A Growing Queendom - A weight gain based empire building game

[falcon82mm]

I actually plan on making this, but I can tell it will take a long time because of all the features I need to get working, which is why it is in ideas for now.

The concept is that the game takes place in a courtroom of a palace in a Queendom (Kingdom but it is ruled exclusively by women). There would also be a world map which would be useful when making decisions. In the court, there would be 3 representatives. One representing the nobility, one representing the merchant class, and one representing the peasants. These representatives would tell you the class’s power relative to you as well how happy they are, and if anything is modifying their stats in any way. If any estate is upset, they will do things to hurt the crown. At their most upset and powerful, they can overthrow the government and kill the queen, causing a game over.

Another system I want in the game is a trade system. As you conquer lands, the lands would have different amounts of certain trade goods and a certain amount of value they produce. There will be a system where you can give land to certain estates, and that estate will now have the trade goods and wealth from that land. When estates have certain amounts of a trade good, they will get modifiers which impact them in a few ways. One of these is that they will gain or lose weight, another is their loyalty is affected, they can also gain power relative to you and the other estates, and lastly, it can impact their combat effectiveness. The crown will function as an estate in some important instances (involving weight gain), but mostly just get money from the trade goods they hold.

Money can be used to hire mercenaries and give gifts to estates to boost loyalty.

I mentioned combat effectiveness earlier, and I want to make it so there is a lot of things that will affect combat. You would have a womanpower pool which is how many women are soldiers and is impacted by the number of provinces held by you. Peasant opinion of you could boost or drop the womanpower pool reflecting how willing to fight for you the peasants are. You would have a general effectiveness rating affected by the quality of the nobility, and having certain trade monopolies would impact fighting ability. Lastly, the crown can spend money to hire mercenaries and mercenary generals to make up for low womanpower or nobility that is bad at combat as I touched upon earlier. Nobility or soldiers being too fat will give a malus to combat, but it will be easy to overcome if they are well equipped because the nation is wealthy.

The merchants will not impact fighting ability, but can be used to affect and steer trade, making you more money while taking money from opponents.

Hopefully, with all of these systems functioning, you will be able to have an empire that suits your preferences. Maybe a country where everyone but the queen is starving, a country where the nobility benefits from the labor of peasants but never goes to war, growing soft and fat as time passes. Maybe the military is fat but still the best fighting force in the game because of how well equipped they are? My goal is for there to be a lot of different directions for your country to take.

The other countries will also have one diplomat you can interact with. If all countries are female, the diplomat’s weight will be affected by the wealth of the nation they represent. If the other countries are male, they will just comment on the state of your state. I am unsure what I will do with the diplomats yet.

Anyways, I spent a good amount of time thinking about this and was excited enough I wanted to make a post about the idea. Can you tell it was inspired by EU4 and Crusader Kings?

Update: The project currently needs an artist. If any artists want to reach out to work on the project I would love to have you on board!

[Skinny_Guy]

I really love the concept! Although yeah I can see why it would be difficult to actually bring into reality. For example what engine would you use? Would this be like a Visual Novel? A Turn-Based strategy? Another RPG maker game?

[NickSav]

This has more of a Unity based feel to it. Since most stuff would need to be coded by hand.
Although, having said that, I do like the idea a lot. It might be easier to mod Crusader Kings further however.
Either way you go will require a fair bit of coding knowledge and time.

[Seeker9043]

How about Bannerlord 2? Has a variety of different castles and towns to take over, with numerous units ranging from crossbowmen to heavy cavalry, and does require maintenance by your hand in order to prevent a collapse (such as lords betraying you or certain alliances breaking).

[falcon82mm]

I was actually thinking of doing it in renpy. I know that the throneroom interactions can be done in renpy and a visual novel engine is kind of ideal for that. Getting a map working will be difficult in this engine, but I have a good amount of experience with it and no experience with unity. I actually have an idea for how to make the map work, and renpy can handle variables well enough that it should be able to handle all of the modifiers I will throw at it for combat.

If you are curious, the way I will make the map work will be to draw the provinces and use them as imagebuttons, but any time I call the imagebuttons in the script, it will be a long if-elif statement that brings the province in the color it should be based off of who owns the province.

As for the genre, the game will be a turn based strategy game where as turns pass, character’s weights will change as a result of factors that impact their weight. I do plan on making it so that you can talk to the characters during the turns which is why the throneroom interactions will be there, so there will be a vn feel for these segments.

[FeelingHealing]

I think going for the corruption of champions engine may be better, it is pretty flexible and what is weight gain if not one of the few actual transformations we as humans can do ourselves?

Hardest thing would be working on the combat to make the inbuilt system work for army combat, but it should be much easier than doing it in renpy.

[falcon82mm]

I already started making the map and everything functions as it should. If a province changes ownership, it’s color changes to reflect that. In the diplomacy map mode, clicking on the province brings you to the diplomacy screen for the other nations. As of now, only 1 province is in the game, but the fact I was able to make the map and have it have the functionality I want is a big deal. Once I have a few more provinces in the game, I will show screenshots, but with only 1 province the map isn’t much to look at.

[SelectFilly]

I absolutely love this idea.

The thought of a gluttonous, selfish queen taking practically everything for herself and leaving little for everyone else, ruling with an iron fist… mmf.

[Zabi]

Yeah, this sounds really cool

[falcon82mm]

This is what I have done of the map so far. it is 6 provinces (the islands count as 1) out of the 62 total I plan on having in the game.

[phoenixfelix101]

[falcon82mm]

I currently have 12 provinces in the game, but I planned out the entire map and figured it would be worth sharing. As you can see, there are 8 nations. I decided all of them will have female rulers you talk to. Also, there is now 58 provinces I believe? I redrew one area because it made more sense for the trade map mode, and it now has fewer provinces.

The yellow nation is a very mercantile nation inspired by renaissance Italy (mostly Venice) and will likely be the wealthiest nation in the game. They will be less aggressive than other nations when it comes to fighting wars, but may declare war over provinces that have trade goods that would benefit their trade empire.

The blue nation will be a small nation with a strong military that can contend with larger nations and is inspired by Prussia. Their leader will wear a military uniform that is very “prussian” looking.

My current idea for the dark green nation is that they are a poor nation with a lot of manpower. I was thinking this country would be a peasant republic, and the diplomat you interact with will be a random farm girl they elected to represent the nation in diplomacy with other nations. My reasoning for this is they will typically not receive a lot of trade in their node because the people who control the nodes ahead of it steer it to the yellow country, and all of the trade goods would be cattle in the region they start in.

The tan colored nation is inspired by turkey/ the ottoman empire. The leader will be Arab and wear more Middle-Eastern clothes. She was inspired a bit by the woman who can be leader of the ottoman empire in HOI4 to give a sense of how she will look. They will be programmed to be aggressive because I want them to mimic the ottoman empire when it was expanding.

The brown nation will be a nation which will aesthetically be like Morocco and be very trade focused.

The lime green nation will be a nation inspired by the steppe hordes. They will always be looking to fight wars to expand themselves and will be very aggressive. Their leader’s weight gain will be tied to if they are forced to stay at peace. If you are able to keep them at peace, eventually they get modifiers that cause them to become significantly weaker. (note to self, subjugating nations should be a thing in this game if I get the time)

The red nation is an isolationist nation inspired by China. They will never declare an offensive war.

Purple is the player nation

Pink is a nation run by your sister. You used to be part of one nation but she wanted the throne and started a civil war which split the country in two.

I also have some other weight gain arcs for the nation representatives figured out, in addition to the steppe horde one I already talked about.

The dark green nation will have their representative gain weight after technology becomes available that makes farming more efficient, meaning she doesn’t have to work as hard. (it will be a late game event). I think I will make this events also increase their womanpower pool.

The tan nation’s ruler will really like food produced in the red nation’s trade nodes. If she acquires these trade goods, she will get fat.

I think yellow nation will have their leader start out fat, but she can be starved and lose weight if you lower her country’s wealth.

Currently, I have it planned that blue nation’s leader gains weight if her country expands. She will stress eat as a result of having to administrate all of the new land in the country. The country will also lose its military bonuses as it grows.

I do not have anything planned for the pink, brown, or red nations. I do not think every nation needs a weight gain arc, but if anyone has suggestions, I am ears. Some of these nations can be put in a role where they make comments about your ruler’s weight change to make up for the fact they don’t change weights.

[Seeker9043]

Are there going to be sea routes or is all the trading done by land? The reasoning why is purple seems to be in a great seat of land trading that may allow for some “trading” warfare (meaning possible embargo on lean foods or healthy stuff while allowing fattening food through to weaken other nations).

[Skinny_Guy]

Maybe for the Red Nation the Chinese Empress can get fat if they stay isolated long enough? I’d imagine it’d get to be pretty sedentary if she doesn’t have to deal with other nations.

Also for the player nation, could we pick our cultural style? Or do you already have a culture in mind

[falcon82mm]

There is land and sea trading. I actually made a reference map for that as well.

At the start, more of the trade from the lime green node will be steered to the blue trade node, and the tan node is steered into the pink node, meaning your region will start out somewhat poor.

Something important to know is if someone has a certain amount of trade power in their node, they will have 20% of that trade power in the node preceding it. This means you will have a small amount of trade power in the tan and lime green nodes, and will steer it to purple. Also, tan nation will collect at the tan node, meaning all of the trade they can keep there, they will. Same goes for lime green.

This is also relevant because if you conquer the dark green and pink nodes, trade power will not leave your purple node because no one has trade power pulling it forward.

I made it so that purple has the potential to be one of the best nodes in the game, but it requires your expansion for it to be.

Also, this isn’t something I have done yet, but when I know what trade good will be in each province, I will make it so that you have all of the trade goods from provinces you own in an inventory box. I plan on making it so that you can gift trade goods to your estates or to other nations for favors or other trade goods. I will make it so that each nation and estate value the goods differently, and the amounts of these goods they have will affect the nation.

The brown nation will not produce food on its own and need to import it at the start. I think importing fatty foods will be how you make their leader (and country) get fat.

I think the way I will make it so this is a better strategy to use against some nations than others will be to make it so not all countries will be interested in taking the foods that make them get fat. Like the green farmer nation will not be interested in taking food from you because they have enough. Most of the other countries with wg arcs for their leader will have leaders who won’t get fat but their armies can have maluses from getting too fat.

I also figured out pink’s weight gain arc. If pink has 0 food that their peasants eat, and their queen reaches maximum fatness from eating imported luxury food, the peasants revolt and request to join your nation.

[falcon82mm]

For the player nation the culture would be vaguely European but no particular place in Europe. I want your nation to look and feel like a country where there is a monarch who has to balance the wants of the 3 estates to keep themselves in power.

When it comes to the red nation, I think I figured out what will be her weight gain arc and it is inspired by your idea. My thinking is that their capitol will be a large breadbasket that can feed their entire nation, so as you gobble up the lands that are not her capitol, it makes it so she and the country gets fat because they now have a surplus of food since they are not using the food in order to feed the other provinces. Originally, my only concern with her getting fat only from being in isolation is that she will isolate herself by default, meaning nothing needs to happen to cause her to get fat. I want the player to have to do something to make her get fat. I also like this because it is an explanation for why they are isolationist. They already have all the land that their capitol can support and feed.

[falcon82mm]

I updated my top post, but also figured I would make a post here. If anyone is an artist who wants to be a part of this project, you would be a big help to the team. It is always hard finding artists to work on your game, but I figure it is worth posting and searching.

[Zabi]

Honestly this looks like it has incredible potential. I can’t wait to see the result!

[Seeker9043]

I wonder, is there going to be focuses like in Hoi4 where you can strive for some political policy or focus that gives some minor boost or advantage (while adding disadvantages if need be) that could add a varied playthrough depending on your mood?

[falcon82mm]

My original idea was the estate interactions would fill that niche in this game. The estate interactions will be very important for the game and give permanent as well as temporary bonuses and modifiers. I am also debating about making you have a reason to declare war and making it so you need an estate to give you a reason to declare war. With a system like this, I think that it accomplishes everything the national focus system does so it wouldn’t be necessary to add a nf system in the game.

Examples of permanent modifiers could be reduced costs of constructing boats, army effectiveness boosts, I make it so you can get 2 trade goods in your inventory for every trade good owned as opposed to 1.

If you need permission from certain estates to declare wars, I could also see your country’s borders being much different depending on which estate you are favoring. If you are only getting claims for provinces with certain trade goods, there could be much more border gore than if an estate wants you to invade a whole area, for example.