Birth of the Empires

Hi All,
Unfortunately I'm not German so I use English only...
I have some ideas for next development and I'm hope that they will interesting for developers.

1) Races
The 6 main races idea is very good. But as I understand correctly each player should select other race than rest. Why? And why only six races to play?
I think about similar situation as in Stars! game, where were 6 pre-defined races only but player can change the name and race logo (and secondary parameters of race). With this option human players can use similar race to make this game more fun - with these same pre-defined races but others logo, name, race symbol.

2) Multiplayer
There is a low chance to play more than 3 players by LAN. Everybody have their private life, different time to play, special events...
Better way to play as multiplayer is PBEM (play be e-mail). Second time I use Stars! game example like here: http://starsautohost.org/games/oldworld.htm.

• a) Players save the turn and send the 'orders file' to host,
  b) Host (or autohost) is generating the new turn,
  c) Playes upload next turn and generate orders...

Of course these are problems like battle or no turn but this is extremelly good idea to turn-based multiplayer game.

3) Map area
Is good option to choose map area like small / medium / huge with pre-defined 2/4/6 races. Game at small galaxy is faster.

4) Map area 2
I know that square are map is simple to do, but the better results with distance, empire shape and movement are with hex map like Civilization 5 or Space Empires 5. So, maybe the hexagon map is much much better than square?

5) Map area 3
Last idea of map is option like "infinite map" as 'torus map' or 'sphere map' when bottom edge is connected with upper, and left side with right side (like at torus world at Civilization games). At this option (sphere when all edges are connected with themselves) all players have this same chance and no idea to tell "where is center of the galaxy" at map without edges and corners.

6) Technology browser
Next idea known at Stars! game. There was technology browser which show just known technologies / all technologies / plus as option special technologies (available for specific race). When I put "battleship" or "ultrastation" or "distruptors" I had all information about this technology / building or space hull:

• - reques technology levels
  - cost to build
  - description

Now, when I don't know this game I feel as blind men...

1) we already took care of that. It's just not documented yet. You can add as many major races as you want just like you explained with Stars!. Though this requires manually editing majorraces.data file in bote subfolder. At some point this is going to be enhanced with a GUI I guess. SirP knows more about how to do it. He managed it once to add a 7th race for example, which uses buildings and artwork of the other 6 (that's also the reason why there are no infinite number of races to begin with, since a real new race would need a lot of graphics and stuff). But the way as in Stars! is possible with Alpha6. I'm just not sure if you then can select 7 races in start menu though. That's a question only SirP can answer.

2) PBEM was something I mentioned years ago but SirP just meant: Nope . I guess he isn't a fan of it so it depends on other people to mod it in. Source code is available at bote.codeplex.com

3) comes with Alpha7

4) squares are fine enough. if someone wants hex tiles, well, there's the source again .

5) torus idea is nice. maybe something we could consider for Alpha7

6) also comes when in-game encyclopedia is implemented. Maybe Alpha7.


As you can see, Alpha7 should take care of most issues resulting from people being "blind" as beginners. Right now, not much light is shed into the depths of gameplay from in-game, we know that .