Supreme Ruler 2010 Forums

[George Geczy]

A bit of news for those of you who have heard about Supreme Ruler 2010, which is a new military/economic strategy game for the PC in development by BattleGoat Studios... we've just launched our new online forums to discuss ideas and questions on the game:
www.bgforums.com

Please drop on by if this type of game is of interest to you. (The main website for the game is at www.supremeruler2010.com )

Supreme Ruler 2010 is targeted for release early next year, and we think we've done more than a few very innovative things in the design of the game.
The forums will let us get some feedback on our ideas as we get in to the home stretch of development.

-- George.

-- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios
-- Developing the Next Generation of Intelligent Strategy Games
-- Website: www.supremeruler2010.com
-- Forums: www.bgforums.com

[Kautilya]

Cool. It's always a good sign when developers start a forum and interact with fans. I hope more companies follow this trend.

I haven't followed this game much but I definitely look forward to reading more about it in the next few months. I suggest you try to get a preview in one of the big game sites. That's always a good way in drumming up interest in the game.

Oh and please take your time in polishing the game and releasing it after you have removed most of the bugs.
Superpower, which you may have heard of, was also an exciting concept but seems to have suffered from a premature release and got lousy reviews.

Better to take the extra month or two and get decent reviews than to go early, get horrible reviews and lose all your early buzz.

Other than that, best of luck. It's great to see new companies trying to make innovative games.

[George Geczy]

Thanks for the comments.

And yes, we are quite intent on taking the time to make sure we release as bug-free as possible, fully tested and taking in to account all the feedback we can. In fact that's the main reason we have not signed with a publisher yet, we want to keep control of the milestones and deadlines and not be forced into an early release just to meet a marketing schedule...

The forum both allows us to keep people up to date on our developments, and also lets us get ideas and feedback on different parts of the game design.

There are not enough good strategy games in development, but we certainly think that there is a market for people looking to buy good, intelligent strategy products. Hey, that's what this forum (and the Civ series) is all about!

-- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios
-- Developing the Next Generation of Intelligent Strategy Games
-- Website: www.supremeruler2010.com
-- Forums: www.bgforums.com

[Kautilya]

"In fact that's the main reason we
have not signed with a publisher yet, we want to keep control of the milestones and deadlines and
not be forced into an early release just to meet a marketing schedule..."
That's great. I think this was the big mistake that Golem Labs (Superpower) made; signing up too early and then being forced to release too soon.

BTW if you haven't done so yet, I really suggest you get a copy of Superpower,play it and also read all the reviews to see what you can learn from it, both good and bad.

The biggest problem with Superpower seems to be a very unrealistc AI with all sorts of ridiculous wars (Bangladesh attacks Sweden etc.) This really defeats the purpose of a realistic geopolitical game since, if the AI allows such ridiculous gameplay, you might as well play a game like Civilization.

Programming a decent AI is probably the biggest challenge that your team faces and what will make or break your game.
Designing a decent interface is probably second. In particular I hope you put in a lot of keyboard shortcuts for all the commonly used game functions. Some excellent games like Europa Universalis really suffer from a shortage of those.
In general developers for these kinds of games (Civ3 being a classic example) seem to forget how massive and unwieldy these games can get at the end when you have lots of units and they don't put enough effort in solving the "late game tedium" problem.

Also I hope you put in some effort in presenting as many statistics in the game as possible. The EU "ledger" does this pretty well.

[George Geczy]

Thanks for the suggestions.

The AI is certainly one of our big targets in development, since it is the key to a fun single-player experience.

Supreme Ruler 2010 actually has to develop with a number of AI 'threads' that co-operate but also work independently, since AI players must handle economy, production, and diplomacy as well as the military side.

So many games just toss in concepts like AI diplomacy as an afterthought; we're serious about even making small elements like this fully developed.

-- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios
-- Developing the Next Generation of Intelligent Strategy Games
-- Website: www.supremeruler2010.com
-- Forums: www.bgforums.com