Sneak Peek: Commerce Games!

A new game mode has been added to WarLight!

In commerce games, instead of receiving armies per turn, all players receive gold per turn. For example, if you capture Central America which used to be worth 3 armies per turn, you’ll instead get 3 gold every turn. You can then use that gold to buy armies.

While it may seem like a subtle change, this actually has big implications on the game and allows for new strategic features to be introduced which couldn’t have existed in the old model. For example, you can decide not to spend all your gold every turn, and instead save it for future turns where you can then deploy more and surprise your opponent.

What’s more is that WarLight allows you to customize the cost of armies. By default, armies cost 1 gold for the first 10 you buy in each turn, 2 gold for the next 10, 3 gold for the next 10, etc. This multiplier means that armies are more expensive as you buy more, which helps balance against people who save their gold for future turns.

Cities

But wait, there’s more! In commerce games, players can also build cities on their territories. Cities produce one gold every turn for their owners in tax revenue. This gives a way of players of investing in the future.

Ensure you build your cities on territories that are well-defended! However, by default, cities cost 5 gold plus one additional gold for each city already on that territory. This gives you reason to spread out your cities, and not pile them all on the most defensible territory.

Cities open up interesting strategic opportunities. Each player needs to balance how much of their income they want to invest into cities and how much into armies, as investing too much into cities leaves them vulnerable to capture by an opponent who invested heavily in armies. Investing too much in armies could find you outmatched by an opponent who can out-spend you.

Want to try it now?

An alpha version of commerce games are available today in WarLight’s Unity client! The Unity client is being developed to replace the iOS, Android and Flash versions of the game. Try it today and let me know what you think!

Commerce games will be officially released at the same time as the Unity client.

Designed with Mods in mind

WarLight’s new modding framework is doing great, with 27 public mods already that affect the game in all sorts of interesting ways. Commerce games are designed to fit in well with mods, and mods will be able to add their own purchasable items. Mods will easily be able to do things like let players buy/sell/trade territories, treaties, cards, special units, and anything else you can imagine!

Official support for commerce game mods will be added in the next update.

20 thoughts on “Sneak Peek: Commerce Games!”

  1. Sounds neat.

    will there be any way a map maker can have a gold value thats separate than an army value for a bonus? I’d like to make a map that’s primarily for this game mode, but don’t want non members that’d play on it think its imbalanced because theyre playing normally.

    1. No, but you can always make a template that turns on commerce mode plus sets the bonus values to what they should be in commerce games, then just recommend people use your template.

  2. Very cool addition, a very good feature for diplos. Will be interesting to see if it will work for strat games too!

  3. I don’t know what your opinion of us GoT players is, but this is something that we have been waiting for, forever. Thank you so much for the all this work.

  4. Fizzer, man… You have a big nasty problem with the money or I am too blind to see what I must do to helping you with this test, without being a member? Also I have not read anywhere in this post that you only need this help from members only. Or we had to realize that you talk just to them?
    I mean, c’moon! I did all the steps I had to go through to start the test, and when do I start it, do you ask me to buy a membership package from you, because that’s the only way?
    WTF!?

    1. Hey Cristian,

      Sorry about that. It says in the forum thread “This alpha is only usable by WarLight members. If you’re not a member, check out https://www.warlight.net/Membership for details. A free trial is available.”

      The alpha is not yet ready for mass distribution. For one thing, it doesn’t have ads yet for one thing and non-members cover their cost of playing WarLight by looking at ads. So until it’s official release, it’s member only. Note a free trial is available on the website.

  5. >I did all the steps I had to go through to start the test, and when do I start it, do you ask me to buy a membership package from you, because that’s the only way?
    Is not there a free 30-day membership?

    1. Of course there is, but if you want to use them you must sign up with a credit card and after that 30 days the warlight site will taken from your account 3.99 USD for the next 30 days …

        1. No, not all trials are like that. In fact just few ask for a credit card, but the most of them you are allowed to try the different programs (which are on sites or needed to be installed on your computer/phone) with very few options, just to see what it is about. Other you can use them to the maximum potential, but you can not finish the “project”, like you can not save a picture after you used the photo processing program in trial mode, for example.
          And for me a free trial it means FREE, without being obliged to show others that I own a wallet, if I want to try the trial. Cos that means “One month trial FREE”! You know what I mean?

  6. I think it could also be cool to have something like capital cities, which act as stationary commanders: small amount of extra defense(high patriotism encourages civilians to fight), extra gold(high profile manufacturing and government jobs), and if it gets taken over, you are immediately eliminated.
    Would add some interesting realism to diplo games, and if different resource types were added, it could make it so trade is feasible.

  7. can we have capitail citys so that when the capital is taken down the player eho destroys it gain all of the other players citys

  8. This sounds great and opens a up a whole new world of future possibilities. My personal favorite would be different types of troops, for example Infantry would be a normal troop will 50 defense and attack percentages that would cost 1 gold, then for example cavalry could have worse defense rates and better attack rates or be able to go through two territories(like malty attack) but would cost 2 or 3 gold and stuff like that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*