Ggs project overview

[amjayee]

In addition, anyone is free to make suggestions for game ideas. If you think we are missing some important aspect of GGS, just rise discussion! We will not squash it just because it's from GGS, quite the contrary. Everything will be considered.

[The Joker]

Thank you for getting back to us, Cavebear. It is really nice when people have the decency to at least tell us why they quit.

I can see your points, and I can understand why this project is not what you expected anyway.

But like Amjayee said: What is it that we are not implementing from GGS, as of now?

We are still trying to make the game a historical simulation, with lots of aspects based on GGS. Only it will also be a game.

Of cause if you don't want to be a part of this any more then we can all respect that. But if you feel there is something we are not doing right, then we would like to hear it. Maybe your suggestion will not make it into the game, if it makes it unplayable. But then again, maybe it will.

What I am trying to say is, that it would be totally ok to have less close relations with the project than being a "real" member. Maybe if you still have some interest in the project you could just tell us if you have some comments, from time to time? We have several people doing that, and it is really a great way for us to see things in a new perspective, and get some new ideas that we would not have gotten otherwise.

But this is all up to you. Whatever you choose I am very happy that you decided to make your last post, even if we wont hear from you again.

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"Damn those nazicommunists."
- McBain

GGS Website

[cavebear]

Thank you all for your careful consideration of my comments. I felt that the basic aspects of the game were already settled, and perhaps I was incorrect about that. You seem a very thoughtful group of people.

Jared Diamond expressed his ideas in terms of a progression from ultimate causes to proximate causes. In other words, his answer to the timeline of history is not that the Spanish had Guns so much as *why* they had guns (and germs and steel). And, in his view, the answer to *that* is not that they had metal-working, or before that, tools, but *why* they did. Jared Diamond sought to discover the "ultimate" causes of advantage.

He found it in geography. Specifically, he found it in axes (plural of axis) of landmass shape; East-West "good", North-South, "bad". That is, in his view (and I agree with him until a better explanation comes along) the original (ultimate)explanation for civilization success.

He found the availability of (the right kinds) of domesticatable plants and large animals to be the secondary determinant. Not all areas had suitable animals and plants for domestication. Some that did, did not discover the idea as early as other areas.

From the domestication of animals came the diseases, Diamond's third function. Those areas that found a suitable animal or animals to domesticate were exposed to cross-species diseases. That exposure gave them a Darwinian immunity (only the resistant survived).

The fourth level factor was technology. That arose from cities, which depended on plant and animal domestication. Those factors combined to allow food surpluses which, in turn, allowed for tech specialists.

Guns can only come from civs that have (by geographical fortune) had domesticatable plants and animals.

So, by the game parameters being settled on by you designers, it seemed to me that the primary issues were being passed over in favor of a game similar to a Civ2 Scenario (in itself, an adventurous idea). If I am incorrect, I apologize. But it still seems to me that directed warfare is the main focus for winning the game you intend.

And that is *not* GGS.

I welcome rebutal (without taking it in any way personally).

And I have some thoughts about how to make a game more faithful to GGS...

[heardie]

Trust me we do not want this game to be, in anyway, just a war game. It is more of a 'history simulator' a 'government simulator', and will not be bias towards anything

[cavebear]

Joker said it would *not* be a simulator...

[The Joker]

Thanks again for replying, Cavebear.

I have read GGS, so I don't think I would have to comment on your short resume of its concepts. It is still nice, however, that you wrote it, for people not familiar with it.

But I can, and will, answer your comments on the game.

I think it would be a big mistake to mistake the game for a wargame. It is not a wargame.

It has been a goal for us since the very beginning to not make this a wargame. And to make it less so than, for instance, Civ2.

There should be more ways to win than war. And war without sensible thought should be destructive. For instance, units should require an upkeep, which would make it impossible to just build as many as you could.

And there should be more options to gain power via diplomacy, economic power etc. So no. It will definately not be a Civ2 type wargame.

I don't think I have said somewhere that it will not be a simulator. I have said that it will not be a game version of GGS.

But one of the goals are to make the game as much a historical simulation as a strategy game.

And this is true. The game will focus on realism, which will make it a bit like a technology tool, so playing a civ in a time period should be like ruling a civ in that time period. The whole game should be like running a government in history.

On top of this it should be a fun strategy game to play against loads of other people over the internet. Imagine huge online games where perhabs hundreds of people picks a country/character/religion/corporation from a screenshot of todays world with alll its conflics and opportunities, and play!

I don't think the two would be mutually exclusive.

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"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

[cavebear]

Do you have any basic outlines for the expected game objectives, strategies, and restrictions? In other words, do you have some ideas of the challenges that players should have to overcome, the main kinds of conflicts players will face with adjacent civs, and the kinds of tools available for succeeding against other civs?

I'm trying to understand how you think the plant domestication, animal domestication, and disease diffusion issues would be handled (meaning your intentions, not the programming).

Disease, for example... Do you intend that individual civs can develop specific diseases that could then be spread to specific civs they contact? Or would you have a more generic "epidemic factor" that pops up within a civ from time to time that assumes it came from elsewhere (but no where specifically).

I don't want to ask too many questions along this line at once...

[The Joker]

I'm not sure I can answer a lot of potential questions, but I'll try.

Game objectives:
We are trying to make the game a rewrite of history. The player should encounter the same things as a leader of a country in history would. Other civs, plagues, revolts, politics, war, diplomacy, economics etc.

Plant domestication:
I think this should not become too important an aspect in the game. It should propably work as raw materials, but it should not have too great an importance. We have animals and diseases for that.

Animal domestication:
I think animals should be put different places on the map before the game starts, and then spread to all hexes with climate similar enough to their home one. Then the game begins. Animals gives a production bonus, and the possibility to make certain units. Plus animals would have diseases on them.

Diseases:
Would work as plagues when they encounter new people - kill a percentage of the pop. Later it becomes a part of the pop, and kills just a few people each turn.

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

[cavebear]

OK, a few ideas. For simplicity, I will assume the real world (though I would expect the game to create random maps in which the same general principles would apply):

1. Appropriate domesticatable plants and animals would be scaterred around the appropriate geological areas. Some areas would have many, some not so many (or even none).

2. Players would be required to take some action to "domesticate" plant and animal types. Each plant or animal would be a *separate* domestication, costing some time and/or resource expenditure.

3. Once domesticated, each plant or animal domestication would diffuse by adjacent squares by turns of years and require terrain suitability. Put another way, when wheat is domesticated, adjacent suitable terrains will allow for it "x" number of squares per turn. If wheat hits unsuitable terrain, it stops spreading on its own.

4. The automatic diffusion rates of domesticated plants/animals should be low.

5. More terrains should be used than in Civ. There could be several "grassland" types, for example - 'winter rain', 'summer rain', and 'monsoon'. Same for some other terrains.

6. Domesticatable plants/animals could possibly have some randomly-generated characteristics. Wheat might have a tendency towards terrain adaptabilty in exchange for reduced food value (or vice versa) for example.

7. A "pioneer" unit might be able to carry seed/animals for a few squares (to over come minor barriers) and a more advanced "trader" unit to carry them farther in later years.

8. The map should be huge. It is ridiculous to allow any civ to have a unit that can move from China to France in just a few turns.

9. Who says that "squares" have to be "square"? Why not like bricks, or hexes, or even flattened hexes?

10. There should be localized diseases based on the number of domesticated animals.

11. Those disease should be transmitable on contact with another culture's units. Those units could be infected or not by random programming. They could further die or not randomly. Survivors could even be carriers (randomly again).

12. My domesticated wheat might not be as good as your domesticated wheat. Yours would replace mine (but I would gain from that).

Well, those are a few thoughts.

[The Joker]

Thanks for your suggestions.

1: How about giving each animal a starting position completely randomly (as long as it is in the right terrain) and then spread them to all suitable tiles they can reach before the game begins? I think this will be realistic, and will mean that large continents will have more animals than small islands.

2: Yes, I assume this is needed. But wouldn't the people do this themselves, without government interferance?

3: Yes.

4: I don't think it would be too slow. Crops and animals have travelled thousands of km's in just 1000 years or less. I think it would depend on terrain differences.

5: Yes, we will use a different terrain system than Civ. I am not sure if winter rain versus summer rain grassland tiles would be overdoing it, though. Would it have such great importance? And couldn't it be done in another, more simple way?

6: Yeah, this is obvious. Horses could be used as army units, pigs could not etc.

7: Yes, this makes sence. Only when you have contact with another civ trade would often happen automatically. But of cause in early years the max trade route length would be limited, and there a government funded trader/pioneer could spread things further.

8: The map is going to be huge. We are using 50 km wide hexagonal shaped tiles. But I disagree that a unit should not be able to cross a continent in a few turns. I personally hated using centuries to cross a continent in civ. We want to make unit movement as realistic as possible, so movement would be pretty fast. Only there would be more factors to consider. For examble if you cross territory not controlled by you you would have to battle the people living there. These would not create units or anything, they would just give a little damage to your army. Nothing important, but if you are crossing 50 enemy hexes in one turn your army would propably die from it. And supply routes should be used too. So you would have to secure them in order to have your unit move.

9: Like I said - hexes!

10: Can't anything but agree here.

11: Same thing.

12: I think we should avoid too much complexity in this field. I think using generic plants and animals would be simpler and most likely better. Otherwise how would you get better wheat? I just think it creates too many problems and concerns without much fun.

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

[cavebear]

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 12-22-2000 10:12 AM 1: How about giving each animal a starting position completely randomly (as long as it is in the right terrain) and then spread them to all suitable tiles they can reach before the game begins?

I was thinking in terms of wild plants and animals being available in a few tiles at game start and only beginning to diffuse after domestication.

quote: 2: Yes, I assume this is needed. But wouldn't the people do this themselves, without government interferance?

I think that the initial domestication of a wild plant or animal should take some specific player action (similar to researching a tech). That would allow for strategic decisions by the player, but not any micromanagement.

quote: 4: I don't think it would be too slow. Crops and animals have travelled thousands of km's in just 1000 years or less. I think it would depend on terrain differences.

It took about 4k years for domesticated wheat to spread from Persia to England. I only mean that the diffusion should not be too rapid in the game.

quote: 5: Yes, we will use a different terrain system than Civ. I am not sure if winter rain versus summer rain grassland tiles would be overdoing it, though. Would it have such great importance? And couldn't it be done in another, more simple way?

Winter/Summer rain was important in the real world, but not neccessarily here. I was mainly thinking in terms of more terrain types. Perhaps "plains" terrain could become "steppes", "plains", and "savannah" or something like that. In civ, all the growing is done on just 2 terrains, and that seemed too simple.

quote: 8: The map is going to be huge. We are using 50 km wide hexagonal shaped tiles. But I disagree that a unit should not be able to cross a continent in a few turns. I personally hated using centuries to cross a continent in civ. We want to make unit movement as realistic as possible, so movement would be pretty fast.

I was thinking about the early years. I'm hoping for some way to prevent "ancient blitzkreig" games where a player can wipe out an early civ from far away with a couple of lucky chariots.

quote: Only there would be more factors to consider. For examble if you cross territory not controlled by you you would have to battle the people living there. These would not create units or anything, they would just give a little damage to your army. Nothing important, but if you are crossing 50 enemy hexes in one turn your army would propably die from it. And supply routes should be used too. So you would have to secure them in order to have your unit move.

I like that!

quote: 12: I think we should avoid too much complexity in this field. I think using generic plants and animals would be simpler and most likely better. Otherwise how would you get better wheat? I just think it creates too many problems and concerns without much fun.

On rethinking it, I agree that is too complex. OK, wheat is wheat is wheat. And if it is independently domesticated in more than one place, then it stops diffusing where it meets itself.

But there *would* be different kinds of plants and animals, right? Wheat, rice, corn, potatoes with slightly different food values and terrains? And horses, cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc? They would all be suited to different terrains.



[This message has been edited by cavebear (edited December 23, 2000).]

[Sikander]

Gentlemen (and of course any Ladies!),

I just noticed this project, and have read several pages of posts, and visited the website. I am intriqued by the ideas I have seen so far. I would like to help the project in any way that I can. Allow me to tell you what I can bring to your efforts, and what sort of limitations I have.

What I can bring:

1) I have 25 years of wargame, roleplaying game, game design and playtesting experience, both with computers and board / paper and pencil games. I have played hundreds of different games during that time.

2) I have studied history for over 30 years.

3) Like you, I am fascinated by the subject of the origins of mankind and civilization, and can bring yet another perspective to both the historicity (how historically accurate something is) as well as the game mechanics / mathematic modeling side of the project.

4) I speak and write English well (if you can get past my American spelling), and am willing to write / edit any of the English language portions of the game materials, website etc.

My limitations:

1) I am not a computer programmer, though I am probably more aware than many about the techniques and limitations inherent in a computer program.

2) I work full time, and have a family as well as other projects which may limit my availability at certain times, as well as giving me an absolute limit to the time which I can give to this project.


I leave it to you who have already taken the mantle of Designers, Programmers etc. of Guns, Germs and Steel to use me as you will. I can be contacted via my email address available from Apolyton. I look forward to taking part in a successful venture with you.

Sikander

[The Joker]

Cavebear:

1: I think at least animals could spread on their own. Couldn't they? I am not really sure here, actually. Were cows confined to a small area before human domestication?

2: Hmm, yes, you are propably right. Also since this will keep the player active in the game.

4: Well, yeah. You're right.

5: Agreed.

12: Yes there most likely will be. We are not sure how they will work, though. Yet...

I think we should move this discussion to the "GGS - The Book" thread. This is more meant as an informative thread about the general game issues. Ok?

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

[The Joker]

And welcome to you, Sikander! It is great to see interest in our project. And you seem like just the kind of person we could use.

Right now our main issues are designing the population and economy models, as well as making a user interface.

If you want us to "put you to work" (although you are more than welcome to just take part in the things you have interest in) you could look at the two appropriate threads (pop and econ), and give us the appropriate comments. Right now we are mostly concerned with how to make these two work. Player activity will be incorporated later.

Good to see you!

------------------
"The future is that mountain."
- Bret Easton Ellis

GGS Website

[Sikander]

Thanks Joker! I'm about halfway through the population model posts, and am almost overwhelmed. I will give them a lot of thought (as everyone else seems to).