Openciv3 - Realism, Scope, Abstraction and Adjusting them

[The Joker]

I think it is a fascinating concept to use game years in stead of historical years. But like the starting date it should remain an option. It is, after all, not something that will take an awful amount of time to implement.

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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.

GGS Website

[Guildmaster]

Ok something just occured to me, if we're going to use that concept of time, then there is no such thing as a starting date! Since there is no year save yesteryear and next year, how can we say it's the year 10000BC?

I think that the players should be able to start the game instead at a certain tech level...
and choose which tech level they want to start at.

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[amjayee]

I was thinking just the same, Guildmaster. That would be more reasonable. So the player could choose to start at the dawn of agriculture, ath the dawn of cities, at the dawn of science, and so on. But; isn't the tech level different in different places? Perhaps if the player chooses to start at the dawn of agriculture, he would be among the first cultures to discover that.

[Guildmaster]

I have a better idea:

A player gets to choose not only his own starting tech leve, but also the relative tech level of his competitors!
why?
BIG BONUS POINTS
Say you could start at the dawn of the information age (1979?)
You could start with the USA, in which case you get no bonus.
Imagine, however, you could start playing as Ghana or Bangladesh or Afghanistan or something like that. Not that I'm saying those countries are backwards, but in terms of communication networks, military might, and consumer buying power they don't compare to any of the industrialized west countries. In fact I think it would present an interesting challenge to BE the country that the superpowers use in a proxy war. SO why start at such a disadvantage?
Say for every major science handicap you take you get an exponential ammount points added to your total score for that game, x squared where x is the number of handicaps you take.
Then you could do the same with deliberately taking a leader that is "less than the wisest."

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[ElmoTheElk]

Wow, really great ideas here! When we let the user choose the tech levels of all the civs (or let the AI generates them) it is just about the best method to implent difficulty levels. 1 prob less. AND the game is even more costumizable AND more fun to play.

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Guns, Germs & Steel homepage

[Guildmaster]

hehehe

Then we don't have to make stupid rules that sets difficulty levels of Civ2 which determine how much cheating the AI is allowed. That makes the game more simple too, since there is only 1 difficulty level.

Only thing now is to ask: How are points going to be used, and what good are they?
Do we want to just have a high-scoreboard or what?
If we're going to use the relay-race thing where you start another game right after you lose the last one and keep the same timeline, then perhaps you could "spend" your points on something like more money or something like that. I dunno?

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[ElmoTheElk]

Hum, not a bad idea. I was also thiking of some other sort of reward for your points. Like unlocking new things when you reach x points in 1 game (of max x turns). Something like that.

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Guns, Germs & Steel homepage

[The Joker]

Great ideas here! All of them! Keep it up, guys!

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"It would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
- A Clockwork Orange

GGS Website

[Guildmaster]

I know!
Perfect!

We know that assuming the game is good enough, people will play the crap out of it for days and months and years.

We can have secret subcommands in the game that unlock hidden toys once you reach a total number of points on that computer.

Suppose normally the game would end when the first player dominates the world (ho-ho I'm the king of the world let's play again) or something like that. If you had enough points as a player as a whole since you started playing the game, say at 2,500,000 points the following event happens:

you would suddenly be introduced to an alien species and being the emperor of earth you would have to defend the Jupiter colonies against an alien invasion force, then try and mount an interstellar counteroffensive with the latest starships and space marines. You would be inducted into the Galactic High Council and begin an arms race against the Korban empire while they threaten you with the devastating "Omega-Bomb" and have to spread a vast network of genetically engineered spies across the galaxy to make sure they don't try to smuggle something like that to Earth.

Perhaps another idea:
You reach 5,000,000 archaeologists discover in a remote cavern of Antarctica: what appears to be a timecapsule. Apparently, before the last Ice age, some 30,000 years ago there was a tremendously advanced civilization on Earth, but was destroyed by some cataclysmic event. To prevent everything from being lost, they mustered everything they could into an enourmous data-storage machine built to last eons. Well you found it. In it, you find all sorts of technological wonders the world hasn't pondered for millenia- hypersonic matter-displacement drive systems, radically advanced physical theories and calculations describing the exact nature of light and how to accelerate past it, reciprocating micro-fusion power plants that use water for fuel and make air for exhaust, microscopic Bio-genetic automatons that can be wired directly to the brain's neurons and act like living nanites that a person can control as easily as an arm or a leg.

I dunno, what do you think?

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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray

[amjayee]

Also I like the ideas presented here. That kind of point system would give many new things for the genre, and make the game style we are planning interesting. Also the reward system would be cool, and would keep players playing for long times! (Assuming it's really difficult to reach 5000000 points.) Also we would need to make sure that the rewards are not always the same. They would depend on situation, and also players might have the option to choose for what they want to use the points. And most of all the rewards must not ruin the game atmosphere. But otherwise I think these are Great Ideas! And we will have lots of times planning how to implement them.

[The Joker]

lol



Cool ideas. But let's make a game before we start an interstellar war.

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"In America, first we take the sugar, then we take the power, then we take the women."
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[ElmoTheElk]

This is an reaction to the discussion made in the Disease Model Programming tread:

I think I don't really agree with you all. I think it's don't neccesary has to be boring moving your units unit by unit and attacking regions unit by unit.

So making whole armies isn't really good here. Instead we could give the ability to group units, like it is done in the Command & Conquer series (and virtually every other new rts game). Of course there are more than 10 groups available.

Any feedback?

[amjayee]

I'm afraid that moving single units tile by tile is quite out of question. The units will be 1000-10000 men each, so there would be hundreds and hundreds of them, and it would be quite impossible to create AI to handle that kind of mass of units. With armies, that task would be easier. Also armies makes handling the combat far easier, since we can simply decide, what effect each kind of unit has in the outcome of the battle; thus we can make a system where, unlike in civ2, the different unit types don't work in the same way. Thus, we can have much more realistic artillery, archers, cavalry etc. than earlier. And let's face it; war is organized combat between armies, where different unit types cooperate, not single units; it has been that way for thousands of years. Only the earliest clashes between small tribes and guerrilla war make an exception.

Even with larger tiles, they will still be some 50-70 km wide; one tile would be quite large an area to be covered only one division of 10000 men. So the scope also propose the use of armies.

Also another point is, that the map sizes will be, as said, way larger. It would kill both you and your keyboard to move 200 units tile by tile across large distances.

I can see your point here, but I'm afraid we simply can't go along that path anymore. It is quite natural way of thinking that if we change something that is familiar for us, and we like it, it might become less good or fun. But I'm quite assured the new system would be just as good, and at least just as fun as the old system; it's just that it would be good and fun in another way.

Also, the opinion of the guy who needs to take part in programming the system, it would be much easier and more fun to use the army system. And yes, I think it would become far better also. And this system consumes also less computer resources.

And finally personal level, conquering the world, where you needed massive armies, was quite tedious. Basically, underneath the keyboard hassle, the strategics and tactics were fun, but the unit movement was not very fun after a couple of games like that. Just my personal opinion.

[This message has been edited by amjayee (edited November 27, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All!

I hope you don't mind non-members inserting opinions...

I just wanted to support amjayee's point about armies being better than units. I'll be brief (actually after proofreading, I Lied, its not brief).

1. Historically the more powerful armies win wars (duh!) but only by concentrating military power at the critical points. The only reason this doesn't work in Civ is because arbitrary rules, like only one unit in the stack defends, make 'real' armies untenable at least in the open. In a game without these rule distortions the more powerful force will generally win if it is concentrated. A more powerful force will lose if it is dispersed while its opponent concentrates, since each small army can be defeated in turn by the large army with very small losses. Of course, guerilla war is an exception, because the dispersed forces refuse set-piece battles.

2. We've discussed this a lot over in the Clash forums, and armies are pretty much the hands-down winners because of reduced micromanagement, and more historical gameplay. (Feel free to peruse our forum on this point Elmo) But there is one caution. You need a vaguely reasonable supply system or the 'reality' I speak of in item 1 will imbalance the game. First, supply rules will limit army size since only so much food can Get to a single square. Second, without supply limits or other restrictions on task force (TFs, our army units) movements the first really great army can sweep the board. What prevented this in history was geographic boundaries, supply limitations, and human concerns, like Alexander's troops forcing him to turn back from India.

So Elmo, IMO if the AI is concentrating into armies, you will be forced to do so by the inevitable results of losing all your single units in turn. At least if the GGS military system is vaguely realistic.

[ElmoTheElk]

Hum, I agree with you now. You convinced me of using armies instead of units. The thing we should beware of is what Mark said: don't let the big armies inmeadiately control the others. We must have an well balanced system that gives small(er) civs a change to win from large armies.

This is even more realistic (for example: Japan has won a war against the Sovjet Union not that long ago...). The other probs Mark gave us are also pretty interesting ones that are relly has to be discussed. Supplies for your army, for example, is a nasty thing...

(To be continued...)