Characters

[Egbert]

Maybe the player could have as many governors/generals/whatever as pleased him. Say start of by recruiting a general (perhaps some expenditure of resources required), give him basic training at a cost provided you have appropriate technology. eg. basic training possible if you have barracks technology and a working barracks. This would give him certain added capabilities, perhaps 10% combat bonus to accompanying troops. You could say give him more training if you get "miltary academy" technology to get 15% bonus. Perhaps a bit extra training to get 20% bonus.
Similar for governors but you could get a food, money, science or resource bonus depending upon his training. Also perhaps his training (and your general orders) could bias his administrative priorities when you leave him to manage a province by himself.
I think special abilities should not be "too good" otherwise if one character can become a game buster with consequence a player will win with him but lose without him. (This happened to me for a while with Kersus in MOO2 although I don't need any characters now).

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[Mark_Everson]

Peter:

The characters in Clash IMO by design should not be around for very long. So any imbalance should be temporary. The area's clearly going to require careful thought and playtesting.

-Mark

[Cerebuz]

Hello team!

Wouldn't it be kind of fun to have a superclass "Agent" and then do all kinds of subclass agents like Merchant Company, Religion, Dynasty, Grassroot movement (evolves when a society is very different from what the ppl in the society needs whit consideration to ppls freedom and strength of gov) etc?

I too think that MoM was a great game. The spells where a lot better balanced against eachother than the wonders o' the world in the civ series or SMAC, although overall balance and AI sucked worse than your average civ. The really fun part was heroes and how you could build their strength. It would be nice if one could affect theese agents, both thoose who are free, who work for you and thoose who work for other civs.

/Cerebuz

[Blade Runner]

The characters need some good and some bad behaviour. Let say I start to train my general or governor. If the "guy" to clever must be a little chance to revolt or betray my imperium. In the history the powerfull generals frequvently made revolts, civil wars, or military governments. I think it must be connected to the situation of the game. Let say I have a well trained general. If the neighour start an aggression against me, the general don't revolt. But if I attack my peacefull neighbour, there is a chance, my well trained general make peace with my enemy and attack me.

Blade Runner

[Cerebuz]

Oh, I thought some more and read the gov-file on the Clash-page. Perhaps it would be nice to make the social classes as another form of agents? That would be neat.

Oh, and if you're gonna have wonders, couldn't you make them come in two versions: The first civ to get it gets a Big Boost or some other advantage, but all others can now build the wonder to a reduced cost and with reduced benefits. So not just one civ can have a KGB etc, as in the civ-series.

Just some food for thought.

/Cerebuz


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/Cerebuz
____________________

Email me at
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[Mark_Everson]

Hi Cerebuz:

We may do the characters as Agents... Even if not they will have agent-like behaviors.

I really don't want to have characters or dynasties that grow in power. These are great play elements in, say, a fantasy setting, but I think they would disrupt the connection with history we're trying to foster in Clash.

Blade Runner:

I think you're right about possibilities for rebellion etc. However, I don't think the characters will always do the 'just' thing. They might be equally likely (but not often) to ally with your enemy whether the enemy is morally on the right side or not. It would just depend on how good a chance they perceive they have of getting away with it IMO.

Cerebuz:

Hrafnkell is currently looking into putting characters into the internal politics system. We'll have to see what he comes up with.

So far we have no firm plans for wonders, although there was some discussion of them a bit ago. I think the general opinon was that we don't want wonders with awesome cosmic powers like in Civ2.

-Mark

[Dominique]

Ok, since I've been away for a while there have been no more witty comments of mine on this - I'll do them now:

1) I wanted to have characters in CLASH from the beginning - but I fully agree with Mark that we should make them dynasties for the sake of credibility (Maybe we should NAME the game "Despots & Dynasties"?). As for the question how long a dynasty should "live"... well, please do not put all the stress on realism. Having a dynasty rise only to lose it some game turns later is boring. At least there should be the odd dynasty which accompanies my rise as aruler (hopefully so) fo many hundred years. I'd like to have the same feeling for at least some dynasties as I have for my group members in roleplaying games - and I want to be really sorry if one dies (or if the situation forces me to remove it). Dynasties (or some of them) must stick around for a while so the player gets an opportunity to develop an emotional bond (positive or negative). Btw., like CIV taught many of us hardcore strategy gamers that there are other ways to victory, CLASH could teach the need for cooperation - not only with other empires, but with helping hands within my own empire.

2) I can't agree with the ideas that dynasties where mostyl founded by some strong-willed indiviadual and then gradually declined. I think it's more historically accurate if you say that often a strong-willed individual let an existing dynasty appera important which before wasn't. So, maybe, more like a gaussian curve...

3) Mark, I like your list of possible characteristics.

4) Characters (dynasties) should be freely available as long as "empty posts" are concerned - i.e. if I have a province that needs a governor, some dynasty must be available all the time. Additionally, there should always be a small pool of characters so I can replace existing ones I don't like at all. BUT

a) not all characteristics should be obvious before actually setting in a character.

b) there mustn't be a real random function as far as the characteristics are concerned - a dynastie's characteristics should be determined by some pseudo-random function so as to prevent the temptation ofg a player trying until he gets a "super-character" (remember the goodie huts in CIV? Well... tempting, indeed...).

[Mark_Everson]

Some more ideas...

Characters can be part of a dynasty or one-shots (not attached to a dynasty). One-shots are more typical of meritocratic systems, and will tend to be a little stronger than your average dynasty member. The typical character (individual) lasts about 30 turns (say 20-40 barring mishaps) on average. Dynasties will usually go thru 4-6 characters before the characters become so lousy you gotta rid yourself of them. I think an average dynasty lifetime of 150 turns is pretty good. Maybe 1/7th of a 1000-turn game.

Character Luck must Even Out in the long run...
Each civ will have generated for it at birth a profile of Total character power at each turn for the remainder of the game. (This is to get around constant character reload cheats looking for a lucky shot.) The Average over the whole game will be set by the player. So if you want a lot of characters you can set it high. Each time you field a new character you have control over (independent ones are not under your control) its stats are determined and deducted from the total character power bank. When you run out of points all your characters after that will just be average. The will have names, history, or whatever, but their stats will not really help the player.

The character point bank value can be modified by factors like corruption, meritocratic nature of the civ, etc.

I'm not sure what I think about the point bank... It seems kinda kludgey. Anyone else have a decent idea?

[Diodorus Sicilus]

In the CivIII Threads I posted concerning "Charismatic Leaders" - characters that would appear to mess up or improve your day in the game. This Thread appears to be related, with a couple of questions:
Are you trying to represent subordinate leaders like governors, or the Genetic Crap Shoot that has plagued monarchies, or reproduce the Great Man theory of history (which is anathema to a lot of modern historians and Marxists, but still valid)?
I suggest that the 'normal' run of governors, their competence and number, will be set by the Tech level, bureaucratic and administrative structure of your Civ. On the other hand, the Genetic Crap Shoot that throws up Religious Prophets, Great Conquerors, and Barking Maniacs does have some parameters...
Dynasties tend to deteriorate very fast. The longest steadily-competent one I know of was the Seljuk Turks, who had something like 7 consecutive good rulers, lasting some 200 years or so (these figures are from memory, so don't hold me to exactness here). Most of the Great Charismatic Leaders of history are followed by Slugs: Peter the Great, Friedrich the Great, Louis XIV - all left a vacuum.
At least three Royal Dynasties tried to keep the Blood Pure by inbreeding: Hawaiin, Incan, and Ptolemaic Egyptian. As a result, the famous Kleopatra was the last of her line, the intermarraige having pretty much killed off the rest.
Special Characters should be largely random. Yes, a military academy might help get you a great general, but there are just as many that came from nowhere: All the ancient generals, most of the pre-modern ones (Duke of Marlborough, Maurice de Saxe, Vicomte Turenne)had no appreciable military training in the modern sense. Even Napoleon, who attended an Artillery School as a youth, only learned in it how to be a Lieutenant: the rest he picked up within himself or by self-study.
West Point, Sandhurst, Samur, Frunze Academy, etc have all turned out about as many idiots as geniuses. Believe me, I've studied and written enough military history to fill 10 threads with examples!
So, make the Characters represent the Real Movers, the geniuses of talent that show up out of the blue: random event Charismatics. The field in which they act can be modified or weighted in favor of the cultural/social values of the Civ in which they appear: Romans tend to get people interested in politics and military, Classical Greece weighted towards politics, philosophy (raw research) and Trade, one of the nomadic 'civs" weighted towards military, religion, and trade, etc.
Charismatics can be either good or bad: the religious leader can reform the church or start a new religion which will probably cause serious disruption before it settles down. The Ruling Dynasty, even in decline, may throw up a Charismatic, or the political Charismatic might lead a revolt! Military geniuses always include the threat that if they are too successful, they turn political and take the government (Julius Caesar, Napoleon, etc).
Economic Charismatics might be one way to add your Agents for development (see my post in the Econ Model thread). They would represent the ocasional Multi-Millionaire who shows up and can do things the government and no ordinary individual can: Crassus in Rome, J.P. Morgan in the US, Fuggers and Rothschilds in Europe, all had economic clout far beyond any ordinary non-government agency. They could finance Economic Development that ordinarily only the government could afford. Your (the government's) problem would be that their Goals might not match yours, and what they finance probably won't be exactly what you want developed!
Religious Charismatics would give us a historical (realistic) way to add the major effect of religion to the game, something that has been utterly absent from every other Civ title. Religions are not Researchable, they are rarely controllable, and usually are a distraction to the government, especially when they are starting up. Since all the major modern religions can be traced to a single Charismatic Individual starting them, this mechanism can be reproduced in the game. Religion can change your Civ completely, but how badly or well it goes is partially a function of how the government treats the religion: suppress or embrace, make it official or allow "religious freedom" (which may turn out to be the Freedom to Slaughter Each Other in the Name of the True Faith and lead to Civil War!).
History is full of banana peels that leaders slipped on, and Charismatic Characters can add a bunch of them to the game, both as Genius individual Randm Events, or as the start/part of a Dynasty.

[Mark_Everson]

Diodorus Sicilus:

In response to your query as to whether we are modeling the genetic crap shoot of leaders, or subordinate jobs like governors, the answer is yes . The points you raised are the things that get me most interested in the character system. I find the wildcard geniuses the most interesting, in that they push the game in a direction the player may not have imagined ten turns before. The capability to use multiple characters as governors or labor leaders will clearly be of use in the 'connection-to-game' aspects. I think we should try both (at Player option), since they're not mutually exclusive. We will simply need to playtest the two aspects of characters before the answer is clear what to use in the final game.

-Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited June 11, 1999).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ok everyone its been a while since anyone posted in this section but some idea was brought up for character use in the tech model and thought i should post something here. Read there for more info.

Mark:
Also btw what ever was decided on their use and the character/dynasty proposal u said u were going to write up?

If nothing else I'll write 1 up if i can figure out what was eventually decided pretty much.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited November 15, 1999).]

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

You found Characters I. Remember I mentioned Characters I & II? If you look in the Guide to Current Status thread Characters II is listed. This is one of the cases where the better organization of the new web site will help out alot!

Characters II is here and takes the discussion a bit further. Why don't you read it and comment, and we can re-start the discussion there.

All further comments in this area should be in Characters II.