Design Doc 0.2 discussion and vote

[heardie]

I think scenarios should be able to be made over any turn length, to fit in with the game. Well actually, if the user decreases the implements ot months/days,etc then this can increase the amount of turns. Anyway, i don't know what I mean

[korn469]

Leland and Heardie

critism taken

so we need to make the following things Host machine options
[*]how often the game updates[*]how long each turn represents[*]overall length of the scenario/game

this way the game could automatically tell you about how long the game will take to play...i still think that we should have a default setting where people join the game and play from the the beginning of history to present day and the total gameplay time would be about one year with the game running 24/7

however i stand by the following
[*]GGS being basically multiplayer[*]giving general commands to units (a specific order system will harm GGS...this has been my problem with preplanned turns all along...though many of you might have always defined preplanned turns as nonspecific commands to the unit AI i assumed that preplanned turns was a very specific and detailed way of telling your units exactly what to do)[*]turns update automatically as long as the server is unpaused[*]making this game as point and click as possible

korn469


p.s.

i used WW2 as a scenario example because it is a short period of history which lends itself to quick yet interesting games. also i think that virtually everyone can identify with WW2 unlike some rather arcane scenarios (the french and indian war just doesn't seem as widespread in terms of games made about it). also if we can't make WW2 seem fun then we will probably really have problems keeping the player interested in the game as they go through a dark age with limited contact with other players
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 13, 2001).]

[amjayee]

The current extended game ideas are good. That might become the main for of the game. About ww2, it's a short period of time, and usually there would not be much to do in such a short time. But in ww2, it's different; there would be loads of things to do, even for some small countries, not to speak of Germany, Britain, Japan and US.

About the extended game system, I think in the year-long game the players would receive a game situation update from the server, check what has happened, and send updated orders to the server; those updates would take place in the next possible update cycle (monthly or yearly). So I view this much like an e-mail game, and it would become like a hobby to run your civ little by little...

Generally I think this would be a pre-planned turn system. Players would plan the coming turns, they would not change orders "real-time". The orders you give would be buffered, and at the beginning of the next turn they would become effective. This would simplify the system, and reduce the hassle.

So, my idea is; time goes by at constant speed. Units and regions have general orders they follow. Player watches the game as it goes by, and changes the orders. The new orders are buffered, and they are updated at the beginning of the next "turn" or update cycle. The orders could be sent to server and buffered there, or buffered at the client machine and sent in one package at the beginning of the update cycle - the first option would reduce the traffic of course. When there is no pause between the turns, we have a real-time system with pre-planned turns; you plan the next turn while you watch the current turn go by. The original pre-plan turns system could be got by having a pause mode between turns. The players could change orders during the turn execution phase, but that would in effect be "planning the next turn". So, if your units screw up during the turn, you can't change the orders until next turn... which is only realistic I think, the leaders don't have very much they can do in the finer details.

So this system would combine real-time and pre-planned turns. It would be very flexible; the turn could be one month, one year, ten years, anything. The turn speed could be any desired speed. You could play real-time, pre-planned, extended mode, quick action-games, anything, with the same system. What would this system sound like? I think it's the best compromise to obtain all the ideas presented here. Or is this a completely foolish idea?

[korn469]

quote: Generally I think this would be a pre-planned turn system. Players would plan the coming turns, they would not change orders "real-time". The orders you give would be buffered, and at the beginning of the next turn they would become effective. This would simplify the system, and reduce the hassle.

I think we agree amjayee...using my example of the turns updating every five minutes

the player issues orders to units on their computer and then hits "update turn" or "end turn" or "connect" (whatever) and then the client send it's orders to the server which collects all of the orders it has been sent and resolves everything simultaneously at the set update time (five minute mark in my example)...then the server sends this update to the client

the server would update automatically, therefore if one player doesn't send their turn to the server it would not slow the game down

all the player could do would be to issue order to their units all of the orders would actually be carried out simultaneously on the server without any player intervention during that turn

scenarios would be best played if everyone was online at all once and scenarios should for the most part take between 4-50 hours...so that players could play for a few hours a night and finish most games in less than a week and with a few exceptions maybe taking just a night or two to finish on the low end and maybe a month to finish on the high end...players would host scenarios on their machine, and whoever hosted the game would act as the server

then we could have a central server that runs the extended game that plays 24/7 and take a year to finish and could allow for lots of players to get involved in one game...if it was going slow enough and clans could operate a single civilization then players could cope with missing a turns

it sounds to me like we have a turn system that everyone agrees on now

korn469

ps

the server should automatically update the client if that client is online...if the player has the game on hiberate mode (like when napster is running in the background) then the player would have to request an update from the server...this way the server would have less of a workload
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 13, 2001).]

[TempLeland]

I must be delusional... it seems as if we're reaching an agreement! In fact, the system amjayee just described is exactly what I have had in mind for a long time. Except for the minor fact that I didn't seriously consider making the game time per turn a variable, but that is only an improvement.

Ok, now for the potential problems I foresee:

quote: Originally posted by korn469 on 03-13-2001 03:47 AM so we need to make the following things Host machine options [*]how often the game updates[*]how long each turn represents[*]overall length of the scenario/game

My answers:

Turns in real time: 5 to 60 minutes

This game will be quite complex. This means that the orders sent to the server will be big, the time the server needs to calculate them is not negligible and the final results will also take their time to arrive. Perhaps the first delay can be reduced to a minimum by sending new commands to the server all the time instead of one single package, but the two other bottlenecks still remain.

I just wish to avoid situatations where the turn is already being resolded in the server while the players still think it is not. This is why a some sort of notification in the lines of "hey, if you give orders now they won't come into effect until the year n+1. Don't move" is needed, whilst it must not take a big portion of the time spent in one turn. In a five minute turn the time the server takes to update all clients might conceivably take over a minute or two, which is a lot if the whole turn is supposed to be just five minutes.

I also wish to point out that the player might be flooded with information at the beginning of each turn. Sure, the events of new messages may be turned off but it is possible to end up in a situation where even little details might be important ("Hey guys, I just figured how to unite the proletariat of the whole world... what do you mean, revolution? Hey, put down that gun!"), but there are compelling reasons not to be speanding half of the turn just skipping the messages. If the turns are longeer than five minutes, the time spent in just analyzing the situation is taking a relatively smaller chunk of the action. Connected to this problem is, how will the updates be shown to the player anyway? Is each advance of units shown separately (that is, you first show the army attacking Brazil, then Hong Kong, then Turkey, while all this takes place at the same time) or do they happen simultaneously (which makes it impossible to follow them all if you don't happen to turn on a map of whole world)?


Turns in game time: 1 to 12 months

Korn, you suggested that each turn would depict a time span of 12.5 days. i think this is absolutely impossible, it is one 30th of a year. At this level of detail we should, in order to keep the game realistic, model things like weather (for instance, individual storms), delayed command (which I am not fond of, though I admit it is realistic and easier to ignore on longer time spans), smaller amounts of people (when recruiting armies, showing the casualties of diseases or violence) and a more complicated resources extraction (it takes several turns to harvest the crops, for example) among other things. The game is already complex enough, methinks, and needs no further complications. Of course, if we are willing to compromise with realism then this is not a problem, but I would have to protest.

Previously I was strongly against turns shorter than a year, mainly because I didn't want to involve the seasonal changes. A static map is a lot easier to handle. But now that I think of it, perhaps some seasons are conceivable. So, I think maybe 4-8 turns per year might be good. Perhaps even 12, but I think that is stretching it. Of course, it should be possible to set the turn length to any multiple of the minimum time.


Overall length of a game: 50 to 6000 years, or 1 to 12 months (real time)

I don't think even all the scenarios should have a time limit. If the game stays interesting for over ten millenia, then why stop it artificially? The WW2 scenario I still don't find very fascinating, except for the fact that it was kind of a crossroads of history: anything can happen, and the rest of the 20th century depends on the outcome. The few years of actual war sound pretty boring since you cannot play around with the Third Reich you manage to create.

As for the extended game lasting a whole year, from the dawn of civilaztion to modern times, I think that is not what everybody would like. I think that it should be possible, certainly, but I also think the whole human history should be playable in a month or so. Maybe even less in terms of server uptime. This not only makes the game testing easier, but also gives the players a feeling of actually doing something, and seeing the rapid growth of their civilizations. That's the thing where I get my rush at least.

quote: this way the game could automatically tell you about how long the game will take to play...i still think that we should have a default setting where people join the game and play from the the beginning of history to present day and the total gameplay time would be about one year with the game running 24/7

I think the default should be something like 2 months of server uptime. But of course we should experiment with different kinds of cycles, and incorporate them as alternatives (for instance, a player could choose from a variety of modes for the game, and if he is not happy with them he could script/configure his own).

quote: [*]GGS being basically multiplayer

I think we all agree on that.

quote: [*]giving general commands to units (a specific order system will harm GGS...this has been my problem with preplanned turns all along...though many of you might have always defined preplanned turns as nonspecific commands to the unit AI i assumed that preplanned turns was a very specific and detailed way of telling your units exactly what to do)

Yes, I envision general rather than very specific orders. Generality is imposed by the granularity of the map as well as the relatively long time span of one turn in the game (several months).

quote: [*]turns update automatically as long as the server is unpaused

Yup. Though I would say "suspended" rather than just paused, because the server may be off-line completely or maybe even moved to another computer. A lot of changes can happen during a year, and no Windows based computer can stay up that long.

quote: [*]making this game as point and click as possible

Agreed.

We really do seem to agree on the general stuff, now we just need to tweak the details to make everyone happy. Mainly, the lengths and variations of the properties which korn listed above. Please give your input, as many of you as possible! We need at least an illusion of consensus here.

I can already warn that I'll be busy this week. I'll update the design doc as soon possible though. And hey, if korn or anyone wants to write a short passage about the turn order, combat or whatever to the design doc, just do so. No one is stopping you.

Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited March 13, 2001).]

[korn469]

Leland

ok to address what you brought up...

yes there will be server/IP bottlenecks but i think that those can be overcome...

now on to the second part of your first point...the time it takes a player to play a turn should be shorter than what it takes to play a civ turn, because we are dealing with a much smaller time frame...if i recall correctly the smallest unit of time in civ2 is one year per turn...the largest unit of time is 200 years per turn

if we do as you suggest and make each turn a month then each turn should be easier to handle although our game is much more complex than civ...each turn would have less to do and yet would still be more realistic

so how does this sound

default settings on the server updates the turn every ten minutes and each turn represents one month

that should solve not having enough time to play the turn...also as your issues orders to units they could be sent to the server but not carried out until the turn updates

but now i must make a stand...if the game updates slower than 10 minutes then it will be hard to ever get into this game because gameplay would be too elusive...i think that updating the game six times an hour is better than updating it once

also shorter amounts of time per turn are better for realism

also i think you should have to be connected to the server to play...this way you could leave the game running...lets say while you typed a paper for class...ever now and then you bring up the game and see what's going on, tweak the orders some and then go back to your research paper

__________________________________________________ _________________________

quote: The game is already complex enough, methinks, and needs no further complications. Of course, if we are willing to compromise with realism then this is not a problem, but I would have to protest.

of course we are going to have to compromise with reality...i would rather GGS but less realistic than civ and be fun than to be the most precise simulation of history ever created and but be the most mindnumbing computer program ever created...plus we are already compromising with realism, so it's no big deal to bend reality a little more to suit our pursuit for fun

if i had to put a blurb about how GGS's game play on a hypothetical box here's what i'd say

"GGS is the strategic cousin of the Sims. A must have!"

By that what i mean is this...in the Sims people create a person and then they mircomanage that person in this absract sim world, and what hooks the player is that they imagine stories about their sim.

In GGS you micromanage a civ and basically what would turn GGS from virtual aversion therapy into a virtual crackhouse would be players micromanaging their civ. Now when i say micromanaging i don't mean complicated interfaces that take twenty click to do anything, or stupid units that you have to click on 100 times to get them to do anything but the ability to exert complete control to lead your civ in any path you choose.

I mean could u imagine if basically you and ten of your friends form a clan and customize your civ to become the icon of truth, justice, and the (insert clan name here) way...then you begin to butt heads with an equally strong civ who quickly becomes to the evil empire...

soon we are locked in a cold war...two powerful clans competing against each other in every area...militarily, economically, religiously, culturally, diplomatically...the game is going to be decided when one side falls...yet because of good playing and MAD neither side can win for months...imagine playing six months just to get a slight advantage over the other civ to exploit while not opening yourself up to any trickery by some of the peripherial players

this is emersion...to achieve emersion (which is the goal not realism) we need elements of reality...but like in chemisty class where a simple formula H2O represents water that's all that GGS needs...who needs water, its fairly hard to work with and hard to see a chemical reaction like corrosion by using real water...where you can clearly see the effect of corrosion with a chemical formula

in GGS we need to find all of the best parts of reality (in terms of an emersive strategical experiance) and then add to the GGS fun/emersion formula

yes we need religion...but that doesn't mean getting up at 8am on a sunday morning to goto sunday school and listen to a boring old preacher (i am not very religious so please don't be too offended i'm making a point)...we need something else entirely...we need an economic model, not a McDonalds simulator...forget realism! lets make this game fun first, relistic second

__________________________________________________ _________________________


ok to recap

the player streams orders to the server...at predefined intervals the processes these orders and then updates all of the clients connected to it...for players not connected to the server they couldn't send order to the server until they connected to the server and received an update

default settings could be server updates every ten minutes with each update representing one month

we need to focus on fun first and realism second...not that we should ignore reality but we should not be slavish devotees to the Idol of REAL

if we are simulating disease...i say lets add a simple weather model to game...this could also help us to predict/simulate crop yields, energy usage, etc

teams should be of the utmost importance to GGS and without a large team a continant spanning world empire should basically be impossible to maintain

__________________________________________________ _________________________

slighty off the subject...but in responce to your post Leland i think that we need a news ticker/overview/search tool to help keep a player on top of things in GGS

this could be a box outside of the game, one that would have an always on top option like ICQ...so while we are typing that research paper with GGS running in the background we could see a message in red on our news ticker than announces one of our provinces has revolted...we type in happiness in the search box nd we see that numerous provinces are about to revolt because of insurgence sponsored by a rival empire...basically this tool alerts you to any problems you might have, to any glorious victories and it allows you to search demographics...we could also have one of these UI add on for diplomacy...so we could plot the demise of our enemies in our free time while GGS runs in the background

korn469

ps but i also think that we are getting very close to reaching an agreement that we can all learn to love

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by TempLeland on 03-08-2001 06:52 PM Game time vs. real time: It has been planned elsewhere that the game should span from the rise of the first cities to modern times, that is approximately 6000-10000 years (okay, my memory isn't what it used to be ... correct me here!). if one turn translates to one year, that gives 6000 turns. If one turn lasts fifteen minutes, one game would go on for about two months, 24/7. Doesn't sound too bad. But if the turns would be partitioned to months, it would take two years to go through one game. This is something undesirable to most players, expecially since 15 minute turns aren't that long. Also, the amount of time a single player can afford to a gaming session is something between 1-5 hours, in other words 4 to 20 years. Is this enough? When the player logs off, the game world goes on and the next session might not come until 80-100 years. What guarantees are there that the civilization isn't completely wiped out by then? The speed of the game will be configurable, of course, but there is always the tradeoff between providing enough action for on-line players and not ruining the game for the off-liners. Unless we give up on the concept of logging in and out of the game, but it is my humble opinion that this is one of the cornerstones in this project. AI won't be the magic bullet, because an AI which could not only keep the civ up and running, but also follow the path laid out by the human player is pretty difficult to implement. "Dummy AI" just isn't enough. Finally, I believe that if a fast paced semi-real-time system is adopted, this will inevitably make the game immensely more complex. Seasonal changes, weather conditions, delayed information and lots of other details have to be taken into the model, whereas a simple one year/one turn system would work with more abstract terms. Needless to say, this is the reason why I am inclined to disagree with the suggested model.

Dear Amjayee, Joker, Korn469, Leland and others,

Of course you are fully capable of forming your own opinion. It is also my opinion that a simple one year/one turn system could work very well. I would be more than satisfied with such a system. And it was principally to oblige the bellicose like Korn469 and VetLegion that I did an alternative proposal. Korn complained somewhere that with preplanned turns the player wouldn't be able to control his armies sufficiently,
(like heardie:
players have limited possibilities to change their orders during the turn)
so he invented various alternative solutions to avoid preplanned turns.

Since I think preplanned turns are the only feasible solution I still prefer the original proposal as formulated by the Joker in his design document, though some of Korn's alternative ideas are certainly good. I still have to admit I do not understand all details of his proposals, perhaps I am really slow-witted.
I have always found moving units a usually boring task and attach decisive importance to the idea of simultaneous movement of units and armies. In my opinion this makes preplanned actions unavoidable!
My favourite gameDiplomacy is a good example of how exciting such a system can be. And in addition, the inevitable delay of both information and command dessimination makes that before ~1850 this would be quite realistic. Actually it is this limited control that makes preplanned military movement most realistic for 95% of human history.

I am happy to observe there are many issues on which we agree, like the idea that the game should unrelentingly pursue its course night and day, while the players will log on and off. But your argument that we should guard the interests of those who are sleeping seems to me mainly a reason to proceed rather cautiously when time speed is the issue. With my proposal of twelve months lasting exactly 15 minutes, every twenty four hours eight game years would pass. I admit this is slow, yet this increases the chance your empire is still there during your next game session. Since the average empire should realistically last less than 600 years this seems to me still an amount of time most people can handle. I have played Diplomacy by post and enjoyed it very much, though I prefer to play it face-to-face. Between deadlines there were four weeks, so the average game lasted about one and a half year!

Just one example to demonstrate the relative short life span of empires: according to the 'Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare' in 1500AD the world's most important military powers were: the Ottoman Empire, the Mameluke Empire, Safavid Persia, the Lodi Sultanate of Delhi, Ming China, Russia, Poland-Lithuania, the Venetian Republic, Portugal, Spain, France, the Songhai Empire, Bornu, Adal, the Inca Empire, the Aztec Empire and the Maya Empire. Some of them are still clearly there: Turkey, Iran, China, Russia, Portugal, Spain and France. Yet quite often this apparent continuity of these powers turns out to conceal a reality of foreign conquest, disintegration and other intermittent developments. Ming China was completely conquered by the Manchus in 1659 and only became truly Chinese again in 1911. The Russian Empire lived twice through periods of anarchy and civil war: 1604-1613 and 1917-1922. The history of Safavid Persia is even more complicated: during the seventeenth century the power of the Safavid monarchy gradually declined; in 1722 Persia was conquered by Afghans. After the assassination of Nadir Shah in 1747 a period of anarchy followed during which tribal warlords ruled the country. An attempt to pacify the country was temporarily effective, yet followed by a second period of tribal anarchy. Only after Aqa Mohammad Khan Qajar, claiming Safavid descent, had reunified the country in 1794, the authority of the monarchy was gradually restored. And while today Poland and Lithania are again independent, for more than a century (1795-1918) their territories were part of the Prussian, Austrian and Russian Empires.
The other once powerful states have all been conquered or destroyed by foreign powers. Often some of their cultural traditions lived on, influencing states that later arose on their former territory, like Egypt, Mali or Pakistan. Other civilizations were utterly destroyed, like the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations.

I arrived at my proposal of twelve month periods after one of my best friends, who once introduced me to CivII, had told me about the way he often played Pharao, a computer game resembling Caesar. He has three little children who need a lot of care, while he also studies Indonesian history and the language and does most of the housekeeping -his wife earns most of their income. So he usually sets the game speed as slowly as possible, and only occasionally glances at the development of his Egyptian kingdom. It will probably not constitute the ultimate gaming experience for most people, but he certainly derives pleasure from it.

When every turn/year would last 15 minutes, 96 years would pass each day. The risk that one's neglected empire would be completely wiped out when one would miss one gaming day, would be a reality in most cases!
I am not suggesting that my proposal will solve all problems. A year could alternatively be divided in two half-years, three trimesters, four seasons, six two-months or eight periods of 45 days.

quote: Multiplayer: The discussion in this thread has seemed to assume that all players all on-line all the time. Problems arise when we have a human player against a bad AI substitute. If the AI is not cheating, the absent player will be quite dissatisfied with the result once he logs in to see that his army has been crushed. On the other hand, if AI is cheating, it frustrates the human player posed against it. If the old system of one year turns would be used, the problem would not be quite as bad since strategies would not be quite as complicated as they are in real-time. One more reason why I am against the new system. What about PBeM games? This is impossible in real-time mode, so should we support it at all? Then again, it would be a perfect way to play with long preplanned turns.

I truly dislike all cheating by the AI, though I only play CivII at Deity level. In my opinion, civil wars, peasant revolts and feudal risings, random elements like crop failures, weather conditions and epidemics, the unpredictable influence of religion and economics, dangerous barbarians and the brilliant actions of the other players should provide the CHALLENGE!
I am probably most ignorant but could you please explain how PBeM games operate, since I don't know?

quote: Diplomacy: I must disagree with the notion that diplomacy should be delayed or restricted. If players cannot contact each other within the game, they'll just use ICQ. Not everybody will, of course, but those who do have an advantage over those who don't so I think every player should be guaranteed equal chances for communication, even in the expense of realism. Another troubling thing that was suggested somewhere above is that player could call a diplomatic summit and effectively pause the game by doing so. This I highly disagree with: the players who needed more time to move/think could call the summit just to finish whatever they're doing, thus making the game slower for others. I think that diplomacy with other players should be done completely independent of the rest of the game flow.

Again you are fully entitled to have your own opinion. Yet I think your concern for players using ICQ and thus gaining an unfair advantage is unfounded. Instead I think this would make any game a lot more interesting, creating many possibilities of treachery and deceit! You really should play Diplomacy to understand what I mean!

"1. Combinations and agreements among the players may affect the course of the game a great deal. These are determined during the diplomacy period which takes place before each move. This period lasts 30 minutes before the first move and 15 minutes before each move thereafter. These periods may end sooner if all players agree at the time.
2. During the diplomacy periods, a player may say anything he wishes. Usually, the players go to another room or off to a corner in twos and threes. They try to keep the content of their conversations secret. They may try to overhear the conversations of others. The conversations usually consist of bargaining or joint military planning, but they may include such things as exchanging information, denouncing, threatening, spreading rumors, and so forth. Public announcements may be made and documents may be written and made public or not, as the players see fit. The rules do not bind a player to anything he says; deciding whom to trust as situations arise is part of the game."
(source: Rules for Diplomacy,1971)

I'll try to make up one illustrative example:
The Portuguese and the Venetian Republic have formed a military Alliance, confirmed and agreed upon by their official diplomats and ambassadors, to make war against the Ottoman Turks, who control a large empire. Yet so far the alliance has been quite succesful, partly as a result of rebellions in several parts of the empire. One day the king of Portugal receives a message by ICQ from the Porte, admitting defeat, proposing to make peace on favourable conditions for the Portuguese. The Portuguese king likes the idea: his treasury is rather empty and the proposals of the Porte are quite reasonable. They discuss the details of the treaty and the king of Portugal promises to send an official Embassy to Constantinople with a Peace Treaty (which would be binding within the rules of the game). And so he does, in the meantime trying to contact with his allies the Venetians. The Porte has hinted that he has made similar proposals to the Venetians, who also seem willing to make peace. Yet the Venetians do not react, unfortunately...
The king of Portugal gives orders to his fleet not to capture Tripoli, since the Porte has promised to surrender it in the Peace Treaty anyway.

Two months later the king receives a report of a naval victory: the combined Venetian-Portuguese fleet has crushed the Turkish fleet. Now it seems a pity the king didn't order the contemplated attack on Tunis and Tripoli. Again he receives by ICQ a worried message from the Porte: where's the official Embassy, delivering the Peace Treaty for ratification? This is rather strange: an Embassy has been sent and would normally arrive within two months. Perhaps a storm at sea has caused some delay?
Meanwhile the Venetians continue their offensive in Greece, while the Portuguese fleet -as a result of the commands of the government- floats around.

Two months later a message from the Portuguese Embassy in Constantinople arrives in Lisboa: so far the Porte has declined to grant an audience!
Next month the Venetians complain -through an official Embassy- about the lack of Portuguese support during their last offensive: When the Portuguese are unwilling or unable to pursue their combined goals more vigorously, they will annul the Alliance and make a seperate Peace! etc.
(I could go on, but I think my point is made sufficiently clear)

Neither do I like the idea of a diplomatic summit, effectively pausing the entire game.

quote: Turn order: So far, I think there are three different proposed systems. First, there is the old preplanned turn order, where conflicts between players' commands would be resolved without any additional input from the players. I kind of like that approach. Anyway, then there is Korn's suggestion which adds more real-time elements to the mix and Elmo's system which has great resemblance to simultaneous turns in Civ2. I think these two turn order models have some problems, but because this may be only because I haven't understood them properly I think that simple, preplanned year-by-year turns are sufficient for the purposes of the game. This allows us to make many simplifications. For instance, the delayed information is not such a problem because even though it could take months for a message to travel from one end of the empire to another, it rarely takes years (granted, sometimes such delays happen, but based on the examples provided by S. Kroeze, such cases are not the norm). Also the strategies of armies could be kept more simple. Wars wouldn't take more than 5-10 years or less, though this number varies in different points of history. Anyway, the combat would inevitably be strategic for the simple fact that there is no tactical level. So, there is also no need for an AI to handle the tactical decisions and carrying out a multitude of orders. Thirdly, again inspired by S. Kroeze's rambling , it seems that the most serious threat to an army is deterioration, not a superior tactical genious on the opposing side. Thus, logistics, infrastructure, and simple straightforward campaigns become more emphasized than military tactics, IMHO. (As a sidenote, even if I don't yet accept the real-time model, if it was used then why is there a need to have any turns at all? Everything could just flow real-time, and the players could pause the game whenever they wanted, but the "pausetime" would be limited and would regerate slowly. Just a thought) Anyway, in the beginning of this post I did compliment the idea of using action points. This is because I think they are an excellent way of resolving conflicts between different units, even if they wouldn't be visible to the player. A great idea, actually. Summary (for those who didn't bother reading ): Seriously, I think that the following issues should be solved: 1. Game length, turn length, average game session length, pace of the game? 2. Delayed information vs. the integrity of the civilization from POV of the player? 3. Real-time or preplanned turns? 4. Number of thingamajigs to move around on the map? (I suggest that there will be less armies than regions) 5. How the turn order affects all the other aspects of the game beside combat? Hopefully we can come to a solution which satisfies us all enough to be put in the design doc, at this point I am not going to make any suggestions for changes because I am not yet quite sure what we want. Maybe later. Ciao. Leland

Here we agree again on many issues. Yet I really doubt whether a player will have sufficient influence on and enough overview of military operarions when all orders should be programmed a year in advance, information delay or not. There would still exist a dissemination delay, sometimes of eleven months! I fear this could result in unpredictable actions at the end of one turn/year (December). Players might try to exploit this, giving strange orders at the end of a series of commands, when many armies will already have lost most of their soldiers through wastage.
Personally I think some influence of the weather (storms at sea, frozen harbours, muddy roads in wet seasons) would be a nice realistic addition. Excessive rain and drought are a normal part of every-day life, having far-reaching consequences, occurring a lot more frequently than disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

I also hope the trench warfare of CivII, that made warfare rather boring and profitless, can be avoided. Actually only Elephants/Crusaders and Howitzers were efficient assailants in this game.
Yet in history many succesful or disastrous military campaigns were decided in only several months. Hannibal marched from Spain to Italy in less than a year, twice defeating the Romans heavily(218BC).
In the beginning of 1812 Napoleon was at the height of his power, controlling most of Europe: Austria and Prussia were almost reduced to satellites, only Britain, Russia, Sweden and the people of Spain were actively hostile to his regime. Yet after his disastrous Russian invasion, he was defeated in the 'Battle of the Nations'(Oct.1813) and forced to abdicate(April 1814). The sailing of the Armada(1588) was accomplished in two months and could have ended differently when the weather conditions had been more favourable. The expedition of Alexander lasted less than ten years. Most large empires of history were conquered in a relatively short period of time. Here is some information about the Mongols, underlining this same point:

'The Mongols were inspired by a zeal for world conquest begun by their creato, Temujin, later called Chingiz Khan (1167-1227). By 1206 he had united the tribes of Mongolia under his leadership, symbolized by a kuriltai. Chingiz created an army of horse-archers on the traditional steppe model, employing a decimal unit structure from 10 to 10,000, which facilitated command and control. Before the full development of gunpowder and firearms, they were almost invincible in battle against sedentary enemies.

Such nomads traditionally lacked siege techniques, but the Mongols learnt them, and in 1215 took Beijing. The conquest of China was completed, incredibly, by 1234, although it took another fifty years to subdue. Meanwhile, Chingiz had turned his attention to the empire of the Khwarizm Shah, who ruled from Samarkand. In a brilliantly organized three-pronged attack, the Khwarizmians were overwhelmed (some of their soldiers, fleeing west, ousted the last Latin troops from Jerusalem). Chingiz spent his last years securing the Asian steppe, and this is what gave his empire such durability. Ögedei, Chingiz's successor, who ruled from the Caspian to the China Sea, was said to command an army of 129,000 men.

Much larger numbers are often cited for the Mongol hordes, based on Islamic sources, but the sheer logistical problems of moving cavalry armies in which each soldier had several horses, contradicts exaggerated claims. Their invasion of Russia consisted of twelve to fourteen tumans, each notionally of 10,000 men. What made the Mongols so superior, though, was their strategic flexibility and rigorous discipline. When they fell upon Russia in 1237, the princes could respond with neither.

The Mongols attacked in winter, the favoured season because frozen marshlands facilitated rapid movements by their cavalry. The first place to fall was Ryazan, taken after a five-day siege (21 December). A relief force sent by grand prince Yury of Vladimir was surrounded and defeated at Kolomna. Yury fled his capital and took his main army north-west to the river Sit, placing all available Suzdalian troops in a defensive position between the Volga and the Mologa rivers to the east and north. The Mongol general Batu first took Vladimir (3-7 February 1238) then swept through the rest of the principality, while a subordinate attacked on the river Sit. The Suzdalians fled, possibly even offering up their prince's head, without a fight (4 March). Meanwhile, another Mongol force besieged Torzhok, the southernmost town of Novgorod, which fell on 5 March. But Novgorod itself was spared, the Mongol cavalry getting to within 60 miles (96 km) of the city before turning back, possibly because the spring thaw threatened to cut them off if they began a siege.

After regrouping, the next phase of the Mongol campaign began in spring 1239. Möngke's army swept through Chernigov, besieging its capital with 'a giant catapult capable of hurling stones, which could only be lifted by four men, a bowshot's distance'. A relief force from Kiev was defeated, and Chernigov fell on 18 October. The main Mongol army then withdrew to encampments on the Kipchak steppe. In autumn 1240, the third and last phase of the campaign was directed against Kiev. An army of ten tumans surrounded the city which was pounded by artillery in the area of the Polish Gates, before the city was stormed on 6 December. Concentrating his forces near Galich, Batu was poised to strike into Europe.

News of the Mongol invasions caused panic in Europe. Their unified command and purpose contrasted strongly with a divided response. German bishops and the only supranational authority -the papacy- preached crusades against the impending attack, but the Mongols were superior in both their strategy and tactics. In the spring of 1241, Batu launched a twin-pronged attack into Poland and Hungary. The Mongol advantages of discipline, manoeuvring to the directions of their horse-tail banners, flexibility, as they fled in front of an enemy charge to return when it was blown, and the arrow-storm created by their bows, gave them superiority in the field.

The northern army encountered a force led by Henry, duke of Silesia, and the Prussian master of the Teutonic Knights, supported by German town militia infantry, at Liegnitz (9 April 1241). The crusaders were lured into a trap by the classic Mongol tactic of feigned flight and encirclement. In Hungary, it was the same story. Despite king Bela IV's attempts to block the Carpathian passes, Batu's forces swept into the Hungarian Plain, heading for Gran at a speed of 60 miles (96 km) per day. Desperately, Bela mustered his forces on the river Sajo at Mohi. The Mongols then threw a pontoon bridge over the river to outflank the defenders, forcing the crossing against the main body with firebombs. Despite withdrawing into a wagon fortress, the Hungarians were overwhelmed.

Throughout the rest of 1241, Mongol forces ravaged eastern Europe, almost reaching the walls of Vienna. Then, in early 1242, news came that Ögedei was dead and that all the Mongols were recalled for the kuriltai to choose his successor. Batu retired to the Eurasian steppe where he established the Golden Horde, but Mongol armies never returned to Europe. In 1258-59, Möngke Khan conquered Baghdad and Persia, establishing the Il-Khanate in the region. But his death in 1259 meant that further advances into Syria were led by Kitbugha, in command of two weak tumans largely made up of subject Turks. As a result, he was defeated and killed by the Mamluk sultan Qutuz at Ain Jalut (3 September 1260). Later attacks on the Mamluks were also defeated.

It used to be thought that only chance spared Europe from Mongol domination. Certainly their troops were superior in the field, and their Chinese (and later, Persian) siege engineers could take any city they wished. Yet the Mongol army depended upon its horse-power for strategic and tactic mobility. Once away from the grasslands of the Hungarian Plain it is possible that they would not have been able to feed their horses. The Mongols' failure to conquer Syria would seem to confrim this, althought the Mamluks did beat them at their own game with better-equipped horse-archer troops. But crucial to the Mongol military decline was the splitting of their empire into seperate regional, sedentary dynasties.'
(source: 'The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: The Middle Ages, 768-1487',1996)

So basically I hope that warfare in GGS will present on average more opportunities for bold, aggressive attacks and will be a lot more dynamic. Finally I think I should answer an important question put forward by Korn:

in your vision are you playing Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer? (the former is the CTO and Chairman of MS, the latter is the CEO) in my vision we are Steve Ballmer, making many strategic decisions and many operational ones(strategic --> Operational --> Tactical --> Grunt work in the trenches)...

in your vision are you bill gates and never handle anything less than a strategic decision?

Essentially I agree with Leland's answer:

quote: In my opinion, GGS should have strategic and operational levels, and perhaps some tactical decisions. Tactics like "seize that ridge" are not applicable simply because of the granularity of the map. In short, I think I'd like to be a lazy Steve Ballmer... not even touching the tactical and grunt levels, but instead deciding strategies and carrying them out (or letting AI do it, sometime in the far far future). I disagree that preplanned turns, relatively small number of stuff to move or simplified strategies will necessarily be boring. It's all a matter of how the situation is presented to the players. The movements of armies would still be *shown* on the map, the plans would be represented by (animated?) arrows, the player would give the orders by dragging and dropping, pointing and clicking and so on. It's not just "take over tumbolia, 60% casualties accepted, 20% annual budget available", but actually taking a couple of armies, choosing where to cross the borders, allocating the weak spots of the enemy, deciding best course of conquest (quickly through the plains, or safely through the mountains?), making sure logistics with mother civ works, assimilating the conquered area to your civ and suppressing rebels, ...

In my opinion a government only makes Strategic and Operational decisions, apart from deciding who will be the commanding general/admiral, which could be one of its main decisions. Here is an example of the sort of commands I would like to give:
"Move from Paris to Roma by the shortest possible route; when encountering any resistance, enforce passage!
In Roma take up defensive positions in the vicinity (~100km) of Roma!
Suppress all local opposition!
Avoid battle with a superior force!
Defend Roma at all costs!
When forced to retreat, retreat in the direction of Firenze, taking up defensive positions!"

So the combat system shouldn't at all resemble RISK, which is a completely absurd game, nor Diplomacy, which has a very abstract, though brilliantly simple yet irrealistic combat system. Units in Diplomacy are terribly slow: it takes a year to march from Spain to Paris, though the year is 1900AD!
In RISK the map consists of only 42 regions and the entire world seems one large army camp. The Diplomacy map contains 19 sea regions and 56 land provinces; the number of units on the board is constant, making eternal warfare possible. This is something to avoid at all costs: warfare should generally be dynamic, consisting of relatively short military campaigns, where units/armies move from a political centre to a clearly circumscribed goal.

Sincere regards,

S.Kroeze

[korn469]

S. Kroeze

The primary reason i rejected preplanned turns is because i imagined trying to play a civ2 turn in advance...to me that would be impossible. Lets say two Rifle Men hold a city, you have four armor units...ok you attack the city with your first armor unit...then do you bring in your second armor unit or do you attack again with your first armor unit? You don't really know because you have no idea what the specific outcome of your action will be, so it is impossible to make a determination of what to do...also for all you know the player might be reinforcing his rifle men or he might pull one back...it is impossible to give specific orders in advance to your units because the possibilites make your guesses inaccurate at best...so then the only sure way to play the game would be to use a Sledgehammer to swat every fly...or use ten howitzers and ten armor units to take each city. Specific preplanned turns will NEVER EVER work!

Now however if in GGS we could give some kind of general orders to our four armor units, something to the effect of:

Seize City X, fortify that city with X number of units and then advance with healthy units after those objective have been secured.

then that could work, especially if the scripting language was easy to understand and use and if it was truly powerful enought so that you could basically anticipate virtually any contingency. This is what I support when I say I support simultaneous preplanned turns.

What lead me to this is that the focus of the game would have more in common with diplomacy than civ...more overarching concepts and less tactical operations, when i really began to see what many of you were talking about that is when i changed my mind

I think that having turns represent one month and last ten minutes would be quite adequate...i still think that we could solve communication problems between the client and server and get away with five minute turns...so S. Kroeze our opinions are very close on this matter

by the way if we are going to have less units than in Civ2, and all around less micromanagement and each turn only represents a month Why in the #$&% do we need to take so long to play a turn? I bet that most late game civ2 turns last ten minutes or less...with the turn representing a year and lots more units than what everybody has proposed to be in GGS so far...

Most likely with month long turns we are not going to get bombarded by completly new information, except on truly bad months...I mean not every month is going to be the start of an Operation Barbarossa on an unsuspecting Soviet Union...if the average turn (granted some turns will be different and more time would be a luxery you don't have) is taking longer than 10 minutes to play a month then we must have one of two problems in the design
[*]either the UI is horrible and it takes far to long to accomplish a given task[*]or the scale of the game is just too large and we need to make the map smaller and scale back on someother things too

i mean if it takes a player close to fifteen minutes to play a month long almost everytime then the AI will fail under that burden and we could not have the game be a persistant world, and with 15 minute month long turns we would bore simply bore virtually everyone (including me and probably most of you too) instead of entertain them

most turns should be tweaking your oders...not issuing completely new orders to each and every unit every single turn...this is part of overcoming excessive micromanagement of units...

so basically for the most part in GGS units should have multiturn orders that reuire tweaks every so often and the player should not have to issue new orders to all units every turn

__________________________________________________ _________________________

here is something off topic but i think that it relates to the game...Supply lines and unit readiness

I think that all units should have to trace a supply line back to a supply node. if a unit cannot trace a supply line the unit should start to atrophy, lose men, equipment etc.

the length of the supply line should be based on transportation technology...therefore before you have invented the wheel supply lines should be very short compared to civs that have hypersonic space transport VTOLs that can operate anywhere and can lift hundreds of tons of supplies

also all units should have a stat called unit readiness which has 100 points (and no more than 100)...
[*]every turn a unit carries out a non-combat action it loses one readiness point if it is in supply and two readiness points if it is out of supply [*]every turn a unit engages in combat it loses two readiness points if it is in supply and four readiness points if it is out of supply[*]every turn a unit either rests or trains it gains two readiness points if it is in supply and one readiness point if it is out of supply

when unit rediness drops below 75 points that unit gets a 1 percentage point negative combat modifier for every point it drops below 75; also if a unit has a 90 readiness points or above it gains a 1 percentage point positive combat bonus...so for example a unit at 100 readiness points would get a +10% combat modifer, while a unit at 80 readiness points wouldn't have any modifer, and a unit at 25 readiness points would gain a 50% negative combat modifier

Also units not inside of cities/supply nodes/military bases should not be able to heal above 75% of their hit points

these ideas would stop a conquer from using a very small high experiance task force to spearhead through all of his enemies without ever stopping because of supply, or morale, or readiness considerations.

korn469

[amjayee]

I really start to like the new planned game system. It could be a real Experience to play such a game. If we manage to make it so, that the game is something like S.Kroeze wrote, it would be really interesting.

So, your main task in the game would be to build up the structures of your empire.

1. You would negotiate and conspire to build the relations to the other nations and look for allies and try to gain as much advantage from the current situation as you can. Game situation would be dynamic, and you would have real humans to compete with, so you would need all your cunning.

2. You would take care of the resources of your nation; you would supervise the production of necessary supplies and organize trade to buy what you can't produce and to make money.

3. You would take care of your domestic politics. You would try to negotiate with the powerful factions of your own civ and try to keep your people content and hold your nation together.

4. You would organize the building of defensive structures, invest for better military technology and train your forces. You would need to think carefully how large military you can afford, and decide when you have your opportunity to attack and when you are better to defend.

5. Also you would need to allocate your resources correctly.

S.Kroezes post was very inspirational. I could almost see myself playing the game. Your posts are very long; I have to ask, how long does it take to write them? Do you write those quotes by hand or do you use scanner or something? Also, how old are you, and what's your profession? Thanks again for your efforts!

I agree with supply and unit readiness, that sounded ok. I also agree with Korn's realism thoughts.

About orders, I think most orders would be "for time being" kind of orders; general enough so they could be followed if player doesn't give new orders, so basically you would need only give new orders to change the old orders. Of course offensive moves require short-term orders, but also they couldbe multi-turn. Basically, I think in warfare more decisive would be moving your pieces into position (organizing your military, training them, organizing your resource management systems, creating supply and negotiating with other nations) than the actual offensive, like in chess. The most enjoyable part would be the offensive, but preparing for it is what should make this game GGS.

About turn length, it would depend on the game type; the extended game turns could (and should) take longer. I agree that usually giving the orders and doing the work for a turn would not take very long; 5 minutes should suffice for most turns. But diplomacy and thinking would of course require some time, too. But I think we can make also quite short games possible, perhaps y reducing the complexity of the game in shorter games... we'll have to test these things before we make excact decisions. For now, we will need to make some general plans for the game system and agree on them. Who would like to write a document of this. I could, but can't for some time do that.

[The Joker]

Hey guys.

It seems like you have all pretty much agreed on a system. But due to my absencity (does such a word exist?) I am not at all clear how it would work. I think it means preplanned turns and realtime mixed in some ingenious way. But what?

Personally I find the pseudorealtime proposed by Korn (primarily) very interesting, and I think it could make our game truly unique and fantastic. But I still have some criteria that it needs to pass, before I can support it. First it can not give fast clickers a large advantage (and here I strongly disagree with Korn - Starcraft could easily be won by a fast clicker), second it has to allow many, many players and third it has to allow players not all be online at the same time.

I think the idea of two more or less seperated game types (regular and extended) it great.

But I think that having monthly turns is just too much. In a regular game lasting millenia yearly would be adequate. So in a normal game perhabs 10 minutes per turn (=year)? In the early years many turns would pass much faster than this, since there would be less things to do.

But the extended game still has some problems, although Korns clans can propably solve some of them - sharing civs with other players.

Besides this I would just like to know what the turn system is like. So tell me, please!

------------------
I distrust those who pray; for they are putting their lives in the hands of strangers.

GGS Website

[TempLeland]

Well, this thread is about all there is on the new turn order model. We all seem to be getting to an agreement, and perhaps I should write a short description of the ideas presented here in the design document and we could start working on a more detailed model. Sorry that my posting sprees are rather sporadic, hopefully I will be able to contribute more frequently.

Of course, nothing prevents any of you to write a paragraph or two summarizing turn order if you get the inspiration.

Anyway, just for the record let me say that I do agree most of what korn and S. Kroeze have been writing, but there are some minor details which I would like to bring up (again).

korn469:

The server and network bottlenecks will probably be very significant at first, but later when the code is optimized, high-speed internet access becomes more commonplace and Moore's law keeps doubling the computing power the problem will at least partially solve itself. However, if we are to have even half of the proposed features, the game will be mindbogglingly complex. At least from a hobbyist programmer point of view. So, at the development phase we may not yet have the luxury of shortest possible turns, neither in game time or real time. It could be that even ten minutes per turn becomes difficult to handle and as a result the game will be balanced favouring longer time periods.

Nevertheless, it would be foolish to set any precise limits at this phase. I have been against turns as short as 1 month, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be included as one option. One turn could maybe be configured to last something between 1 to 60 months, and the final "default setting" could be determined later when there is a more exact view on how the turn order model would actually work. Similarly, the turnaround in real time could be anything between 5 minutes and 24 hours, so that it could accomodate both casual players as well as those who crave action.

Other parameters may include how the players can log in and out of the game. I foresee eight possibilities:

1) Closed on-line game without clans. All players have to be present, no new players are admitted during the game and there is only one civ per player.
2) Closed off-line game without clans. Same as above, except players can be off-line. In those cases the civs are controlled by an AI, as bad as it may sound.
3) Closed on-line game with clans. Same as 1) with the exception of multiple players steering same civs.
4) Closed off-line game with clans. Same as above, but players can go off-line.
5) Open on-line games without clans. Here new players could join at any time, but once they log off they will have to lose their civs. I don't think this alternative would be very interesting, and I suggest the game is not balanced based on this mode of play.
6) Open off-line game without clans.
7) Open off-line game with clans.

The combination of on-line play and clans in an open play is really not different from the corresponding off-line game, so I left it out. But these six or seven (number 5 is kind of controversial, IMHO) should be possible, though of course some may turn out to be more interesting than others.

I think the notion of clans is a brilliant idea. It should of course be optional, and the clan size should not become very large, but otherwise I believe it could turn out to be interesting. My understanding of the clans is that they would be just a way of several people who know each other to cooperate, and definitely not an alliance where you would need to do diplomacy or struggle for power. There should be plenty of those between different civilizations without internal disputes.

You mentioned your vision of GGS being a civilization micromanagement game, and I have to agree with that opinion. I do not want to be a head of state, I want to be the state itself. I want to be able to drill down on the areas that interest me and not be restricted by bureocracy or any predefined "role" I am supposed to play. This contradicts with realism, of course, but I think it is one area where that compromise can be taken. This is why I am an advocate of instantaneous information flow and nearly omnipotent ability to know what is going on within the borders of your nation.

This brings me to the issues of immersion and realism. I have considered the difference and under "Game philosophy" it is mentioned that

quote: Our philosophy here is, that reality is both immersive and intuitive to the player and that ruling a country through history would be fun.

This is partially an article of faith, but I have a strong belief that immersiveness and realism are not against each other, but the former can be achieved through the latter. If the game mechanics would be blatantly different from how history works, then the players could surely enjoy the game but they would not necessarily feel that they're making history any more than chess players feel that they're controlling monarchies. To some the difference may be irrelevant, but to me and to many others a realistic or at least a plausible setting is a big factor in a game. The stuff that I think are important with realism include, but are not restricted to

- Population growth
- Domestic politics, religion and social tension
- Military campaigns and combat (no more lonely triremes sailing about for centuries)
- Climate (if applicable), terrain and resources

I also think that some things need not be done very realistically, namely the information a player has of his own civilization and the diplomacy between players.

In a nutshell, we should aim for immersion through realism. Some people are more demanding in this respect than others, but our goal should be at least one notch above Civ2. Just for the challange, if nothing else.

I'd also like to comment your vision of two competing clans ending up in a cold war that lasts for months and progresses very little. Personally I would probably find that boring. I'd rather see lots of dynamic changes in political atmosphere. It would make a nice scenario though.

I have been against modelling weather and climate, but now I am beginning to change my mind. Maybe it would be nice to play a game where one turn lasts for a quarter of a year, thus introducing seasonal changes into the game play. Naturally this is just my subjective point of view, and I could live with shorter turns as well. Just that I am now beginning to get excited about the idea of less-than-a-year turns.

Okay, this is pretty much everything I have to say about your two posts above.. just some final notes that came to my mind while typing: About the UI, it will most likely be "traditional" at first, occupying the whole screen and thus making it difficult to play on the background, but who knows what will happen in the future. You are absolutely right in pointing out that there has been a minor inconsistency in my mind regarding the length of turns and the amount of micromanagement. And yes, turns would definitely have to be multiturn, I think we can all agree on that.

S.Kroeze:

One year turns sound just fine to me too, in fact I think we agree on several issues. I just want to point out that we shouldn't lock many parameters of the game at this phase. It's essential to just set some very broad limits where the game would actually fit, and those limits will be further narrowed whenever the detailed turn order model is devised. Longer turns I find better than very short ones because withing longer time spans it is easier to lull myself into the suspension of disbelief that the instantaneous information flow would require. If the turn is just one month, it may be suspicious to receive up-to-date news from another continent until the modern times, but it is less striking if it happens within a year.

The compromise between real-time and preplanning is something that I cannot escape as easily. In turn based games the idea is that you can stop playing any time, have a cup of coffee and go back to your computer when you see fit. In real-time mode there will be constant hurry, though it depends on the pace of the game and the attention span of the players how hurried they will subjectively feel. If there is only one single player, the turn-based solution would of course be superior to real-time one, but unfortunately this will not be the case with GGS for some time. I'd dare to say that I am busy enough to value the slower games (in game time), but also too analytical to be annoyed by long turnaround time. In fact, I could tolerate one turn per one day approach and could even find it stimulating.

But people are different. From your posts I have concluded that you are what I would call a hard-core strategist. I prefer less efficient strategies and like to play around with history, and apparently Korn is after intensity in his gaming sessions. I'd like to have a game which as many people as possible would be able to enjoy, if not together then at least by altering the settings to one direction or another and playing with their likeminded friends. The development of this game is and will be constant negotiation with different people, and I have a strong belief that the more viewpoints we have, the better the game will be. Personally I would like to see almost all of your visions come true in the final product, apart from the delayed information.

Speaking of which, I am not convinced by your example. I cannot imagine any compelling reason for the Portuguese player to wait for a formal confirmation of the peace treaty, if making such treaty would be very difficult. A peace can be arranged by simply not attacking, and a war likewise by doing the opposite. Of course, I also think that a formal agreement should have an impact in the populations of the involved nations, but if the overhead caused by informalism surpassed the penalties of bad PR then at least some players will take the easy way. And it doesn't necessarily take more than one such player to ruin the fun for the rest. There simply shouldn't be an opportunity for such mischief.

* * *

Okay, I think this is enough for the day. I'd like to hear your opinions on the delayed information, that seems to be the only area in which may cause disagreements. But it shouldn't stop me from rewriting the proper sections of the design doc... just you wait.

Regards,

Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited March 25, 2001).]

[The Joker]

As usual I agree with virtually everything Leland says. And as usual I agree with virtually everything S. Kroeze says. I am not sure about the delayed information, though. It might be interesting, but it might also be annoying.

I think turn lengths should be very flexible. A 1 turn (1 year) per day model has to included. This would make the game a hobby that people would just use a few minutes every day on. For instance one of my friends have just moved to Nice, and him and me are now playing a game of email chess with each other, by just emailing our moves every few days. GGS could be like that.

But would someone PLEASE describe the turn model for me? Please?

------------------
I distrust those who pray; for they are putting their lives in the hands of strangers.

GGS Website

[VetLegion]

I think extremely long games are totally unplayable. Whatever system we go with it has to have reasonable speed.

[The Joker]

Although I do not agree completely with VetLegion (especcially not if the clans are implemented) I do agree that we have to have some games that progress at a reasonable speed. Therefore I think the monthly turns are just too unplayable and will make the game too slow. If we can have monthly turns of 10 minutes each, then why not have yearly turns of 10 minutes each?

And COME ON, guys! Describe that turn model for me!!!!!!

------------------
"I have an idea for a movie. It's about a killer robot driving instructor, that travels back in time for some reason."
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website

[ElmoTheElk]

Well Joker, I think it's not that we don;t want to descipe it, but as long as we are not sutre about what to descipe in the description, what's there to descripe?

I reread most of the posts in this topic. I agre with most of the thing presented here, including:
- I agree with the actions you'll have to make during the game as amjayee descriped.
- I agree about the turn system used now. (Altough I REALLY want to keep the lenght of the 'turns' open now, since I think I DON'T like month-long turns)
- I agree that It's damn difficult to write a summary of this system! (I tried..)

Extremely long games (1 year or so) are unplayable in my opinion. These type of games can easaly get boring. I rather see games with the playing type of 3 civ2-length games or so. I know we have a much more complex game, but we also have much more options to give general orders in stead of moving unit-by-unit.

I don't think that we have to make 2 game types however. This will result in mch more work (since we have to make 2 'games') and I think we can use the extended one for short-always-online-scenario games too.

About clans: I think a civ is always accesable by any player who has the right to. (Password protected if you like.) This would keep games rolling and prevent very-often-off-line-civs to get a disadvantage.

I realy, really hope we can settle this this week or so. I tried to write a summary of the system, without succes. I haven't got the feeling for it enough. However, I will give it another try asap.

ElmoTheElk

ps. as you may noticed i think in developer's thoughts, not in programmer's ones...