Expeditions: Rome - Dev Diary 5 - Metagame: Legion Battles

[Silver]

The latest dev diary for Expeditions: Rome looks at the meta of legion battles.

Ave! Welcome to DevDiary #5, where we take our first detailed look at some of the metagame features of Expeditions: Rome! In our previous DevDiary, we made a brief expedition into the world of art direction to show you how we've approached the challenges of bringing the ancient world of Rome to life in a way that feels authentic, yet vibrant and exciting. Today we'll return to the world of gameplay and system design as we delve into the meta systems of Expeditions: Rome and explore how we're selling the fantasy of being a Roman legatus on a campaign of war. This time we're dealing with some systems that are still very much under development, so buckle up for some serious inside baseball.

Our 2nd DevDiary, which focused on our core combat design, should have made it clear that while significant improvements - as well as some clever and risky innovations - have been made in the core combat, our focus there has always been to deliver a solid, challenging, and satisfying take on traditional turn-based combat. By contrast, the meta gameplay has always been the area where we've pushed ourselves to think differently and try crazy new things to separate the Expeditions series from other RPG and strategy games. Expeditions: Rome continues this philosophy.

Let's start by defining what we mean when we say meta. The meta is the game systems that track your overall progression and allow you to interact with it. Our core game loops such as combat or dialogue are self-contained bubbles of content that begin and end discretely, whereas the meta spans the whole game and ties all the content together. Every core game loop always interacts with the meta in many ways, but in game development it's useful to think of them separately.

(Side note: Although the overall story and the personal development of each character spans the whole game and ties together all the dialogue, in this diary we're purely interested in game mechanics.)

The meta of Expeditions: Rome can be roughly divided into two parts: the character systems, and the worldmap systems. Both aspects of the meta are quite different than previous instalments, but the worldmap systems are what really sets Expeditions: Rome apart from other games.

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Thanks Farflame!

More information.

 

[Feist]

Sounds pretty interesting and different from the previous games in the series. In general, I enjoy a bit of a "change of pace" in rpgs, whether that comes in the form of mini-games, base-building or a temporary switch from tactical to strategic combat.

So, let's hope they manage to make this "legion combat according to choices of various stratagems" enjoyable.

 

[Carnifex]

Indeed, it does sound rather odd to me, yet the proof will be how it functions within the game itself. The first two games had some very different mechanics, yet for me they worked and I was able to enjoy both games, though I have a preference for the first. In any case, I'm looking forward to the Roman version!

 

[Couchpotato]

Seems every game in the series is different so nothing new there. This will be a day one but for me as I love the Early ROME setting. Also I hated the first game so meh.

 

[Carnifex]

You didn't care for Conquistadors, Couch? Perhaps you need to revisit that great game and give it another chance.

 

[Couchpotato]

Nope I like Vikings better it was vastly improved over Conquistador.

 

[Gwydden]

Yeah, I tried getting into Conquistador twice and bounced off of it hard both times. Viking was great, though. Definitely getting this one when it comes out.