Village Growth

One neat idea Lordy brought up in chat was the idea of villages being capable of growing. Here's how I see it working:

1) Villages and towns have a certain population (just a measure of their current size, not necessarily an exact count of NPCs + players... though that would be cool). At various levels of population, new things crop up (new public crafting places, new public gardens, maybe a new lot for player housing). At a certain level it becomes a town or city.

2) To keep size in check, left on its own, population will tend to drop to whatever it started at. This decay can accelerate as population goes up, to keep the size in check (so some tiny village doesn't become a massive city, or whatever). Though maybe the default point that it regresses to will slowly increase over time, so a lasting change is made and it slowly becomes easier to make it grow just a bit more...

3) Players can do things to raise population (or earn growth points towards raising population). Some might include: Taking part in quests (like "kill the brigands that waylay the main trail leading to the village, so more people travel through"); buying/selling resources in that village, to increase the local economy; donating gold directly to the village's government, to be used for development; buying a house lot (raises population by 1, since now the player lives there!)

I realize this would take a lot of work to put into the game, but I think it will add a nice dynamic. People can make a real change in the place they live, it adds some "local pride", it would mean you are working together with all the people who live where you do, increasing the sense that you belong to a community.

 

Good ideas!

 

Agreed if played in conjunction with the 2m goal of player/guild owned castles. i.e. players set taxes and influence the economy of the town when they hold the nearby castle...if this is successful, it can improve everything.

 

We were talking about this about 3 weeks ago.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=town-growth