Curremt Character/Dynasty Model

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

NP, I Know things aren't too organized and there's a Lot of material. Kull and Dominic have helped Immensely by organizing things in the web site!

Mark

[Mark_Everson]

Well, I have been thinking about what I can add to the conversation that hasn't already been said.

Character effects on diplomacy are hard for me to envision in terms of specific game mechanics. The only thing I can come up with is that a really successful diplomat essentially manufactures out of the air extra "stuff" to give the other side in the negotiation . I guess the simplest way to do this would be to have a Great diplomat automatically sweeten the pot in a negotiation by a certain percentage of what is at stake. So, for instance, we are trying to end the war with the hated Pig-Molesters and we offer them the province of no-big-dealia to quit attacking us. Suppose the province is worth $one million, a great diplomat offering it to them might convince them it is worth $1.1 million. The deal would then be accepted or rejected based on that inflated value.

The government stuff with respect to characters has been beaten to death, and I don't see what I can add to that discussion in a few minutes. If you want to ask specific questions about areas that you are having difficulty with, I'd be happy to try and answer them with my take on it.

On the economy, other than bankers and merchants, I really don't have any good ideas at the moment. We have already discussed both of those. Great bankers or other economic actors will probably just give arbitrary benefits to various sectors of the economy. I think I know what you mean when you say that you want to incorporate merchants directly into the characters model. I frankly don't like the idea. There will be merchants running around doing all sorts of things, and to basically Require that every one of them also be a character will IMO overburden the system without much being accomplished. I think the merchant characters should be limited to a Small sub-set of merchants. If I have misconstrued your plans for the merchants, just let me know.

Well, that's the best I can dredge out of my feeble brain at the moment.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Plz, before i can get much further i need the following gen ideas on how u'd expect char/dynasty to affect: Diplomacy, Government, Economic, Merchants, Social/Cultural. Basically give me some ideas as to type of positions, some info on them that might be useful that i don't curr have/hasn't been brought up, etc. As far as merchants gom I'm planning on incorperating them directly into chars somehow so i'd really like some feedback on how u'd like this done. Same goes for pirates which i thinks should IMO be done in military or merchants model for the most part.

PLZ! PLZ! To the people in charge of the respective models give me some feedback cuz i can't really do anything without it.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well first off thanks for the info. It does help but i guess what i want more though and should have clariefied this before is positions/types of chars.

As far as merchants go, this somewhat true. If u play with lots of chars it prob would be the case, but that's ur choice. On the other hand if its like u want to use char, just minimal to add "flavor" to the game then it wouldn't cuz only well known merchants such as Marco Polo would be chars. These could also be interacted with to get better deals through contracts.

Similar thing goes with pirates. The thing is though that most of the chars would be unkown and unable to actually make contracts with prob because of their low rep. We'll haveta see.

[Mark_Everson]

Oops, sorry. Thought you wanted All merchants to be Characters. Just something in your phrasing made me think that... I've got no problem with some merchants being characters. Great Merchants could work by providing 'immaginary' extra gains to those they trade with similar to what I said about diplomats above. That's the only idea I've got at the moment.

[Lord God Jinnai]

It would depend on the level set for chars for what would be considered char merchants. The way i play it would prob be 30-60% of the best, depending on the era and number of merchants.

[roquijad]

About number of chars: In a multiplayer Clash there should be some kind of agreement between player concerning this number. The reason: if chars can actually give bonuses to players (like when selling that $1 mill province and making it look like $1.1 mill), then players will tend to choose a big number of chars each, so you then get a really messed-up situation concerning computational speed.
In a single player game there should also be some control on the number of chars: If I'm playing and things aren't going good for me, I'd choose to increase the number of chars to get more bonuses in all game aspects. It'd be like cheating.

Rodrigo

[Lord God Jinnai]

The reverse is true for inflating the worth of civ...a really bad diplomat (and the way i'm implimeting it sometimes u could get a bad one), will make that million $ civ look like 900,000.