HELP SID Make a Civ Massive Multiplayer Game!

[DRoseDARs]

He could call it... CivNETII



Edit: This one just occurred to me. CivO (Civilization Online: Clean, concise, easy to remember and pronounce )

[Atahualpa]

Ok, I made some thoughts about a MMOCiv.

Let's completely forget the concrete implementations of settler, cities, nations, units thing for a while. Let's just say that you are thrown in a world that lives on its own. The world is populated by people who gather in settlements, organize their lifes and do their work. At first every settlement is there for its own and they are completely autarchic.
Among all those people, it happens from time to time that a leader is born. This leader is you. You reign and you use your resources to conquer neighboring settlements and include them in an ever growing empire.
Your lifespan is limited though and as such you have to manage to create heirs... there's also a lot of trait specific stuff. When you don't get a heir and you die, or through other circumstances, your empire may collapse and every settlement fights for its own again.

Okay so much for the start of a game. Now, what in a developed world with empires everywhere. A player starts in a settlement already in an empire. The ruler of this empire can then assign this player specific tasks, like military campaigns or assigns him to govern a province or various settlements. In case of the ruler dying without appointing a follower (using one of the players or his heir) and the empire crumbeling, these people are then immediately be able to reconstruct the empire, effectively quarreling for their heritage.

Ok, this is the rough and basic idea, that I think something like this could work. A players life should not be more than ~2 hours, forcing people to play it through as they cannot logout and come back later. An advantage of this is that you can say you've finished a game, while the game lives on, plus _is_ online at the same time (server-stress...) so you can somehow make it turn based, although I don't think that'll work out. Maybe a combination of TBS/RTS on various levels of the game.

Every heir that you create is another possible login in this world, with more advantages than a newly registered player and which you can use later on (so to say it doesn't age and will show up when you first login with it).
Ofc, we could see lots of empires crumbeling during the night-time and building up day time again when people play. That's probably why it requires a ton of players from all over the globe.

[Lemmy]

Heh, good points by Jon, i didn't think about the money-making aspect yet, as said, that was mostly what i had in mind for a C4 mod, not a stand-alone game...let alone making money with it.

But i think Ozzy's ideas adresses some of these issues though. Basically give everyone a bit of control ingame.

I think overall, the game itself would have to be a lot more detailed at the lower levels. Having hundreds of civs on a single map, run the same way as in the SP game doesn't sound fun to me. But having 10 people control a civ and only have a dozen civs, each run the same way as in the SP game probably isn't the most fun approach either as pointed out earlier. So i'd add detail to city management and unit/army management, make it so detailed that any decent sized civ can't be run effectively by a single player, and that players with partial control of a civilization will have their hands full with it and don't get bored too soon.

Perhaps instead of only having civilizations, you could also have corporations, similar to SimCountry, or completely different non-civ factions, like running your own church, earn your income/power by converting cities with your missionaries and defame other churches till it's clear that yours is the only true religion

I Think forcing people to guild from the get go won't be very popular...

But that is the nature of basically any MMOG out there. You have to be in a clan/alliance/guild to have any kind of success.

LDiCesare also sums up my thoughts about persistency and game pace. 1 turn/day, one game lasting up to a year.

[OzzyKP]

If it was 1 turn a day, what would players be doing that would retain their interest in it?

With one turn a day it sounds almost like a PBEM, where they spend 5-10 minutes to place their commands for that turn, and then come back and do it again the next day. No one is gonna pay $10 a month so they can get 10 minutes of gameplay a day. PBEM's (in my opinion) are incredibly dull.

Just putting people in established nations could work. They could still pick their role in that world (priest, shopkeeper, soldier, etc). But then if we are doing individual characters, this sounds like Ultima Online and a drastic change to the game.

Also, in UO or others you spend your time fighting monsters mostly, if it were civ you'd spend most of your time fighting other players, via war. This changes the dynamic. In most games if you die, you get resurrected and keep playing. What would that do to a sim like this if everyone's army just got resurrected? That'd totally foul things up. But if you had a character that you put in time developing and your first battle you die and have to start over, that'd just piss people off. I think a 2 hour lifespan wouldn't attract people either.

As for Lemmy's suggestions, lets say you are science minister of your civ. What options could be added to make that post interesting? Right now of course science is just picking a tech and waiting to invent it. How could that become an active process? And something involving enough that would allow people to play for several hours each day?

I think a year long game would be appropriate, and then reset the world at the end of that. Or have a couple different "shards" running that start out staggered, so people can join different on-going games at different points of progression (ancient, middle ages, etc). One day turns.... i'm just not seeing it.

[Jon Miller]

yeah, in civ MP it is mostly PvP

most people want PvE for MMOs... (although a decent number like the possibility of PvP)

so I was thinking something maybe MOM like instead of Civ (would still be a 'Civ' style game)

I still want to know where to send all my ideas, I Think I have a working bit

maybe I Should just post them all in one huge post

Jon Miller

[OzzyKP]

Yea, post them here.

[Nikolai]

I found this in the List (for Civ3) 2.0:

10.1) Massive Multiplayer Online Civ - Bloodlines
In the context of Civ 2: The game would be played on an earth world that is much larger in size than any civ. You would build cities and civilizations to actual scale, and some players would play regions within civs, and can rebel and try to start their own civ, etc.
New benefits: Fun.
Discussion: You would play a bloodline that could marry with others and have children. If your bloodline dies out you have to restart the game.
Marrying would be the equivalent of making an alliance. Each member of your familly would be listed. Government would be such that you can tell different players, if you have completely captured their bloodline, to control a region for you, which they would do under the threat of eradication. The converse is of course also possible, and rebellion remains a possibility.
In a republic, the players in that civ would control different factions in the senate and would have to do actions to get them more popular so that they got more power. In general, play could move as in SMC’s simultaneous mode. New players would start along the edges of civilization and in historical areas. In the game you could “launch huge realistic campaigns against others, or manage a real looking and acting civ…”

[Jon Miller]

that looks familiar...

JM

[Nikolai]

Yeah, it does. But Atahualpa didn't mention the republic thing, did he?

[Jon Miller]

it was the list that originally led me to apolyton (after coming for scenarios when it was the Ultimate site)

I mostly just read, talked a bit..

JM

[Nikolai]

I see that you were part of the compiling group or something? Then perhaps you remember whether there was more MMOTBS ideas there? I'm sure I saw more than this when I first read the List years ago...

[Jon Miller]

I was sorta involved in the List 1 and 2, but the discussion

when it was actually being compiled, I was not arround

JM

[OzzyKP]

Our sister project at civfanatics:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=128780

[Jon Miller]

my idea over 6 years ago

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14806&perpage=30&pagenumber=4

Hi all

I have a really radical idea (have had it for a while, didn't think this forum was the place to post it but here it is)

my idea is massive multiplayer online civ

what made me post it was sovereign

my idea was that on an earth world that is much larger in size than any civ one (maybe real size with real size cities) you would build cities and civilizations

the management would be such that you can have people under you (and that they can rebel and try to start their own civ)

the game would start as all civ games do at 4000 bc

you would control a bloodline that could marry with others have children ect

if your bloodline dies out you have to restart the game

if another player captures all your blood line you then play under them in the management role they set you too

marrying out your bloodline would than be advantageous and would mean that you too would be allied

each member of your familly would be listed and you would have very complete government

government would be such that you can set different players, if you have completely captured their bloodline, to control a region for you

they would do this under the threat of eradication

you would of course have to watch them to keep them from rebelling against you

in a republic the players in that civ would control different factions in the senate and would have to do actions to get them more popular so that they get more power

early on you can be let men or women rule or both

if you have men only than you are introuble if you have only female members and you lose control of the city

besides the stuff to make this good for massive online most rules could be found in these forums

play could move like in smac simultaneous mode

play would go on over like 3 years to take the world to 2000 ad (turns would of course be less time as would tech learning)

new players would start along the edges of civilization and in historical areas

if there are no more places for cities of a bloodline to start one would start in the freeist, largest nation with the fewest bloodlines in it (a new family moving up in the world) or maybe after a certain time you can choose what to do

governments will be extremely customizable so that you can mske all sorts of ones even like the US or Rome

this is a crazy idea but I had it a while ago and I want it

humans are funner to play against then AI

I think this would be cool

I lied, many things would have to be changed because of the scale change (and many things would/could grow more realistic)

maybe we could even make it real time (but with speeded up time

maybe we could even make it play to two turns and die of old age

time could be linear in it in any case

wouldn't it be fun to launch huge realist campaigns against others, or manage a real looking and acting civ

maybe even we could make squares much much smaller and have it so that cities can spread and become larger

I'm being taken to the asylum now

Jon Miller

[Nikolai]

Asylum, eh? When did you escape?

But I see that it's your idea that's included in the List. Lucky bastard, I'd wish I was here when it was made, I came just too late...