Editorial Note: This continues the discussion from the original Characters thread.

This is an idea of mine reagarding the use of characters and their role in the society. It was done alongside the gov.model (which should be here later today), but isn´t excactly a part of it, so it´s here in a seperate post.

Characters & Dynasties

There have been considerable discussions on characters on the Forum, with no clear consensus reached, although the general ideas and possibilities have been analized. So what you read here is not necceserily the exact system we´ll use. First, I´ll look at two ways to handle character statistics and then I´ll briefly look on the possible roles characters can have in the game. Finally I´ll discuss Dynasties a little bit.
Now, I think we all agree that characters should be rated in various categories that relate directly to some in-game functions, such as Administraion skills or Army Command skills. This way is pretty straight forward and tells the players immedietly what the character does best. Another idea is to rate each character in some personality traits, such as Intelligence and Charisma, and then base his performance on those stats alone. Both ideas are OK, but pose some problems.
Someone had the idea to keep this hidden or uncertain until the player actually assigned the character to a specific position. This, IMO, is a good idea, but how to actually do this can be tricky. My idea is that we use a bit from both of the ideas above. Each character has personal traits, and when he is assigned (or chooses) a profession his skills are determined (see next section on the profession thing). This (hopefully) pleases the role-players out there (yes, Dominique, I´m talking about You :-)) as this has relations to many role-play games, I believe. A long time ago (in a BB far, far away :-)) I proposed a character system which´d use character traits as its basis. Those traits where: 3 Social Ratings: Status, Wealth and Education; Physical Ratings: Intelligence, Charisma and Drive (or Will). These traits are IMO sufficient to depict characters’ background without going into too much details. The last one (Drive) is important in real life in determining how ambitious/driven the person is, but maybe it´s better to replace this with Intuition? Or use them both? Also, we could put Loyality in as the 4th Social Rating. I´m of course open to any suggestions. Next come the skills (and the interests, so to speak), these are pretty much the same as the one proposed by Mark on the Forum. Here´s is a list:
- Administration
- Finance
- Mil.tactics
- Nav.tactics
- Leadership
- Engineering/Mechanincal/Technical
- Arts/Entertainment
- Theory
- Diplomacy/Persuasion
- Maybe something more…
In addition we´ll probably include Personality and History as suggested by Mark for flavor, although these are not skills per se. The exact level of skill in any of the listings above depends on the traits related to it (f.e. Leadership would be mainly based on Charisma, but also a bit on Status and Intelligence, maybe even Drive or Intuition) and also on the exact profession the character has (see next section), so a Army Commander would have somewhat higher Leadership value than a Banker even if they had the exact same traits. I´ll leave the exact connections between the traits and skills out for now until I know whether this idea of mine will be used. The general idea should be obvious: When a character is created he is rated in several characteristic traits, if the character is controlled by a player he can be assigned to numerous Professions. When this is done, the skills are determined, using the traits and the Profession as basis.
Next, lets look at character creation. This is done on class-bases, i.e. a newly created character is considered to belong to a specific class. How a character is created is determined randomly, although I support Mark’s ideas on regulating this so players can´t go back to a saved game to get different kind of character. One idea we could use instead of the Point Bank is simply to average out characters over the game, so if a player gets a super character he will get a total airhead later on (or several that are below par). As for how frequent characters are, this is something that players choose at the beginning at the game. Perhaps players can also choose how influential they want the characters system to be, i.e. whether they want a lot of great characters or not.
In determining the class the new character belongs to we´ll probably influence it by the pol.power of the classes, so a state with strong MC is more likely to get a character. After that three things are determined. First, the cultural background of the character. For this we´d use Manu’s Social Model.
Then the allignment of the character is checked, i.e. if he’s pro, neutral or anti governmental. For this the anti/pro status is used (see the gov.model), perhaps modified a bit by the cultural backgound (f.e. if the character belongs to a oppressed minority there is more chance it becomes anti-gov). If the character is pro-gov he becomes a player controlled character, i.e. he´s controlled by the player of the state he was created in. That player is then free to assign the character to a specific post. If the character is neutral two things can happen: he either becomes pro or anti, or he becomes a ‘free’ character which any player can attract (at least those in nearby states). Possibly pro/anti characters can become ‘free’ too, we´ll determine that later (through playtesting). Characters that fall into the Anti group can also do two things: they can act against the government (duh!) or they can become Radicals with even more far-reaching effects (the ‘wildcards’ we´ve spoken about). ‘Free’ characters represent mercenary leaders, independent investors, artists without a patron, etc. and can be hired by any player in their vicinity (i.e. offered an Office). The computer states can generate ‘free’ characters, maybe even radicals. However, the computer states themselves never have characters as such, at the most only the ruler will be represented with a character.
Then the traits of the character are determined. As said above whether the character has high/low stats is pretty random (with some restraints). When distributing the trait ratings the class the character belongs to is very important. Thus characters from the UC tend to have higher Status and Wealth rating than those from f.e. the LC.
About the longetivity of characters I more or less agree with Mark on this, i.e. on the average 30 turns, and the range maybe 20 to 40. Because the difference in time scales through the game this means of course that characters live abnormally long in the early game, but fairly short in the late game. We could possibly rectify this somewhat by making Dynasties more common in the early days, but that might only confuse players, so I guess we must accept the slight unrealism.
I think the simplest way in handling Dynasties is to check, when a character dies (dissapears), whether he creates a Dynasty or not. This would be determined by: a) the characters traits/skills (the higher the more likely a Dynasty emerges); b) the position the character has in the game; c) possible we can influence this by the History of the character. As for a) of course lousy characters are in reality just as likely to start a Dynasty, but for gameplays sake I think we should limit them to the better characters. The position the character holds (b) means that characters in lucrative or high positions are slightly more likely to start a Dynasty. Another idea for creating Dynasties is to check this at the same time the (first) character is created. This is simpler and probably makes it easier to keep the number of Dynasties under control. The downside is that we´ve no idea what kind of a Dynasty it will turn out to be, for all we know the character could be killed in the first battle he participated in.
The offsprings of the first character automatically try to follow in their fathers (mothers) footstep, even expecting (demanding) the same position he/she held. If it was a heriditary position they´d probably get it automatically (spelling potential trouble for players when the Dynasty begins to ‘slacken’). The traits/skills of the offsprings (note that only one character for a Dynasty is active at a time) are calculated using the stats of the one before them. The tendancy that the Dynasty ‘slackens’ in time means that there would be some negative modifers to this. Just to throw some numbers out, we could assume that for each trait/skill the new character has ca. 10-20% chance of improving it, 30-40% chance of it staying the same and 40-50% chance of it declining. The idea, as Mark has mentioned, is that a Dynasty should be pretty lousy after ca. 4 to 6 characters. I guess the lousy Dynasty characters could linger about for some time after they´ve been ‘kicked out’, but under certain conditions (TBD) the Dynasty should dissapear.
Dynasties can of course be of any type, it all depends on the Profession/Office of the originator. The only Office that most hold a Dynasty at all times is the ruler when the state is Monarchy, or the like. In most cases a Dynasty should be associated with a certain Office, because the idea with the Dynasties is that once they decline players must pry them from their Office in order to put a better character in it. As this may be something that some players aren´t interedted in doing we must include the option to turn Dynasties ‘off’, including having the ruler represented by a special character. I don´t know if we need some special rules regarding the ruling Dynasty. Maybe the ‘slackening’ curve wouldn´t be quite as steep as for other Dynasties (this is for gameplays sake). Also, the chance that a Dynasty becomes ‘extinct’ could be slightly higher for ruling Dynasties than other. This is done to lessen the chance that a total nitwit sits on the throne. Of course history holds many nitwit rulers, but I think we must put some restraints on this for gameplays sake.

Offices & Professions

Thanks for taking this area on. There's a lot of good new stuff (and alternatives) in your proposal. I guess assume I think everything is really good unless I criticize it . Again, good job. -Mark

First of all I think I need to stress (and I think you agree from previous comments) that IMO characters should be Optional for the player. If the player doesn't want them, then all they will get is the 'interface' parts of the characters, but with no game effects.

Dynasties / Characters - My only comment here is that I think more traditional systems should give more dynasties for good or ill, and more meritocratic systems should give more individual characters (and of somewhat better quality than found in non-merit systems). Some systems could be meritocratic for most things except the ruling dynasty, we'd have to work out the details.

You suggested that non-player civs not have characters. I disagree, since I think part of the spice that characters add to the game is in making the player respond to exceptional characters on the Other side. However I admit this may be found to be bad thru playtesting.

I think characters that work for the player should Always take on a Benign office, that benefits the player in some way, Immediately. The last thing we want is the player having to check every turn to see if a new character has popped up, and being afraid of missing a few turns' bonus that would result. To avoid this micromanagement I think that pro-player characters should automatically go into a 'character pool' in the government. This would have a civ-wide impact in the area of competency. The character's effectiveness would be reduced somewhat since by definition characters in the pool are safe and never rebel or do anything bad (since otherwise the player won't use the pool, and we're back to micromanagement (MM)) The player can at any point move a character under their control into an office etc.

IMO characters associated with the interface, FE the UC (upper class) representative, should not be assignable by the player, but simply represent their class. I think this is proper since the main game purpose of these is to represent their class (and this 'office' should IMO always be filled), and any player benefits or penalties are a secondary matter. Also these are not controlled by the player, although interests may align frequently. In the case of classes allied with the government the character would provide benefits as those in the 'pool'. (However they would use their powers to champion class-specific issues when these conflict with what the player is trying to do) Class Interface characters that are neutral or hostile to the govt could have either generalized or localized effects.

I agree with you that the player shouldn't generally pay characters salaries, but 'Mercenary' Characters (available for hire) that were rare would be useful (you may even have meant this since you talk of mercenary captains)

quote:

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I proposed a character system which´d use character traits as its basis. Those traits where: 3 Social Ratings: Status, Wealth and Education; Physical Ratings: Intelligence, Charisma and Drive (or Will).

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I prefer the other option of skill-specific characters (Army Generalship +100%, etc.). The training of geniuses in whatever the player wants them to do strikes me as (1) unhistorical, in that Picasso would have been a useless scientist etc. and (2) difficult to do good AI for (although after thinking on it I may reach a different conclusion). On the other hand having a character who is Only suitible for one thing (or at most two) is a little boring. I realize that you're just trying to achieve some consensus between two sets of opinions on the old thread (
apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000063.html ). My point was that someone doesn't show up in the real world and say 'I'm a genius, where would you like me to develop my talents.' The talents are usually only in one or two well-defined areas, and what the govt Wants is irrelevant. If Picasso shows up and you need an administrator, he Simply Can't Do That Job better than any normal underling, and probably Worse. If Alexander's Macedonia had called for great administrative skill because it was bankrupt, he probably would have been a complete failure. So I am, I think, more for the specific-ability kind of system. I just think the other system departs too much from the real world for my tastes. Its of course all game balance and feeling, but I can see players channeling every decent character into a great general, and I think that will make things very one-dimensional.

On the AI-difficulty issue. Its in deciding what the Right place is to put the characters that's tough. If characters can go into any of a large variety of offices, in each of which they can have significant effects, it becomes Very difficult for the AI to get nearly as good as a human at weighing the alternatives. That's why I proposed the character pool, because the AI can then do the straightforward thing of dumping all its characters in the pool, and only worry about the Really exceptional ones. Don't get me wrong, the AI for the 'complex' case is not any different from what we have to do for the military strategic AI system which involves similar big, interacting trade-offs. Its just that we Have to do military and I'm not sure the added flavor is worth the added complexity for characters. But like I said I'm still thinking about it, it may not be too bad.

Actually "hiding" character stats might be frustrating for the player.

Showing the competencies in each area is IMHO too straightforward. So why not

a) assign a certain random modifier to each character stat per turn (remember, we're talking of individuals from a dynasty over the course of centuries).

Anyway after reading though these i've come up with some ideas of my own. First off we could combine the merchant/pirates into this area by simply making characters that have good statistics in those areas merchants/pirates with anti-gov more likely for pirates and pro-gov less likely. Also the player can still decide to make them a merchant/pirate if he hires them.

Also culture might be a major factor in background.

Has anyone decided wether or not to use gender in this model?

Finnaly as far as dynasty's go i think the percentages should be a little differnt for the first and second generation where its about 25-50% chance of increasing stats, 15-40% chance of staying the same and only 15-35% chance of decreasing because of the fact that there will still be people who remeber that person's father/grandfather (or mother) and will be able to much more realisticly demand more from their descendants. This also plays more into reality since dynasty's don't usually last 2 generations, but more than that before then begin to slacken. Also another idea when it creates the new character if its extremly high or low number generated when rolling for stats to see if it goes up or down, u should have a super great or dim-witted character created. This could moreso abruptly end the dynasty or keep it going for another several hundered years.

Pirates is a cool idea. I think we already planned great merchants.

IMO we need to do gender, because ideally we'd like to put a face to each character as discussed earlier in the thread.

I am still working on a comprehensive model for Ideas and making it fit what is already decided. The general concept is that Ideas with certain effects are generated and spread to a certain percentage of the population. If the Idea is widespread and powerful enough, it will demand player attention. For example, the player might have to change government if the people demand a democracy. the prresence of a Philosopher will affect these Ideas.

You should check out the Social Model. It will support modeling what the people think on a provincial basis sliced by class and some other parameters. I think your Idea proposal should be framed in terms of what is in the Social Model, or extensions that could be made to it.

Glak:

There's gonna be some randomness, just get used to it... Personally, I find pure strategy games somewhat stultifying. You can always calculate everything. (And I admittedly don't enjoy highly choreographed operations, as are usually found in pure strategy games, don't have the patience . I Prefer having some unexpected curves thrown at me, and I think lots of people do.

Glak: I contend that the essence of strategy is dealing with the unexpected.

How does that sound? This approach should add to the game while not requiring micromanagement. Also, not having too many people means that each one can get a good name. The naming system could be something like this:

That's true but then the AI must be done to accomodate moving lots of characters around into a large variety of positions. A few is doable, as you get more and more, it becomes much more calculationally intensive. I am emphatically opposed to putting in things that the AI can't handle well. That is IMO the Major defect in CivX. You Must micromanage everything because the AI is so feeble there is a Large penalty for turning anything over to it.

Richard:

That's close to my take on it, although there will certainly be people that want more. BTW, I want not only individual names, but custom pictures for each! Using mix-and-match facial characteristics... That's a great job for some aspiring artist we take on. (Needless to say, not until release 25 or so )

LGJ II:

I think the ruling dynasty should possibly be an exception to the sparse-characters approach. Only playtesting will tell for sure. Certainly a few characters or dynastic members at a time would not be difficult. Its when you get characters all over the place, say of order 5-10 that it starts getting tougher IMO.

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Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai on 11-17-1999 09:57 AM
The main prob with having very few characters comes in conflict with dynasty's. Since with a dynasty there's always going to be atleast one character in the dynasty at a time, it basically totally rules out the possibility of a new char coming in. Anyway I'll explain more when the text file is sent.

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This doesn't have to be true. Characters are suppossed to be exceptional people who will be remembered throughout history. But our past has been litered with leaders who have been forgotten. It was said in the model that when an office was without a character a "John Doe" with average stats would fill the void. It could be the same case with rulers. Thus keeping the characters rare and meaningful, which was the intent of characters in the first place.