An idea came to my mind, inspired by my memories from playing Europa 1400. In the Guild 1 if you had a fiscal imbalance on the next round, such as -1000 or higher, the player automatically lost his turn, i.e. basically a gameover. In early game players had to carefully manage their finances so as not to go bankrupt, otherwise their game was over. I suggest making [somewhat] similar changes to the guild 2 to make the gameplay more [economic-wise] complex. Right now, even if a player goes 200k in ‘minus’ he/she is still continues running all his businesses, which makes no sense [from economic competition perspective]
I suggest making the following changes, which will allow competitors destroy a rival dynasty by economic/financial means, such as stealing their gold or make the court issue a great fine, or stopping production by starting a financial inspection or using smoke bombs to stop production for a while. The following points I suggest adding to the gameplay:
- In case a player ends up with more than 1 000 in debt on the new turn, most [if not all] his employees become highly dissatisfied with a player and leave, which leaves him no employees to being a new round with. In case it is less than 1k, employees become highly dissatisfried but do not leave yet. In case employees are already highly dissatisfried and the player ends up with a debt, they leave, even if the debt does not exceed 1k. This will make players not only carefully manage their income, but also regularly pay bonuses to their employees.
- In case a player ends up with more than 3-5k in debt his/her buildings [that are established within city borders] become for sale, i.e. player losses his [legal] buildings.
- Point #2 does not apply for buildings outside of town and rogue buildings, however, the employees, including thugs, still leave in case a player cannot manage his income.
- In case a player has a high debt [say 3k or more] guild houses no longer give him loans.
- To counter the risk of possible bankruptcy as a result of competitors I suggest adding a 'safe deposit' option to the house of level 4 or higher. In the Guild 1 players could hide some of their cash in order to have a secret stash or to decrease inheritance tax, which was present in the first title, before characters death. A safe to hide some of the cash could play a role of money which a player desperately needs in case of a risk of bankrupty. This money should not be targeted by the thieves and the player cannot use it as long as it is 'stored' in the safe deposit.
- In case of a high debt players lose their infrastructure and employees on the next round, not immediately after having a debt, such as after the court trial ended.
- I also suggest increasing employee dissatisfaction rate so that player has to regularly invest into them so that they do not steal or leave during production. I believe employee dissatisfaction should be based on their level, the more experienced the employees are the more their wages cost per turn and the faster is their dissatisfaction rate, i.e. a player has to give them pay bonuses more often, say once per 2 turns.
Thus, in case a player ends up with a high debt, he/she basically loses all his [legal] business infrastructure, which in my opinion is logical and will enhance the gameplay to allow many economic possibilities to conquer your rivals. Right now the game emphasis physical elimination, but not economic one, which in my opinion would be closer to the concept of the Guild series. This way the game will become both, more difficult and interesting from economic gameplay perspective.
Regarding the trials and sentences, I suggest the following:
- Each court decision in case a defendant become accused, is followed not only by the court decision itself, but always with a fine. In case a character is put to death but his other family members are still present, they pay a certain fine. In case a character is imprisoned, it is also followed by the fine.
- Add 'lose the title' as an actually possible court sentence, which is not merely a huge fine as in the vanilla game, but makes a character actually lose his or her title down to the Yeoman.
- Criminal evidence is only added in case a character is seen commiting a crime with a spy on his tail or if a the merc are using 'ask around', rather than automatically. Character who commits a crime should still lose his reputation/disposition and [eventually] become a walking nightmare, however, actual evidence is only collected through specifc options. This should improve the spying part of the game and make information collection more closer to the first Guild, where players actually had to pay a spy to get certain evidences.
This is not a final brief for my suggestion, in case there could be possible difficulties with what I propose, and which I failed to take into account, please let me know, we can discuss a more balanced version of the above.
Thank you
