Mass multiplayer Civ/MOO?

[Lemmy]

Unless Earth 2025 has significantly changed in the last 2 years, the tech model is a lot different then your basic civ game, it isn't tree like for example, and the game doesn't last untill there is a winner, but ends after a fixed amount of time.

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Lemmy
Unless Earth 2025 has significantly changed in the last 2 years, the tech model is a lot different then your basic civ game, it isn't tree like for example, and the game doesn't last untill there is a winner, but ends after a fixed amount of time.

Well it's this ending... Done well, it could be done the same with a Civ in mass multiplayer. Should be done elegantly by some way...

[Leland]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I don't understand why you can't start in the middle of the game? You can just start with some of the same techs as your neightbours or in the edges of civilization, can't you? Or you can, as the idea form the List suggests, lead a revolt, and if successfull lead the new nation.

If the game has a persistent world, after a while pretty much all the civs will have reached modern tech. If new players automatically get the same techs (or even part of them) that the existing players do, then they are missing out on the joy of discovering stuff by themselves. This kind of defies the point of having technological development in the first place.

Of course, a game could work out where people can choose their own starting level... some start with modern high-tech society, others with pointed sticks. But in that case you'd definitely need some balance between the two, so as not to make one superior to the other in every way.

[Trifna]

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=15103

Hey, I've just lurned it seems as the next "Galactic Civilization" will be some sort of massive multiplayer! I dunno really at which extent, but seems so (follow link). Something called Stellar Frontier is gonna be that multi player part of GalCiv (in the future) but I wasn't conscious it was MMP. Info on Stellar Frontier is at www.drengin.net

[Mathemagician]

good to see that others are dreaming of such a game too.
the main thing that is missing currently in massive multiplayer games is that they dont have a common map, they just use territory as a number and not a 2-dimensional locational object.
more on my opinion later.
im first gonna read through this thread.

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by War of Art
I'm sorry, I was about to write about mass MP TBS games, but I realised the suggestion was for RTS games. Wow ! Big difference there. Imagine the processing power for keeping all that moving.

yeah, me too. what i was dreaming of was a MMP TBS game of course.

i'll explain some ideas of mine later on.

[Mathemagician]

okay, i read through the thread.

ive been thinking about a concept to realize a MMP TBS game for a long time now.
let me first ask you:

under which circumstances would you be interested in playing such a game ?
it surely cannot include all suggestions here, since some of them are rather contradicting. is it mainly the general concept of MMPedness that you are interested in, or will you like such a game only if lives up to your personal ideas ?

also, would you rather have such a game browser-oriented or would you download a software.
could you imagine paying money for it ? from the beginning or only after a test period ?

the point is, im really considering to deal with that issue, maybe even on a commercial level one day. that depends on how likely the idea is to be productive.

so, please could you go more into how you would imagine a realization of such a game ?
id be very interested in hearing about that...

[Trifna]

Such browser games already exist. Earth 2025 is I think the most known of them all (search google, you'll see).

The thing would really be a game like MOO or GalCiv put to MMP. What I see as essential in such a game is:

- Intellect is what counts, player against player
- You're able to make political/diplomatical moves (help someone against another, etc.)

Sometimes, the problem in games as Earth 2025 is that most of the game is in chatting session since it's alot of diplomacy. Thus, in some way, to not let the REALALITY diplomatical skills of players show up and let it to the game itself, players need the option to not be able to contact each other. When it becomes the player who makes diplomacy, it can take alot of time in a week and it's a reaaaally different game (trust me ).

If you really make it, you may ask me any question any day and I'll make myself a pleasure to answer I have quite some experience on the field. Other things you wanna know?

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by Trifna
Such browser games already exist. Earth 2025 is I think the most known of them all (search google, you'll see).

i know. i played Utopia and Earth2025 and saw a dozen similarly made games. but all of the miss not only complexity, especially in diplomatic options, but also the feel of a civlike map, where territory and neighbourhood is actually open for diplomacy and relevant in a lot of ways.

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by Trifna
If you really make it, you may ask me any question any day and I'll make myself a pleasure to answer Other things you wanna know?

well, still the same questions.
how does the game have to be ? i mean both ingame feel and browser/software reliance.
what could/should it cost ?
how do you estimate the market chances for a game that is complex like civilization, but open to many more players ?
how close does it need to be to civ, or any of the suggestions made here.

things like that is what i would like to know first, before i deal more explicitly with the idea.

[Trifna]

How should be the game, this cannot rely on me only. But it has to be somewhat mainstreamed but without beeing TOO mainstream or it'll lose its depth and most of its serious player bases are the ones you'll see in Earth 2025 and so. It has to have an incomparable diplomatical/political depth, since THERE is really all the intelligence field (in player vs player) and not in tactical non-sense. This is where there's a player vs player thing, where people like to be acute, sharp or machiavellic. Maybe Galactic Civilizations will show the way. It is someting said in military fields that tactics are for starters, but strategy and political stuff around is what's higher, twisted and mental. What counts in my opinion is macro-management, since details always follow the general lines (as Napoleon said).

The ingame feel should be the one that gives the player the impression of ruling, where he sees what he gets ad loses. Like someone playing Civ or other TBS and having the impression of beeing a ruler. The rest has to be seen maybe by polls done to see people's opinions.

Cost? Well the cost depends on how big it is. If it's bigger, you can ask more. So it really depends. EverQuest Live (last version) costs soemthing like 30/month while some little unknown half-commercial game may cost 5. Average is between 10 and 15 USD.

About beeing civ-like, I'd say you want things to not be simply "who's tactically the best" (where having other players or not changes little) but "who's strategically the best" (where the intelligence/habilities of the opponents is what counts the most and you SEE the most. When you have humans instead of AIs, you have to use such an intelligence potential at its best, since there is where MP get its strenght). All micro reduced to minimum as much as possible. Doesn't has to be exactly civ-like, and has to be adapted to MMP.

The other aspects to be looked at are up to be seen.

[Mathemagician]

i mostly agree with you, Trifna. at least there is no point where i actually disagree.

for my ideas now:

it should have civ character in that you build up a civilisation from the very core, maybe even earlier than the real civilisation, like from the first people who live together in a village and have an undisputed leader.

it should then be mostly a matter of decisions the player makes, where no decision can be seen as absolutely right or wrong in the beginning.

i imagine then more of an economical game where you have to manage your territory, its cultivation, a lot of ressources, not so narrow as just production, gold and food. maybe lumber, stone, iron and some more specific ones, but that goes into detail already.

i also want to keep micromanagement low, with the focus being to make the basic decisions where your civ goes and later on, if you meet others, how you treat them.
i want mainly the source for conflicts as realistical as possible (in addition to all of the game's other aspects of course ).
that is, for example, some territories with valuable deposits, a strategical outpost for trade into distant colonies, alliances that contradict each other (like in WW1) and cause dilemmas when a war erupts somewhere else.

all these little tactical, strategical and psychological things that make a crowd of neighboured nations tick.
detailed long-term interests should rule the politics of the game. thats the main thing im enthusiastic about.

as for the game, it should of course be more detailed than in CTP, CIV whatsoever. if detailed factors are to be important, a civ cannot just unimpeded expand over 1000s of kms by building settlers all the time.

my ideas for newer joining players are plentifold:

1.) they start as a rebel faction, or in-country opposition to some existing player who isnt making his people content enough.

2.) they start out in a sparsely settled region (like in a dynamically growing world, think: drifting island idea) and "grow" into the existing world by not being extincted by the established civs for reasons that have be thought of yet. in the worst case, they might just stick together, form an alliance of small nations to defend against 1 or 2 bigger ones.

[Mathemagician]

...continued...

3.) newer player start out as other characters, such as traders, mayors, local barons or such and have to obey certain orders from the great kings, but are free in other regards. this would allow to hand over the micro-management to these subordinated once your civ gets better and bigger.

4.) when the world/planet reaches a certain threshold of nations or a specific tech level, whichever comes first, newer players start a new world/planet. this would also allow for several planets competing later on. WAY later one !

i guess it will end up with a mixture of these.
i like both points 3 and 4. point 3 could possibly draw some role-players as well. but it should be way more complicated to implement too.

about the timing.
- for the game to be massive multiplayer, all turns have to be done synchronously. so it would have to be kind of tick-based.
- for the micro-interests (NOT micro-management) to be relevant, the turns have to be plenty, so that long-term planning is really interesting.
- for the year counts to be realistic, the turn lengths (in game years) have to be short.
- for the game to be playable, the real turn lengths have to be big enough, like one day.

quite contradicting, isnt it ?

yep !
but such a beautiful game of open-end would be long-term anyway, so how about this time-scale:

12 hours = 1 turn meaning 2 turns per day.
1 turn = 1 game year meaning 2 game years per real day.
730 turns per year = 730 game years per real year.

if the game runs for 5 years (for the more interested players) this makes 3500+ years of civilisation with plenty of details.

considering that many players only want to make movements once per 2 or 3 days, 4-6 turns of the game would have to be possible to plan somehow in advance, like with goto options, queue lists. this should be possible i think.

also, i would like to move away from the totally city oriented game structure of previous civ games.
i'd prefer to mark each map square as 1 of several states:
- undiscovered (totally black)
- unexplored (viewn from outside, not entered yet)
- explored (but not inhabited)
- claimed (a few troops patrolling it)
- settled (small settlements)
then 2-4 settlement levels

production wouldnt be focussed on cities anymore (trivially, since cities dont 'exist' anymore), but are rather a matter of areas. global civ-wide production i dont like too much cause that would imply that all ressources are gathered without difficulty, but maybe im getting to much into details here.
maybe i will come up with some way in between later on.

troop movement
troops wouldnt just defend the square they're sitting on. they would have a radius or some other measure of activity range, where they can automatically defend territory. on the other side, the surveillance/visibility system would have to be slightly adjusted.

well, i have many more ideas where it should go away from classical civ games.
im aware that many of them will be
a) hard to invent/think of.
b) hard to implement.
c) hard for the players to understand.

c) can be compensated with lots of advisor-type auto-mechanisms to reduce micro-management.
b) i still believe to be possible, provided there is enough server power (im not familiar with hardware requirements or possibilities, so im not sure)
a) is the main reason i put it up to discussion here, in the hope of getting some ideas.

back to the realization stuff again:

economical aspect:

means of making money:
- advertisement like in most current ("simple") online strategy games
- selling software that is required to play, probably only after a test time of 3-6 months.
- selling software to improve the macro-management/overview tools, or for example to get away from (probably slow) browser-reliant gaming
- donations of players

means to save money:
- establishing a network of participating servers all over the world that each have rather specialized tasks or handle a part of the (massive) player number.
these could either be provided for free by enthusiastic players or they could be compensated by a share of the ad revenue calculated from the number of players on their server.

[Trifna]

Well the game can start anywhere... And games can be started with all players starting at same time, and new ones beeing incorporated from the parts of territory that are breaking apart for exemple. But I don't see what I said that was contrary to what you wrote.

One thing, I wouldn't get into specific stuff such as having "lumber", "stone", "iron" and so on. Otherwise, will you name 346 988 different existing ressources? Better say that someone has an economy with this about energy, water, food and categorize each ressources. Two different economies can get more optimized one with eachother, and if one is stronger than the other it can take control of the other. Stuff like that, conceptualized at the simplest possible.

[Mathemagician]

Originally posted by Trifna
But I don't see what I said that was contrary to what you wrote.

well, what i said was that there was NO point where i disagree with you.

One thing, I wouldn't get into specific stuff such as having "lumber", "stone", "iron" and so on. Otherwise, will you name 346 988 different existing ressources?

maybe, but i would like to make it feel as detailed as possible without it getting too complicated, especially with ressources, cause they could be the main reasons civs would fight for some terrain.
i dont mind having many automated tools so that it is more intuitive for the player and he cannot calculate all things back to the roots like in CTP...