Hey everyone, I hope finishing out the school year is going well!
This update comes with two larger changes, Drag Select and Alliances, along with a few smaller changes and bug fixes. Since these changes hit a lot of code there is a higher chance for new bugs so let me know if you run into anything.
Also thanks again to playtesters for the feedback! Drag Select was specifically prioritized because of it.
Drag Select
I started this game with the idea "you can only select territories" because I initially planned this as a mobile strategy game with simple controls. However, since pivoting to being a PC game early on, this simplification has become more and more of a hinderance to the player experience. This change became inevitable after loosening the selection restriction by allowing the player to independently select armies. This gave more agency to the player to control its armies, however, it then logically followed the player should be able to select multiple armies.
In the past when I have tried to implement drag selection it has felt clunky and messy. It is a deceptively hard feature to add because the changes it needs ripples through a lot of the code logic and adds a bunch of conditional selection states that can cause bugs and needs to be communicated well to the player. How many armies can you select at once? What happens when there is an enemy army that is selected? What happens when an army dies while selected? Can you multi select enemy armies? Can you multi select multiple factions armies? How much information per army should the UI show? etc.
For that last question I split the difference, if you have 3 or less armies selected then it will show detailed army selection for each army, but if you are over that then it will move to a simplified view where it just shows the armies lead units in a grid. Enemy armies cannot be multi selected and your own armies will take precedent if multiple factions armies are in the selection box.
** I plan to add Ctrl+Click to modify the selection in the future but that did not make in this first pass. **
Alliances
I have been very hesitant to add anything with diplomacy because, once implemented, it can explode in complexity and lead to a ton of logical follow-on features like expanding the AI's logic and revamping the UI to communicate who is allied with who and why. That being said, I slowly realized a simplified version could add a lot to the gameplay (if ruthlessly constrained). One of the issues you come across in every playthrough is needing a way to cover your flank. Since the game is a free for all, if you are not able to fight your way to a nice corner position, you eventually get squeezed down by surrounding factions or factions that start on the edges of the map. An alliance ends up being a great way for a player to create their own protected flank positions anywhere on the map.
These are the rules I came up with to keep diplomacy lean and focused on the goal of "create a protected flank"
This can only be done by the player
You can only have 1 Ally at a time
An Ally will be your Ally forever unless you break the alliance or they get defeated
You can form an alliance with any faction if you have enough money
This change also required some UI shifting
The player UI is in the Left corner instead of the Right corner
The "gift gold" button is now in the faction list UI instead of the territory UI
A new "form/break alliance" button is also in the faction list UI
The current Ally is indicated in a new smaller UI attached to the player UI with "gift gold" and "break alliance" buttons for convenience
Other Changes and Bugfixes
Fixed bug where a territory would lose its faction owner leading to cascading errors
Fixed issue where AI logic weights could turn negative leading to incorrect behavior selection
Made more text consistent with previous font changes
Changed how the clicking effect is spawned so its more consistent and cleaner
Increased the treasury gold spacing in the resources panel so its less likely to wrap the text
Fixed typo with suppress rebels where it said +10 unrest instead of -10 unrest
