I probably should have been doing these throughout the EA process, we had some feedback from players that our Steam social game has been lacking. Sorry! Better late then never.
I'm going to run you through what we've been cooking for the next update, what it is, how it works, and the high level mechanics.
Global Domination is a lite 4X inspired by games such as the Total War series, or more specifically, Great War: Western Front. The intent is to add some high level strategy, escalation, variety and importance to individual fights in a way other modes cannot.
(although if I'm being honest it is more 3X, it has the eXpand, eXploit, and a whole lotta eXterminate, but is lacking in the eXplore. Would be fun to add this in eventually)
A game of Global Domination goes until you've knocked out all other team's HQs. After you knock out a team they'll join their conquerors, to make sure players still get to do stuff!
Commander Power: An indicator showing the charge state of your map power. These are faction specific and are extremely powerful!
HQ: Your center of command. It provides some base income, fortification and army generation. Lose it and lose the game!
Map Hazard: Weather will spawn. These have a few effects: They'll kill an army that ends on it, they'll stop building, and fights that happen on that tile will have that weather effect causing chaos!
Tile Multiplier: A big part of the economy is seizing these valuable tiles. They'll multiply the income of a structure by the amount shown to any structure built on the tile.
Mountain Ranges: These will block movement, creating chokepoints on the map. Until the nukes land...
Neutrals: High value territories with lots of tile multipliers will have neutrals spawn in to defend them, requiring their defeat before you can capture the territory and start building.
And to make sure you get the experience you want, there's a bunch of options you can set.
The main phase you'll spend your time in, this is the phase you give move orders to your armies and build structures.
A territory can hold up to 4 structures. They cost gold to build and gold to upkeep, and provide an income.
The 4 types of structures are:
Factory: produces armies
Mines: produces gold
Labs: produces research
Fortification: fortifies territory, up to 4 levels of fortification
The factions are slightly asymmetrical, with Invader labs costing much more but serving as teleporters, Chromatech labs eating armies to produce more research, and their fortifications produce armies, and UCF getting a discount on their structures.
During the command phase you can issue move orders to your armies. An army can move one territory a turn, and if it enters a territory with another enemy army it will result in a fight.
Expanding quickly in the early game is critical, so generally you want to split up, but it is also key to seize big tile mod territories from the neutrals, which encourages putting enough armies together to conquer them. So clever army maneuvering is key.
During the power phase you can use any map powers that have been charged. The powers, by faction, are:
UCF: Chromastrike: Nukes a tile at the end of the turn, destroying everything on it, and any mountain ranges on the tile (take down the Shield Wall!)
Chromatech: Blood Moon: for the rest of the round, any fights you're present in will have a friendly Blood Moon, raising any corpses as zombies and adding significant numbers of zombies to each of your armies.
Invaders: Meteor Landing: Summons a meteor to land an army at an undefended territory, great for seizing an enemy back line.
All player's armies will now move.
Any colliding armies will fight a battle. If no one controls the territory it is a collision battle, and armies instantly deploy.
Territory battles will occur if a friendly territory is being attacked.
In territory battles, the fortification level determines how much set up the defender gets to make.
And the directions and number of armies determines how much the attacker gets to deploy:
To take heavily fortified territories, players will want to attack from multiple directions and with many armies!
Players can also choose to autobattle, which uses an estimate of forces and rolls the dice.
It also helps to tech up. After a player has reached a threshold of research, during the tech phase they get to make a choice.
Passives and Structure Upgrades works like it does in the other modes, where you can get up to 3 bonus passives, and add up to one upgrade per structure. Tech works as a modifier for the global domination map itself, impacting something about the economy or the nature of battles.
Keeping up on your tech is crucial for an edge in battles and for the economic war!
Resolution phase is where all the incomes from the structures come in, new armies are produced, and things clean up for the next round.
That about covers it, without going into exhaustive detail. Hopefully you all found that interesting, and we especially hope you all enjoy the mode when it comes out on June 11th!