My number one desire for UrW right now would be the ability to found your own settlement. I enjoy outfitting my recruits with gear, but it's always disheartening when they finish their term of service and then vanish into the wilderness, never to be seen again (or be totally unwilling to rejoin me, even if I do find them). Having folk you could outfit and keep around (as they also develop in skill over time, too) would be great. It would also provide more late game content, as after I've outfitted myself in all masterwork gear, with a nice cabin and endless miles of trap fences I always run out of goals beyond raiding the Njerperz until I get unlucky and die.
My proposal for implementation:
In order to invite someone to your settlement, you first have to have a spare habitation flagged as available. So you'd need to construct homes for new immigrants. Then you'd have to find someone willing to move there and ask them to join your settlement. For this, there would need to be a more complex system defining each NPC's demeanor and place in society. Their relationships, personality, personal wealth, and occupation (shopkeeper, nobility, landed/unlanded farmer, so on), and a much broader range of skills would all need to be tracked.
Each NPC would have an assigned value between 0-100 indicating their reticence to move. Randomized within a range depending on personality, and then adjusted based off their age (younger people are more likely to be adventurous and take chances on a new place), skill (individuals with lesser skill will be more likely to seek opportunity elsewhere), personal wealth (a wealthy shopkeeper would be loathe to leave their thriving business, and his firstborn would also be unlikely to abandon the opportunity to inherit that wealth), and relationships (someone with a spouse who does not wish to move will be less likely to do so, or even if their family is willing, they may require a larger habitation). This personal score for each NPC will then be checked against what you're offering. This will be determined by your settlement's overall wealth, as well as the value of the property you are offering (a tiny yurt won't be nearly as enticing as a large, furnished cabin, for instance), how distant the settlement is (depending on personality; a homebody who values family is less likely to move a long distance than someone who is naturally adventurous), how many people are already living there (a town might be wealthy, but if there's already a large population there will be less opportunity for anyone freshly arriving), as well as town policies. A settlement's wealth can be increased by having walls, agricultural fields, livestock, certain communal buildings (public sauna, perhaps a temple, shops, a feast hall, etc), sufficient food stores, accessible water routes (e.g., on the coast or next to a river that leads to a coast for trading purposes), and well equipped warriors to protect it.
Of course, having a wealthy settlement is a double edged sword, as it will also attract the attention of others. While coastal or river adjacent villages are advantageous for trading and agricultural purposes, they will also be accessible to a new villain, "foreign raiders," who can arrive unexpectedly by boat during the late spring and summer. You can pay them off to go raid elsewhere, or fight them. You might receive some warnings a few days or weeks out that there are raiders in the vicinity, if you are in town or visiting nearby villages, but beware if you're out adventuring elsewhere for long periods, as you might come home to a smoldering wreck.
If you have a settlement within the cultural boundaries of a group, or within a certain distance from one of their cities, they will demand annual taxes, and may ask you to provide troops for campaigns. Failing to do so, or coming up short in either troops or taxes, will reduce your reputation with them, as will attacking anyone they are friendly with. If your reputation is reduced enough, they may request you cede control of the town, or else organize a campaign against you. Their demands will obviously increase with the wealth of your settlement.
Wherever you are, you may come afoul of common bandits or Njerperz, but your odds increase significantly the further you are from any cultural boundaries, especially from the Njerperz. This way, there's no truly "safe" place to set up a settlement, as there will always be someone who will covet your accruing wealth and want it for their own.
As for your townfolk, once they have moved in, you can try to assign jobs for them, which they may choose to accept based off their skills and personality (a brave man may be willing to be a warrior even without strong combat skills, but a coward will not), current duties (if you already have someone tagged as a hunter and hide processor, they will not have time to also be a fisherman), as well as access to the necessary utilities for the job (for instance, you may not have sufficient farmland to assign a new farmer, or have the tools they need to perform their job, such as shovels, sickles, and seeds).
Townfolk will also have their own desires. For instance, an unwed man may at some point request leave to travel to neighboring villages to find a possible bride to bring back, if they do not find anyone suitable in the village. A very religious person may grow increasingly unhappy if your town has reached a certain size and still does not have a temple, or if its temple is too small and unworthy. A village woman may desire for there to be some sheep to sheer for wool, or more warriors to protect them. A warrior may wish for better gear, or a larger house. And so on.
As the founder of the township, you can determine certain basic policies. For instance, it could be a free town, where everyone can do as they please, owing nothing, but can be bargained with to assist with various tasks if they're willing to (provide lumber in exchange for X payment, with less payment requested depending on their personality, skills, and overall happiness). Or you may require a certain amount of labor per year from your occupants. The more you demand, the less happy they will be, naturally. People will also be less likely to move somewhere where the taxes are onerous. However, as your settlement grows, it may be inevitable, as you will require more warriors to defend it than you could hope to feed on your own, so you will need your farmers, fishermen, and hunters to provide some portion of their labor.
Maybe this all goes well beyond the scope of UrW, but I think it would add so much more depth to the game. There would be a much more personal connection with the people who populate the world, as well as more ambitious long term goals available to pursue, that can just as easily be ignored by those from whom it holds no interest.
Topic: Creating Settlements (Read 7105 times)