Announcement

**The Joker** · October 19, 2000, 15:20

Thanks for the links, Korn.

What I was telling Korn about the gameplay was, that I think that some part of the game would not be looking at the map, but be in windows, like the tax menu in Civ2, but more expanded, where you would handle diplomacy, economy, domestic politics etc. This would take up maybe 30% of the gaming time. The rest of the time would be with civ like tasks, like unit movement.

Generally there should be more macromanagement and less micromanagement. There should be more tools to use, but they would work for the empire as a whole and not just for individual provinces.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**korn469** · October 20, 2000, 09:22

ok i haven't found genghis khan yet...but i did find nobunga's ambition which is about the same

the graphic sux but play around with it some and see what u think

you can download nobunga's ambition from here
http://www.geocities.com/unsanescan/Nobunga.zip

get an emulator from here
http://www.zsnes.com/archives.html

korn469

hmmm the link doesn't seem to be working correctly i will fix it when i get back from class
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited October 20, 2000).]

**The Joker** · October 20, 2000, 15:23

The links in the first post just sent me round and round in circles.
However, I am getting nobungas ambition now, and will check it out.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**Guildmaster** · October 21, 2000, 16:07

Just a thought, but why not make the interface more like a role-playing-game? What the player really sees is anything a real world leader would see, their advisors telling them what's going on, maybe in a conference with generals you look at a map and decide what you want to to with the war, etc. and the generals go off and fight it. Then certain technology affects how you view your world.
In ancient times, you view your empire as a rough sketch of your country on a rolled-out stretch of papyrus depending of course on how good your mapmaking skills are. With the advent of global sattelite imaging you get to view your whole empire on a computer console instead.
This same technique can be used to accent the "delayed responce" thingy we were talking about a while back, say you send a messenger to your army in Gaul and then after a while if you're lucky you get a messenger come back to you telling you stuff. And who knows how far from the truth the message is... until the advent of writing, that is. Also this would allow you to personally fly out to another country to meet with foreign delegates.

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Goes down smooth when I get a clean hit of that skunky, funky, smelly green sh.t
- Cypress Hill

**korn469** · October 22, 2000, 02:34

after a couple hours of trying i finally found genghis khan for the nintendo just ready to be researched by our team

so check it out here!
http://www.geocities.com/unsanescan/gk1.html

i swear it has everything in it that everybody has been asking for

a disease model
a trade model
a population model
even generals going off to fight and a delayed responce model that guildmaster just asked about

so try it and discuss please

korn469

**The Joker** · October 22, 2000, 06:53

"Slow realtime?"

"Roleplaying game like interface?"

Ehh, guys?

Shouldn't we try to keep this a bit realistic? Here we are struggling to get a working version of a simple economy demo, and you are suggesting things that would need complete restructuring of everything. The reason we can succeed is, that we are reusing some of the basic game aspects from Civ2, and that we can therefore focus on more advanced things, like improving the gameplay and the historical accuracy.

I say we keep the Civ like interface, where the player hovers over the map, and where we use the preplanned turn system, which offers the best from both turn based and realtime strategy, and then focus our effort on making this the best game ever!

PS: I have just downloaded Ghengis Khan now, and I will try it today.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**korn469** · October 22, 2000, 15:51

ok now i think this discussion is finally getting somewhere...

When we first started this project i used to think that our goal should be to create a SMAC+ (civ2++) game, using many of the ideas presented in the various civ3 lists. However, at present i think that making SMAC+ (civ2++) would be futile. The earliest we would be able to finish our game would be early 2001 (if that). By that time CtP2 would be a year old and would probably have an expansion pack out and Civ3 would probably be at least three months old. Freeciv would be probably like at version 2.0+

Civ2 is pushing its limits, i think the civ2 scenarios have taken civ2 as far as it can go (past the limits envisoned by it's creators) and anything we do must have fresh ideas if we are to gain any following and to maintain interest in this project. If our game in final form is going to be less advanced than CtP2 then we are in real trouble.

So i think that we should do something with a civ vibe but is not civ. Every single fresh idea increases the chances that this project will succeed. I think that we explore all kinds of new ideas and find what works.

korn469

**The Joker** · October 24, 2000, 03:13

I think we are doing this pretty good already. We haven't really moved on to advanced features yet, but all the basic features that we are using are ones that we have developed ourselves.

But I agree, we should try to give the game many new features. Since Civ2 does such a great job doing what it wants to do there is no reason just trying to improve that. We have to implement new features that Civ2 doesn't have.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**amjayee** · October 24, 2000, 06:08

I'm quite positive about having many new advanced features. Just remember that the more features, the longer the game will take to finish. Also I think that the basic features, like economy, population, warfare would be the same even if we are moving to some new direction eventually. So, I think we can well continue the work with the basic models as we have done this far, and meanwhile make ideas about the "bigger" things. About the rpg-like system, I like that idea; also it would be done mainly with UI, so we could well add it later. About slow real-time, that seems to be beyond the reach; the game will require quite much calculations, so a real time game would consume lots of resources. It would also change the game system quite much. Basically I think making ideas is good, but for now we should perhaps assume that we will make a game somewhat like civ2-smac, but reserve the possibility to change the system later.

**ElmoTheElk** · October 29, 2000, 07:15

I don't think it's a good idea to change the total system later on in our project, however we certainly should decide now on how the system works, otherwise we stay in the beginning fase of the game development and we will never get finished...

About the rpg style: You'll have to explane this more, I can't seem to undertand what this means for our game.

**The Joker** · October 29, 2000, 11:34

I agree with Elmo here. We can't change the entire system later on. But I don't think we would really want to.

I think we all have pretty much the same idea how the system should work.

But I don't really get what RPG would add to the game. Would that mean you would have a little man that you could move around and talk to your generals or what? I wouldn't want that to happen. I like the Civ2 game perspective and UI, as it seem to be the very best way to play an RTS game/historical simulation. Of cause we would have special features, like the delayed responce, which is an idea that I really like. But basically I think we should stick with the known UI - Civ2's UI.

Of cause if anyone comes with a truly great RPG UI, that can be added to the game without having to change the other game features I am not saying that I would necessarily vote no on that. But I don't think we should spend our time thinking of one at this moment.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**korn469** · October 29, 2000, 15:57

i also agree with elmo here

if we decide on a radical design change about halfway through the process it would basically mean that we had wasted time and effort with no reward and would probably be just a nail in the coffin

i however do not think that we have the same idea on how the system should work...

personally i would like to create the "thinking man's warcraft III" i think that would be different and fresh

i think that the roleplaying in the game should be on managing characters in the game...these characters should work something like the continental congress in colonization

some characters should be generals represented on the map, with areas of influence that confers special bonuses on surrounding troops, these areas of effect should work like the paladin's auras in diablo 2

other characters should not be represented on the map (or if they are maybe they could be included with a special king/HQ unit) some of the jobs they could hold would be economic advisors, chief of secret police, secretary of state and so forth...these important characters should have special influences on your empire as a whole...for example Henry Ford is your nation's economic advisor, he confers the efficent manufactoring techniques on all of your factories, so they produce goods cheaper and quicker, but people become twice as restless during an economic downturn or something like that...

as for system resources, if we have the resources to find out something as abstract as the exact amount of tuna fish that lower class people wanna buy then we could probably find the resources to add in other things, like characters

if RT is beyond the scope of this game please give me something to work with besides the tired (dull) smac/civ2 concept...because we are going to be competing with CtP2/CtP2x, Civ3/Civ3x, and CtP/SMAC/Civ2, Freeciv etc

there isn't any point in making another civ2 clone, and especially not one that doubles or triples the amount of micromanagement while taking away the fun tasks and putting them in the hands of the AI

korn469

**The Joker** · October 29, 2000, 17:25

truly great post, korn. I may not agree completely, but you really make the reader (me) think about the game, and what we should do.

We really must find out what we want to do with this game, what features we should have and how we should make it better than the competition.

Characters:

I think we should have this game be close to reality. I like realism, and I actually think making this game more realistic than Civ2 could make it a funnier game than Civ2. But characters, at least not as they are implemented in many games, are not really "realistic". I don't want characters (other than yourself) that live for millenia. Characters should only live as long as they would do in reality. And characters should be realistic in all ways. They should not take over the rest of the game's aspects.

But when that is said I can actually become a supporter of characters. They actually work good with the domestic politics system that I think we should implement. For an early look check out my old SI model. I haven't worked on this for months (I have focused on economy), and it is not at all complete, but it should make it possible for the social classes in your civ to have a mind of their own. Maybe the workers will revolt and demand communism if you don't give them what they want. If it is done intelligently I feel it could truly make the game great. Imagine being forced by the nobility (who is the most powerful class in your civ) to go to war with another civ! You could either refuse, and cast your civ into a civil war, or accept and go to war against your own will! Lots of great things could be done. you could get influence in other civs from the back door by supporting classes there. You give them money, which they can use to get power in their civ, and in return the give you some special goodies if they get to power!

I think that the domestic politics thing could either be a historically correct version of the characters, or be used with them by having characters as class leaders. Other characters would be commanders, which would be used to give certain bonuses to your armies.

The politics system combined with the econ system that we are working on now will make virtually anything and everything possible. I feel they could become the very core of the game.

RT:

I think Amjayee's turn system is really great. it removes the unfair advantage that war starters has, it takes a lot of the great things from RT and still keeps the relaxation provided by RPG: you can sit down, have a cup of coffee and think about things without having to worry. It also opens the path to some really cool multiplayer game options: imagine having loads of players in a multiplayer game, and the rule is just that every day each player sends in his moves to the server. The server then processes the data from all players, and whenever the players want to they download the new game stats, see what happened that turn and do their turn again. Multiplayer gaming would become much more convenient for us who don't want to stay online for 10 hours straight. Plus, there would be no waiting time what so ever.

Fun tasks:

Let's see. What are the fun tasks of Civ2? Moving around hundreds of units tile by tile? Moving around little heads on a city map? No. The fun tasks are thinking out strategies for your next war, prioritize production and research, doing diplomacy with other civs. And while removing much of the tedious micromanagement from GGS with the economy model, by simply having some predefined algorithms handle it all. The player would do what the government does in reality. If you don't feel like managing econ you can just set a tax rate. If you like to mingle around with it you could set tariffs on individual goods, make a progressional tax rate and many other things. One of my dreams for the project is to make it useable for education purposes as well as entertainment. Imagine a highschool class that just plays GGS for social studies. They would choose a country today, and just do what countries do. They could even play against each other. That is what realism provides.

And the fun tasks of Civ2 will be a much larger part of GGS. There would be diplomacy with foreign nations as well as with your own classes/characters. You would manage large armies in stead of single units, which would give you more time to think out a strategy. More realism in combat would also make it suicidal to not spend time on your war strategy.

That is my dream for GGS.

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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting

**The Joker** · October 30, 2000, 17:19

Truly great ideas, Amjayee. With them characters would be taken to a whole new level in gaming!

I now agree with both Amjayee and Korn. We should have characters, and we should try to implement them as Amjayee suggested.

Characters should have some effect on the history created by us, since, well, they have in real history. They should be more or less loyal to you, and some times they would try to throw you away and take over power.

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

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