Developer Note #4
Hello, I'm the developer of Three Kingdoms: Alias.
Today, I would like to share our progress on the domestic administration side of v0.6.0.
The features described below are still in development and have not yet undergone sufficient testing, so they may change at any time.
Even so, I wanted to share the direction of development and hear your thoughts. Please keep this in mind as you read.
A great deal is being added, but starting with the institution system renewal should make the overall changes easier to explain.
This is the new institution system.
Previously, institutions followed a simple structure in which they unlocked one after another based on the number of cities you controlled.
The new system uses a tech tree and calls for more strategic choices.
You will eventually research almost every institution, but in the early and middle stages of a campaign, the order in which you research them can significantly change how you manage your faction.
Many new institutions are being added, but if I had to choose the most important addition, it would be the “facility unlocks” described below.
City administration will now operate around facilities.
The Governor's Office, Patrol Department, and Agriculture Department are installed in every city by default, so you can assign officers to them right away. Facilities such as the Commerce Department and Recruitment Department, however, must be built on vacant plots before they can be used.
The number of vacant plots differs by city size, so larger cities can build more facilities. Even the largest cities cannot construct every building, which means you will need to decide how to specialize each city.
For example, you might create a city focused on commerce, military affairs, or officer training, which I will discuss below.
This also makes the choice of which facilities to unlock first through the institution tech tree an important one.
One of the new facilities is the “Office of Concord.”
The Office of Concord manages a city's “Team Harmony” by mediating conflicts between officers and curbing Loyalty loss, among other duties.
From v0.6.0 onward, the efficiency of city administration will depend on how well its administrative team works together under the Governor's leadership, making the Office of Concord an important facility.
The officer assigned to the Office of Concord as its “Personnel Officer” will be more effective with higher Intelligence and Charisma.
As you continue researching institutions, you will also be able to activate “Automatic Rewards” at the Office of Concord, which automatically grants rewards to officers with low Loyalty.
Some of the major new facilities are training institutions that function like schools.
For example, if you assign an Instructor and student officers to the “Military Strategy Hall,” a facility for training Intelligence, the students' Intelligence will increase.
For now, the limit on stat growth is the maximum value listed for that officer in the Officer Compendium.
(In other words, even if Lü Bu's Warfare stat rolled as 91, he can eventually reach 100 by continuing to hone it.)
You can also unlock the “Mentorship” system through institution research.
Mentorship pairs a mentor with a disciple to help the disciple grow, and can affect not only their primary stats but a broad range of hidden stats as well.
Any officer who is at least one year older can become a mentor, and the better the affinity between the two officers, the greater the chance of a successful mentorship.
Many other changes are also in development, including a professional corps system made up of warfare specialists, additional military adviser positions for strategists, and changes to true-name verification and information disclosure. I will discuss those in the next Developer Note. The combat renewal introduced in the previous Developer Note is also continuing steadily without any major changes to its overall direction so far.
Today's overview was brief, so I expect you may have many questions about the detailed specifications. Since the design may still change, I hope you will understand why I have limited this note to a broad overview.
The combat renewal is also a very large system. With only a little exaggeration, the amount of work is close to making an entirely new game, so it will still take a fair amount of time. I will continue working diligently to make this a game you can enjoy for years to come.
Every message of encouragement and every suggestion you leave in the comments gives me strength and keeps me working hard, so you do not need to worry about me getting tired and running away. I will see you in the next Developer Note. Thank you.
