Characters

[Hrafnkell]

This is from an e-mail I sent Mark recently, we decided to post it on the Forum so everybody can state their opinion.

So, finally we come to characters, something that´s was brought up again recently. With characters we run into the same problem as with war-making, that of time-scale. On a time-scale of 10-20 years per turn the usage of characters is severely limited, because they´d come and go too fast to be any fun. We have two solutions to this (apart from the unrealistic one of allowing characters to live for Very long), the first is where you only get characthers occassionaly, they live for some time then die and you´ll get new one shortly after. The number of characters would be limited to perhaps 2-8 per player at each time. The second solution is to use Dynasties. An idea on how to use Dynasty is that when a player gets one (hires it, ‘builds’ it, discovers it, whatever) he attaches it to either one class or a specific province. We could even allow players to choose a ruling dynasty, if they want. Each dynasty would have numerous attributes, such as organization, financial strength (skills), military skills, innovation, and so on so all af them have their strengths and their weaknesness. Now, in time (two to three generations, sometimes longer) a active dynasty begins to ‘degenerate’, i.e. its stats begin to weaken until its benefits are almost none. When this happens players can try to remove it and replace it with a new and vigorous one. This can of course be tricky if the dynasty is in the ruling seat, so some cunning is required on the part of the player. The number of dynasties active would vary (this is set at the beginning of the game), maybe from 1 to 5. If we want to get very adventurous we could allow dynasties to evolve like cultures and religions, amalgating with other dynasties and so on. One final word, even if we do include characters/dynasties in one form or another I think this should always be an option only, not requirement. So even if it´s fun to contemplate this maybe it´s best to shelf it for awhile and finish the core rules first. But having said that I´d still want your general opinion on this.

[Dominique]

A big YES for characters!

Okay, but I see it mainly from the atmospheric point of view where characters always have been much of an improvement (give you the idea of "my friends are with me").

In game terms, characters aren't much more than special unique unites with some special, "character-only" attributes (morale, leadership...).

As for the realism question: We have to simply bite the bullet here - let's face it: Not only is the concept of the player being an undying leader through the milennia QUITE a strain of realism, the maintenance of the same units through centuries is, as well. Clearly, if you build a phalanx in 2500 b.C. you don't expect it in 500 a.D. to consist of the very same soldiers, do you? So in effect you have a "soldier dynasty" here. Why not simply assume the same for characters?

Characters should be rare (maximum of five over the whole game length or so) and always be an add-on to the atmosphere. If you do not like the idea of true dynasties, maybe one simply could use an office, e.g. the player can name up to (any number here) field marshals, or vizirs or whatever.

[Glak]

I think dynasties are the way to go. I mean a lot of them such that they are essential to the game. Perhaps dynasties would occasionally produce a hero. Heros would rejuvenate dynasties.

Grr moron brother cut me off, oh well I forgot what I was saying. Basically dynasty control should be important. You might have to play them off against each other to survive troubled times. They might have lands of their own or you could strip them of their lands and force them to serve you in the capital.

[This message has been edited by Glak (edited May 22, 1999).]

[Mark_Everson]

So just to be explicit we're talking about particularly good Kings (or dynasties) Generals, Statesmen, Thinkers, etc.

First of all I'm with Dominique on the basic point that we just have to go with game balance here, and somewhat ignore reality. One factor that would make these things more palatable is if we just go by Turns and forget Dates. ( Or alternatively, do this until we get to the point that we might have one turn = 1 year and arbitrarily call this 1800 or something. ) This helps with the ridiculously slow movement rates for military units problems also.

I kind of view characters the same way I do tech breakthroughs. Utilizing fleeting opportunities should be a challenge and adrenaline rush for the player. Over time these 'good breaks' will even out, but the skillful player will be able to exploit the transitory advantage to the fullest. This would make enormous Alexandrine conquests possible if:
1) the civ is well-managed at the start
2) the technology and/or character is at the high end of the bonuses
3) the neighboring civs are relatively weak

And of course the story telling aspect is very strong. They will talk of Alexander long after he is gone. When the history of the civ is told this period will resonate with the player.

The character's exact advantages shouldn't IMO be made explicitly known to the player. Only, fe, that Alexander is a Very Good general. Along with their obvious talents the characters should also have some hidden flaws or risks. We can enumerate these later, but a good general might be likely to expire 'early', or in one out of 10 battles be completely worthless, or have political ambitions... These limitations should still leave the character a clear net bonus to the player, but will increase the storytelling aspects of the game.

Whether there be 5 per game, or 5 running continuously is a balance issue we need to address. I'm personally in favor of a light touch here, with there typically being none (say 2/3 of the time) or one character on-the-field at a time. But this one we could even adjust easily when feedback from playtesters come in.

Good Job guys! I was initially against it, but the more it comes up, the more it sounds Right.

[xiane]

Characters are fun, and do reflect reality to some degree, so I say include them. But how?

They should be limited in time though, to reflect time passing, to balance the game, and make it interesting to see what players will do. That is do you try to "ride" your great general to big military victories, or plod along, squandering the talent, but staying safe?

One idea I have is that there might be certain "free" characters who come along at random for a limited amount of time in any area of the game, government, military, science, arts, religion (could be destabilizing), or commerce. They are not the result of planning or of the factors I'll describe below.

Next there can be leaders who come at a price. That is you have a better chance of gaining a military leader if you "build" or fund a military academy or if you encourage a militaristic culture. The drawback of doing this is handing more power to the military class. The same could go for religion, or science- with centers of theology and religion or "special" academies, institutes or universities. For politics there could be political families or party strongholds in certrain provinces. They produce leaders regularly, but might vie for control of the nation.

[Dominique]

Characters might become a necessity while an empire grows, i.e. if one would see them mainly as provincial leaders.

Maybe this really is the way to go: Remember how important it could be to micro-manage every single tile in CIV2? At the beginning of a game, this could easily decide if you lateron had a big or a GREAT empire. But as soon as you had 10 or more cities, this kind of micro-management became hard to do, nevertheles was feasable and thus (for those longing to "max out" their civ) a tough job to do.

If Clash features characters, these could be very well used to reduce the need for micro-management. I imagine the following:

In 600 b.C. my Roman Empire grows in a way that al of today's italy belongs to it. Up to this point I micro-managed a s much as possible, trying to make the best out of it. Now, the program informs me of the fact that my empire has grown too large to be effectively led by just one alone; I had the choice between receiving disadvantages for sticking to an ineffective system OR I could choose amongst the nobility a provincial leader. From this point, I WON'T be able to do most micro-management in that province, since the provincial leader would see that as offensive behaviour. As for my capital / core empire, I'm free whether to choose a vizir or not (a leader should have some direct influence on his capital).

So, in effect, this character system could bit by bit take away routine tasks while new, bigger tasks come up over the centuries.

[xiane]

Dominique, I like the above idea quite a bit, and perhaps I could add something. You could still have the choice of micro managing to an extent in certain places, what you would do would be to "replace" the governor, and for a number of turns you would get to micro manage, then the game would take over. If you wanted to micromanage some more you'd replace the governor again. But this would quicly lead to instability and problems in the region. So you could "step in" for awhile, when really necessary, but you couldn't do it for long...

[Dominique]

Xiane,

that's more or less exactly what I had in mind. When I remember my latter CIV2 games, I never could resist to micro-manage every least bit, knowing that it really makes a difference. On the other hand, turns took an eternity then...

Now, let's say you can "replace" a gouvernor character by micro-manage things yourself, but you can only replace ONE of them at any given time (simulating the fact that even the ruler can only be present at one place at a time), then the player would have the opportuity to do micro-management on his own, but this task would be restricted. On the other hand, even deciding WHICH province needs to be looked after might become a strategic decision.

Hm, I think the idea of that is really beginning to take shape... now we only have to decide on what happens as soon as the ruler leaves and the gouvernor jumps in place again. Should the ruler's commands "erode" over time, according to the loyalty attribute of the gouvernor? Or should the commands be kept literally, with new decisions made only for "new" population?

[Hrafnkell]

I like the idea of tying characters into the governing system, and that by using characters in certain game areas to help you run things the tradeoff is that their power increases. The fact that large empires are forced to use its characters to govern provinces, while smaller states can use their characters as scientists or financial moguls is very appealing I think, and relates to what we've often talked about, that small states are more vigorous and innovative. Now, regarding the power ratio between the ruler and provincial governors, and how well a rulers orders can all be represented by the governmental system as it exists pretty much now. When a player uses a character as a provincial leader the Geocentric power graph is effected, i.e. power becomes less centralized. Also, the Upper Class (for provincial leaders) benefits politically the more governors there are (the same goes for the military and generals and so on). The only thing we must be careful about is the usage of characters to reduce micro-management. If we stick to the above, i.e. that using characters has effects on the governmental structure, then we force those who want more centralized power to do everything themselves, while those that don´t what to micro-manage things inevetably give more power to the local lords. Ok, this is realistic I agree, but not much fun.

[Mark_Everson]

I think you collectively are evolving a really interesting (and Fun) concept. I'd just like to reinforce what Hrafnkell said about micromanagement. IMO a player should Never be forced into any micro-management that he/she doesn't want. You could f.e. reduce the government's effectiveness, or increase rebellion as a civ gets too big for its administrative capablilities, but I maintain managing these issues should still be Easy for the player.

The leader In Fact can't be everywhere at once, so it is not realistic to have them manage transitory minutae for a province that they will probably never visit. The government model in fact enforces that to some extent although we don't have the exact details yet. Here I think that realism and good gameplay go together. Of course if the player Wants to do this, we'll have to let them for gameplay reasons. But the player will still be managing by hand a province that has some problems and limitations associated with it being far from the central authority.

Now, characters, perhaps should allow the breaking of these corruption-vs-distance rules to some extent when it'll make the game more fun. Perhaps a good adminiatrator would make it as if there were two kings at different spots, and make administering a larger empire possible while the character is in play.

[Dominique]

I remember a game on the Amiga called "Imperium" - in fact it wasn't that good, but it focused on the idea of "gouverning the gouvernors", including low loyalty (up to betrayal).

Now, while micro-managing a SMALL empire might be fun, the game shifts towards a larger scale lateron, so the tasks of the leader should grow with his realm - but in order to keep the game playable, there must not simply be a "more" of tasks, but a shift.

In the beginning, you (as a ruler) have to care for the crops, for the one city you have (or the first few). Lateron, a careful balance between the different provinces might become more important. I think, a simulation of the delicate balance between ruler and the upcoming nobility might be quite challenging, don't you think?

So, in the later game, one might get more and more distance between the ruler and the "daily tasks" (as in reality), while managing one's subordinates becomes more and more important.

The concept of some strategy (more tactical) games of a "chain of command" might play a role, too, so a leader might give empire-wide commands which are in fact realized only to a certain extent, depending on how able / loayal the gouvernors are.

Personally, I think that THESE aspects are much more important than military questions - after all, there are HUNDREDS of strategy games out there, but only very few good civlike games.

[Mark_Everson]

At least my gut feeling is that we want to keep the characters Special. I'm coming around to think there should only be something like 5-10 per game per civ. IMO characters, hired or otherwise, should not be average goverors of provinces. There should be simple mechanics for how a ruler handles the governors as a group. This would be explicitly included in the government system. For instance the ruler/player can make the civ-wide decision to:
1)Sell governorships, in which case the governors look upon their provinces as a business proposition and try to extract as much wealth from the provinces if they can. 2) An alternate method, again applied to the whole civ, would be a more benign one where governors are paid handsomely so long as they develop their province well.
3) Then of course in a modern democracy you get the people electing their own governors.
One of these, or some mixture of these basic approaches should be used IMO.

The point is you don't need characters for this. Characters should be Very special Rare individuals, that add Fun to the game. If they become too numerous they will IMO become yet another micromanagement chore that has to be done because of the design, but that the player derives little joy from. I do a fair amount of micromanagement when I play Civ2, but its pretty joyless since most of it could be done Automatically with either a better game design, or better AI to implement my decisions. I think we Must avoid this sort of thing in Clash.

I also like someone's idea (can't find it now) that characters that do show up should be linked to the culture and main thrust of the society. The romans value statesmanship, law, and military, so their characters will usually show up in these areas. Other cultures value other things, and other types of characters would tend to show up.

[Dominique]

Mark,

on the one hand, you are right about characters not becoming too numerous... on the other hand TOO few characters could definitely make the game unbalanced - why?

If a character is to be something special, it must have abilities / bonuses. Now, if a player gets few characters or loses them quickly, he is at a heavy disadvantage if these specials are too good. But make them not good enough, and characters become uninteresting.

I think we could wonderfully combine the concept of characters and governours: Give the player X + 3 characters, X being the number of provinces. Now, since he MUST assign one character per province (to handle the province efficiently, else there will be malus points) but one (because that's the province the ruler looks for personally right now), you only have 4 characters available for "roaming the land", i.e. leading armies or have a function as special engineer etc.

What's the advantage of this solution?

For one, you don't have abstract gouvernors, but "living" characters, letting the game come to life a bit more.

Second, you can swap your guys around, setting each on the position you deem best. This way, you could e.g. put a not-so-able gouvernor into a province that's not that critical at the moment.

The player is simply a bit more flecible here, since he always (from a certain point on) has a pool of characters, some stationary, some "roaming" - look at it as garrisons and field armies.

It's a bit more balancing, too - it's not THAT bad a catastrophe if one character dies, since you always have some more, just the choices are reduced.

As for this being more micro-management: Yes, absolutely, but isn't that exactly the idea of it? Freeing the player of the mm tasks he has at the very beginning and shifting them towards political roulette? If you want to eliminate that, too, what's left? Only juggling with some numbers? Just moving the armies? Come on, that's no fun at all, I'd play CtP then, there I have numbers and armies enough...

[Dominique]

Mark,

I see your point, af if there's something that has been decided long ago, I'm certainly not the one doubting it - go ahead!

But IF there are characters to be included, I simply feel it would be the most natural way to use them for the "offices", as well.

And, yes, you are right, they'd become "business as usual" - but which of the game aspect won't, in the end? The question IMHO is not wheter the player gets accustomed to characters, it's whether he gets accustomed and still has fun with them.

My fear only is that you are obviously a number-addict - all *I* want to do is push those numbers and statistics a bit more in the, well, in the roleplaying direction..

If there is one civlike game I love as much as Civ, it's Master of Magic (strangely, it's much less known than Master of Orion), and this is mainly because of the characters involved... and, ah, yes, because you can "customize" all of your units (and characters) by giving them countless combinations of magical spells. In fact, I haven't seen a game with such a number of individual / city / worldwide modifications as this one. If you haven't played it, you should definitely have a look at it, to get an idea of this.

Anyway, characters shouldn't be degraded to "super units" only, that's my main point.

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

No, nothing is locked in either way on characters. Your idea may be the one that's best... I don't know, all we have is your feeling against mine. That's why I wanted to hear what other project members thought.