Leaders, who you are etc.

[chrispie]

I was thinking about a concept for a game (based somewhat on the MOO3 stuff I was reading) and I realised it might be possible to apply it to GGS (subject to heavy flaming for me lol).

Anyway, you as the player are in fact the force of a nation, sort of the will and driving force of that nation. You don't directly play the leader, but the nation has a leader, several leaders infact.

Because the game (typically) is played over long periods of time, real leaders which grow old and die could be incorperated, and one part of your job could be to manage these leaders.

You could choose an overall leader, i.e dictator, president etc. And also leaders to run specific parts of the emipre, finances, resources etc. Maybe even a leader or more per region (though that would probably prove excessive).

I see leaders have having 2 roles really, the main role is to simply give bonuses in their area, depending on the type of leader you choose - so if you chose a defensive military leader, you'd get bonuses when defending. The second role of a leader is to help run the nation when you're not around, and this is the interesting bit I think...

It's already been said that for long term games, when the player is offline, the AI would need to run the country - well this would give a player to kind of direct his nation whilst he is not around, by choosing a specific kind of leader for each area, he could expect the continious running of his country in a way that follows that leaders attributes.

So, for example - if you told your military leader to play it cautious, and you were invaded, he might only try to reduce his loses, and simply play for time - holding off the enemy. But if you tell him to be aggressive, he might role in the big guns in an attempt to rid your nation of the enemy, but wouldn't go on the offensive (that's your job )

Other leaders I invisige include the Resource Leader, who manages resources (so might liase with the Trade Leader if your foundries are running low on coal) or may indeed look for ways to increase production when it's needed.

I think they'd be around 8-10 leaders for you to manage, each growing old and dying of course - but being automatically replaced when they die to save you the problem of being offline, and losing all military control.
You could of course replace a leader at any time, but that would reduce
effeciency - making it difficult to constantly change leaders.

The overall leader, dictator, president or whoever would be there as a guiding power, bringing bonuses depending on his/her character and skills.

IMHO this leader thing covers 2 obvious problems;

1. Who you are, as you can now live forever!
2. Helping players to manage their empires in the way of their choice when they're offline.

ideas, complaints, insults etc. please

[This message has been edited by chrispie (edited April 17, 2001).]

[ElmoTheElk]

I partly agree with you here. We need some sort of system that handles your civ when you're off-line. But it's still the AI that runs the civ then in your system. Isn't it just a name (= leader) to the AI?

The part I disagree is that we should give the leaders so much impact. It's not good when you play 10% of the timne yourself and the rest is AI controlled. That would be a test of the best AI tweaker (and knowing the weak spots of our own AI...)

Elmo

[chrispie]

Hmm, Elmo I think you've completely missed the point of my post here.

The Leaders are not there to run your nation, when you're playing they do nothing to run it, you run it. I wanted to give them a reason to exist whilst you are playing, and that reason is to provide bonuses in certain areas or to carry out simple mundane tasks.

And it's not just a 'name' for the AI when you're offline, not at all. The idea is to split the AI into regions, run by leaders - who you the player can define, as appose to one big AI which just plods along doing little when you're offline.

Let's face it, the majority of players (except maybe the obsessive ) are going to not be playing more often than they are in a long term game, but they still want some kind of system they can use to give their empire a direction during their offline time, and maybe even some ability to react to arising situations - which could otherwise greatly damage your nation or take it in a direction you don't want.

[ElmoTheElk]

Well, if you put it that way... No, I undestand now, and agree with you. I escpacialy like the region-different part. So that you can set the future of each region independantly of each other..

Altough personally, I like games played in 1, 2 or 3 pieces more than very long term games, with relatively long offline percentages. I hope it's possible to save a game after 5 hours of play, then all the players quit, and later, when all the players are online again, they continue where they were. As an extra option of course...

Elmo

[VetLegion]

I agree with crispie here, leaders + bonuses = good thing. (and I like moo3 stuff too, going to get it when it is made)

Similar thing is in Europa Universalis, you are not a force/will, but a person behind the throne, and the leaders change, each bringing his own bonuses to various areas.

as for an online game ... I dont know. The design should take into consideration then that military actions such as conquering an entire empire would need 5-7 days of real time (or more), and that it would take 3-4 hours to conquer a city. That is because no matter how smart AI is, it is still dumb, and would harm the player too much if he went to sleep and got invaded while in sleep

if game is online (lasting), and there is AI, I think pace of the game has to go down in some areas. (note: I am not really comfortable with online vision of the game yet, so that is the source of my worries)

[The Joker]

I pretty much agree with you, Chris.

Leaders (including commanders of your armies) would be fun to manage. I also think that in some cases a leader could be so good that he would become ambitious, wanting to take control of your civ. I do, however, think that leader should be chosen from a pool of potentials. I also think that although you could play as a guiding force like in MOO3, you should not control everything. The people must have their own will, and you can only guide that.

About the mp game, I agree Elmo that a feature where you can save a mp game would be great.

But for the larger mmp games (which is where I see the true potential of GGS) I think using clans as Korn suggested, and otherwise play either a year a day, or simply online games where a year might take 10 minutes, in which case you would simply go online, pick a civ, play it for some hours/years and then leave it to someone else.

------------------
"All that monsters fear is the day."
- Kashmir

GGS Website

[S. Kroeze]

About the clan idea of Korn and this "new" idea of leaders:

I think those leaders resemble the 'characters' which at the time weren't very popular. I liked the idea of characters, but I think they are not essential to the game, so they can wait. They are more like 'frosting' than 'cake'. First things first!

I liked Korn's clan idea, yet to make it truly interesting I think it would be essential to have two levels of conflict in the game:

• Governments/civilizations try to expand and become the dominant Empire in the world or region
• Within each civilization ruled as a clan, all players compete with one another to become the dominant power/clan within that Empire/civilization

During a Revolution or Civil War an Empire ruled as a clan could possibly split in several independent kingdoms.
When the delay in the dissemination of commands/information would be used -which unfortunately only Amjayee seemed to like- this clan structure could help to guard against some of its drawbacks: the central government could reside in Madrid, while a viceroy residing in Lima, Mexico or Manila -and probably better informed- could make most decisions about local politics. Yet what would happen when a viceroy would declare himself independent? Perhaps he could even misinform the central government for some time about local conditions, e.g. keeping silent about local disturbances, military setbacks etc...

Sincere regards,

S.Kroeze

[TempLeland]

I like the idea of "Leaders" (which are pretty much a mix between advisors and characters discussed earlier) in the sense that they are a neat way of partitioning the AI. What I don't like, however, is bonuses based on the leader you choose. That's just one way of making the AI cheat, unless the leaders are a mandatory feature. Neither option appeals to me because I want both to have an honest game (i.e. it's the player's intelligence that matters, not the character's) and I want to reserve the right to micromanage when it seems necessary or fun.

Actually, I never really thought of it as a problem that the player is not a concrete person. Or that the advisors/generals/governors would be immortal. I can easily think of them as abstractions of the real things, so that "general" for example would be more of title than an actual person.

In a multiplayer game, these leaders/advisors will inevitably have great importance. Good AI is not an easy thing to have, so we'll have to think of something else. I believe that at first phases, the viceroy AI will consist of several sub-AIs like governors, generals, and ministers, just like chrispie suggested. The player could set some of their properties individually, for example a general on the western front could be ordered to mobilize whereas the one on the eastern front could be more cautious. Later, when the game becomes more mature, a more advanced scripting could be added ("if neighbour attacks, build more airplanes and retaliate until enemy withdraws from region X"). After that, perhaps an AI that could actually be trusted.


Besides AI, the clans and agreements on playing times are two other ways of dealing with long off-line periods. If there are something like 5-10 players, all from the same time zone, it is not inconceivable that they want the game running only a certain part of the day. Most likely the server in this case would be a responsiblity of one of the players, and 24/7 uptime may not even be possible (after all, it's running on Windows...). So yes, I agree with Elmo that there should definitely be lots of options to set the active playing times, maybe even a chance to automatically hold the game when no human players are around.

About clans, my views differ slightly from S.Kroeze's:

Originally posted by S. Kroeze
I liked Korn's clan idea, yet to make it truly interesting I think it would be essential to have two levels of conflict in the game:

• Governments/civilizations try to expand and become the dominant Empire in the world or region
• Within each civilization ruled as a clan, all players compete with one another to become the dominant power/clan within that Empire/civilization

What I have in mind for clans is something quite different. Players within a clan would, in my vision, always be in the same boat so to speak and whatever conflicts will be between clan members would be their private matter. In fact, I don't even think these clans should have a representation inside the game world, so a civ controlled by a clan would be equivalent of a civ controlled by a single player or an AI. In other words, clans would be nothing more than a way for several people to play a single civ, thus avoiding the usage of dumb AI or simply giving the players a chance to tackle the complexity of their civs.

Two-level conflict should be part of the game, but instead of using clans to do that we could implement it by having a sophisticated diplomacy rules. Civilizations should be able to form pacts and alliances very flexibly, perhaps even to a degree of forming some sort of shared government structures. This way, each civ would fight to increase their power within an alliance, and the alliance itself would have some permanent goals as well. I believe that this would not only be a nice feature to have, but something we definitely need: no civ should survive all by itself.

"Leland"

[ElmoTheElk]

A really brilliant post here!

First, I love the idea of implenting 'a chance to automatically hold the game when no human players are around'. This a very good option and makes saving a game a not to be needed function. You can play with 6 friend 1 hour a day, start at 8 and decide at 9 to stop, then they all log off and the game will stop until they all log in at 8 'o clock the next day! We can ever add the option to start the game only when all players are logged in.

I also like your clan ideas. Clans will make it possible to play a 24/7 game without much AI interference. Onlt thing we need to know is what to do with mutiple members from 1 clan logged in... ??

Elmo

[TempLeland]

Actually, I think that backing up the game data every turn is a must. If the server crashes, that way people can keep playing without losing anything but the time needed to restart the server side. As a side note relating to saving games, I think that everytime a player logs in he will have to download all his civ's data, whereas after every turn only changes are being sent. So, nothing except maybe some UI settings or diplomatic messages are stored on the client side.

I think that a loooong time ago in the design doc thread i listed different types of games, based factors like clans/no clans, closed/open and off-line/on-line. All combinations should be possible, at least in this phase of design we should not be too discriminatory. But, you raise a good question with clan memebrs logging in at the same time. Maybe the creator of the clan could choose whether there can be several simultaneous logins at the same time or only one? Also, I think that the creator could choose the form of the clan from several options:

1. All members, including the creator, are equal and can give any orders to any elements of their civ. If a given order conflicts with another, the player would be notified but there would be nothing to stop him from erasing the old order and replacing with his own. This kind of clan would work best when all the members are trustworthy and good team players.

2. One member (the creator) is a leader, and others are equal. The leader can kick people out of the clan if necessary. The orders given by the leader cannot be erased, but the leader could erase or replace any orders given by others. The players would still have to be relatively trustworthy not to obstruct each others play, but at least now there is a central authority who could kick people out and solve any possible differences.

3. Members are given responsibilities, i.e. orders are categorized so that certain types of orders can only be given by certain members. So one member would handle the military, another one the politics and a third one resource management. Or, every member could have their own region to command. This could work best when players want to concentrate only on certain aspects of the game. There could still be a leader who would have the right to override any orders he sees fit.

4. Any combination of the above. Several leaders, a hierachy or leaders and sub-leaders, each responsibility area having it's own leader, the creator and the leader being different people, dynamic changes to the clan structure... the possibilities are endless!

All of these options should be just for the convenience of the players, and I think that in clan formation there should not be any strict rules. Clans are just a tool tackling the 24/7 multiplayer games and to allow sophisticated player cooperation, in my opinion.

"Leland"

[ElmoTheElk]

I agree with you here. We can implent all these options later on. For now we can program like there are no such things as clans and imlent this functionality later on.

You say the design model is really open, but i son't really think so. We have settleled a lot already. It's true however that a lot of things will change during the time the game take to develop...

[TempLeland]

Hmm... to me the both the design and the programming aspects are still taking their baby steps. Having discussed this with the programmers, it seems that a realistic goal for us is to have the software framework (that is, a non-functional core to which we plug in the actual game-related code) ready by fall, not much sooner. So, it is not just a matter of pulling up our sleeves and starting to code the models, there are a lot of technical issues that need to be solved/programmed first. Anyone interested in participating may use the sourceforge mailing list, I'll try to keep the Apolyton board fully design-oriented.

On the other hand, I don't see what makes you think our design documents would be anywhere near ready. Sure, they will change once we implement stuff, but to me it seems that there are a lot of questions that can and need to be answered before the programming phase. What we have now is

1. pretty good general design doc (almost finished )
2. some informal talk about turn order
3. a draft of population model
4. quite good economy model, but it's probably going to have to be revised due to it's age
5. disease model, pretty much in the same state as econ model
6. lots of unformulated great ideas, which we need to write down

This really isn't much, in my opinion. We really need to have more or less extensive documentation, otherwise we can never be sure what the other designers are thinking, let alone attract new members who can't understand an iota of our ramblings. Besides, there won't be much programming results for a while so now is the perfect time to work on the design stuff and at least get the general guidelines of the core models clarified.

"Leland"

[chrispie]

Leland, didn't you miss the UI in your list of things we have done?

There is only a certain amount that can be achieved by us having endless meetings, discussions and writing design doc after design doc - all that really matter is what comes from it, the game.

Yes, we have lots more to agree on and design, but that doesn't stop us from programming models, and using that to show what we are thinking - remember everything we write doesn't have to be used.

[TempLeland]

Yes, of course we have the UI ... I was talking about design documentation. And you're right in pointing out that I may be a little bit too design-oriented myself. But by no means was my intention to say that we should stop programming... on the contrary. We need programming more than ever now, because if we don't have the framework to build upon it's going to be very difficult to start writing demos on the models and ideas we have now. The way I see it, once we get the basic software technicalities worked out we will immediately go on to implementing the models and seeing how they run. With or without design docs.

However, It seems very likely that it will take some time before the framework is ready. So, I see no reason for the non-programmers to just sit back and wait, there are a lot of holes on design front that could be worked on.

There are basicly three different kinds of design: one that's written down in a document, one that's in someone head, and one that manifests itself as a computer program. The shortness of the list on my previous post was supposed to emphasize that we do not have much of the first variety. We also don't yet have the people/time to write demos (on the models, I mean... UI and client/server code are the core of the software, but not the heart of the game), and the ideas between different people vary a lot (the turn order hassle should prove it). I don't think everything has to be first written in a document before being programmed, that would be nuts. But I do think that we cannot just stop writing models, because they also act as means of communication between designers, programmers and eventually the players.

Aww heck, I just like writing designs as much as I like writing code (maybe even more so, because I get to program at work anyway). So don't trust anything I say! This is a voluntary endeavour, everybody does whatever they feel is most useful, or whatever they enjoy doing. Even if the game would flop, I'd still consider myself a richer person upon having had a chance to discuss with this group of excellent people. I know I'm boring the hell out of you all, but I'm hoping that at least occasionally my contributions would be useful in our final goal: the working game.

"Leland"

[heardie]

Even if the game would flop, I'd still consider myself a richer person upon having had a chance to discuss with this group of excellent people

Touché
Even though I don't post here much, I still read all the threads, and consider myself a 'GGS'er'

heardie

And on a totally unrelated topic did you know that Einstein taught himself Euceladian geometry when he was 12?