Poll

[VetLegion]

I read the meeting log where amjayee and chrispie were. They spoke of many things, amongst them about joy of building ... a peaceful civilization!!

What??

This assures me that we have some very different views about civ. In all civ games I tried to conquer the world.

I mean, I did enjoy building my empire... using as most land as I can, designing an efficient network of transport (land and sea), irrigating, fortifying... but all that because I had a goal of conquering the world with it at one point! (as soon as possible that is )

Anyway, we can have game be both, no problem there. Another thing emerges from regions/cities debate. I think it revolves around few questions:

- Do we have only one type of tiles?
- Do we start in a previousely inhabited world or not?
- Does world start already devided in regions?
- Do we allow dynamic borders of regions?

My answers are:
- yes
- no
- no
- yes

I also want to say that I see no reason for including hunter gatherers and very little reason for including nomads.

Also, Leland? You there?
I think your city idea has potential, can you please explain it more?

[ElmoTheElk]

My answers:
- yes, i think we can make this work good enough
- no, there are just some people living at your starting location. Also, you won't start with an cities, but with an (military) unit that you will need to conquer more land and so find cities.
- no, definatly not. there are only regions where civs are.
- yes, but not player definable. they are the result of cities, tech, wealth, etc. in the region and where in the region improvements are an people live.

About nomads and stuff: we may add them later, but not as a civ but more like the barbarians in civ2.

Good post Vet!

Also extra questions that arised from the meeting:
- Are there more ways to win the game?
- When yes, are they set at the start of the game/scenario?
- Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic (resizable and moveable) or static (like in most rts games, like Red Alert 2)?

My answers:
- yes, but i think we all agree with that.
- yes, at the start of a game and they can't be changed after that.
- Dynamic, this may be harder to program but it's really nice for users to set there own priorities about window sizes, etc. I can live with static ones though.

Discussion...

[The Joker]

Interesting topic...

I don't have a world of time right now, so for now I will just post my votes:

- Yes
- Yes
- No
- Yes

And for Elmo's questions:

- Yes
- Yes
- Not sure - depends on what you programming guys can do.

That's it for now. I will elaborate later.

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"If I sink to the bottom I can run to the shore!"
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[amjayee]

My answers for my kind of game would be yes for everything. For Elmos's questions, yes to others, but no to the last one; static windows are adequate for our purposes. Dynamic windows require much more advanced system than we are using.

About world being inhabited and divided to regions (so the middlemost two questions) I don't have any problem if we choose not to make those features; we can well use similar kind of system as in civ2. I just think the system with four yes's would be better and nicer for me, but I'm aware that would be more difficult to do. So just expressing my opinion.

About peaceful building, I sometimes wage war and conquer the world (my record is some 200 BC for the conquering of the whole world in the normal - sized world! That was quite some game. *gets drifted away with memories*) but I have found that less satisfactory than building a perfect country of my own, trading peacefully and protecting it against enemies. Civ2 is nice in the way that it allows enough fun things for this, too; so actually there are three objectives for the game. Though I have used the AC option only a couple of times.

[chrispie]

- Do we have only one type of tiles?

Yes

- Do we start in a previousely inhabited world or not?

Yes, but only limited inhabited area's, like the game sets out the world as inhabited in certain area's, and picks civ starting points from them if we use random maps.

- Does world start already devided in regions?

Um, no I think probably not also, regions are defined by players but only to a certain extent.

- Do we allow dynamic borders of regions?

Maybe after a region has been defined, it can only be changed by x amount per 'turn'.

And..

- Are there more ways to win the game?

Yep, for sure.

- When yes, are they set at the start of the
game/scenario?

Absolutly!

- Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic (resizable and moveable) or static

Hmm, well making them have a limited amount of dynamicness we could get away with. I'm thinking static interface but with some level of UI movement. One thing for example, could be an icon that when you hover over it, a menu bar with more icons or text "slides" out. I'll have a go at some menu stuff soon.

[heardie]

1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Both
7. Whatever the programmers say.

Ill addd a question:
8. Am I short on time right now?

Yes



Sorry for the brief answers

[The Joker]

To explain my votes...

Only one type of tiles:
We all agree on this, so not much explanation needed here.

Previously inhabited world:
I think that the world at the start of the game should already be inhabited by primitive people, as well as the civs that would be in the game. It would not be very hard to program, since these people would not be organized in any way, and would therefore not be active. The main things I like about a previously inhabited world is, that it creates more realism. For examble, we are using Amjayee's unit movement model. And an important part of that is to make unit movement more realistic, and therefore much faster than in Civ2. But that would mean that a player, even at the beginning of the game in an uninhabited world could send his troops to far away places in no time - propably just 10-20 turns for crossing a continent. But that makes the game weird and unrealistic, since that can not be done in reality, and since it would mean that the player could conquor an awful lot of land in no time. Having people in all hexes removes this oddness. What it would mean is, that to conquor a hex would require beating up these primitive people. So if you want to get a larger civ you would have to fight them. And doing that these people would act as a very pathetic unit, that would just damage your unit a little bit. Nothing big when conquoring a few hexes, but it would kill a unit to conquor a continent.

Furthermore these people would be fun to have, despite their (complete) inactivity. So when you conquor a hex you would get more people as well as more land to your civ. But these people would obviously not be of your nationality. Rather they would be "primitive". And as always having too many foreigners in your civ creates problems. Another way to reduce the dumb, early and ultrafast expansion we could otherwise have.

Finally each civ would have it's sphere of influence, showing how much influence you would have over other people. And if your influence over the primitive people in nearby hexes gets high enough (it would just mean that you were much more advanced and mighty than them) they could join your civ. This whole sphere of influence might seem advanced. But it really doesn't have to be. It would just be a function of each civ's size and wealth and power, plus it's cultural significance. Futhermore it could be used between two civs as well. If you have a small neighbor civ whose culture it greatly influenced by you, and whose largest trading partner is you, and you have a good relationship, the small civ might join yours as a protectorate.

Not having the world already divided into regions:
I think regions should be a thing of civs, not primitives. And I think regions should be made by the players. This is why I don't think regions should exist at the beginning of the game. I honestly think that each of the starting civs (other civs could join later on) would start with just one hex, and the sole region of the civ would be that hex. The rest of the world should be free for conquest and expansion, and for new civs to emerge.

Having dynamic regions:
We all agree on this (don't we?), so I don't think I need to explain that much. I think static regions are evil. That's it. Regions are a cultural, not a natural thing. It should be so in the game as well.

And finally...

GUI windows:
When I think about it I have actually come to the conclusion that static windows would propably be best. I think that all games with dynamic windows have poor looking ones. They are always dull, grey and windows like. And I don't like that type of interface. I am sure that we can make something that looks great, and I am sure that Elmo and Heardie can draw something that looks good. But dynamic regions just makes everything so much more dificult, and reduces the room for artistic liberty greatly.

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"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on

GGS Website

[VetLegion]

Units dont have to fight unorganised people
If they are not organised, they wont fight.
Units should take damage, but due to supply lines mostly.

World inhabited with primitives on "no mans land" is strange, and never was a case. But again, I am not concerned about realism, so we can make it.

But to me it can be two ways:

- world is uninhabited, and you and other "players" start in one place and expand your population

- world is inhabited, then it is also divided between tribes, warlords, despots, city states or other primitive forms of government. This means that you should also border someone from the very start.

Do we all agree that we start after hunther-gatherers?

Nomads are more fitting, although I think they should not move very great distances. They should be a civ (tribe) with a leader etc and their territory. They would migrate (seasonal) inside that teritory, so in effect, they would be a civ with specific economy.

[The Joker]

The people would not be completely unorganized. They would just be organized at too low a level to be used gamewise. There would be local warlords etc, but none of these would control very many people, and so there would be several in every hex. And these people doesn't have to be hunter/gatherers. They could be farmers as well, there would just not be any central authority controling anything as big as a 50 km hex.

And I think it is completely realistic. The world does not evolve at the same speed, and should not be at the same level at the beginning of the game. 4000 BC thriving farmers were developing the first civs in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, China and elsewhere. But what about the people of France, UK, Croatia and Denmark? They were propably farmers at that point. But to call them civs would be a big mistake, since they were not organized at a high enough level. Like I said there were local tribes with warlords, controlling only a few hundred people each. These societies should be portrayed, since they would be an important part of the life of an early civ.

I think nomads has to be modelled too. The Mongols travelled thousands of kms, conquoring everything they encountered. That alone is reason enough to include them. Fall of the Roman empire, Vandals, Huns, Gots. All nomads of some sort.

------------------
"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on

GGS Website

[chrispie]

I don't think that nomads (in terms of the Mongols) can be considered in the same sense as local disorganised populations. I think anything which requires major movement of population and controlling of area's must be done by a 'force' usually that of a Civilization. IMO a Civilization can be described in terms of a controlling system, i.e that of a goverment at one level or another, a group of people who control the fate of greater numbers of people.

So when the game starts, you are just that, a goverment in control of um go on then ... 1 tile. Much of the populated world is populated by people in the same manner, but has no government to control them. This implies of course that tiles need more than just population total...

[VetLegion]

Well, I am not going for realism, so as I said we can do it so that we have "non-owned primitives" or "disorganised natives" living on tiles you can conquer. But as chrispie said, tile needs additional info then. Or do you just conquer a number of people, without specific characteristics?

As I said, it makes sence to me to have either uninhabited world or inhabited and divided to "tribes" at the start.

As for nomads, in gameplay terms:

Mongols would be a nomadic (nomad economy) civ in Mongolia, which sent massive troops (military) to the west and south to conquer. They based rule on military suppression of population.

Visigoths on the other hand moved the entire tribes. This can be portreyed as massive migration - disbanding of towns to settler units (or woman and children units) and moving them together with military (this should be costly in lives). Each of those units should act as a "mobile city", so it would have ability to move at the begining of turn, settle, then move again. Every civ could do that, but you should invest in animal food tecnologies heavily then, since crops demand permanent settling.

nomadic economy - a system of production of food based on animals.

So nomad civ is possible, but a settled civ should always, except very early, be in advandage over nomadic one. This can be achieved by making animal domestication/exploitation technologies easier to achieve than agricultural ones and making them incopatible with cities and big population density.

Nomad civ should be a tool for player who is not satisfied with his starting location. By switching to nomad economy and investing in related tech, he can move cities around with less cost, maintain a population growth (not huge, but some) and develop a relatively superior fighting force (at the age).

In terrain which can not support extensive agriculture this should pay off and allow civ to grow, however nomadic civs would have a limit for development of technology, which would force player to make permanent cities and switch to agriculture as soon as possible, but certainly before he hits the limit. A player deciding to rule a nomadic civ forever should eventually be destroyed by lowland civs with superior technology and numbers.

A nomadic civ would also have external borders, and it would have government, just that its internal workings would be different (smaller cities, no agriculture, no roads, no high tech) and it would have some bonuses: easier military tech, switching city/settler in same turn(?), primitive and thus homogenous population with small number of classes and no rioting.

In any case, you should see nomads in only 10% of the game time, the earliest, after that, they would be seriousely behind in tech and pop.

Nomad civs would generally ne inable do develop far, due to lack of cities, but they do develop riding animals, and also usualy have superior military skill. This would allow player to adapt to his starting conditions and would be simmilar to the The Wheel (chariot) or Bronze Working (Phalanx) choice/dillema in civ, just with more depth.

A nomad civ would only have one region.

[chrispie]

That's all cool vet, but...these Nomad civs would they be human players too? Would it be fair to give some players such bad starting conditions that they are forced into that? Also, I wonder how much it'd be worth us taking time to write all the nomad stuff if anyone who chooses to do it is doomed to be destroyed? Wouldn't imagine it'd be taken up very fast in most games...

So, I think if we are going to introduce that, then they will need to be able to succeed, even at the expense of realism.

[VetLegion]

I may be overcomplicating

But I think if we should have this type of civ, it should be playable, not only an AI feature, like barbarians in civ.

You can not suceed if you stay in despotism forever or if you stick to bronze weapons in nuclear age. I would like to see Nomads as a combination of tech and social engeneering, but only suitable for specific conditions and specific period.

They could suceed, in fact, I think that them having early military bonuses would make them an interesting choice for the player.

Also, if terrain is anything earthlike there will be bad terrain.

[The Joker]

I think for simplicity it would be adequate to store only the pop total for the disorganized people. Of cause when they get conquored there could be more things involved. But they would not need any economic system or cultural thing or anything.

Nomadic civs have had great importance on the history of man. So there has to be some advantages to it, as history has shown. So it would be wrong to say that a settled civ would always, except very early, have advantages over a nomadic one. The Mongols conquored half of Asia 800 years ago. 1200 AD can't be described as "very early" in the game.

Basically I agree with Vet's last post.

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"If you are to hurt someone you better do it so good that you don't have to fear revenge."
- Machiavelli

GGS Website

[TempLeland]

Do we have only one type of tiles? Yes, I think everybody has agreed on this.

Do we start in a previously inhabited world or not? Yes. Increasing a population by reproduction only is incredibly slow, and the tribes outside civilizations function both as a source of new populace as well as a threat much like barbarians. It also forces the civ to cope with multiculturalism right from the beginning.

Also, in multiplayer games some players will hop in later than others, so from that point of view the game does not only start in an inhabited world but also in a world with existing advanced civilizations and fierce competition.

Does world start already devided in regions? Do we allow dynamic borders of regions? Yes, both issues are dealt with in the new region/population model.

Are there more ways to win the game? Sure. I think that the main goal for the game should be just staying alive as long as possible, and other objectives can be cutomized at the beginning of each game. Some alternatives I can think of include:

Conquering the world: reaching a position where only one civ is standing. Multiplayer don't always need to end here since new civilizations could keep on challenging the conqueror, but it is one obvious optional ending point for the game.

Holocaust: Kill the human race. This would require the development of nuclear weapons (or highly advanced biological ones) and would obviously end every multiplayer game.

Unified world government: Achieve a high level of cooperation with every other civ. Determining a winner in this situation would be difficult though. Perhaps one civ could gain enough influence in the social movements of others that it could blackmail a formation of world government? Other players would either agree and end the game with their current points, or keep going and risk civil unrest or severe dents in their score.

Economical victory: One civ (or an alliance of civs) makes all other economically dependent on it while itself not depending on the outside world. This is highly subjective, and will require some quantitative limits to define what is actually meant by "dependent".

Scientific knowledge: discover all tech first. Or a set of predefined techs.

Ideological utopia: In the beginning of the game it could be defined that the civ who first implements democracy, communism, anarchy or whatever wins. Also, this ideal government type should probably have some extra attributes so that simply having a revolution would not be sufficient. Maybe the players woudl need to keep up their government working for a certain period of time or meet some social requirements. Also, perhaps it should be possible to define different ideal governments for different civs.

Engineering project: I find the colonization of Alpha Centauri rather pointless, but maybe due to the end of the game there could be similar projects. Having a working colony on the moon, for example. Or simply going to space. Or having a global network of computers. Or creating a human level AI. Or, in case of earlier times, building a wall around earth or something. I do believe that not only modern engineering projects should be taken into account, the game should have such projects to end all projects throughout history.

Nationalistic victory: Wipe out other nationalities except one, or all that are sufficiently closely related to that one. Again it is difficult to see who is the winner, and I am not quite sure how to actually make this kind of objective work in open MP games.

Religious victory: much like in the nationalistic one, here the goal is to convert the whole world to a single religion. A little bit problematic.

Enlightment/Happiness/Submission/Health: A civilization reaches a point where its people meet certain criteria. Purely quantitative measure.

When yes, are they set at the start of the game/scenario? Yes indeed. It should also be possible to be able to customize the end conditions for each game: something like "90% of land area is discovered or tech reaches level X" or "the largest civ has twice the population of the second largest". I think the game will have a universal scripting language which should be able to do this, as well as GUI support and ready-made templates for all sorts of alternative victories. After all, since the focus is on multiplayer game there is no reason to limit into simplified goals.

Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic or static? Static is sufficient in most cases I think. The positions of windows should be movable and configurable nevertheless. The goal in programming is to make the UI such that it can be easily be altered (that is, reprogrammed) without touching the rest of the game, so the final UI may look radically different from what we're doing now. I don't have much worries regarding the UI though: surely chrispie, amjayee and Vet know what they're doing.

Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]