Curremt Character/Dynasty Model

[Lord God Jinnai]

Characters & Dynasties

1.0 - Table of Contents

1.0 Table of Contents
1.1 Introuction
Characters
2.0 Traits
2.1 Skills
2.2 Creation
2.3 Other Character Info
Dynasties
3.0 Creation
3.1 Evolution
3.2 Death
3.3 Succession and Splintering

4.0 Offices & Proffessions
4.1 Offices
4.2 Proffessions
5.0 Credits

1.1 - Introduction

There have been considerable discussions on characters and dynasty's on the Forum, with little 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 off Characters and Dynasty's are two totally differnt things and are only placed together because they are so intertwined.

CHARACTERS

2.0 - Traits

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 will hopefully please the role-players out there as this has relations to many role-play games. All of these will be based on a number 1-20, 20 being the best. I think these should be hidden from the player, but instead have desciptions that rate the general levels. Character's from dynasty's I would like to add a "haze" effect for social viewing of characters, but that we'll have to wait and see.

Physcial Traits: Social Traits:
---------------- --------------
Status Intuition
Education Willpower
Reputation Charisma

Physical Traits - These usually evolve during play somewhat and have a lot do with the character's history and perhaps his dynasty's history.

Status - Represents the social level a character is at. 1 is usually slave or serf or in modern times, a bum. 10 is a journeysman craftsperson or in modern times, a factory worker. 20 is the elite arostocracy or extremely influential people. In modern times these would be rulers of countries, superstars, CEOs of huge corperations like Microsoft. This also represents there relative wealth or potential wealth for the very near future. As the character is played, this may go up or down somewhat.

Education - This is basically book knowledge and the use of it. Those of less than 5 are considered illiterate while those of 17+ are usually considered geniuses. This stat will prob not change, but if so, will prob only go up and not by more than 2.

Reputation - First off, this is the most volitile of all the Traits. All characters who don't come from a dynasty start off with a reputation of 1. Those that come from dynasty's start off 2 lower than their parent(s) reputation. All Radicals (explained later) will have a minimum of 10. This trait measures how well a character is know, not liked. The higher the reputation, the more he's known and the more able u are to hire him if he's outside your civ. However, higher reputations also require more lucrative offers (explained below). Reputation is increased and decreased in many ways, namely as time passes (reputation tends toward shifting for the center (10) if no other modifiers are out there. Other things that can raise it; when the character is hired, were successful at a job, been promoted, very few in that proffesion. Some that could lower; fired from a office, overthrown, unsuccessful. This is by far incomplete and prob hightly inaccurate, but I hope you get the idea.

Social Traits - These have more to do with predisposed areas a char is good/bad in. When rolling for random generation of these numbers, these stats are what make super/stupid characters.

Intuition - This represents a character's insticts, common sence, percention and daily living knowledge. Those with high intuitions usally are able to think fast (although not ness correctly). Low inutition doesn't mean that someone's dumb, it means they might be inexperienced or somewhat mentally imbalanced. Inutition like education will prob not change that much, but if so will only go up and by not more than 2.

Willpower - This is the drive for success of a person, there ability to resist charasimatic leaders (and resist being hired) and the ability to be efficent. Those with high willpower will be risk takers, adventurous or dominant in politcal field. Strong willpowered people are harder to hire, but are also good if you manage to get one.

Charisma - This is a characters ability to sway a person, group or populace through his speaking and actions. This char is naturally gifted (or hadicapted) in this area and will usually nake good in politics or religion. Super charasmatic people are known to cause turmoil throughout history.

2.1 - Skills

Next come the skills. 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 Intuition, maybe even Willpower) and also on the exact profession the character has (see next section). So an 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. 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 so long as that character meets the minimum requirements. When this is done, the skills are determined, using the traits and the Profession as basis.

In addition we´ll probably include Personality and History as suggested by Mark for flavor, although these are not skills per se.

- Administration
- Accounting
- Mil.tactics
- Leadership
- Engineering
- Theory
- Diplomacy
- Persuasion
- Tinkering
- Agriculture
- Theatre
- Music
- Medicine
- Sailing
- Drawing/Painting
- Philosophy
- Electronics
- Computers
- Driving
- Flying
- Maybe something more

2.2 - Creation

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 with some regulating so that 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.

Finnaly there are 2 basic types of characters created. "Free" characters and "Mercenary" characters. "Mercenary characters are common and there are usually 5-20 per civ depending on size and population. These characters require payment of some kind to become employed. They are usually lower in stats than free characters, but not always. Free characters are, well, free. These characters start already in your pool in a position called "General Administration" which just means they help the government out. The exception to this is with hereditary dynasties (See that section for details). Free characters are usually rarer, or are created by dynasties. Finnaly there is a very rare 3rd type of character generated. These are "Radicals" and cannot be controled, only influced, by any civ. These characters have opposing views and are always anti-gov (see below). They also have atleast 1 very high physical stat.

In determining the class the new character belongs to there are three steps. First, the cultural background of the character. For this we´d use the 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 helps out the government in any way he can. He can easily hire this person with prob nothing more than asking if he wants a job. Note that one major differance in the anti/pro status is that this is for all governments. If a character is hired his status is kept (but frozen) and is replaced by loyalty which measures how much he likes your gov. Neutral characters can be hired, but it is usually harder to do so. Anti-gov characters its near impossible to hire without some kind of bribery and even so there loyalty will start out very low. When hired, the player is then free to assign the character to a specific post.

Characters that fall into the Anti group can also do 2 additional things: they can act against the government(s) or they can become Radicals with even more far-reaching effects.

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 the LC in social traits.

2.3 - Other Character Info

About the longetivity of characters is on the average 30 turns, and the range maybe 20 to 40.

DYNASTIES

3.0 - Creation

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 status and reputation; b) type of government; c)possible we can influence this by the History of the character. As for a) only those of high reputation and status have dynasties that are remembered. The government (b) will determine whether or not it is more likely that a dynasty would be started. Another idea for creating Dynasties is to check this at the same time the founding 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. Of course it is more realistic.

3.1 - Evolution

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. Here's the numbers i've come up with based on 20. This represents the first generation after the founding character and should change as follows: the "Stay's the same" should never change in actual amount. The positve modifier will slowly erode at 1 per generation till it is only a 1 or 2. On a roll of 1 or 20 a super character/dim-witted character is created. Each new character will start with a -1 modifier to their stats which will be rolled (unless specified otherwise) with a variation of 3 (-2 - +1). On super char it will be (-7 - +5). In the case of a 1, the slacken curve is reset and on 20 it is put to its end result. If there is a 1 and 20 rolled, it evens out if more than one of them than the other is rolled, law of majority wins.

This is how the slackening curve should start out:

1-8 Stat raised
9-15 Stay's the same
16-20 Stat Lowered

3.2 - Death

In addition a dynasty dies out either through player intervention (or computer civ intervention) or when its reputation of the character born is below 5. Finnaly if there are no offspring when the char dies, so does the dynasty.

3.3 - Succession and Splintering

There will be 0-5 offspring. tending toward 2. Well have to determine when they have kids. Earlier periods had them quite young with daughters being married sometimes at the age of 8 and sons 10. This will have to be playtested i guess. Anyway the succession is usually 1st born unless (a) char dies (b) personality conflict with parent (c) politcal reasons such as char wants to be an artist and runs away, daughter is married off, etc. Anyway dynasty succession can't be micromanaged. Period.

Civil wars will usually occur do to succession for the throne by two influental and powerful siblings (one being the "rightful" heir). This will usually have the other leave and form his own dynasty which will be at war with the other one. Others can happen from splitting of resources upon death, parent/child disowning there respective counterpart. How this should be implimented should have mych to do with the current politiocal situation and personalities of all involved, though beyond that i'm not sure. Note if its a new dynasty that's at war with the old, it will usually be in another civ, but not always if the player allows for competition in succession. Anyway this shouldn't happen too too often are the AI would be overrun with dynasty's. I'd say only if there were 4-5 children.

Finnaly since this has to do with the former paragraph i'm posting it here. It's about rouge dynasty's. Those are dynasty's that don't support the way the current succession is or have disowned (been disowned) by their parnet and took some retainers and started their own dynasty. These will prob always start out at war with other dynasty and be in another country as i said before. The case where they might not is if u recognise them as being a legitimate dynasty, which will have reprocussions with the other side.

4.0 - Offices & Professions

Dynasties can of course be of any type, it all depends on the Profession/Office of the originator. The only Office that must 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 interested in doing we must include the option to turn Dynasties ‘off’, including having the ruler represented by a special character.

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 for a character to have any effects on the game he must occupy an Office or pursue a Profession. As mentioned in the Character section each character can have one of 3 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 someone'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.

- Radical. Radicals are a rare breed, I envision that there´ll be no more than 10-12+1-2 per each player beyond the first (in multiplayer games) of these in a whole game . 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, philisophical or political) and take it to new heights, so to speak. This would be determined bythe social/tech standings. We could use these for the creation of new religions (see Social model).

4.1 Offices

Here is a list of possible offices, 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
- Minister (several types possible, Finance, Defence, Internal, Foreign, Judical, Prime; could also be termed Chancellor or Chamberlain, even Consul or Vizier)
- General/Admiral
- Tax-collector (tax-farmer)
- Chief of police/intelliegence service
- Diplomat/Ambassador
- Inspector
- Spy
- Judge
- Some independant organizations like "The Federal Reserve" or something

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. Inspectors can be corrupted also though. 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).

4.2 Proffessions

Professions:
- Landlord/Aristocrat
- Class/Faction Leader
- Banker
- Scientist
- Inventor
- Philosopher
- Religious Leader
- Doctor/Healer
- Artist
- Bard/Performer
- Muscian
- Mercenary Leader
- Pirate Captain
- Merchant Leader
- Guild Leader/CEO
- Farmer
- Engineer
- Electrician
- Computer Specialist
- Master Craftsman (any kind)

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 Class 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 and similar, some explanation is needed. Players get several benefits from employing Artists, Bards or Muscians. First, the court of a ruler with many prominent "talents" around attracts attention and gives the player a Diplomacy bonus. Secondly, each turn there is a chance that a "talent" 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 (or lost). If we decide to implement this rule it could be a small consolation for those missing the Wonders of the World.

5.0 - Credits

I'd like to thank Hrafnkell since most of this document was taken from his posting. I just modified it and cleared stuff up I though was vauge that could've been not quite so.
I'd also like to thank Dominique for his help in the development of Characters. Much of what he wanted I've tried to incorperate as best I can into here.
Mark - For Clash of Civilizations without which this doc prob wouldn't exist.
Lord God Jinnai - I'm the one who rewrote this and cleared it up somewhat so it could be posted for all to see.

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Anyway post what u like, dislike and how to make some areas more detailed.


Editorial note: Previous discussion can be found in Characters II


[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited November 22, 1999).]

[alms66]

I have a few comments:
1.) I don't think the player should be able to influece how often characters come out. They are supposed to be special people right?, Well special people are rare. The player should just be able to turn them on or off and on auto pilot, if he chooses.
2.) On the marrying of daughters: Will it be possible to marry your leader's son to a neighboring civ's daughter, kill off your current leader, then by right of heir, If the other civ had no sons, rule both kingdoms as one civ?
3.) Another possibility with the succession thing is, split empires. I think it was Charlemange who died and left in his will each of his sons would get one third of his empire, thereby creating 2 new civs. We need to think about including this possibility into the game.
4.) Radicals could also start wars like the American Revolution. They could stir the people into a revolt for democracy and once one civ had acieved this, there would be a greater chance of Radicals poping up in other civs preaching democracy(kinda like what happened in the real world.)

[Lord God Jinnai]

1.) I don't think the player should be able to influece how often characters come out. They are supposed to be special people right?, Well special people are rare. The player should just be able to turn them on or off and on auto pilot, if he chooses.

Well first off i am in the liking of what dominique wanted, ie lots of character interaction, however, i know that many people are not. That's why i am allowing people to vary the amount so it will satify everyone involved. It shouldn't be too much harder to program either.

2.) On the marrying of daughters: Will it be possible to marry your leader's son to a neighboring civ's daughter, kill off your current leader, then by right of heir, If the other civ had no sons, rule both kingdoms as one civ?

Perhaps, but perhaps not. It depends on the political situation. FE an uncle from the other side may claim the right to rule or a civil war for succession could happen or the daughter could rule.

3.) Another possibility with the succession thing is, split empires. I think it was Charlemange who died and left in his will each of his sons would get one third of his empire, thereby creating 2 new civs. We need to think about including this possibility into the game.

Yea i know. I was hinting at that when i was explaining some ways of forming new dynasty's.

4.) Radicals could also start wars like the American Revolution. They could stir the people into a revolt for democracy and once one civ had acieved this, there would be a greater chance of Radicals poping up in other civs preaching democracy(kinda like what happened in the real world.)

Yes to the first part and no to the second. Racicals can and will affect political and religious (perhaps other aspects) a lot, but, radicals are very rare and at most they might produce anti-gov people more in other civs.

[Kull]

LGJ: The "Characters" page has been added to the web site. Do me one favor.

I gave your opening post a fairly thorough spellcheck prior to posting, so please copy it over your original. It's not that I'm overly picky about spelling in the threads, but if you ever edit the original, I'd rather not repeat the edit process before updating the web site. Thanks!

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Thanks for putting the summary/proposal together!

There's just one 'blast from the past' that I didn't See in the doc that I'd like to reiterate...

IMO 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.

And as a corollary, characters in meritocratic systems should be somewhat stronger on average than those from stratified systems. Just because the former has a Much bigger talent pool to draw from than the latter.

[Paul Crocker]

LGJ: I finally took the time to read through your proposal (been a little preoccupied with the graphics, etc). Great job! I'm not so interested in the characters (never been much into role playing) but I love the idea of the dynasties. That would get around the 6020 year old leader

[Mikael]

LGJ:

I see "flying" and "driving" in the different skills...Do you intend to model Formula 1 champions or what?
I'm curious to see what a character can do with those skills.
Sorry if I missed something.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Actually i planned on using them for merchants mainly (i don't think its right to just use seafaring for merchants since many go across land and in modern times air),but it does sould kinda useless in modern era since they can hire people to ship cargo...but then again it could be useful for entrpenuers (hope i spelled it right ). Anyway Sports is a part of entertainment and char will be used for that purpose also. Also flying could be used as an ace pilot in military...i don't know yet though.

[Mikael]

LGJ,

All right, now I understand "driving" . But really I don't see the use of "flying". Pilots are only soldiers in your army and surely can't have any effect on anything...Except if they rise in rank, but then you'd have to use the "military leadership" skill(like Goring).

[Mark_Everson]

Yeah, I'm with Mikael. I hadn't looked at the skills list very carefully . How about just having a Commerce skill. Then you can subsume merchant-related driving, etc. into it. IMO the character should have skills in Only the things they will directly do which are something worthy of the player taking note of.

Now we might want Explorer characters... so maybe sailing isn't all that irrelevant

[Lord God Jinnai]

ok commmerce might be acceptable for merchants.

Mark:
well if we have sailing we have to have something for explorers who aren't sea based such as survival or something

[Glak]

why not just have some skill like adventuring or something? Or geography?

[Lord God Jinnai]

adventuring, no cuz that's really put in will, well maybe. Geography wouldn't really cut it for a skill.

[roquijad]

I'm posting for the first time and I hope this ideas are new:
1) Characters could become "real" persons if they do really well and acordingly to the Era where you're playing. So, a good ancient philosofer chracater could become Socrates, a modern one could become Kant, a scientist could became Newton, Bernoulli or Einstein. An entertainer could became Shakespeare, Cervantes or Elvis. So, at the end of the game, your civ gets more points if it was able to gather important figures of world history through the game. It's like competing not only for wonders of the world but also for remarkable people.

2) I believe the independence of characters from the players is a much more fun thing to play with. Characters could be rebel leaders, rich merchants looking for better economic oportunities from the govt, a religious leader like Christ or Budha. People you have to deal with rather than command them.

Rodrigo

[Lord God Jinnai]

Thanks for posting Rodrigo!!!

Anyway as to ur questions:

1) Characters could become "real" persons if they do really well and acordingly to the Era where you're playing. So, a good ancient philosofer chracater could become Socrates, a modern one could become Kant, a scientist could became Newton, Bernoulli or Einstein. An entertainer could became Shakespeare, Cervantes or Elvis. So, at the end of the game, your civ gets more points if it was able to gather important figures of world history through the game. It's like competing not only for wonders of the world but also for remarkable people.
----
That's a good idea, i just don't know if there should be such a direct connection between our world and this one(s) we're creating. A close idea to this i've had was the ability to name ur dynasty's (or have random names given for urs and others) as well as names for important people, not ness from our world. U could also put an "alias" for anyone u deem worthy of keeping track of also. The latter would have no affect on gameplay but would be similar to what was done with the sim games.

2) I believe the independence of characters from the players is a much more fun thing to play with. Characters could be rebel leaders, rich merchants looking for better economic oportunities from the govt, a religious leader like Christ or Budha. People you have to deal with rather than command them.

:- I thought i had made that clear...guess not. Yes, CHARACTERS CAN DO OTHER THINGS THAN JUST BE ORDERED AROUND! There, i hope everyone knows now Anyway as far as characters rebeling, those would be anti-govs or neutrals only. And yes characters do move around in search of better oppurtunities, however if u hire them for a position (as long as u treat them good) they don't move around in search of better opurtunities. There will be pirates and unowned merchants, religious leaders and more. U can attempt to hire anyone except a radical, however its not guaranteed and u could only try a char 1ce per 3-4 turns and only say 1-2 per turn so that someone doesn't try every turn to hire all the chars.

I'll get more specific on what types of chars there are later on when more of the models are fleshed out and closer to there final stages.