Balkanization 1 by kr4ft3r
Please no hate or judgement. My friend and I live in Balkans and feel we have right to make fun of our countrymen and neighbors. And the theme was simply asking for it. In any case, I have put a lot of effort into making such a complex game over a weekend, so if anything I hope the effort will be respected.
Five playable nations
Four separatist republics
Seven troop types to research
Economic Victory available
Fast paced gameplay (if you can get the hangs of it)
Coder :keyboard: @kr4ft3r
Investor :moneywithwings: @Orb (also the map and banners graphics)
VICTORY CONDITION
Only one victory condition made it to the game, economic victory by joining the EU (must have income of 400 per turn).
WAR
(Wage War button) You can attack only the faction that your public opinion wants to attack for that turn, as shown in lower part of the screen.
Attacked nations that run out of defending units will have their economy set to zero. Attacked separatist republics that run out of defending units will be temporarily destroyed.
It will be a faction that is bordering yours, and your nation must be either "indifferent" to it or "hate" it. Same goes for AI. Sadly I didn't had time to add info panel for each nation's likes and dislikes, so you will have to learn that with practice. But in general, Serbia and Montenegro will like each other, nations and their separatists will hate each other, and nations who are same ethnic group as separatists will like each other.
UNIT RESEARCH
(Modernize Army button) You must aim to upgrade your troops to the next level whenever possible. All of your troops will be upgraded, so the more troops you have the more will the upgrade cost.
ECONOMY
The only way to win the game, use the Modernize Economy button to upgrade your income per turn. Nations that lose all their troops in war (or don't have troops at all) will have their economy level set back to zero. Some specific AI nations may randomly receive monetary gifts from the EU in order to keep the game more challenging.
SEPARATISM
All nations have constantly increasing separatism counter that can be reduced by using the Squelch Separatism button. Once this counter reaches 100, some nations will have separatist republics spawned, while others will just have a riot and lose income for that turn.
Separatist republics act like tampons, they will allow nation that they like (same ethnic group) to attack across their border, while the nation which they got separated from will have to destroy them before being able to attack across.
| Link | https://krafter.itch.io/balkanization-1 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/balkanization-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 375th | 3.793⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 272th | 3.849⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 383th | 3.648⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 182th | 4.148⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1015th | 3.31⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 698th | 3.216⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 316th | 3.65⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 398th | 3.726⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 79🗨️ |
I'm not a fan of Civilization, but I loved this! The gameplay feel of it just feels so nice. My only request would be to make it so I can choose who to pick on (unless I'm missing something and you can already do that), it got kind of hard to slaughter innocent lives when those innocent lives also turned guilty of murder and assembled fighter jets to match my maximum-size fleet. Kind of felt like conflicts were going nowhere when each country had the exact same things.
I really thought I could have got my orbital cannons for 99999(
- Add a small note about what "fortify defenses" does.
- Add "conflict history" lines between nations that attacked each other so that I can learn over time who tends to attack who.
Fighter jets though :laughing:
@fre conflict history lines is a great idea
The only point of feedback I have for you: sometimes I clicked "fortify defenses", but I could not really see what happened.
It is a great game, I have not seen a strategygame like this in Ludum Dare before. The graphics and soundeffects are fitting nicely together. Keep up the great work!
@thedude3600 @fre @fabdynamic Yes showing relations is one of those things that could have been implemented in 10 minutes but you know how it is when you are in rush to publish and keep it as stable as possible. Here is a little secret: opening the developer console and hovering over a faction will show you mutual relations with factions that are currently bordering it.
@wouter52 @fre Fortify defenses is sort of a "skip turn" option which also gives +1 to rolls when defending that turn. Its main purpose is to not spend money (when stocking up to upgrade army) as all other options cost money.
@alex-aspa I got over 10 years of experience in JavaScript and coding in general, but still I run into entries that amaze me with how much has been done. By keeping the code simple yet modular (the code base is 14 classes) you can achieve complex-looking things in a short amount of time, depending on how much the project motivates you (and luck). It's all about thinking in terms of how components communicate with each other, and not being afraid to write some garbage code to get it done faster, while constantly testing so the thing doesn't fall apart.
Honestly, I didn't fully grasp what the winning conditions are. Also, you can only attack your neighbours, right?
In my game, there were two or three with big militaries stomping everyone else. And we could not really attack each other, I think. The balance and game mechanic could improve a bit in that regard.
Still, the pace of the game was very nice and I enjoyed the text only history log. I also enjoyed the humour, even though I probably didn't get half of the jokes.
Solid entry!
Aha! Found it: `Milomir Martic - Bando mudzahedinska`
There's just enough meat to make it fun though, and that's what matters. I didn't initially notice the victory condition you mentioned on your page, so I was wondering why my full rack of MiGs weren't doing anything.
Neat little entry. It'd be interesting to see this fleshed out a bit more.
Nice work!
And yeah, I was morbidly curious what the next military tech would be.
(+) the soundtrack, lol
(+) funny idea for grandstragegy
(+) game seems to have quite a interresting complexity