[SUGGESTION] Coin drop and pick-up mechanics

[Penfold]

It's 20–30 days in, your economy is pumping, and the streets are paved in gold. Literally. There's gold everywhere. In the fields, on the grass, in the buildings, next to troops, back at base — everywhere. Whilst this is technically a nice position to be in, it does have one negative consequence: It ruins the ambiance!

Every time you go past a unit a stream of gold coins comes pouring out. If you gallop past you have multiple streams at the same time. I find the noise off-putting and immersion-breaking. It sounds like I'm in a pokie parlour or casino and machines are disgorging coins all around me. Either that or someone emptying a sack of marbles on a wooden table. It ruins the excellent background music and sound effects and visually litters the scenery. I don't like it — not one bit.

Proposal

Adjust the coin drop mechanic that friendly units use so that:

• if you are galloping they do not throw money at you
  
• when they do throw money at you, they throw it in the direction that you are facing/travelling

A ruler that is galloping along is travelling far too fast (v1.1.0) to pick up anything thrown at them. This forces you to continually stop and zig/zag backwards and forwards to pick all of the coins up. The action of doing so is not fun, does not look authentic, and does not contribute to immersion. It's distracting. It also slows you down, making it take longer to get to where you want to go.

A trotting ruler, travelling much slower, should be able to pick up at least some coins — provided they are thrown in front of the ruler (in the direction of travel) and not behind them. Throwing coins behind a ruler makes no sense. Would a peasant dare do that and force the ruler to stop and turn around? The direction in which coins are thrown should not be random.

Adjust the pick-up mechanic that the ruler uses so that:

• a guaranteed minimum number of coins can be picked up whilst trotting past a friendly unit that throws money in front of the ruler

Currently when rulers trot past they can't pick up any coins due to a combination of three things:

1. the horse is trotting too fast
   
2. the peasants don't throw coins far enough in front
   
3. the 'pick-up range' is too small

Making the horse any slower would not be well received by the player base, and would cause flow-on issues, so it would seem wise to leave that alone. The peasants could throw the coins a little bit further... but I'm not sure if this alone would suffice — and having coins tossed huge distances would look quite odd. The 'pick-up range' could be increased.

Some combination of 2 and 3, with perhaps more emphasis on 3, could be experimented with in order to guarantee that the ruler could trot past a peasant, have coins thrown at them, and be guaranteed of catching a minimum amount.

What this amount actually should be I am not sure. Perhaps 5 coins? It should be an amount sufficiently high to encourage and reward trotting, but not so high as to make stopping (at farms especially) no longer necessary if one wishes to collect absolutely everything. It should be a 'skim'. If an average farm has four farmers, trotting past should perhaps fill the ruler's empty pouch no more than half-way. Thus a ruler that trots past two farms should have close to a full pouch.

Once the number has been decided, it might be possible to further adjust the coin drop mechanic such that units drop that amount in a burst, then pause, then check to see if the ruler is still in range before dispensing any more — as opposed to just dumping everything as they do now. This would reduce visual clutter on the ground and audio noise as well.

One significant gameplay benefit of the above is that even if the horse is exhausted, the ruler can trot past a couple of farms without stopping, fill up on coins whilst resting the horse at the same time, and then start galloping again. This effectively makes travelling across the map far, far more efficient, and would go some way to alleviating the pain associated with travel from the mid-game onwards — because I don't think it's the distances that are so much of a concern, it's having to stop all the time to pick up coins that introduces tedium.

A player who doesn't have to frenetically zig/zag to collect coins in transit can mentally focus more on crisis management, where they are going and why they are collecting coins, rather than the mechanics of coin collection itself.

None of the above changes the ability of rulers to collect loose change on the ground — riding through such coins at any speed should continue to result in an automatic pick-up.

That's it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this proposal.

[Kryptokind]

+1

[Mk1]

Originally posted by Penfold:

<excellent post>

Or perhaps have an icon which appears above each actor that you pass (cumulative if you pass several in a close group travelling in the same direction: two icons if opposite) which has a coin above their head with a number above that in brackets, so that the coins are not dropped when you're galloping.

This way you can monitor the west/east flow of coins and whereabouts without worrying about dropping the coins etc - also coins do expire if on the ground for too long.

[Penfold]

Originally posted by Mk1:

Or perhaps have an icon which appears above each actor that you pass (cumulative if you pass several in a close group travelling in the same direction: two icons if opposite) which has a coin above their head with a number above that in brackets, so that the coins are not dropped when you're galloping.

Such an icon would work functionally, but I don't think it would fit in with the aesthetic of the game. The developers have eschewed "info boxes" above units up until now, so I think that trend will continue. As for the numbers, given the low-resolution pixel-art in use, it would be hard to even fit numbers into a reasonable space above units and have them be legible to the player... especially if using Roman numerals.

I guess they could subtly change the sprite to give some indicator of how much gold is being carried. Perhaps a single pixel near the waist (where a purse could be) could be rendered in an ever-increasing brightness of yellow as the unit accumulates more and more coin? That said I'm not sure my eyes would be good enough to spot the difference whilst galloping along.

also coins do expire if on the ground for too long.

I've read that it is about half a day, but have not tested this personally.

Thanks for your feedback!

[noio]

I agree with you. This "coin orgy" is something that we're aiming to address in multiple ways.

[Roaringdragon2]

One thing: by this point in the game, you can only hold about 5 units worth of coins, but if you are travelling to an edge of your kingdom, you walk past like 500 coins.