Character/Dynasty Model IV

[LOGO]

Good, I agree totally, I think the Charactor system should really take more of our focus it can become something really incredible. People have to remember how important Nobles were in anciant, medievil, and even near-modern times. I say we should intregrate as much as possible, but of course let people choose

[axi]

I think that we should start figuring out exactly how the various characters will influence the game, in their specific area of expertise, using the current settings in the respective model.

In order to start doing that of course, we have to define a limited number of positions for the characters inside the government. Later on, we can expand this to unofficial positions.

I believe that our list of traits and professions for the characters should be revised, because currently they are too vague.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Okay, I thought about it for a day or so. I don't really see what the problem is. Most of the places where a character goes into a model, the character's effects will be simply to modify one or a few of the effects within it. How exactly does this result in overworking the CPU?

As I have always pictured it, there are the normal characters like you talk of, and then there are things like advisers. The advisers don't really function as characters per se, they just have things in common with characters, like a picture etc. for flavor. The advisers Must Not IMO be real characters, especially in terms of trustworthiness. The advisers must be Completely trustworthy, or the players will start doubting what they say, and we will descend into micromanagement hell. Your idea to inject stats from the character model into other areas is IMO inappropriate and unnecessary. It's inappropriate because in the object oriented philosophy the character should be the ones that keep track of their stats, and only pass Essential information to the other models. It is unnecessary, because you're not going to save any CPU time by doing that anyway...

Maybe I don't get what you are saying, but I can't think of a single instance where a calculation would need to be done twice because a character was involved.


Hi axi:

I think you have to give LGJ a break on this; many of the models are still not quite to the point where one could say Exactly what the character does.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:

I hear what u have to say about the advisors and such, but i think we should also allow people who want to have characters as advisors do so and then if they do they'd get a slight advantage if it was a good advisor as apposed to not having a character advisor. They would, however, be risking the chance of having inept and corrupt advisors, but that's their choice. No ones would then be forcing them to use characters as advisors (or anything else).

What i mean by using the stats is that for someone who does want to use characters for various positions. It would be easier IMO to check to see what type of info the advisor would give at what level and a non-char advisor would always have say 10/11 (1-20) for the app advising stats. This way we always know what he will say to the player depending on the situation, however if the player wants a character advisor (as characters stand for currently) it makes it easier to check and see how the advisor will react becuase ur using the same method, just differnt numbers.

[LOGO]

Mark,
Let's take another look at what an advisor is, in Civ. II your "advisor" was simply a data table of some kind right? What I'd like to see is a creation of a Cabinet, a group of people appointed by you to act as real advisors. They'd give you each of their own ideas on how to go about such an action, they'd either make their own competing ideas or back another's idea. Or you could choose to create your own or combine certain ideas. For example you could hold a meating with your advisors on how to deal with Iraq invading Kuwait, there would be a couple military people but mostly civilians. Some would say ignore it, some would say invoke sanctions, some would say begin diplomacy, some would say fight a war. Then of you choose war you'd go to your military advisors and pick the strategies you want to use, from a Kosovo air war to a Gulf War to a Vietnam. I think you may want to have differant options like LGJ said, you could have an option of them being corrupt or whatever but it should be on default not corrupt. But I think you might want to set the default on some of them being smarter then others and such, and of course making them have differant points of view. Any thoughts?
[This message has been edited by LOGO (edited February 14, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

The point that I am absolutely certain on, is we always want the "generic" advisers to give the best advice we know how to give. If the player wants to have the possibility of a corrupt adviser that gives worse, or skewed advice, that's fine by me. But there is no way that I personally can justify having an adviser (of the generic type) give less than the absolute best advice we can come up with. If the advisers are no good, they will be, like the advisers in civ, completely useless. I personally am not interested in any way in dumbing down the advisers just so that we can have "smart" character advisers that perform better. So it is my position that we not only want the generic advisers to give consistent results when they are not being handled by real characters, but that they also must give the best results we can afford.

Logo:

The cabinet of this sort you are talking about is certainly possible, and is an interesting concept . Why don't we see how the advisers work in general before we worry about interactions between them... Then we could approach this issue with some real knowledge under our belts.

[Lord God Jinnai]

First off I do have to disagree with u mark, but that characters should atleast give advise good enough for the players to use, because the whole reason of using characters from the way i've been basing it is that they can aid for an element of role-playing and iteraction, but also they force u to take risks. If u'd only loose by doing so (ur notion on advisors) it defeats the whole purpose of my model.

Well I planned on also using charcters like i said for more things that are in other models other than advisors, such as govenors, generals, religions leaders, etc. Like always things would be optional though.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

Yeah I see what you are trying to do, and from the point of the characters model its very interesting. But I am vehemently opposed to dumbing down the advisors for the whole game just to make one part of the character model more interesting...

Lets see how things work out in general, and hopefully in the fullness of time we can figure out an approach that will make both of us happy.

[LOGO]

I don't believe we should dumb down the charactors, most people in polotics today aren't "dumb" they have different points of view. As much as democrats say republicans are idiots what they really mean is the republican right-wing conservative aproach is the wrong one, just conflicting views. What we'd have to focus on is making the idea of conflicting views extremely odvious to the player, the computer will never have the "right" way to do anything, that's what we have to remember. Having some advisors saying "when you start bombing greace they'll surrender imediatly" and others saying "it'll boost national pride and strenthen them" is a hard choice, but it's the kind of hard choices that make the game fun! I'd love to have a Cuban missle crisis where you have to rise above your advisor's squabling and make a decision that will forever alter the world. I don't think they should make stupid decisions, nobody does things that they know is wrong, and I think corruption could really mess the entire game up so I now advise against it. Maybe we should think about seperating the advisors with the charactor model, just a thought, and leave the charactors to do things like lead armys or run organizations? I don't know, but I think that charactors might not have a place in the game as advisors. Your thoughts?

[Henrique Duarte]

I agree with Logo

IMO Advisors should have a personality, their advice would be the best according to his phylosophical/political etc characteristics.
I think that if the game is well done and there is no simple wining route (as there is in every other civ game), then the advisors have to be as Logo described them. If advisors only give the best solutions then we are admiting there is "one" wining approach, and I suppose nobody wants that feeling while playing Clash.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Logo:

Well I do think u have a good point on the personalities which was originally planned in there anyway, but right now I haven't figured out much except it will be based somewhat culturally biased and dynstically biased (if u use dynasties).

I have to disagree with the your use of characters. True they can do such things, but i don't like limiting them. I want a playet to put characters wherever possible. From generals to advisors, to govenors to merchants, etc. It won't be ness, but for me and people like me it will make it much more interesting.

About ur thing with corruption i don't mind having an on/off switch so long as there is a drawback to having it off. I really want it in there because, again, it give more flavor to what can sometimes be a boring game if u have to worry about a plot to break away or overthrow u (note even with corruption on u'd still not have to worry for a characterless advisor, etc).

Mark:
I still think we should try it someway. The use of personalities would help, but not solve the situation. The thing is if advisors always give the best info possible and the player always uses it, then who's really playing the game?

[Mark_Everson]

I think some background on my position for what the advisers do, and how they act, is in order here. First of all, the player can choose to load the advisers with very general preferences. For instance, do they want to be aggressive, or defensive militarily; how risk averse are they; do they value their diplomatic reputation, etc. So a lot of the things that you guys are assuming the character adviser will bring to the party, the adviser already has the correct answer from the player themselves.

LGJ:

What do you think we are, AI gods or something? The Best advice we can give will probably still not be all that good! The advisers serve three main functions. They're a way to pass information to the character in a more colorful way; they can provide hints to people who aren't really familiar with the system yet; and they can be put in charge of an area when the player doesn't derive much enjoyment from managing it themselves. Our hope is to make them good enough so that turning over an area to an adviser will only cost the player something like a 20% or 30% penalty in effectiveness. I do not think we can make them as good as most players that are familiar with the game will be. The hope is that they will just not be so Completely Awful as the advisers in most games in the genre.

[Lord God Jinnai]

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[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited February 15, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Mark:

I'm willing to work with u if u can come up with a good idea that incoperates what u want and what I want. Mainly from what I see u want the player to have the best advice possible. What I want is for character advisors to have a chance at being better than ur standard advisors, but with a risk that they'll be worse and/or corrupt.

I am sure we can come to a compromise.

[Grier]

Ok I dont know if this idea is too late to be considered or if similar concepts have already been discussed, I am also assuming that many of the principles are the same as in civ so not all of my comments may be relevant, but here goes (please ignore my dreadfull spelling).

IMO it would be good if each city had a ruleing dynasty. This dynasty would be responsable for any units built in that city as far as maintinence and refitting. These units would be loyal to that dynasty and if the dynasty rebelled so would the units.

The citizens happiness might be determined by how much they like the ruleing dynasty. Replacing one dynasty with another might have adverse consequences to the populace if they were well liked (i.e they may decide to rebel instead of accepting a new dynasty).

The abilities of a dynasty would affect how well a city was run (crime rate, happiness, gold, science etc).

Two dynasties may not like each other and may go to war with each other (causing a headache to the leader of the civ and forcing loyal troops to have to go and sort it out).

During a revolution all (or some) of can be disposed and replaced with dynasties supportive of the new regime. It may be necessary to forcably remove dynasties during a revolution and prevent cities from rebelling.

The powers of the dynasties could also be dependent on the form of government. For example:

Monarchy - Dynasties are Dukes, Barons, Lords etc..
Fascism - Generals.
Democracy - Members of Parliment.

In ancient governments Dynasties might rule with an iron fist, i.e population is unhappy but cant do much about it (marshall law). In a democracy however a dynasty with a low reputation could be voted out.

One good way to control an important city may be to allow a relative of rule it. Over time however the dynasty would grow away from the crown and may become less controlable.

Alliances with other civs may include inter-marrage among foriegn dynasties. Hence if the alliance is broken one of your dynasties may break away and join the rival civ.

Anyway this is just my $0.03 worth. Hope it helps and I cant wait to see the finished game.