Characters II

[Mark_Everson]

Hrafnkell:

Thanks for taking this area on. There's a lot of good new stuff (and alternatives) in your proposal. I guess assume I think everything is really good unless I criticize it . Again, good job. -Mark

First of all I think I need to stress (and I think you agree from previous comments) that IMO characters should be Optional for the player. If the player doesn't want them, then all they will get is the 'interface' parts of the characters, but with no game effects.

Dynasties / Characters - My only comment here is that I think more traditional systems should give more dynasties for good or ill, and more meritocratic systems should give more individual characters (and of somewhat better quality than found in non-merit systems). Some systems could be meritocratic for most things except the ruling dynasty, we'd have to work out the details.

You suggested that non-player civs not have characters. I disagree, since I think part of the spice that characters add to the game is in making the player respond to exceptional characters on the Other side. However I admit this may be found to be bad thru playtesting.

I think characters that work for the player should Always take on a Benign office, that benefits the player in some way, Immediately. The last thing we want is the player having to check every turn to see if a new character has popped up, and being afraid of missing a few turns' bonus that would result. To avoid this micromanagement I think that pro-player characters should automatically go into a 'character pool' in the government. This would have a civ-wide impact in the area of competency. The character's effectiveness would be reduced somewhat since by definition characters in the pool are safe and never rebel or do anything bad (since otherwise the player won't use the pool, and we're back to micromanagement (MM)) The player can at any point move a character under their control into an office etc.

IMO characters associated with the interface, FE the UC (upper class) representative, should not be assignable by the player, but simply represent their class. I think this is proper since the main game purpose of these is to represent their class (and this 'office' should IMO always be filled), and any player benefits or penalties are a secondary matter. Also these are not controlled by the player, although interests may align frequently. In the case of classes allied with the government the character would provide benefits as those in the 'pool'. (However they would use their powers to champion class-specific issues when these conflict with what the player is trying to do) Class Interface characters that are neutral or hostile to the govt could have either generalized or localized effects.

I agree with you that the player shouldn't generally pay characters salaries, but 'Mercenary' Characters (available for hire) that were rare would be useful (you may even have meant this since you talk of mercenary captains)

I proposed a character system which´d use character traits as its basis. Those traits where: 3 Social Ratings: Status, Wealth and Education; Physical Ratings: Intelligence, Charisma and Drive (or Will).

Then I assume the player can put the character in one of Many offices

I prefer the other option of skill-specific characters (Army Generalship +100%, etc.). The training of geniuses in whatever the player wants them to do strikes me as (1) unhistorical, in that Picasso would have been a useless scientist etc. and (2) difficult to do good AI for (although after thinking on it I may reach a different conclusion). On the other hand having a character who is Only suitible for one thing (or at most two) is a little boring. I realize that you're just trying to achieve some consensus between two sets of opinions on the old thread (
apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000063.html ). My point was that someone doesn't show up in the real world and say 'I'm a genius, where would you like me to develop my talents.' The talents are usually only in one or two well-defined areas, and what the govt Wants is irrelevant. If Picasso shows up and you need an administrator, he Simply Can't Do That Job better than any normal underling, and probably Worse. If Alexander's Macedonia had called for great administrative skill because it was bankrupt, he probably would have been a complete failure. So I am, I think, more for the specific-ability kind of system. I just think the other system departs too much from the real world for my tastes. Its of course all game balance and feeling, but I can see players channeling every decent character into a great general, and I think that will make things very one-dimensional.

On the AI-difficulty issue. Its in deciding what the Right place is to put the characters that's tough. If characters can go into any of a large variety of offices, in each of which they can have significant effects, it becomes Very difficult for the AI to get nearly as good as a human at weighing the alternatives. That's why I proposed the character pool, because the AI can then do the straightforward thing of dumping all its characters in the pool, and only worry about the Really exceptional ones. Don't get me wrong, the AI for the 'complex' case is not any different from what we have to do for the military strategic AI system which involves similar big, interacting trade-offs. Its just that we Have to do military and I'm not sure the added flavor is worth the added complexity for characters. But like I said I'm still thinking about it, it may not be too bad.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited June 13, 1999).]

[Hrafnkell]

Characters II

The first thread was getting rather big, and this post is rather big, so...

Editorial Note: This continues the discussion from the original Characters thread.

This is an idea of mine reagarding the use of characters and their role in the society. It was done alongside the gov.model (which should be here later today), but isn´t excactly a part of it, so it´s here in a seperate post.


Characters & Dynasties

There have been considerable discussions on characters on the Forum, with no clear consensus reached, although the general ideas and possibilities have been analized. So what you read here is not necceserily the exact system we´ll use. First, I´ll look at two ways to handle character statistics and then I´ll briefly look on the possible roles characters can have in the game. Finally I´ll discuss Dynasties a little bit.
Now, I think we all agree that characters should be rated in various categories that relate directly to some in-game functions, such as Administraion skills or Army Command skills. This way is pretty straight forward and tells the players immedietly what the character does best. Another idea is to rate each character in some personality traits, such as Intelligence and Charisma, and then base his performance on those stats alone. Both ideas are OK, but pose some problems.
Someone had the idea to keep this hidden or uncertain until the player actually assigned the character to a specific position. This, IMO, is a good idea, but how to actually do this can be tricky. My idea is that we use a bit from both of the ideas above. Each character has personal traits, and when he is assigned (or chooses) a profession his skills are determined (see next section on the profession thing). This (hopefully) pleases the role-players out there (yes, Dominique, I´m talking about You :-)) as this has relations to many role-play games, I believe. A long time ago (in a BB far, far away :-)) I proposed a character system which´d use character traits as its basis. Those traits where: 3 Social Ratings: Status, Wealth and Education; Physical Ratings: Intelligence, Charisma and Drive (or Will). These traits are IMO sufficient to depict characters’ background without going into too much details. The last one (Drive) is important in real life in determining how ambitious/driven the person is, but maybe it´s better to replace this with Intuition? Or use them both? Also, we could put Loyality in as the 4th Social Rating. I´m of course open to any suggestions. Next come the skills (and the interests, so to speak), these are pretty much the same as the one proposed by Mark on the Forum. Here´s is a list:
- Administration
- Finance
- Mil.tactics
- Nav.tactics
- Leadership
- Engineering/Mechanincal/Technical
- Arts/Entertainment
- Theory
- Diplomacy/Persuasion
- Maybe something more…
In addition we´ll probably include Personality and History as suggested by Mark for flavor, although these are not skills per se. The exact level of skill in any of the listings above depends on the traits related to it (f.e. Leadership would be mainly based on Charisma, but also a bit on Status and Intelligence, maybe even Drive or Intuition) and also on the exact profession the character has (see next section), so a Army Commander would have somewhat higher Leadership value than a Banker even if they had the exact same traits. I´ll leave the exact connections between the traits and skills out for now until I know whether this idea of mine will be used. The general idea should be obvious: When a character is created he is rated in several characteristic traits, if the character is controlled by a player he can be assigned to numerous Professions. When this is done, the skills are determined, using the traits and the Profession as basis.
Next, lets look at character creation. This is done on class-bases, i.e. a newly created character is considered to belong to a specific class. How a character is created is determined randomly, although I support Mark’s ideas on regulating this so players can´t go back to a saved game to get different kind of character. One idea we could use instead of the Point Bank is simply to average out characters over the game, so if a player gets a super character he will get a total airhead later on (or several that are below par). As for how frequent characters are, this is something that players choose at the beginning at the game. Perhaps players can also choose how influential they want the characters system to be, i.e. whether they want a lot of great characters or not.
In determining the class the new character belongs to we´ll probably influence it by the pol.power of the classes, so a state with strong MC is more likely to get a character. After that three things are determined. First, the cultural background of the character. For this we´d use Manu’s Social Model.
Then the allignment of the character is checked, i.e. if he’s pro, neutral or anti governmental. For this the anti/pro status is used (see the gov.model), perhaps modified a bit by the cultural backgound (f.e. if the character belongs to a oppressed minority there is more chance it becomes anti-gov). If the character is pro-gov he becomes a player controlled character, i.e. he´s controlled by the player of the state he was created in. That player is then free to assign the character to a specific post. If the character is neutral two things can happen: he either becomes pro or anti, or he becomes a ‘free’ character which any player can attract (at least those in nearby states). Possibly pro/anti characters can become ‘free’ too, we´ll determine that later (through playtesting). Characters that fall into the Anti group can also do two things: they can act against the government (duh!) or they can become Radicals with even more far-reaching effects (the ‘wildcards’ we´ve spoken about). ‘Free’ characters represent mercenary leaders, independent investors, artists without a patron, etc. and can be hired by any player in their vicinity (i.e. offered an Office). The computer states can generate ‘free’ characters, maybe even radicals. However, the computer states themselves never have characters as such, at the most only the ruler will be represented with a character.
Then the traits of the character are determined. As said above whether the character has high/low stats is pretty random (with some restraints). When distributing the trait ratings the class the character belongs to is very important. Thus characters from the UC tend to have higher Status and Wealth rating than those from f.e. the LC.
About the longetivity of characters I more or less agree with Mark on this, i.e. on the average 30 turns, and the range maybe 20 to 40. Because the difference in time scales through the game this means of course that characters live abnormally long in the early game, but fairly short in the late game. We could possibly rectify this somewhat by making Dynasties more common in the early days, but that might only confuse players, so I guess we must accept the slight unrealism.
I think the simplest way in handling Dynasties is to check, when a character dies (dissapears), whether he creates a Dynasty or not. This would be determined by: a) the characters traits/skills (the higher the more likely a Dynasty emerges); b) the position the character has in the game; c) possible we can influence this by the History of the character. As for a) of course lousy characters are in reality just as likely to start a Dynasty, but for gameplays sake I think we should limit them to the better characters. The position the character holds (b) means that characters in lucrative or high positions are slightly more likely to start a Dynasty. Another idea for creating Dynasties is to check this at the same time the (first) character is created. This is simpler and probably makes it easier to keep the number of Dynasties under control. The downside is that we´ve no idea what kind of a Dynasty it will turn out to be, for all we know the character could be killed in the first battle he participated in.
The offsprings of the first character automatically try to follow in their fathers (mothers) footstep, even expecting (demanding) the same position he/she held. If it was a heriditary position they´d probably get it automatically (spelling potential trouble for players when the Dynasty begins to ‘slacken’). The traits/skills of the offsprings (note that only one character for a Dynasty is active at a time) are calculated using the stats of the one before them. The tendancy that the Dynasty ‘slackens’ in time means that there would be some negative modifers to this. Just to throw some numbers out, we could assume that for each trait/skill the new character has ca. 10-20% chance of improving it, 30-40% chance of it staying the same and 40-50% chance of it declining. The idea, as Mark has mentioned, is that a Dynasty should be pretty lousy after ca. 4 to 6 characters. I guess the lousy Dynasty characters could linger about for some time after they´ve been ‘kicked out’, but under certain conditions (TBD) the Dynasty should dissapear.
Dynasties can of course be of any type, it all depends on the Profession/Office of the originator. The only Office that most hold a Dynasty at all times is the ruler when the state is Monarchy, or the like. In most cases a Dynasty should be associated with a certain Office, because the idea with the Dynasties is that once they decline players must pry them from their Office in order to put a better character in it. As this may be something that some players aren´t interedted in doing we must include the option to turn Dynasties ‘off’, including having the ruler represented by a special character. I don´t know if we need some special rules regarding the ruling Dynasty. Maybe the ‘slackening’ curve wouldn´t be quite as steep as for other Dynasties (this is for gameplays sake). Also, the chance that a Dynasty becomes ‘extinct’ could be slightly higher for ruling Dynasties than other. This is done to lessen the chance that a total nitwit sits on the throne. Of course history holds many nitwit rulers, but I think we must put some restraints on this for gameplays sake.


Offices & Professions

Now that we´ve outlined the creation and stats of characters and dynasties the next step is to decide what to do with them. I think if we just let them wander around without a specific purpose or position we´re asking for a lot of trouble. So my idea is that for a character to have any effects on the game he must occupy an Office or pursue a Profession (these terms are liable for changing later on). As mentioned in the Character section each character can have one of 4 occupations at any given time. These are:
- Office. Characters that are working in the government (not merely for it) are considered in an Office. Basically, these are the governmental officials. Apart from heriditary Dynasty positions characters never get an Office without assignment from the player (players can of course let the AI handle this for them).
- Profession. This occupation can be divided into two groups. The first is all characters that are under a player’s control, but that are not part of the government. The second group are characters that are characters that are not under direct control by any player, either because no-one has offered them a job (yet), or of their own choosing (i.e. they´re essentially anti-gov).
- Free Character. This occupation is for newly created characters as well as those who´ve lost their former Office/Profession. Characters stay here for a few turns (2-3) before they find themselves a Profession, if they haven´t been approached already by a player.
- (Free) Radical. Radicals are a rare breed, I envision that there´ll be no more than 10 or 12 of these in a whole game (that is for All players, not per player). The radicals can never be controlled by a player, at most they can be influenced. I haven´t completely figured out how these guys should work, so any suggestions are welcome. I think each of them will embrace an obscure or unexisting idea (religious or political) and take it to new heights, so to speak. This would be determined by the social/tech standings.
Here is a list of possible positions, not a complete one. Note that many positions only become availible when civs have reached a certain advancement level, and some may become obsolete in time: Also, that some positions where known under numerous names throughout history.
Offices:
- Governor (maybe Mayor too)
- Minister (several types possible, Finance, Defence, Internal, Foreign, Judical, Prime; could also be termed Chancellor or Chamberlain, even Consul or Vizier)
- Commander-in-Chief
- General/Admiral
- Tax-collector (tax-farmer)
- Chief of police/intelliegence service
- Diplomat/Ambassador
- Inspector
- Spy
These types should all be familiar, the Inspector is an official whose job it is to make sure that other officials are doing their job appropriately, thus decreasing corruption and increasing administration efficiency. Note that the effects of each position are yet to be decided. Also, if an Office isn´t occupied by an active character (as will happen often) it´s considered occupied by a ‘John Doe’ with average stats (maybe a bit low), which occupies the Office until the player assigns it to an active character )and occupies it again when that character dies or is sacked).
Professions:
- Landlord/Aristocrat
- Labor/Class/Faction Leader
- Banker/Investor
- Scientist/Thinker/Inventor/Scholar
- Bishop (or other religious term)
- Artist
- Mercenary Leader
These types should also be more or less familiar. The Landlord/Aristocrat is in most cases a powerful and influential character, which is liable to act against you if kept out of government for too long. The Labor… Leaders are characters that represent a class or a faction and can modify the relations of that class/faction towards the ruler, even act as a rebel leader in case of a revolt. As for the Artists, some explanation is needed. Players get several benefits from employing an Artist. First, the court of a ruler with many prominent Artist around attracts attention and gives the player a Diplomacy bonus. Secondly, each turn there is a chance that an Artist produces a Masterpiece, which gives the player a VP bonus, and perhaps some monetary gain later on (Tourism). We could also award extra Diplomatic or Stability bonuses for Masterpieces. If it´s not too complicated to implement (and if we think it´s worth it) we could keep track of each Masterpiece, what type it is, where it is, who owns it, etc. thus allowed them to be stolen (looted) or exchanged through diplomacy (like the Statue of Liberty). Masterpieces can of course be destroyed. If we decide to implement this rule it could be a small consolation for those missing the Wonders of the World.
Note that I leave out the money-side of this, that is characters are not paid salaries, or a recruiting fee. Similarily, the sale of offices, which could be fairly lucrative at times, has also been left out. I feel that this serves no real purpose in the game and thus there is no need to incorporate this.
The system for hiring characters will be very simple, the player simply chooses any character that is either free or in a profession but controlled by no one (players can possibly hire characters from other states nearby) and offers him a job. A free character will almost always say yes, the chances for the others are based on their profession, the job they’re offered and the relations of that character (and his faction) to the government.

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited November 15, 1999).]

[Dominique]

Okay, I admit that I haven't got the time to read both previous posts carefully by now; I just had a glance and want to propose something (being the roleplayer that I am ):

Actually "hiding" character stats might be frustrating for the player.

Showing the competencies in each area is IMHO too straightforward. So why not

a) assign a certain random modifier to each character stat per turn (remember, we're talking of individuals from a dynasty over the course of centuries).

b) add a certain "haze" to the character stats, meaning the following: E.g. a member of an old, famous dynasty might be seen by the public as a great warlord, while he actually isn't that special... the public judges him by the deeds of his famous ancestors, too, and since the ruler has to rely to a certain degree on what the public thinks (since he can't know ALL characters that good), the ruler might be a bit tricked by some rumors etc. In effect, the stats should be deliberately unprecise, in the way of "excellent", "quite good" (no numbers!), while the actual value might vary one level.

[Mark_Everson]

On the per-turn mods, I had actually figured there could be single characters that just had a certain game lifetime. This is an item IMO where we simply pick gameplay over realism. I think moving characteristics randomly on a per-turn basis would just confuse things. Say you send a charismatic great administrator to a province on the edge of revolt. You expect the character to either succeed or not, rather than bouncing back and forth between success and failure on a turn-by-turn basis. I think we just need to put an unknown-to-player modifier on top of the stats we present to them for each requisite.

I think presenting characteristics as excellent etc is quite reasonable.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks for bringing this back to life. I agree that I may have had dynasties going downhill too fast on average. I think we can start with your proposal and just see what we think as it plays out when its implemented.

Pirates is a cool idea. I think we already planned great merchants.

IMO we need to do gender, because ideally we'd like to put a face to each character as discussed earlier in the thread.

[Richard Bruns]

My idea for changing the technology interface to be based on random inventions is basically dead for gameplay reasons. While there were good reasons for killing the model, I will continue to lobby for private individuals creating things without direct player control. Mark suggested that this might fit with Characters, so I will outline some ideas here.
Every so often, an Inventor, Scientist, or Philosopher character will develop. An Inventor is someone with one good device, like the Wright Brothers. A Scientist is someone like Einstein that revolutionizes or improves a field of study. A Philosopher is someone like Aristotle that influences almost all science disciplines.
Inventors can appear in any time, Scientists are more suited to the modern era and Philosophers the ancient times.
When an Inventor appears, the civ gets a free physical technology like Radio or Catapult, something that could be thought of by one person. The inventor then becomes a character that increases technology research in a certain field.
A Scientist could generate a free theoretical technology, or could just give a big bonous to research in some field.
A Philosopher is more likely to generate an idea or social technology, but could also do work in the natural sciences. This character improves tech research a little in each field of study.
The chance of these people arriving is based on many factors, as described in the Technology thread. But basically if you have a good domestic policy and a thriving civilization, they will appear more often. This would reward players for taking good care of their country and show the impact that a single person can have on science and technology.
As far as I can tell, this would fit right into the game model. What does everyone else think?

[Mark_Everson]

Sounds good to me! My only objection would be if something Seriously over 10% of the world's social advances ended up being done by characters as immediate discoveries.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Ok everyone its been a while since anyone posted in this topic (now the right one )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.

Anyway after reading though these i've come up with some ideas of my own. First off we could combine the merchant/pirates into this area by simply making characters that have good statistics in those areas merchants/pirates with anti-gov more likely for pirates and pro-gov less likely. Also the player can still decide to make them a merchant/pirate if he hires them.

Also culture might be a major factor in background.

Has anyone decided wether or not to use gender in this model?

Finnaly as far as dynasty's go i think the percentages should be a little differnt for the first and second generation where its about 25-50% chance of increasing stats, 15-40% chance of staying the same and only 15-35% chance of decreasing because of the fact that there will still be people who remeber that person's father/grandfather (or mother) and will be able to much more realisticly demand more from their descendants. This also plays more into reality since dynasty's don't usually last 2 generations, but more than that before then begin to slacken. Also another idea when it creates the new character if its extremly high or low number generated when rolling for stats to see if it goes up or down, u should have a super great or dim-witted character created. This could moreso abruptly end the dynasty or keep it going for another several hundered years.

Anyway i thought i bring this up seeing as its been a while since anyones talked in here about characters.

[Richard Bruns]

You are right; most social advances came from the entire culture slowly developing something. I was thinking more in terms of a philosopher coming up with a 'radical' idea like Abolition of Slavery that you could choose to accept or suppress.

I am still working on a comprehensive model for Ideas and making it fit what is already decided. The general concept is that Ideas with certain effects are generated and spread to a certain percentage of the population. If the Idea is widespread and powerful enough, it will demand player attention. For example, the player might have to change government if the people demand a democracy. the prresence of a Philosopher will affect these Ideas.

The main concern if inventors has historically been applied technology. I think that as many as 40% of the civ's applied technologies like Airplanes could be supplied by inventors, allowing the player to concentrate the RP pool on general technology and processes like Engineering and Architecture.

[Glak]

the trouble with inventors is that they are random. Randomness is the bane of strategy. Perhaps it would be nice if everyone got identical characters at the same time, though somehow I doubt that would be implemented.

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

You should check out the Social Model. It will support modeling what the people think on a provincial basis sliced by class and some other parameters. I think your Idea proposal should be framed in terms of what is in the Social Model, or extensions that could be made to it.


Glak:

There's gonna be some randomness, just get used to it... Personally, I find pure strategy games somewhat stultifying. You can always calculate everything. (And I admittedly don't enjoy highly choreographed operations, as are usually found in pure strategy games, don't have the patience . I Prefer having some unexpected curves thrown at me, and I think lots of people do.

That said the randomness must not become too large. So long as the luck comes in not too big chunks, and is dispensed evenly, the better player will win anyway IMO. It has to do with the central limit theorem in probability, which I'm too lazy to elaborate on at the moment...

[Richard Bruns]

Mark: I am checking out the Social model and other models. Why did you think it was taking me so much time?

Glak: I contend that the essence of strategy is dealing with the unexpected.

But your consternation is understandable. I probably should not have used the word 'random' so much. As I elaborated in the technology thread, the chance of invention is greatly influenced by the player's domestic policy. If you govern your civ well, the inventors will appear much more often. It is random in that you don't know exactly what turn you will get something like you do in civ 2. Strategy and good governing still plays a big part.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Hey mark if u want I'll go ahead and write up a prelim doc for characters (with rich's help on the inventors scientist and philosphers) and based alot on Hrafnkell put up at this page as well as some modifiers that we've discussed since then. I'm doing this so u can place on the new website along with everything else

[Mark_Everson]

Cool. Thanks for taking on the project. You might also want to do a search of the forum on characters first, just to get a sense of the discussion that went on before the official characters threads

[Lord God Jinnai]

Done that somewhat. Main thing was i never saw wether or not u took any of Dom ideas.