Kingdoms would be a multiplayer mod for servers. Players can band together to form ‘Kingdoms’, choosing one member to be their king (this would probably be done using commands). Once a player is made king, they get a ‘Crystal’ (I think automating this would be too easy to cheat so it might be best for crystals to just be given by server admins via the /Give command), crystals are a placeable 1x1 block, which once destroyed can be picked up. By placing a crystal, the king can set a location as being the centre of the kingdom’s ‘Stronghold’, a stronghold is an area within which blocks can ONLY be destroyed by members of the kingdom to whom the stronghold belongs to. Think Factions mod only blocks aren’t affected by explosions. In other words, a stronghold which can’t be walked into is entirely impenetrable to non-kingdom members. The area of this stronghold is defined by how many villagers are ‘recruited’ to your kingdom; villagers can be recruited by any member of a kingdom, and once recruited cannot be un-recruited, but can be killed. The goal for attackers is to kill enough villagers that the stronghold’s area is 0 and then destroy & steal the crystal. If you are successful in doing so, the king of your kingdom can place this crystal to make another stronghold, and so your kingdom will grow.
What this means for gameplay
The main aim of this is to make raids and battles more fun, in particular to take away that crappy feeling when you build an awesome base and someone just TNTs their way in while you’re offline. By making the stronghold area 100% indestructible, players wanting to raid your base have to scour the land for villagers recruited to you and kill them in order to reduce the size of your stronghold so they can destroy blocks to get in. Just like how, in real medieval warfare, attackers would send out raiding parties to pillage villages and weaken the defending kingdom. This means they can’t just destroy you quickly overnight, they have to put time and effort into an attack. It also adds a political element, as allied kingdoms could betray one another by essentially selling the coordinates of villages enemies (or could lie about coordinates of villages to screw over an enemy, if they wanted to play it sneaky).
Other things that the mod would need to do
Villagers can’t be allowed to exist within strongholds; if they could then players could just build their strongholds on top of villages (or cheat in some villager eggs) and then they’d basically be indestructible. There’d have to be a rule whereby if a villager goes within range of a stronghold then they instantly die.
The spawn rate of villages would have to be increased because in vanilla they’re much too rare for raiding to be fun. You’d have to travel for ages just to kill a dozen villagers.
Stuff I’d like to include but isn't vital
A specialised interface for recruiting villagers, here's a preliminary design I whipped up on Photoshop:
If this isn't possible though I suppose they could just be recruited using a command.
Some kind of graphical change to help quickly distinguish between allied, enemy and un-recruited villagers. Nothing too drastic, just something like eye colour, so it’d look like this:
I think it’d be cool if the crystals looked kind of like the crystals from Castle Story:
A visual indicator of a stronghold’s area, just like a line on the floor or something.
If anyone’s interested in making this mod, I can help with things like deciding the ratio of villagers to area of stronghold and other gameplay elements like that, and I’m handy with Photoshop so I can sprite graphics and stuff, but unfortunately I can’t help with coding. Also, feedback would be appreciated, thanks!
Kingdoms would be a multiplayer mod for servers. Players can band together to form ‘Kingdoms’, choosing one member to be their king (this would probably be done using commands). Once a player is made king, they get a ‘Crystal’ (I think automating this would be too easy to cheat so it might be best for crystals to just be given by server admins via the /Give command), crystals are a placeable 1x1 block, which once destroyed can be picked up. By placing a crystal, the king can set a location as being the centre of the kingdom’s ‘Stronghold’, a stronghold is an area within which blocks can ONLY be destroyed by members of the kingdom to whom the stronghold belongs to. Think Factions mod only blocks aren’t affected by explosions. In other words, a stronghold which can’t be walked into is entirely impenetrable to non-kingdom members. The area of this stronghold is defined by how many villagers are ‘recruited’ to your kingdom; villagers can be recruited by any member of a kingdom, and once recruited cannot be un-recruited, but can be killed. The goal for attackers is to kill enough villagers that the stronghold’s area is 0 and then destroy & steal the crystal. If you are successful in doing so, the king of your kingdom can place this crystal to make another stronghold, and so your kingdom will grow.
What this means for gameplay
The main aim of this is to make raids and battles more fun, in particular to take away that crappy feeling when you build an awesome base and someone just TNTs their way in while you’re offline. By making the stronghold area 100% indestructible, players wanting to raid your base have to scour the land for villagers recruited to you and kill them in order to reduce the size of your stronghold so they can destroy blocks to get in. Just like how, in real medieval warfare, attackers would send out raiding parties to pillage villages and weaken the defending kingdom. This means they can’t just destroy you quickly overnight, they have to put time and effort into an attack. It also adds a political element, as allied kingdoms could betray one another by essentially selling the coordinates of villages enemies (or could lie about coordinates of villages to screw over an enemy, if they wanted to play it sneaky).
Other things that the mod would need to do
- Villagers can’t be allowed to exist within strongholds; if they could then players could just build their strongholds on top of villages (or cheat in some villager eggs) and then they’d basically be indestructible. There’d have to be a rule whereby if a villager goes within range of a stronghold then they instantly die.
- The spawn rate of villages would have to be increased because in vanilla they’re much too rare for raiding to be fun. You’d have to travel for ages just to kill a dozen villagers.
Stuff I’d like to include but isn't vitalIf this isn't possible though I suppose they could just be recruited using a command.
- A visual indicator of a stronghold’s area, just like a line on the floor or something.
If anyone’s interested in making this mod, I can help with things like deciding the ratio of villagers to area of stronghold and other gameplay elements like that, and I’m handy with Photoshop so I can sprite graphics and stuff, but unfortunately I can’t help with coding. Also, feedback would be appreciated, thanks!