Leaders, who you are etc.

[ElmoTheElk]

I must say you are right. I refered mostly to our 'General Design Doc' that we already pointed out the general aspects of our game. I agree however that we have many holes to fill. One of them was the 'Unit/improvement building and city resource management' topic which I created a tread for. We have to come up with more of this stuff. It will be better for the game develpment and more aspects too, like attracting more visitors to our board. It's far too quiet here, altough it's improving lately.

And maybe we should make more summaries of our discussions here too. I think I'll write something about 'my design issue about units/improvements and resources'..

We also have to start more of this discussions I think...

Elmo

[Nath]

About leaders: I think it would be better if the player just controlled the bonuses directly, i.e. 'make this region militaristic'. Having leaders would mean, for a nation with an average of 20 regions throughout the game, a few thousand leaders.
Each leader would be in power for about 20 turns, and therefore on average a leader is being born and dying in one region every turn. Keeping track of 8000 units seems like micromanagement.

[Darkstar]

Watch your toes... a village idiot nears

UGH!

Leaders? Hate them. Hate hate hate hate. And they are going to come and go every 5 to 35 turns? YUCK! Huge turn off.

I hate "leaders" in MoO2. Heroes in Mom were ok. But "Leaders"? Suck suck suck! Civ3 is using "leaders". Is that why you want them? Civ3 is screwing up. Most leaders wouldn't survive a 4 turns in the earlier part of the games.

At 1 turn = 1 year... most leaders are only going to last 5 to 35 turns... then they are done and dead. Now, I have to worry about which new one to pick to maximize my bonuses? No way! Out goes THAT game. Stack pushing, tile micro-management, and leader management. So, you want to make a game you don't even want to play? Why not just go and enhance Tick Tack Toe?

Leaders? YUCK! Adding more micromanagement. That's counter to your design goals, isn't it? In any MP game, he or she that micromanages the best will always win in a resource utilization game... which is what GGS is currently. Therefore, you are REQUIRING your players to automatically MICROMANAGE leaders. Hey, number crunching is easy for a computer, so it can always know to choose Patton over Smith. Simple bonus comparison. Which means you are forcing the Single Player to MICROMANAGE leaders as well.

Hey, I told you to watch your toes. That's how you guys are currently coming across here in the forum to this village idiot.

Leland, you are correct. Analysis Paralysis is always a danger. But I think it's time for a big meeting of the minds before you go waste your time coding on something. There are plenty of projects that would welcome you. I say that to you because it seems to me that aside from making a game you guys aren't even going to want to play YOURSELF... you guys are also pulling in different directions.

Either this is a SP/MP game... or it's a MMP game. What you need to do and implement is different between the two. In a MMP game... you don't need leaders and a whole heck of the other stuff. AI is meaningless as they are just victims in an MMP game... raw resources easy for the first taker. It's the humans and the humans only that you need to worry over.

Here's how to do your cabal...
*The founder is automatically the leader. S/He starts off supremo.
* Each person that joins the cabal, gets the next spot, and becomes low man on the totem pole. They are automatically assigned as "reporting" to the previous person that joined.
* Peer Presedence: Whenever a person is promoted to a level, they are automatically assigned peer precendence order of (maximum peer precendence order+1).
* All players in a cabal have a internal determined presendence order. Whenever new player joins, they get assigned the new number of people in their cabal. The game engine recalculates the internal presendence order number based on the command tree of the cabal each turn before resolving orders, to update who gets final precendence.

You can't countermand a superiors orders... Ever. Why? It's your design... even the MMP game uses a turn sequence of: Order/Player Interaction phase, resolution. Therefore, your CLIENTS won't know that a clan member told that army to advance to the mountain range unless they TALK... So they'll order it to retreat back to the city and go into mobile defense/patrol and intercept mode. That's why you have the chain of command... so the computer can RESOLVE what order takes precedent.
Now, the fun parts...
* Any superior can PROMOTE/DEMOTE someone in their chain of command up as many levels as they like, with a maximum raise of up to directly reporting to the promoter, or down as far they like (so long as they are assigned to work for SOMEONE in his chain of command). So the leader (Player 1) can promote Player 55 to directly report to Player 1 directly. Or demote Player 2 to report to Player 55 directly.
* Any superior can rearrange "precendence" (considered seniority or peer ranking) between his direct underlings. Player 1 promotes Player 3 to directly report to him, and then can change Player 3's orders to take precedence over player 2's orders.
* When Founder/Player 1 is eliminated, Presendence Superior (the player under Player 1 whose orders can only be superceeded by Player 1) in his chain immediately takes over (in effect, becoming Leader/Player 1). Should no other players exist, the cabal is gone/eliminated. Although I suppose you could option to make it AI... a target for the vultures.

Now, you have your cabal (or clan) system. The only thing to be decided is:
* HOW to know a player is eliminated. Everyone bumps up in the chain, with the newly promoted link set (those reporting to the eliminated player) added in peer presendence order to their new commander's "node".
* HOW to detemerine what stays loyal to a player when they leave the cabal, but not the game. Options include: They get only what they had when they "joined". (For allowing other clan members/minor clans to join others), nothing, or everything under their control. Or something in between. (Say, being able to set this in a contract that the game enforces... 10% of all units, facilities, land/regions, whatever. And be able to choose the mix.) Maybe the bonus is purely in trade goods and trade money. (This allows Mercenary Players.)
* WHETHER to allow a democratic system so as to have "votes" on who gets to be number 1, or stay number 1. Sub Issue: Whether everyone has equal weight, or their number of votes is weighted. If weighted, what mechanism is used.
* WHAT kind of alliancing/membership to allow. For instance... if Cabal "Utopians" are a signifacant faction, can the Cabal "WarHaters" become fully ranked/commanded members of "Utopians" due to a Cabal Alliance? Would the WarHaters just be absorded into "Utopians" or are they their own minor sect within it, so that Player 1 of "WarHaters" is still in charge of his chain and their assests? Being "WarHaters", they'd still couldn't tell "WarHater" assests to overstep their superiors, but when handling "Utopian" Command Objects/assets, they could be assigned a higher order precedence their their actual "WarHaters" precedence! Fun fun... Dual/Multiple membership always opens interesting doors. Of course, in this example, just as the Player 1 of Utopians can assign the Utopian precendence order that all Utopian command objects prioritize their orders by including the WarHaters, Player 1 of WarHaters could also choose the order of precedence for WarHater command objects to precendence orders from the Utopians. And when the Aliiance breaks, all precendence in the other cabal is lost, so WarHater assets no longer accept orders from Utopians, and Utopian assets no longer accept orders from WarHaters.

Damn... this sounds FUN! Who needs a world empire builder? Make a nice, simple galactic empire game, and go. But I digress. It would be fun, I think, in any system.

[chrispie]

DarkStar, if you don't like what you see, just leave. I'm getting sick of reading your posts, I stopped on the last one half way down. Yes, right you are a frigging genius and we're a bunch of amauter idiots.

If you dislike what you see in GGS so much, no one is forcing you to read, and we don't need you forcing your 'obviously right' views on us all.

[Darkstar]

Tsk Tsk Tsk. It's a FREE forum, Chris. I don't HATE what I see. I am presenting a POINT OF VIEW. Actually, when talking design, I will present a POINT OF VIEW I don't actually believe... In TEAM efforts (and last I looked, this was a core team which offered temp teaming with any who had a thought), I find it best to debate about design and TEAM MEMBERS point of views.

Chris, you shouldn't take any posts, suggestions, or comments I make about the IDEAS here as attacks on the posters. Not in this forum. I freely admit that I am the newest village idiot here (I can't claim to be the ONLY village idiot, as I don't know even know if someone else used to be the village idiot ). I am still finding out about you, your team, and your ideas.

I do this in real life when doing Design. But I warn my newest team members and co-workers that it's not about them or their worth. I employ odd ways at times to Analyze and Understand a project, what it is about, and why it is the way it is.

However, if you are going to get this upset about little VISITOR like me making actual comments about your project, how are you ever going to handle a real stream of curious users and OTHER PROGRAMMERS? Programmers, as a general guide, aren't very polite. It's quite common for them to think that your way is the dumbest way in their world, and their way is the only way. (I am always open to options, thanks to years of experience, but I don't always SOUND like I am. I know that.) Speaking of which... Do you program, Chris? Professionally? Plan too? Managers and Customers That Pay You will often tell you how STUPID, INANE, and otherwise VERY INSULTINGLY explain how WRONG your app, project, direction, and what not is wrong. Best to not get so mad when you hear it. Team members and visitors should even be WORSE about picking on it. They just might be more polite in their phrasing, at times at least.

If you think my POV is just wrong. Fine. Maybe you would like to say WHY? At least that way it would be put out into the forum again. People FORGET, Chris. Even when it's written down in their notepad of project truths. Repeating it for your TEAM is not a bad thing, as long as it's not EVERY post.

I'll be sticking around for a bit, Chris. Please feel free to educate me why my posts are garbage or wrong for your project. I welcome it. That is what I want to know about. The GGS project, where it's at, why it's there, where it's going, and why. I've already read through your design docs, and a good bit else on the web site as well as here. But there is much to go, and much to understand.

[chrispie]

My point is not that I don't agree with your posts, it's the way you present them - You probably don't realise this but you come across as exceptionally arrogant. This kind of attitude may very well be fine in a work environment but we are not a bunch of professionals and you should learn to accept that, and adjust your wordings to suit that not the other way round.

Yes I do program, not professionally no. I did the GGS UI, if you've seen it.

Anyway, I do apologise for my 'outburst' and yes I do present myself here very often in such verbose ways, I only speak my mind - that's all.

All I ask from you is that you are a little more considerate in your choice of words - and accept that some of us ( mainly me ;-) ) aren't always able to remain as 'cool headed' as yourself.

[Darkstar]

Chrispie, don't worry about it. I certainly wasn't as cool and level headed in my response as I should have been. You caught me off guard, and I apologize for that. I will TRY to not be so arrogant in my future posting, but at this point, I doubt I'll succeed. In other places and even in other forum here (such as OT), I might try to be purposely insulting. But not here.

Now that we have an understanding, feel free to flame me. I can understand. I'm a bit free with the flamer myself. But when talking about this intriguing project that you and the other members of GGS team have put together, I certainly won't mean to insult you. Maybe tease you a little, or get you fired up JUST enough to respond. Humm... with my natural forum style, even toned down, that should probably be WAY over the top. So let me make my apologies to you and everyone else before hand. I certainly don't think your baby is ugly. I just wonder why you dressed it like that.

It's not like I know better... but I truly do know that in person, I SOUND like I do. Face to face, I warn my coworkers and team mates about that when we first start working together. And I also tend to say... as far as I know, as I understand, I think this is how it is/goes/works, and a few other phrases now and then when I know that I don't know, but I think they've forgotten. This being the Net, I figure everyone knows not to believe a word anyone else says. All those people so full of themselves are just EVERYWHERE, aren't they Chrispie? Even if they don't know it or mean it.

[VetLegion]

LOL

yep, chrispie is our most active programmer. That is going to change though (evil laugh) when I have more time

Yes Darkstar, this is a free forum, and noone will kick you out. As chrispie said, most folks here are coolheaded and wont flame you either (we have two finns on board, does it get any cooler than that? )
Though, if I wanted to be picky, there are issues to flame in most of your posts. But it is not about flame wars. It is about constructive criticism. And adding ideas to make a good project.

Dont get insulted. I havent said you suck or anything, just that you have a "angry" style of writing. Caps are considered shouting on usenet for example, and underlining or italicising is for emphasizing.

reason why it is not smart to get excited about any feature in the game is exactly that - we are open for suggestions, corrections, and even rewriting of whole models, if it can be presented in a reasonable way.

One of the grat things here is, as Leland said that it is voluntary project. No strict obligations, no strict hierarchy, no deadlines

Also, it is not necessary that you read all the documents, meeting logs and such before you start shooting your ideas. They are wellcome

[Darkstar]

Angry? My style? Never heard it called that. I'll try to keep that in mind. I learned a different etiquette for emphasis... but back then, we only had CAPS or putting it in things like ** () or a few others. Then again, you had to be careful... or you could accidently execute a command you didn't mean. Computers and communicating via computers has always been fun!

[Darkstar]

Oh... and in case it got missed...

I think a MMP game with clans would be GREAT FUN. But I don't think you need to go into most of the other ideas that have been presented here to make it, nor for it to be fun.

The difference between a MMP and SP/MP game is what is the focus of the game. At least, as I see it. But that would be very important design consideration. What is fun in SP is not so fun in MMP. What is fun in MMP isn't even available in SP, and not very available in MP (dealing with other people, making alliances and deals, stomping on the enemy, etc).

[VetLegion]

Angry? My style? Never heard it called that.

I really dont mean to lecture. You probably go back longer then me in computer usage too. Yeah, all the ASCII, brackets, **s _underlines_ and stuff are a little art to itself

I think a MMP game with clans would be GREAT FUN. But I don't think you need to go into most of the other ideas that have been presented here to make it, nor for it to be fun.

The difference between a MMP and SP/MP game is what is the focus of the game. At least, as I see it. But that would be very important design consideration. What is fun in SP is not so fun in MMP. What is fun in MMP isn't even available in SP, and not very available in MP (dealing with other people, making alliances and deals, stomping on the enemy, etc).

I agree completely. My personal opinion goes more in favour of 20-30 players max, but you may read Jokers oppinion on more. We still cooperate really good on goverment and other stuff. That is when he is not on an exotic cruise or something, which is pretty rarely the case

Is your ICQ working? I am online for a bit more and if you are too, drop in on IRC.

[The Joker]

I don't particularly like the tone around here (especially not Vet's last remark ). Please, everybody, remember, that the point of discussing things is achieving the great synergy effect, so we together can achieve much better sollutions than any of us could have done alone.

SP/MP/MMP:
We have been over this before. What I believe we are going to do is first focus on MP. SP is not really an issue, since I KNOW that we can not create an AI worth playing against, and even less so compared to a human player.

First we will propably do what Vet suggested - 20-30 people. This is by no means unrealistic, so it's a good start. But further into development having more (many more) players would indeed be something gameplay would benefit from. Personally I think 100 players in one game would be magnificant. Having more players enhances one of the funniest elements in any strategy game - that is, if the game engine allows it - diplomacy. But more players will never be squeezed in if it means compromising the other key goals that we have - the great historical accuracy and the complexity of the game algorithms. These have a higher priority than more players.

But with modern computers and the great amount of self governance the game should provide many players should not be impossible.


Leaders:
I am not sure here. I think that in normal games Darkstar is propably right. Changing leaders 100s of times through one game, by just picking the best all the time would not work. So in the normal games perhabs leaders will not be of any good. But sometimes they could be pretty cool to have. Playing a WW2 scenario would be really spicy with leaders.

But then again leaders is really not anywhere near a big issue. It is not something that we will work on implementing any time soon, and it is not something that makes or breaks a game. It is, as S. Kroeze said some time ago, extra frosting on the cake. So using a great deal of effort on it at this point is not very constructive, nor useful.

I will try to put together some simple region/economy/ressource model the following days. One that can be programmed. It is required for any of the other elements of the game to work.

[VetLegion]

SP is not really an issue, since I KNOW that we can not create an AI worth playing against, and even less so compared to a human player.

how do you KNOW so? It is not easy. I dont mind it not being easy. A good AI sounds like quite a challenge. AIs are written when everything else is done ... I ll certainly give it a try.

[ElmoTheElk]

Very heated discussion here! My computer is finally repeared and I also formatted it completely, but I am back to business. ANd then this...

It seems to have cooled down a bit already but I agree with some of my teammembers here. Well forget about it, we need complaints, other toughts and disagreements as much as we need help...

SP/MP/MMP
WHY? I though we decide to make it MP first. And try to implent SP afterwards. So that means we focus on about 20-30 player. Not MMP. Even if we ever decite to make a MMP game, GGS won't be it. We reduce micromanagment, but our models are designed toward MP, not MMP. Or at least that's what I thought....

AI
Well, let's just focus on the game algorithms used in MP. We may need some AI in that already. Serious single player AI is very difficult, I agree, but not impossible. It even might be fun to some of our programmers! (I am planning to learn some AI on collage too later on next year. Very interested in it.) And because it's hard, we don't neccisery have to forget it..

LEADERS
Hum. I don't like leaders as repesented here. Not about the fact that leaders only stay for some turns though. It's more that I think we don't have to give automated functions a name. Bonusses in a region are cool, or might be at least, but we can have them without 'leaders', right?

Some quotes to end with:

I will try to put together some simple region/economy/ressource model the following days. One that can be programmed. It is required for any of the other elements of the game to work

Cool That would be really great.

strict obligations, no strict hierarchy, no deadlines

Yep, definatly. That a really big aspect to begin with within our team. So yelling at each other is queit useless. You guys better program the map thingy.

I've already read through your design docs, and a good bit else on the web site as well as here. But there is much to go, and much to understand

That's just why we can tell you anything at your service. WE also have to dig trough our memories when we start about something new, like tech...

[The Joker]

MP:

I don't think 20 players are MMP. MMP is 100 players or much more. 20 players is just MP. There is no reason why making a game for 20 players should be harder than making one for 7.

Both MMP and SP will be harder, and are only maybes so far. But I still think making an AI that is fun (has it ever been done in a TBS?) is harder than creating MMP support.