered and back)
Warehouse (out of storage space loose manufactured resources...)
Farm (food)
Hiding Place (reserves of Lumber, Clay/Bricks, and Iron, some reason food not there...
direct from the farm?)
Defence
Wall (fence/ wall provides some protection but )
Having troops in massive (100+) quantities is required to win,
Scouts are sent to spy, people could buy instant reports,
then you are likely attacked and killed off...
Loyalty
A worn down set of troops and you get captured, starts at Beginner level protection,
can't be attacked, to 100% and when down to 0 You Lose Your City, and all that hard work,
and time and effort, unless a Phantom or something lets you keep it, Thanks but HOW?
Troops
(time runs in parallel to building structures, so you can start several clocks of
building/ training food cavalry and horses, and forge weapons ALL AT ONCE,
efficiency helps, a computer like dependency tree/ graph would too,
only a resource chart including fighting, Hauling spoils of war back are included)
Lancer (arrows/ spears)
Sentry (knives)
Berserker (machette/ two sided swinging axe type thing)
Scout (read not very intelligent spy)
Knight (horse, think Robin Hood, and other fantasy/ romance type stuffs)
Guardian (armoured Knight)
Ram (smash down walls)
Ballista (arrow type thing on rope to shoot and wedge into wall cracks? and pull apart?
Research
The Forge contains dependencies (requirements) and resources required to do Research,
one needs to learn how to build weapons, and that takes resources of time and materials/ supplies...
Quests
So you are lead by a nearly naked looking pretty young thing, called Aurora? (think Princess Leah (sp?)
if you are old enough to remember Star Wars when it first came out, then what are you
doing looking at something that young? Well, more marketing... Or set her up with your
grandson... <cough, wheeze, croak, smile> )
Strategy/ Practicalities
Resource dependencies exist, you can't start building a Stable until you have
a City Hall and Forge of a certain Level, 5 and 3, IIRC.
Each building takes resources, Lumber, Bricks, Iron, people and Time, starting
at seconds to minutes for Level 0-4 or so but getting to hours for 15-25 and somewhere
in between for others in the middle
People require food (Farm has to support the # of people building/ projects)
Guilds
Teaming up is required to survive...
I don't, so I'm being killed off...
Even with Switzerland, and Purgatory and other clever named cities, towns and
characters...
Missing
The model limits the reality (as opposed to Second Life or something more virtual and real...)
Trees don't disappear while you do your Lumbermill operations,
deforestation is something virtual only, nothing real, as is food, farms,
people,
Barbarians are not human, you are to plunder them into submission
and one of the quests is to scout / read kill to get points
(~Level 3 Quest, others are buildings to certain Levels
or Points which you are given extra resources
like Lumber/Bricks/Iron or soldiers/ material)
While there is no direct blood seen, Respect for life, is lacking,
war is seen as good, and no way to be Pacifist / Objector really in this...
Conclusion
Summary of experience or similar
A huge time sink, which was needed at the time, some learning curve
getting started, then killed off..
Getting killed off is annoying, potentially devastating/ emotional,
but you can reappear elsewhere in that world,
starting over or another world.
Depends upon which neighborhood you start out in, I started with a neighbor
and was friendly, but he went off to another guild, and then killed me off later...
It's gang like, feudal system, which we now interpret as a connotation of
pointless... But that is / was the way it was, and it's marketed as not
about pretty buildings, but warfare...
There is no USAID, foreign aid, famine relief nor social services,
the most one could do would be a Merchant/ Market trader (read Forenge?),
which one quest requires you to sell something, and a profiteering
weakens your opponent is the way you are told to do it...
Discussion
A place for feedback on the page presented
And the age old question of computer games, does it cause people to be violent?
Desensitize people to death and killing ,even if just electronically?
Is it a lesser of two evils? This of FPS games?
For the younger set, and then they progress to the harder stuff/ read drug(s) of violence?
Why isn't it open source? Free the code so that people could build something else
more passive/ complete, un buggy/ un crashing, on web browsers and other devices, etc?
Why are so much marketing stuff? Buy Gold, Buy things to Win,
no T Shirt or anything but Leader Board/ Rankings and Guilds...
Page History
20121216 Jerry
- Jerry created this page to share a pastime and offer unsolicited and likely unwelcome advice, as usual...
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