Re: Marketing Xconq? + battle isle suggestion

["Andreas Bringedal" <anbring at frisurf dot no>]

>   There were two items I mentioned a long while back that would improve
> Xconq's appeal to traditional wargamers.

Another thing is to update the game interface.  It's too cumbersome and not
player friendly enough.  I believe Civ's great success was due to it's very
appealing and intuitive interface.  Somewhat warm and bright colours are
also good as it isn't as depressing as a brown/grey/dark map.  Civilization
and Heroes is a good example of the color type I mean.

If Brandon or someone makes some windows interface that's better I'll be a
very happy camper.


Another thing that might appeal to some wargamers is to make a Battle Isle
clone.  By that I don't mean Battle Isle's combat rules but the game type.
In Xconq you start with a few units and grow larger and get a zillion units
which is very combersome and boring.  When I play Xconq I'm constantly
reminded of a locus swarm as the screen is nearly filled with units.  In
Battle Isle you start with quite a few forces deployed and you can't build
more.  This means that the game has a very strategic beginning with units
placed in intersting and premade setups and that the game goes faster and
faster as units are killed.  This makes for fast and interesting games.  If
you can ensure good scenarios you are nearly guarantied a fun and exciting
game every time you play.  Battle Isle games does however star with the
whole map revealed.  If it isn't if greatly favours the player that has
played the map before, naturally.  It also has a high score.  The score is
based on how fast and how great losses you took.  The score is interesting
when playing solo as trying to best your own score (or others) gives
replayability. Ie you try different tactics and see if you can get a better
result.  This way it doesn't matter as much that the AI sucks as you want
the best score possible.  It is also very possible to make scenarioes that
are heavily stacked in favour of one side which naturally would be the AI
side. This is another advantage.

I've missed playing Battle Isle for many years.  The two first versions were
the best.  The third and fourth were not good as far as I recall.
Historyline(same game but using WW1 units) was also good but it had the
great flaw that you could had a steady influx of production points so you
could get a better score by prolonging the game.  Battle Isle had only a
finite amount of production points(you could only build a small amount of
units) which allowed you to try different tactics(building different units).


Andreas