Guide to the current design status of The Clash of Civilizations

Comments and criticism welcome

[Severely edited 5/13/00, since this had gotten Way out of date]

Welcome to the Clash of Civilizations project. For a Broad overview of Clash and the Clash Project see the Clash Web Page.

As of now, relatively little of the information for the project is in finalized form. However, we are quite far along in specifying high-level models in areas like: the Military; Economy; Government; Technology... We have also made some progress on the Main Interface; Map, Unit, and other Artwork; Culture; Customization; Diplomacy; and AI. Most of the better-developed areas have HTML documents on the web page that outline the main thrust in that. Some of these docs go down to a fairly detailed level. You'll find links to the threads that hold these docs, and the subsequent discussion about them, on the web page. In addition, the Apolyton forums have excellent search capability. If you'd like to know about some area that's not indicated on the web site, just click on the search link near the upper right of the main Clash forum page.

If you're a visitor, feel free to critique any area of interest you. We need Everyone's brainpower working here on evaluation of these models.  Are they too complicated?  Too hard to make an interface for?  Just plain Boring?  Great?...  Because we have already locked in the broad nature of the each game element, comments or criticisms are somewhat more valuable at the level of the details within these models. Note that many of the dukes (coordinators in charge of various areas) have had an increasing number of Real Life commitments over the last few months or so. Many of the discussions just stop at that point. However, your suggestions will still be of value when the final summaries are written up. Please put your suggestions for these areas In The Threads Themselves so that we keep some order in the discussion. So, let us have it .

Demos
What we're looking for out of the demos, is to allow people to test out many of the innovative features in Clash before development gets too far. This should allow us to identify "Turkey" aspects of our current design, and come up with something new to replace them. The latest demo, and a description of the feedback we're looking for on it, can always be found on the web page.

Tell us what you think... And as usual if there's something I need to put up here that I've missed, let me know.

-Mark

Thanks for your interest. We are somewhat behind on things other than the map stuff which is in the post at top. 16-bit tiffs are probably a good choice for everything. I wrote Paul Crocker and asked him to start up a thread for this since I'm completely unqualified to decide such things. If you don't see the an answer you are happy with soon, bug me! We Really need graphical artists. If you have suggestions you'd like to make for the standards check in frequently, and we'll try to hammer them out asap. BTW what sort of thing were you thinking of contributing to?

BTW we also need art for a sexier web page...

Thanks for the query...

I have both CivII and Civ CTP and I greatly enjoyed CivII, but I played Civ CTP twice and I'll get to the reasons later. And when I heard you wanted gammers input, I had to mention two very important areas that where greatly overlooked in CivII.

Ive read all the ideas on the civIII forums, and Id think these ideas will make a great game(I hope its will be clash!).

I play CivII much more because CTP animations made the game drag and the game atmosphere sucked and therefore I played twice and not since! It wasnt appealing. There was a poll on Apolyton (Im sure you've seen it) about buety or speed and ease and I think you got the idea of what the people want. What made CivII so great was the simplicity of the gameplay. I dont want a game that slows down in the later stages because of graphics and animations.

REVOLUTIONS AND CIVIL WARS!!! You've got to have these. And I dont mean revolutions to change governments. I mean like the American revolution where a group of cities wanted independence and (might, not always) have to fight for it. And a new civ should become of it. No barbarian cities! I realy dont know which category this would fit in so I just put it right here and maybe you could figure it out.

Thanks
Daniel

We have both your items covered.

The graphics will be relatively simple, and look as great as we can manage.

Revolutions and civil wars will be handled in detail. Check out the Government and Social models. We'd like to hear what you think about our approaches to this issue.

1) Provide a place for people to post updates on the status of their models.

2) Provide a place for people to ask general questions and make general comments about Clash.

I'll start:

Technology:
The equations for turning RP into tech levels have been finalized and the tech tree generation utility is currently being coded. I have a rough draft of the technologies themselves and will put them into the tech tree generator when it is finished. This will take a couple weeks, at least, and I can't start until the utility is coded. Interface issues and the exact process of RP generation have not yet been decided upon. Also, we have to work on a system of tags that will allow the AI to deal with technology.

Coincidentally, I contacted a couple of the model leads yesterday asking what was going on in their areas. Rodrigo hoped to have something soon on the government model. He is also doing the social model now since TK didn't expect to have the time to work on it in the near future. (And also there is a lot of interaction between the government and social models). I also bugged Harli on the status of the military model, but haven't heard back yet. Darren is going to be focusing on interface coding as soon as he gets the diplomacy package neatened up enough to pass on to the new diplomacy coder, Leandro. Hopefully everyone I have mentioned will check in at this thread and give you their own more detailed version on what they are doing.

Basically as rich said, were waiting for the tech insetion program to be finished, once its done we'll be putting our current techs we have down in there.

Characters:

At pretty much a standstill and will probably be that way till most other models are done.

Wonders and Achievements:

Regarding the Wonders/Achievement model, I've been busy recenetly as I just started exams, but I think that it can wait a while longer until we can see how the other models are evolving and we get a coder.

The ecology model continues to develop and improve as more people give their input. We are trying to iron out its relationship with the new economy model Mark posted, and more input regarding this would be helpful.

Currently. of the 3 models I'm working on only the Technology/Research/Social Advancement model is is pretty much set in stone. The formulas may change slightly tor balance purposes. Also we will be adding the stuff for the social modfiiers and how they act, but the social/cultural model needs to be pretty much done as far as the modifiers for differnt culures and religions and such are figured out before this part can be worked on.

That isn't to say it's near completion. Just the interal structure is set up basically. The external, or actuall technologies and advances aren't done and can be easily changed.

The wonder model i would like to say should be something along the lines I have it as, but its far from being "set in stone."

The character model is still very fluid. Basically the only things "set in stone" for it is the fact that characters will be optional and they can be of differnt numbers and can be allowed change aspects of the game via. how they are used. The other thing is that it is optional, but the player can assign most, not all, (or atleast attempt to) characters to differn't positions within the government or hire them out (like privateers). This isn't manditory that you even do it once, and their will be risks and rewards for doing such.

It also gives you the possibility to have a rebellious prince decide that he wants his kingdom RIGHT NOW and cause a minor civil war. The possibilities are amazing and it doesn't take too much to string together a few possible random events so that one minute you could be laughing at the prince fighting his king, the next find yourself with an irate governor marching on your palace with his own personal army, demanding a change...

Problem with such an idea is that the time element needs to be considered. After all, a King's lifespan could be as small as 3yrs or as long as 35. Who knows? Naturally this is a slight problem in the early stages of the game.

Taking the Civ model of time passage, it's something like 100 turns maybe until 0 BC. However, you jump in 20yr increments. Fine, but that means a all characters change every turn...it would be impossibly complicated, especially for new users.

However, if you tone it down to 1yr intervals, you'd have to wait 4000 turns until you got to 0 BC. Unless the game is horribly slow, by that stage you'd probably be considering which planet to colonise, which isn't going to help realism.

Since we have discussing province sizes and map squares sizes recently I will just paste the information in here on what is locked in and the main reasons why it is so .

Provinces:
1. Give player and AI reasonably small number of empire subdivisions to work with (ideally 10 or less, Max 20 over the long haul) Primary use of subdivisions is for govt and econ.
2. your A,B, C above.
3. Ideally 20-50 squares. (Size of historical large provinces)
4. Since empires are expected to grow, with conquest and technology, provinces should be dynamic to satisfy 1.

Map Squares:
100km /60 mile squares (this will be the standard, which can be overridden by players and scenario designers when desired)
1. military: some tactical flavor remains esp for modern warfare;
2. AI: can't have too many squares to deal with;
3. graphics: get slow above this with target comp (may be a bit too much anyway when we get all the map levels going)

Military: [added 8/17/00]
Task forces exist on the map, and can move at the individual square level. Those that don't like this amount of management can put the AI in charge of their military and handle their input through broad directives to the AI generals.

I'll try to post some similar information on the econ area soon.

The Diamond:

Current coding progress level: 0%

I have finished the spreadsheet that models the technology equations. We are currently working on the methods for handling social technologies and the impact of social factors on the standard technologies. My next task is to create a revised tech system with OO object structure.