Civilization 209
What is civilization? Civilization is just war, destruction, and survival of the fittest. And sometimes art.
Civilization 209 is a real-time strategy game during which you strive to reach total dominance of the map through conquest. You start with a set number of cities that produce troops that you are able to send in an attempt to conquer neutral and enemy cities. The game is lost when you lose all of your cities or when a combination of lost cities and your own slow reaction time causes the score to reach zero.
When the game begins, there are enemy (red), player (blue), and neutral (gray) cities. The enemy cities and the player cities both produce troops, but the neutral cities do not. The troops continue to be produced over time at a one per second rate until the city hits the maximum population limit. The number of cities and each city's location is dependent on the level. On each city, the number of troops they currently hold is displayed. To play, the player clicks on one of his own cities, uses a slider to select how many troops he wants to send, and then clicks on an enemy city to send the specified number of cities to. Troops then march out of the sending city to the destination city. When troops reach a city, they decrement the populations of neutral or enemy cities and add to the population of player cities. When a neutral or enemy city's population becomes negative one, the city becomes a player city with a population of 1.
In A-Level, each level will have weather for each season that can affect troops en route. For example, summer will have a lightning storm that randomly kills a few troops, and winter will have a snowstorm that slows travelling troops. There will also be different types of cities that send different types of troops. For example, besides base troops, there will be troops that are faster, and troops that have double health when fighting enemy troops or dealing damage to cities. There will be cities that are capable of shooting projectiles at attacking enemy troops to eliminate them before they can attack the city.
The player wins when they control all of the cities on the map. The player loses if they no longer have any cities on the map, or if their score reaches zero.
Using the mouse, the players will be able to select a city. They will then use a slider to select how many troops they want to send, with the default being half the troops in the city. They will then click on the city they wish to attack or the city where they wish to send their troops. The player will also be able to send troops to coordinates on the map, where if they run into enemy troops they will engage in combat, where the both the enemy troop and the player troop is destroyed.
The starting point of the score is dependent on the level because it is calculated from the number of cities. The score increments when the player takes over an enemy or neutral city for the first time, and points are decremented when player cities are taken over by the enemy and with the passage of time. Taking over a city for the first time adds points to the score, but losing controlled cities takes away points. A single point is also lost every second, effectively giving a time limit for the game.
The game will have 3 difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard:
- Easy - the enemy fights back in a sluggish manner, half speed.
- Medium - the enemy fights back with an emphasis on defense, normal speed.
- Hard - the enemy fights back with an added emphasis on offense, double speed.
At the main game screen, the player can choose to play in campaign mode or choose a season level to play. There are four season levels that have differing weather that changes troop movements. When a player finishes a season level game, the application goes back to the main screen. In campaign mode, there are three different maps for each season, each map layout getting progressively harder. When playing in campaign mode, the application goes to the next level in the campaign.
This game will operate on Windows 10 and will have a GUI interface. The game will load onto a title screen with options to display a help screen with information on how to play the game, display an about screen, display a high score leaderboard, and start the game.
The level designer will allow players to choose the amount, type, and locations of cities. The player will be able to save these designs and use them to play the game. The player will be able to click on a button respective to the type of city they wish to place, and it will place the city on the map. The player will then be able to drag the city to their desired location. The level designer will require the player to place at least one player city and at least one enemy city. The starting score will be determined by a fixed equation based on the amount of player cities, enemy cities, and total cities.
- Title Screen: Shows the game title and allows the player to select difficulty level and start the game or navigate to the about, help, and high score screens.
- About Screen: Lists the programmer's names, sources of visual and audio media, and any copyright permission notices required for assets used.
- Scoring: Depends on the map. Player starts with a set number of points calculated from the number of cities. The score decreases based on time and player's cities captured. There is a list of top scorers displayed on a high score screen.
- Difficulty Levels: The game has levels of difficulty (easy / medium / hard), and the screen allows the player to set the difficulty level.
- Sound Effects: There are sounds for when a city is captured and when weather strikes.
- Cheat mode: When enabled, it shows how many enemies are in enemy cities, gives player cities max population, and makes player troops stronger.
- Help screen: Tells the user the basics of the game and how to play.
- Game save/load: Allows the player to save the game state and continue playing later.
- Levels: The game progresses through a series of “levels” (different from the “difficulty level”), where each level has a different screen layout.
- Level Designer: A separate application that provides a GUI builder to allow a player to build the screen layouts using drag ‘n drop techniques.
- Seasons and Random Weather Patterns - The random weather patterns have different effects on the troops such as slowing, weakening, or killing.
- City defensive capabilities (or defensive structures such as towers that would destroy enemy troops as they approached).
- Varying Troop Types - Examples: Basic troops, Faster troops, Stronger (damage to cities and defensive capabilities x2) troops.
- Varying City Types - In coordination with troop types.
- Advanced animation design - Rendering objects on the screen so they look like they're being drawn on game start and during game play.
- A More Difficult Enemy - The enemy becomes extremely strategic in its troop deployment strategy.
- A special Easter egg "secret" level.
- A campaign - journey through the four seasons (play through the four seasons of the game).
